What Microsoft Could Learn from OSS and Linux

An anonymous reader writes "An article on OSWeekly.com discusses a few things that Microsoft could learn from OSS and Linux. 'As Microsoft continues to understand that open source does not mean they cannot generate a decent profit, I honestly wonder if they will eventually "get" that releasing MS Office code to the open source community is their only option. Since the whole threatening to sue thing will be met with the same fan base response, just like the RIAA, it is certainly not a wise decision. And if Microsoft thinks Open Office is a pain now, try suing people over it, then see how many people refuse to buy their products.'"

Piracy

[ShedPlant]

Microsoft already has the benefits of their product being free for home/casual users. It's called "piracy".

Besides which, Open Office is in no way a real threat to MSOffice's success and market dominance. Like Microsoft is supposed to throw away their monopoly because someone else has made a word processor for free? Right.

Office and Exchange are why people buy Windows

[billstewart]

Microsoft's got a tight-knit set of products out there - businesses want to run Office because everybody else does, so they buy Windows to run it on, and buy upgrades to Office when it comes out, and buy upgrades to Windows when Office needs them. And they run Exchange for somewhat dodgier reasons, but again they buy Windows to go with it, and if they've got Windows they can run Office. And they developed IE and IE-dependent web site products mainly to make sure that people didn't replace their operating environments with Mozilla and Java, which would have made it easier to junk Windows.

Just about anything else could be released as Open Source, or given away free, and they'd do ok. They've done some things like that - Netmeeting was the first widespread H.323 voice/video/data/conferencing product, and while they didn't give out the source, the product was free beer (on Windows, of course), and was a reasonably standards-based reference implementation that everybody else in the industry could use. But messing with Office is messing with the crown jewels.

Huh? Wha? Did I miss something?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

As Microsoft continues to understand that open source does not mean they cannot generate a decent profit, I honestly wonder if they will eventually "get" that releasing MS Office code to the open source community is their only option.

You jumped from point A to conclusion B awfully fast there. Why would they want to release the source code to Office? Also from TFA...

At first pass, this sounds like a devastating approach to the Microsoft business model. But in truth, it means that they are competing on the same level as Open Office...

...and why would they want to do that either?

Since the whole threatening to sue thing will be met with the same fan base response, just like the RIAA, it is certainly not a wise decision. And if Microsoft thinks Open Office is a pain now, try suing people over it, then see how many people refuse to buy their products.

Ah...so you're worried that Microsoft would SUE someone using OpenOffice?

Honestly, I think OpenOffice is its own worst enemy. I've tried to switch to OpenOffice several times, but it just can't match my old Microsoft Office 97 in terms of launch and execution speed.

Re:Get real

[Short Circuit]

Get real, indeed. The summary writer clearly doesn't understand the situation. There's no reason for Microsoft to open the code for office in a manner that allows community copying.

My prediction? Microsoft is going to convert their Office product to a series of ActiveX applets and serve it up through Internet Explorer. Homes and small businesses will access the applets over broadband Internet connections, and larger businesses will be offered a chance to license an Office server either as an application or rack device.

The only reason they haven't so far is because broadband penetration in their target markets isn't high enough yet. At some point, they're going to decide that a sufficient percentage of their market has broadband, and they'll discontinue client-side-installed Office software.

It's unfortunate for them that broadband didn't spread more quickly. This administration gives them the perfect atmosphere of leniency. If they could have released an online Office two years ago, they could have established their position as the de facto way of doing business before a potentially more strict administration came along.

Re:Office and Exchange are why people buy Windows

[DaveWick79]

What MS does well is package products that are fairly easy to integrate and work well together out fo the box. Office is a cash cow for MS so they would have no reason to open the source. Microsoft is in business to make money, and satisfying a vast minority of customers who would like them to open up more is far down the priority list. Another similar situation is.... Apple! Asking MS to open up windows or office or any of their software is like asking Apple to GPL OSX. At least Apple has the Ipod business to fall back on.

Open source Office?

[cdrguru]

Sure, that would bring them revenue. Why would someone not just clone it and resell it? It isn't as if it requires a great deal of support or anything else for that matter. The only reason anyone pays for Office is they don't want to be possibly raided by BSA - home users pretty much just pirate or buy it with a new computer.

What possibly would Microsoft gain from exposing the code base? It would certainly allow OpenOffice to incorporate all of the "features" of Microsoft Office into their product with (a) little work and (b) no risk. What else would it do? It would not make throngs of Open Source devotees rush out and buy something the could have for free. I can't see unpaid volunteers contributing to the rather rigorous build process Microsoft has to add fixes for obscure, unfixed bugs.

And why does Microsoft have to sue anyone?

Re:Code Release

[jc42]

I bet that they don't have one! There is no MS Office formats specification there is just only one implementation in software and that is it.

Nah; I'd bet that they have a typical corporate software development environment. There's not just a spec for everything; there are several conflicting specs for most of their software. And the programmers generally ignore the specs, because they understand quite well that they'd better work on what their management wants (this week), if they want to keep their jobs. So they pay attention to the informal change orders in memos from management, and if it conflicts with a spec, well, customers will never see the spec, and their management doesn't understand it, so who cares?

Of course, I do keep hearing glowing reports from supposed MS insiders saying how much better MS is than anyone else. But even minimal experience with their products quickly debunks these claims. So the explanation pretty much has to be the usual corporate culture snafu. Ergo, there are specs, which are highly touted internally by management, but which aren't followed.

Re:Office and Exchange are why people buy Windows

[aybiss]

LOL this *has* to be a troll. OK I'll bite. :-)

So what you're saying is that an office package in which I can't do something as simple as search my own multiple mailboxes is 'doing a good job'? I'm a 100% Windows guy who supports this useless frack of an app on a daily basis, and it makes me positively nauseous just thinking of the entire world using the same piece of utter shite to manage their schedule and contacts every day.

The 'integration' you're talking about? Yes, they've stuck three sub-standard programs into one and called it a suite. I'll admit that I personally have never seen an 'integrated' package that does everything Outlook does (although I'd be truly *astounded* if none exist, especially in Linux land), but there are *far* better alternatives to organising your day, managing contacts and reading your emails.

For all the scheduling that Outlook does, I still can't set rules like 'there must be one person still at the office at any given time' or 'alert me if two people book in the same client on the same day'. The list goes on and on: looking for contacts in multiple address books, total lack of SPAM protection, undeletable conflicts folders, failure to fill out the 'To:' field, can't search contacts while printing an email to fax... argh!

If you think back over the years, you'll realise that MS hasn't invested a single dime in making Outlook more useful since Office 97. It still does *exactly* the same shitty job at all three of its primary roles. The improvements have all been either cosmetic or half-assed attempts to fix broken philosophies. How much frigging money has Outlook cost the world in this time? How much *extra* time was wasted dealing with Outlook's general inability to perform? Hundreds of man hours per day? Thousands?

Moving on from the end user now, anyone who has dealt with *external* integration knows it is a complete hack, rather like the internal integration. Publish a security form in public folders to allow access by external programs - Yes, all of them. WTFnF? Let me just grab my eyebrows from the roof! I can't imagine *any* alternative product would be this annoying or unsafe to work with.

That's not to say they haven't made significant 'improvements' to administering the back end over the years, like Active Directories. Otherwise known as 'half decent security management and a lame attempt at tying it to some sort of real logon credentials'.

And shucks, constantly using 600MB of memory and 20-30% of a fast P4 to handle six mailboxes that get maybe 20 messages a day is pretty damn efficient, right?

Shall I get started on Windows Domains themselves? I hope you've now learned your lesson. :-p