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Gates' Replacement says Microsoft Must Simplify

Posted by Hemos on Mon Jun 19, 2006 09:32 AM
from the planning-the-future dept.
Microsoft
Javaman59 writes "This article in The Australian newspaper describes the background and the agenda of Ray Ozzie, Bill Gates' replacement as chief architect at Microsoft. The creator of Lotus Notes, he's a high-calibre technologist. From the article: 'Ray's a programmer's programmer .. He's much closer to an uber-engineer, whereas Bill hasn't been a programmer for a number of years.' Ozzie is also driving Microsoft to simplify its software: 'Complexity kills .. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces security challenges, and it causes end-user and administrator frustration.' He's not the only brilliant programmer in the world, but he does have Microsoft's resources behind him."
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  • I would totally disagree that he is a programmer's programmer. This is the guy that brought us Lotus Notes, and then a similar product named groove. Have you ever seen any company really using Groove? And on the lotus notes side - what a nightmare. I can't even think about that software without getting the shakes. The number of problems and issues I had when I was supporting it was crazy. On top of it all the program did not work like any other windows program... Causing tons of newbie headaches. I think Microsoft is in for a rough ride...

    Windows Admin Tools [intelliadmin.com]
  • Good plan! by Anonymous Coward (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @09:35AM

  • If Complexity Kills.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gasmonso (929871) on Monday June 19 2006, @09:37AM (#15561417)
    (http://religiousfreaks.com/)

    Then there are probably few survivors at Microsoft. Ozzie has his work cut out. You can brag about Lotus Notes all you want, but that was developed from scratch when you can make the proper design decisions. But with Windows being bloated and out of control, you just can't clean it up and make it more simple... can you? It seems like there putting to much faith in Ozzie... like a silver bullet. Gonna be tough to undo years and years of neglect.

    http://psychicfreaks.com/ [psychicfreaks.com]
    • Re:If Complexity Kills.... by misleb (Score:3) Monday June 19 2006, @09:52AM
    • Re:If Complexity Kills.... by alshithead (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @10:10AM

    • Re:If Complexity Kills.... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Red Flayer (890720) on Monday June 19 2006, @10:11AM (#15561626)
      (Last Journal: Friday November 10 2006, @02:16PM)
      The next build of Windows will not be fully backwards-compatible. That's the only solution to the complexity issues MS is facing.

      Not to be ridiculously, totally, farcically speculous, but here's a scenario for you:

      Vista ships at $$$, with extreme requirements. Adoption is very low, due to all the problems that have been rehashed here at slashdot over the past months. However, Vista is fully backwards-compatible (or as near as possible).

      MS releases another OS that looks like Vista but is not backwards compatible (though probably compatible with Vista). Price (at least cost of use) is an order of magnitude (ok, an order of magnitude in binary) lower than Vista.

      Users who need interoperability with older Windows versions pay for Vista (these'll be primarily businesses). Everyone else can buy the non-backwards-compatible version.

      Of course, Vista would have had to have been built with this in mind. And of course, this would break so much currently-deployed software that it would kill MS in the short run. But, it would help explain MS's interest in ODF.

      Finally, this would have to have been in development for years now, and there hasn't been a peep from Redmond (officially or not), so it's pretty much a garbage theory. But, in the long run, the only way MS can get rid of the bloat is to get rid of backwards compatibility.
      [ Parent ]
      • i'd mod this up if i could by cyclomedia (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @10:33AM
      • Re:If Complexity Kills.... by KDR_11k (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @10:42AM

      • Re:If Complexity Kills.... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by g2devi (898503) on Monday June 19 2006, @11:50AM (#15562400)
        Backwards compatibility is extremely important for Microsoft. It doesn't matter if VistaNG (the non-backwards compatible Vista) is 100 times better, if it's not 100% compatible with most applications, it's dead, simply because:
        * the demand for portable apps will grow (apps like OpenOffice and Firefox look a lot more attractive since they can be phased in slowly)
        * the demand for portability programmer skills will grow (programmers who know Vista, VistaNG, Linux, and Mac portability will have the edge)
        * the migration effort will be compareable to switching to a non-Microsoft alternative, so why not investigate them, especially if you're starting to use portable apps?

        I'm not sure if you were around in the early 1990s, but back then Borland ruled to developer tools world. Microsoft wasn't even close. It wasn't just Turbo Pascal. It was also in the C++ arena with the OWL 1.0 framework that made Win32 programming a lot easier (although it used a proprietary C++ extension to get things done). Borland decided to make their next version of OWL standards compliant. It was a beautiful MVC architecture that was head and shoulders above thin kludgy MFC. However, OWL 2.0 was completely backwards incompatible with OWL 1.0 and the more standards compliant C++ compiler couldn't compile OWL 1.0 programs. At that point, companies revolted. OWL 2.0 was the right idea, but since companies had to migrate anyway, they chose to migrate to the inferior (though more API stable) MFC. VistaNG could face a similar revolt too if it make migratiting to it too painful.

        Here's an alternative that's a lot more likely to me.
        * Microsoft ships Vista.
        * Microsoft starts writing a new high performance core from the ground up or takes the FreeBSD core or the Darwin core (since they can reuse the Mach experience) and adds its new and improved Windows API layer above it (that API might even be completely written in .NET so it can be backported to Vista to easy the migration)
        * Microsoft ports all their apps to the new VistaNG API
        * Microsoft writes a WINE-like app that uses their new cleaned up API layer in order to run Vista apps.

        The consequence of this are:
        * VistaNG apps run fast and programming for VistaNG is a lot nicer than Vista
        * Most Vista apps run smoothly on VistaNG (at a slight performance and memory penalty)
        * People who want don't care about backwards compatibility will not have to deal with the bloat and cruft, while those who do, can get it.
        * At some point in the future, (2 releases after VistaNG), Microsoft can throw out the VistaNG layer or just let the code break over time, like they have with the Win16 API

        [ Parent ]
      • Re:If Complexity Kills.... by glsunder (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @12:41PM
      • Virtualization vs backwards compatibility? by Precipitous (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @01:26PM

    • Ozzie (Score:5, Funny)

      by Hoi Polloi (522990) on Monday June 19 2006, @10:12AM (#15561630)
      From what I've seen of Ozzie, especially on TV, he is in no condition to go on tour with a heavy metal band never mind run a major company.

      "Gonna be tough to undo years and years of neglect."

      That's what rehab is for.

      Rock on!
      [ Parent ]
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:If Complexity Kills.... by Kuxman (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @10:15AM
    • Re:If Complexity Kills.... by GoatMonkey2112 (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @10:19AM

    • Re:If Complexity Kills.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by poot_rootbeer (188613) on Monday June 19 2006, @10:22AM (#15561710)
      But with Windows being bloated and out of control, you just can't clean it up and make it more simple... can you?

      They used to say the same things about Mac OS 9 and Netscape Navigator 4...
      [ Parent ]

    • Yes, it would be simple. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Belial6 (794905) on Monday June 19 2006, @10:55AM (#15561966)
      (http://www.glasshead.net/)
      Yes, it would be simple. All they need to do is use that product they bought. You know. VirtualPC. All it would take is a WinXP and a Win95 preinstalled disk image, a VM that is premapped to the existing hard drive, and some tweaking to the interface so that users don't see a big difference between an emulated window and a native one.

      Some difference would be fine because they could just call it 'compatability mode' and people would live with the slight kludgeness. They don't have to allow any new drivers in the images, as they have a fixed target. This would prevent people from moving the image to other machines.

      The beauty of this is that VirtualPC is already semi crossplatform.
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:If Complexity Kills.... by Moofie (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @11:43AM
    • Re:If Complexity Kills.... by Ed Avis (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @11:54AM
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Complexity Kills... the Competition by timeOday (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @12:57PM
    • The Answer is Obvious Then by twitter (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @11:20PM

  • who'da thunk it? (Score:5, Funny)

    by stinky wizzleteats (552063) on Monday June 19 2006, @09:41AM (#15561434)
    (http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Thursday October 05 2006, @10:36PM)
    This may be the single best long term decision Microsoft has ever made. At least until Ballamer murders Ozzie with a chair.
  • focusing on the core is good by sckeener (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @09:41AM

  • From the horse's... uh... well... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Billosaur (927319) * <wgrother&optonline,net> on Monday June 19 2006, @09:43AM (#15561446)
    (Last Journal: Wednesday November 07, @10:09AM)

    Mr Gates himself was once moved to declare Mr Ozzie "one of the top five programmers in the universe" and revealed that he and Mr Ballmer had wanted for more than a decade to persuade him to join Microsoft. To the outside world, Mr Ozzie's programming prowess is known mainly through Lotus Notes, the e-mail and collaboration software that he masterminded, which was acquired by IBM in 1995.

    And we know that if BG says it, it must be true!

    There's no doubt that Ozzie has some programming credit and no one will argue (I'm going out on a limb here) that Lotus Notes was genius back in the day, pre-Internet-as-we-know it. But despite his desire to streamline programs, reduce the bloat, and re-establish some respectability, he's not going to get very far. First, he'll have to lock horns with Ballmer and dodge chairs. Then he'll find that Microsoft has become so mired in its own muck that spurring the current crop of programmers who've been indoctrinated in the "Microsoft Way" will prove nigh impossible. He will also have to live in the shadow of BG, who despite the announcement, isn't really going anywhere, and will be haunting the halls of Redmond like some anti-Obi Wan.

    I give him 18 months before he resigns in frustration.

    • Re:From the horse's... uh... well... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Hoi Polloi (522990) on Monday June 19 2006, @09:46AM (#15561469)
      "one of the top five programmers in the universe"

      I know where the other 4 are, they are all in Russia sending me spam and running porn sites.
      [ Parent ]
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

    • Re:From the horse's... uh... well... (Score:4, Informative)

      by poot_rootbeer (188613) on Monday June 19 2006, @10:29AM (#15561757)
      Then he'll find that Microsoft has become so mired in its own muck that spurring the current crop of programmers who've been indoctrinated in the "Microsoft Way" will prove nigh impossible.

      That doesn't sound like such an insurmountable obstacle to me. Microsoft can just do what they've done for the past 20 years -- wait for the current batch of "Microsoft Way" indoctrinees to burn out around age 30, and replace them with a bunch of workaholic recent grads willing to put in 70 hour weeks for the price of some free sodas and a complimentary mountain bike.

      There's enough churn in the company that any issues with rank-and-file employee attitudes within the company can work themselves out within just a few years.

      [ Parent ]
    • Re:From the horse's... uh... well... by JCOTTON (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @10:56AM

    • Re:From the horse's... uh... well... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Brave Guy (457657) on Monday June 19 2006, @11:05AM (#15562041)
      There's no doubt that Ozzie has some programming credit ... But despite his desire to streamline programs, reduce the bloat, and re-establish some respectability, he's not going to get very far. ... Then he'll find that Microsoft has become so mired in its own muck that spurring the current crop of programmers who've been indoctrinated in the "Microsoft Way" will prove nigh impossible. ... I give him 18 months before he resigns in frustration.

      I'd seriously consider taking that bet.

      I submit two simple points for consideration.

      1. Microsoft has a lot of very smart people working for it. They may have drunk some corporate Kool-Aid in some cases, but they're still very smart. If Ozzie comes up with the goods, I think they'll recognise that pretty quickly and back him up.
      2. Major changes in direction are possible in the software industry, even in flagship products with a huge user base, within a relatively short period of time. Apple did it with OS X. Just a few years ago, no-one had heard of Google. MS has more than enough money in the bank to take a hit for 2-3 years and do things properly, if the guys at the top are willing to buy into it and can take the shareholders with them.

      I think it's been widely acknowledged that the biggest problem with MS is the sheer scale of what they've tried to do in recent years. There's little experience in the industry of how to develop projects on the scale of Windows or Office effectively, no handbook of how to keep the bug count down and avoid introducing security flaws, performance hits, or whatever other scalability problems in software with dev teams of the size they use.

      With that in mind, I find it strangely reassuring that the first comments from the new guy at (almost) the top involved simplifying everything down to reduce the dangers in these areas.

      [ Parent ]
    • Re:From the horse's... uh... well... by Sam Nitzberg (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @11:24AM
    • Re:From the horse's... uh... well... by Gazzonyx (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @11:42AM

  • Lotus Notes??? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Pedrito (94783) on Monday June 19 2006, @09:43AM (#15561447)
    (http://www.petedavis.net/)
    I don't know, if I were the person responsible for Lotus Notes, I might want to omit that from my resume. If you haven't had Lotus Notes inflicted upon you, count yourself lucky.

  • Technologist! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rob T Firefly (844560) on Monday June 19 2006, @09:44AM (#15561452)
    (http://robvincent.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 09, @01:55PM)
    The creator of Lotus Notus, he's a high calibre technologist.
    Not only is he a technologist, he's a great scientician and an award-winning engineeringer. His unfailicating leaderostimation and efficientistic directionating of Microsoft's profusical resources will undoubtingly work for the betterificationating of all humanitism.
  • Mind you... by Whiteout (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @09:46AM
  • Can't resist by djupedal (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @09:46AM

  • Lotus Notes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Chicken04GTO (957041) on Monday June 19 2006, @09:46AM (#15561470)
    I've developed with Notes for 11+ years (I know I feel sorry for me too), and while the UI is gruesome, and it has plenty of quirks, its great for rapid solution development. You can do almost anything with it, fairly quickly. If anything, the reason I think people hate it so much is precisely because it allows just any wanker to come in and crap out a solution without thinking about it. Its WAY to flexible for anyone but experienced developers to do anything reliable with it. 99% of the headaches in a Notes environment are due to admins or developers setting up stuff they don't have an idea how to really do...or like my company, we have 2000+ deployed seats, hundreds of databases all developed by different people, all supported by ONE guy, part time about 10 hours a week. Wow, no wonder theres so many problems.

    If anything, its the poster child of why you *shouldn't* make it too easy for people to develop solutions...and why a solution that does everything does none of it *really* well.
  • MS Resources come with bagage! by a_greer2005 (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @09:47AM

  • Huge Mess For Whoever Takes Over (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2006, @09:47AM (#15561475)
    1) 11 billion or so shares issued over the years. The significance of this fact seems to elude most people for some reason.

    2) Stock in slow decline for over five years

    3) Revenue growth continuing to slow

    4) open document format movement continues to spread across the computing world

    5) Office software has reached a saturation point for features

    6) Linux continues to step by step become the de facto choice for computing companies to base their hardware on

    7) Attempts to create new revenue streams have been failures like the Xbox/Xbox 360 marketplace disasters

    8) Can't attract/keep good employees now that the stock is no longer going up

    9) Can't keep current employees happy - it doesn't matter how you treat an employee if their options are going up dramatically in value every day and that hasn't been the case at MS for many years

    10) Years of poor engineering choices are making progress nearly impossible for their OS

    Taking over a company that is in its decline is no fun.

  • Ozzie knows from experience by JeffTL (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @09:51AM

  • Simpler times (Score:3, Insightful)

    by clickclickdrone (964164) on Monday June 19 2006, @09:53AM (#15561503)
    (http://pcbookreview.com/)
    It's certainly true that programming these days is way harder than it ever used to be. The number of APIs, formats, interoperability options and even the number of languages a single project might encompass is truly bad for the brain of anyone that doesn't spend 24/7 keeping up with it all. Anyone that can push for simplicity gets my vote.
    FWIW, any time I find it all overwhelming, I reach for my trusty copy of 'Programmers at Work' by Susan Lammers. Many of the great programmers are here along with the stories of how they created much of the basic building blocks we take for granted these days. Almost without exception, their ability to convey ideas in a clear and concise way is inspiring and after reading a few sections, I'm all fired up again and ready to cut code.

  • Viva La Simplicity!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by general scruff (938598) on Monday June 19 2006, @09:54AM (#15561507)
    (Last Journal: Monday January 15 2007, @02:43PM)
    Command Line here we COME!!
  • Microsoft's Problem by Baldrson (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @09:56AM
  • New application Microsoft Simplify, coming 2009Q2! by ewg (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @10:00AM

  • Too little, too late (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2006, @10:03AM (#15561564)
    It kind of reminds me of the Captain of the Titanic handing over command to the third mate: "She's a magnificent ship except for a small gash in the side. I trust you to take good care of her."

    By the time Microsoft gets its problems sorted out, Linux will be the de facto standard. Engineering the complexity out of Windows will take years.
  • So the big question is... by zimus (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @10:03AM

  • Alas alack (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kahei (466208) on Monday June 19 2006, @10:05AM (#15561584)
    (http://www.hwacha.net/)
    It's just extraordinary, there's nothing MS won't do to shoot itself in the foot. The only thing they've done since late 2000 that has been remotely constructive has been .NET, and even then it's worth remembering how despite having an excellent product, they rebranded it and spun it and confused the issue until not one manager in ten had any idea what it was. ".NET is XML," remember that? That's MS on marketing, that is.

    The popular perception is that they excel at marketing rather than technology, but the reverse is true. They have top-notch geeks and project management, and then above that, suddenly, there's a layer of utter leaden idiocy that -- well, the chair thing. The chair thing.

    It seems so obvious, from outside, that there's a layer of deadwood generic-mulitinational-parasite-management people gradually crushing the company and that they need to put someone up there whose focus is on delivering actual value to actual people. And I think a little bit of that awareness has reached MS itself (I mean the MS boardroom -- it's an accepted fact most other places). And so they decided to appoint Ozzie, because he's handled a real product that involved real software.

    It's weird how being a tiny bit right, actually makes the decision so much more glaringly wrong. Of course, I've worked with Notes in some detail (anybody else remember the thing where if the server is too fast, the timestamp on everything starts gradually moving forward, becaues the timestamp is used as a unique ID? It was on thedailywtf.com a while ago) and so to me it's extra specially glaringly wrong.

    • Re:Alas alack by HuguesT (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @10:31AM
    • Re:Alas alack by Artifakt (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @11:43AM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • Like tossing out the heavy stuff when ... by Super Dave Osbourne (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @10:08AM

  • Hopeful (Score:3)

    by ehaggis (879721) on Monday June 19 2006, @10:09AM (#15561608)
    (http://www.restorationunity.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday July 05 2005, @08:12AM)
    Lotus Notes was a great innovation. The kind of thinking outside the box and meeting the need would certainly help MS to focus. Right now "Up-Sell is the mother of invention" at MS. Ray Ozzie could get back to "Necessity" as the mother of invention.

    On a lighter note, the only certifications I have are for Lotus Notes, does this mean the will transfer? Can I be an MCSE without the hassle of regurgitating facts on a test without understanding concepts?

  • Bill hasn't been a programmer for a number of year by JustNiz (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @10:12AM
  • Anecdote on Lotus Note by HuguesT (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @10:22AM
  • Lotus now... by hnile_jablko (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @10:28AM

  • Complexity (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ElephanTS (624421) on Monday June 19 2006, @10:32AM (#15561784)
    When are they going to realise complexity is like the cancer they've got. It's not a small thing, something to be tided up, it is THE thing they're suffering with.

    Windows is like a house of cards made from million decks, so many co-dependancies. It's why Vista has taken so long and will continue to cause problems.

    The only thing to do is 'rip it up and start again' but they can't do that because of 1) time 2) losing customers by the millions along the way, so they carry on regardless and hope for the best.

    Apple was in the same situation with Copland and it almost killed them too. Eventually they bit the bullet, trashed it (re-used some sections and ideas), provided the carbon bridge for transition/migration, and bought in proven code (BSD/Mach) and just worked on the GUI experience. This rescued them with literally months to spare before the big bad complexity monster ate them up. Genius, IMO.

    Surely, at this late stage, they're can be no doubt that *nix won the OS wars?
    • Re:Complexity by kpharmer (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @01:54PM
      • Re:Complexity by ElephanTS (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @02:05PM
  • 50 Million Lines of Code... by Firefalcon (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @10:32AM

  • Quote... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HydraSwitch (184123) on Monday June 19 2006, @10:33AM (#15561791)
    (http://slashdot.org/)
    I've been programming for more than 20 years. I keep this quote stuck to all my desktops using knotes:
    Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.
    Brian W. Kernighan
    • Re:Quote... by ponos (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @04:34PM
    • Re:Quote... by ZXSpectrum42 (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @07:32PM
  • No sh1t? by ScottLindner (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @10:34AM
  • If he's an über engineer by Bromskloss (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @10:38AM

  • Interesting parallels (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jugalator (259273) on Monday June 19 2006, @10:40AM (#15561843)
    (Last Journal: Monday February 13 2006, @07:11PM)
    "Complexity kills .. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces security challenges, and it causes end-user and administrator frustration."

    Hmm, is this quote from Microsoft after the development of Windows 2000 concluded, or when in the finishing touches of Vista.

    They're confusingly similar [winsupersite.com] anyway:
    Windows 2000 Beta 3 was delayed one week on April 15 until the 28th. On April 16th, Jim Allchin said that Windows 2000 had hit the home stretch: "We have a set of ship criteria that's incredibly complicated," Allchin said.
    ... and again [winsupersite.com]:
    "While Windows 2000 is a great product, its development time and complexity is just too much to ask of customers. In the future, Microsoft will need to work off of a stable base, adding features on a yearly basis. For example, Microsoft should have developed Active Directory and IntelliMirror separately, releasing these products when they were ready. Asking customers to wrap their minds around all of the new features and changes in Windows 2000 is simply too much to ask."

    So... Microsoft learnt from their mistakes in Longhorn? No, wait a minute!

    The next OS shouldn't be as monolithic with things breaking in their own products, or even worse, OS, as soon as they apply a patch.

    So now you know what you can expect in Vista -- more of the same?

    A funny thing in all this, and a constructive suggestion instead of just whining, is a request for Microsoft to offer install-time choices. Sure, there should be a "novice installer mode" like Vista (and XP) currently features where at the very start, one can say "I'm an idiot, install the OS" in prettier wording. But what about advanced users? Shouldn't they be able to exclude stuff they don't need. Maybe then, *gasp* they won't be subject to security exploits in these non-installed components either.
  • Hopefully, by unkaggregate (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @10:41AM
  • In another news by William Robinson (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @10:41AM

  • Turning around a tanker... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by QuietLagoon (813062) on Monday June 19 2006, @10:42AM (#15561861)
    He's not the only brilliant programmer in the world, but he does have Microsoft's resources behind him

    Even if he were a brilliant programmer (which I think he's not), he still has the extreme inertia of the Microsoft entrenched culture to deal with. This isn't the Microsoft that reacted quickly when the Internet sneaked up on them in the 90's, this is a bloated Microsoft that has as its main goal the protection of a deteriorating monopoly. This is a Microsoft that has not seen a successful, profitable new product in many, many, many years.

  • eh? by Vassgao (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @10:46AM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • Oh the irony! by Godji (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @10:49AM
  • Ozzie, Ozzie, Ozzie by MalusCaelestis (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @10:55AM

  • MS has very little room to change (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ChrisA90278 (905188) on Monday June 19 2006, @11:03AM (#15562026)
    What Mr. Ozzy will learn quickly is that MS _must_ build softwate the way it does if it wants to continue to be the monopoly it is. If they released software that was made of components that used a simple and published interfwce then that would open up competition. Third parties would offer components. No they NEED complexity and circular dependencies and back door interfaces.

    I strongly suspect the Gates decided to bail now while Microsoft is at it's peak. I figure he knows what is going to happen in ten years.

  • An innovative Microsoft is good for everyone by Eloquence (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @11:04AM
  • What's an RDBMS? by billybob_jcv (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @11:04AM
  • Simplify??? by .killedkenny (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @11:12AM
  • Simply by peterfa (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @11:27AM
  • Wither Groove? by fm6 (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @11:27AM
  • GNOME by pato101 (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @11:27AM
  • Ozzie Can't Program... by rayted32 (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @11:35AM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • Programmer's Programmer? by Rob Menke (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @12:37PM
  • Not-so-good Lotus Notes Design by mech_knight (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @01:05PM
  • Only Now... by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @01:40PM
  • Simplicity: a new slogan for the upcoming Vista by fastgood (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @01:45PM
  • At last! by Helldesk Hound (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @02:03PM
  • Rise Lord Vader! by Danathar (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @02:09PM
  • I'm an Exchange/Notes administrator by Poohsticks (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @07:44PM
  • A single quote inspiring so much discussion by Evets (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @10:52PM
  • The dumbest possible human exchange by tjstork (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @11:03PM
  • ATM by jawahar (Score:1) Tuesday June 20 2006, @12:28AM
  • Re:creator of lotus notus? by Bloke down the pub (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @09:47AM
  • Re:Programmer's programmer? by saddino (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @10:00AM
  • Re:creator of lotus notus? by CptPicard (Score:1) Monday June 19 2006, @10:20AM
  • Re:Hey Editurs! (Obligatory Life of Brian Quote) by Rick Genter (Score:2) Monday June 19 2006, @11:21AM
  • 26 replies beneath your current threshold.

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