Category: Microsoft

Microsoft buys itself a Swedish Standard – Updated

It looks like the Swedish Standards Committee was going to vote “no, with comments” on Microsoft’s OOXML proposal. Then, in the 3 days before the vote, 24 new companies paid the fees to join the committee. The result being that the standard was passed. Of those 24 companies, 18 of them were Microsoft Gold Certified Partners.

This is a huge blunder for Microsoft, which has been switching their position from ignoring standards to proposing them over the last few years in order to engender better PR.

links:
http://computersweden.idg.se/2.2683/1.118249
http://stupid.domain.name/node/385

Update – 9/1/07
Looks like the SIS board canceled the vote because of the irregularities  and so Sweden won’t vote in the ISO.

link: http://stupid.domain.name/node/389

Correcting the record on Microsoft’s foray into Open Source

Microsoft is making big headlines in their announcement that they are releasing some technology as Open Source…

Why Microsoft Is Going Open Source | Linux Journal

No one would have believed me if I had said five years ago that Microsoft would have a page on its Web site called “Open Source at Microsoft” with the following remarkably sane and reasonable statement on the subject:

Microsoft is focused on helping customers and partners succeed in a heterogeneous technology world. This starts with participating and contributing to a broad range of choices for developing and deploying software, including open source approaches and applications. From thousands of lines of code and scripts on MSDN and TechNet, to open source applications like IronPython, ASP.NET AJAX, SharePoint Learning Kit, and WiX on CodePlex and SourceForge, Microsoft is continually growing the number of products released with open source access.

Thats right: Microsoft has released not one but several pieces of code as open source. Moreover, its submitting some of its home-grown licences to the Open Source Initiative for approval. So what is going on here?

Very few remember Microsoft’s first release of Open Source code: The Microsoft Virtual Worlds Platform. I worked on that platform from 1994-1999. It was originally designed to be a Microsoft product, but for various reasons it became clear that it wasn’t to be. So rather than just kill it, the team decided to release it as open source, very quietly. So, of course, very few have heard of it and no one remembers that it was Microsoft’s first open source release (to my knowledge).

Interesting side note, it turns out that some grad student in China submitted MS Virtual Worlds platform as part of his thesis claiming he wrote it. heh.

Unfortunately, the source code wasn’t hosted on Microsoft.com and I can’t find it anywhere easily. I’m sure someone has it archived somewhere.

Microsoft Expands in Canada Amid U.S. Visa Crunch

Microsoft Expands in Canada Amid U.S. Visa Crunch

Microsoft Corp. said on Thursday it will open a software development center in Vancouver, giving it a place to employ skilled workers snagged by U.S. immigration quotas.

It may signal the start of a new hiring trend, with other U.S. high-tech firms following in Microsofts footsteps to Canada, where lawyers say it is easier for foreign nationals to obtain work credentials.

This is a smart move for the company on one hand. Since the beginning, MS has concentrated development in Redmond, continuously expanding as the company grew until it owns so much of the town that there is serious concern that there are not enough actual residents there. Satellite offices at MS might as well not exist at all as far as most of the Redmondites are concerned. Moving Research and Mobile to the other side of the 520 sent a pretty strong signal about their relative importance. Those folks might as well be on mars. Now imagine what it will be like in Vancouver. It is time for this company that has tens of thousands of workers to spread out a bit. I would imagine that they are also losing applicants because of the high cost of living in the Seattle area as well.

However, the one thing that MS is forgetting to state in all of this is that by opening offices in Canada, they are saving money. They could get all the qualified applicants they could ever want if they would pay them well relative to the rest of the industry. Since MS isn’t willing to be competitive with salaries, they have become dependent on the modern day equivalent of indentured workers, H1-B visa holders. Now that congress has been (wisely) closing that loophole, MS is taking their ball and going home. That will show those employees wanting more than a %2 raise from the most profitable software company in existence!

Interesting post on life at Google vs Microsoft from a individual contributor perspective

Life at Google – The Microsoftie Perspective « Just Say “No” To Google

The comments are freaky. MS folks piling on this person which seems kind of stupid, because this reads like a love letter to life at Microsoft if I ever read one. I’d like to see this person follow up with a second interview in a few years and see how the Microsoft grind changes their perspective. I never worked at Google, but part of the reason that I left MS was because it was starting to feel like management looked at developers as cogs in the machine. Maybe its worse at Google, I don’t know, but this certainly doesn’t compel me to go work there. Especially as a manager. 100 direct reports! That is insane.

Does virtualization herald the end of the platform war?

I was reading Marc Andreesen’s new blog and I came across this quote:

Virtualization — in the form of software like Parallels and VMWare Fusion — lets you deal with an individual operating system as if it were an application.

from blog.pmarca.com: At long last, switching back to Mac

and I realized that since Apple has completed the standardization of the X86-family as the chip architecture for 99% of the world, the platform really has gotten irrelevant. Now that OS virtualization technologies don’t require massive amount of processing power, you can mix and match all you want. Like OS X, but need to run some windows programs for work? No Problem. Like Vista, but really need to run that Linux app? Easy-peasey. This really got cemented when Parallels officially released version 3 of their windows virtualization solution which theoretically gives virtualized apps access to the GPUs for the first time. We’ll have to see what the cost (in performance) is, but we know that it will get more and more seemless over time.

This goes beyond just the OSes though. Flash/Flex/Silverlight all enter this as well, further blurring the lines between operating system, platform and application.

I could see that very soon, the OS that you run will be 100% based on personal preference and all the worries about compatibility will be gone. If that does happen, Microsoft better be scared. I think that Bootcamp and Parallels are much more of a long-term threat than Flash ever will be.

The RIA battle heats up

Not content to let Adobe and Microsoft slug it out, Java and Firefox decide to enter the fray.
APC: Firefox to go head-to-head with Flash and Silverlight
CNET: Schwartz: JavaFX can take on Flash

I don’t think that this will amount to more than a distraction. JavaFX seems a bit like a mess. Reading over the docs, it is very awkward from a language perspective. Java devs don’t really need it. I could see it being more of a problem for Flex than Silverlight, only because I don’t really see a lot of the Java crowd embracing any Microsoft technology. That said, it is really aimed at the same target market that Silverlight is: developers. Flash devs aren’t switching to Java any time soon. Even Silverlight doesn’t seem to do much for them. I’m guessing that JavaFX may gain some success in the Java community, but I don’t see it peeling of Silverlight or Flex devs.

The main problem with Firefox is marketshare. Until they hit 95% of the browser market, why would anyone do something that would only work in that browser? I’m assuming that I’m missing something here.

Is Microsoft still licensing PMC software? in microsoft.public.windows.mediacenter.portable

Is Microsoft still licensing PMC software? in microsoft.public.windows.mediacenter.portable

Microsoft is no longer licensing the PMC software. Here is an
announcement that was sent out last year to our PMC partners:

In early 2006, Microsoft released the second version of Windows Mobile
for Portable Media Centers to our partners. The second version of the
Portable Media Center software enhanced the end user experience and
enabled partners to build smaller, less expensive and more competitive
devices.

As part of the ongoing review of our product investments, we have
decided to take what we have learned from our investments in Portable
Media Center and focus our product and marketing resources on building
media experiences on connected Windows Mobile powered devices.

With the re-investment of resources in media experiences on connected
Windows Mobile powered devices, Portable Media Center 2.0 is the last
version of our Portable Media Center software under the Windows Mobile
brand. We do not plan any future Portable Media Center software upgrades
or marketing activities.

Thank you for all your support- Microsoft is proud of its work, the work
of its partners and the devices and services delivered as a result of
those relationships. We will continue to work with existing Portable
Media Centers licensees to ensure that devices they are developing come
to market.

This isn’t a surprise, but it still makes me a bit sad. I helped out a little bit on PMC (and its successor that never saw the light of day) at the end of my Microsoft career and it was kind of a sad story. It was basically one guy on the Windows CE team (I can’t remember his name right now and google isn’t helping) who made the PMC happen, but originally it was a lot more interesting and capable device. Then the marketers and biz-dev guys stepped in and decided to make it a “better-together” device by tying it to the Media Center PCs. The result? A brand new technology gets shackled to an under performing one, guaranteeing its failure.

[via engadget]