Platform Evangelism 419
An anonymous submitter writes "James Plamondon, a former Microsoft employee is writing a book on Technological Evangelism at Microsoft. He's posted the first chapter, "Evangelism is War."
Robert Scoble, a current Microsoft Evangelist doesn't like the metaphor, but Micah Alpern is concerned Microsoft could use similar strategies against Macromedia Flash."
scary quote in context (Score:4, Interesting)
Competition (Score:1, Interesting)
Flash is dead (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:mac vs linux vs windows vs etc. (Score:3, Interesting)
Proven protection against evangelism (Score:5, Interesting)
It's difficult for a company that only really supports one platform to compete against s/w that's in widespread use everywhere.
Opening up netscape five years earlier would have killed IE before it even got started. Real may understand this now, I wonder if Macromedia does yet.
paraphrasing the Dixie Chicks... (Score:2, Interesting)
To paraphrase the Dixie Chicks, I'm ashamed to be from the same country as these folks. In the kind of country I'd wish to live in, people would have PERSONAL HONOR and would INSTANTLY RESIGN when they first become aware their company was pursuing a policy like this. They'd quickly get a reputation as assholes and crooks, and people wouldn't want to deal with them. It even says -- explicitly -- that the motivation for this behavior is not just money, but very large amounts of money. They are not just greedy; they are deliberately making the decision to sacrifice the common good for their own selfish ends.
What makes me really sad is not that there are a few evil people in the world. What makes me sad is that this is socially acceptable here in the U.S. Enough people have bought into the capitalistic bullshit lie of winning at any cost that these people may have a relatively low level of awareness that what they are doing is morally wrong. Worse, two people that I can think of who I otherwise respect as honorable men -- my dad and the pastor of my church -- both think that Microsoft has a bold vision that is to be emulated and/or has done lots of good for the country overall. I can't help but conclude, since these are genuinely good men otherwise, that their culture has fed them a lie.
Apparently deliberately-antisocial corporate greed is OK and it's OK to use anti-competitive practices to crush your enemies instead of competing fairly by making a good product. And apparently I'm the only one in the US who thinks otherwise.
OK, I know I've said nothing new here. I'm done venting. For now.
Re:Flash is dead (Score:3, Interesting)
I have been keeping an eye on SVG as I really do hope it gains traction and becomes an open standard.
Quick summary (Score:2, Interesting)
- If someone assume user has software X for their business then software X is a platform.
- If software X is a platform, then it is a competitor.
- Defeating a competitor is making sure it gets no share of the business.
The rest is a brief overview of how they proceed. Basically they don't do the job themselves. They convince others, especially software developpers, to do it for them. This works best when the others are not aware of the alternatives and consequences of their choices. When they get enough people working their way, a critical mass is achieved and Microsoft's platform becomes an unavoidable standard.This is extremely efficient because of the number of people they can get working for their goal without having them on the payroll.
The power of this article is not in the novelty of the story, it is in illuminating how the whole thing works.
Irrealistic Blood Frenzy (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft will be truly lost, not by getting bankrupt or marginalized or anything, but by simply being left as one of the group of players on the software field. That is the loss of its central philosophy, that there could "only be one". Is it not so?
--
On totally other news, it is imminent now that free software will prevail, and must start to prepare to deliver its promise. A lot of infrastructure must be invented in order to best utilize the power of shared development. Just think of all of those organizations from Münich and Turku to the enlightened countries of South America, asking for preparation, development and upkeep of their systems... It can be left to happen, or it can be planned for.
Re:If MS were to use such strategies, would anyone (Score:4, Interesting)
What they and others do is far beyond competition, much less 'healthy' or 'normal.'
They're coasting on the fact that once you achieve a certain critical mass, you get god-mode in the system. For individuals that condition tends not to last, as they either get booted [apple.com] from their company once things get big, or the novelty wears off and they decide to try it all over again. But for corporations, that's a sustainable state, which turns them into fiscal black holes that swallow everything visible to them.
I've always thought that communism looked good on paper, but just doesn't scale well beyond a few thousand people. So are we seeing a similar limitation with capitalism? Or is Wally World really just so clearly superior to anything else with a cash register?
But which are the exceptions? (Score:3, Interesting)
Things are changing quite a lot in the Mac community. With Mac OS X, there are a lot of fairly new Mac users who aren't necessarily wedded to every dot and comma of the old OS. I'm one, for example. (I hope you wouldn't find me pompous, elitist, or arrogant, but that's not for me to judge :) I've fairly broad experience of platforms before 'going Mac' a couple of year ago; there's a lot I love about current Macs (and just a few things I hate). I'm happy to talk about the good stuff, because I find that a lot of PC users simply don't know that things can be different. (That probably doesn't apply to many Slashdotters, of course.) But I try to be honest rather than rabid about it.
I don't know how representative I am of current Mac users, but I suspect that the closed-minded arrogant ones are a smaller proportion than they were 2 or 3 years ago.
(Oh, and what's wrong with being elitist, anyway? When you know just how good things can be, doesn't having to use crap give you pain, whether it's Windows software, web sites, browsers, closed-source software, proprietary data formats, low-quality audio, or whatever? We can all get rabid about something...)
Re:If MS were to use such strategies, would anyone (Score:3, Interesting)
So evolution, and capitalism, is to some degree self-defeating; once a competitor reaches the point where he can eliminate the game that led to his success, he can, in essence, kick away the ladders and burn the bridges to his success so that no others can approach his position.
The problem of capitalism is that it is based on tracking money. Money is the only metric. But it is not the one that evaluates the status of humanity very well. It seems that a lot of people think that capitalism is 'natural' to humanity, since it has been very successful in developing our capabilities. However, it seems the world is heading towards rule by corporation. And I really don't think that is better for everyone.
Re:mac vs linux vs windows vs etc. (Score:2, Interesting)
Well I'm afraid for printing and DTP (CMYK, colour corrections etc.) Windows is barely in the game and Linux isn't even in the league.
There still are things that one OS does far better than others, partly due to well done integration of many available tools. And in my example the main focus of graphic/layout/DTP Software vendors is still on the Mac, so that's why the Mac is where it's at in that business.
Now if any company would come and implement CMYK support, colour correction, bleed adjustment, screen angle settings, under colour reduction etc. in the GIMP and also integrate that with a colour matching system that works throughout the whole OS, I'm sure it then could be just as good as Photoshop on the Mac. The problem is no one has done that yet, so it isn't. (Even on Windows Photoshop is featurewise the same, but getting proper colour out still doesn't work that smoothly, don't ask me why. Been there, done that. Got the t-shirt).
Of course this also counts vice versa for Linux, so I am sure there are things Linux excels at where OS X and Windows really look pale, partly due to the Linux architecture itself and partly thanks to the people/companies that put their efforts into Linux for a certain field of application (Beowulf comes to mind).
I just don't believe that every OS can do every task just as well, if setup by the proper person. Simply due to the fact that each OS or even the users of the OS have some leve of focus on certain applications, and therefore most software available for that platform is focused the same way.
I.e. even if you made lots of graphic and DTP software for Linux right now, most design people just wouldn't feel at home, so it wouldn't sell, hence there isn't much graphics DTP stuff there.
Now looking at 3D (or very high end motion graphics), where the users are much more technically knowledgeable, and suddenly you find quite a few very important apps on Linux (Maya, Shake, Houdini). Software still needs to be paid for, so the paying users define to a large part what software is written for the platform.
The war is almost over... (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft is starting to loose a lot of key battles. The can't compete with Linux simply because of the price. People are cheap and if they can get something for free and it works ok, they will live with it. I honestly believe that this is part of the reason that the Macintosh isn't nearly as competitive as WinTel.
First will be governments switching over to it, then schools,charitable organizations and point of sale type businesses. After that is done then you will see surrounding businesses that work with those HUGE clients being forced to switch. Once that is done and Linux/Open Source has a 25-30% desktop market share the war is over. No development company will want to exclude 25-30% of the market and then ROME falls quickly.
Some of the key battles that I see now that Microsoft isn't winning.
1. Handhelds
2. Phones
3. Java v.s.
4. Getting current user base to upgrade past NT 4.0
5. PS2 vs Xbox.
6. Databases, Oracle, IBM, SQL Server, MySQL, PostGreSQL
In my opinion Microsoft seems a lot like IBM of the early 80's. The are doing a lot of things, and flat out own one key marketplace, but they don't do anything well.
Now there are some things that could dramatically slow this down.
1. Death of Linus.
2. IBM to offer it's own Linux and try and seize control of the kernel.
3. For some reason Java flounders.
Anyway, the way I see it the next 10 years will actually be fun!
Re:As much as I hate to say it... (Score:3, Interesting)
macromedia needs to work on security of flash
That's a laugh. Macromedia's in bed [macromedia.com] with Doubleclick if you didn't know. Since nobody is paying for their Flash plugin, it's apparently in Macromedia's best interest to keep their (figurative) partners in crime happy. Macromedia can bite my shiny metal ass. I mourn Allaire.
I'll read this right after I read Hillary's (Score:3, Interesting)
Proof that if you are a self centered A-hole and want to start a company you should surround yourself with other self centered a-holes too.
Evangelism is a great word for the Microsoft phenomena. They ask you to believe without any proof, in fact in spite of proof to the contrary, that they advanced technology during the 80's and 90's.
The PC phenomena, in spite of a good start has set computing back at least 10 years. Almost all of the innovations brought to us via the PC have come in spite of Microsoft not because of it. Even so, there is so much re-invention of wheels going on. From protected memory spaces, multitasking, asynchronous I/O devices, it all had to be re-invented for the PC and more specifically, for Windows, when all of the concepts had been invented, and refined on mainframes years earlier.
We've turned into a society of publishers with no time to read. We can't get customer support for our flaked out computing infrastructure because everyone is too busy working on their blog to man the help-desk.
If Microsoft doesn't change, the combination of true Enterprise computing, Open Source, and Internationalism is going to cause Microsoft to lose skirmish, battle and war. What Microsoft needs not is not evangelists, bit strategists. And this time, rather than strategizing only on how to "crush the competition", maybe they should try strategizing on how to do something good for the world or at least a value-add for their customers. In the process they may allow their company to continue to survive.
By the way, this doesn't look like a very good book. Sounds like the kid in the bubble trying to tell you how the world works, excpcept he hasn't even bothered to look up what the XXX number are yet. Astonding!
Re:mac vs linux vs windows vs etc. (Score:2, Interesting)
Typical.... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's so typical of MS employees. They can say the most astonishing things, and somehow link it all back to "doing what's best for the customer", Kevin Bacon style. They collectively tell themselves, and therefore believe, that they are there to serve the customer, and that they are the best because they do what the customer needs and wants.
The reality is far, far different of course. It's rare (but not unheard of) for one of their employees to make the mental leap between the hordes of people who hate them, and the idea that maybe they are actually working exclusively for the profit of their shareholders and executives as opposed to "making the world a better place through technology".
Re:Hate Flash too - Re:As much as I hate to say it (Score:1, Interesting)
Schmuk. Get off of our internet and take your acursed "content" with you.