Get Off Microsoft

If you haven’t already jumped off the Microsoft Windows/Vista platform, you probably have your reasons. But many IT managers are resisting the move to Vista. Microsoft even tried to guilt-trip the Windows XP-only skeptics by pulling Mojave out of its hat, presenting it as a new operating system, and then revealing it was Vista all along. But the skeptics weren’t buying it. Even Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer casts its two major rivals, Apple and Google, in a somewhat positive light, acknowledging that Microsoft faces an uphill battle with both. I say to Ballmer, good luck with that.

And this is all good news! Competition has returned to the industry. Apple has climbed to third place in U.S. market for personal computers. The inexorable trend toward cloud computing puts Linux in the driver’s seat. Bill Gates is gone, but the issue was never about him; it was about the tactic of locking users into their products while maintaining a monopoly. That monopoly is receding faster than Ballmer’s hairline. With software-as-a-service and innovations like iPhone applications, the nature of software is changing radically and providing far more choices than ever before. I predict that, in just a few years, people will look back on the operating system wars, Windows domination, and the Microsoft monopoly with amusement and nostalgia.

So this blog must come to an end, as the topic no longer carries weight. I haven’t used Microsoft software (except for testing purposes) for several years now, and I’ve collaborated with Microsoft users in many different ways without compromising my integrity or Office compatibility. I’m bullish on Apple, the iPod, and the iPhone, and continue to use Macs in my day-to-day work and Apple consumer devices at home. And I will continue to blog, just not on this topic alone. See my personal blog at tonybove.com to continue this thread. And if you’re interested in rock music history, check out Rockument.

I can go on to better topics now. So long, and thanks for all the fish!

As Apple eats away at Microsoft’s market share on the consumer side of PCs and mobile devices, and Google chips at Microsoft Office’s share in business, Microsoft is caught in the middle and facing a two-front war. The giant in Redmond is already weak in the knees in the enterprise world, where the largest companies on the planet are virtualizing their systems and transitioning to services-oriented architectures. There is very little innovation going on in packaged applications — the new focus is online (with some offline capabilities). This fundamental shift to a service model, which has been going on for quite some time, will get seriously businesslike this year and change the business world over the next few years, putting Microsoft at a disadvantage.

This is no April Fools joke (note however that the article uses Techmeme as its example — so much for trusting only one source!).

Apple’s big gains with the Mac are not as newsworthy as iPhone or iPod stories, but according to analysts quoted by Philip Elmer-DeWitt in Fortune, Apple has about 21% of the consumer market in the U.S. (10% worldwide); its share of the total PC market worldwide grew from 2.4% in 2006 to 2.9% in 2007. About twice as many Macs sell as PCs: after Apple introduced the Intel Macs, Mac sales grew 37% in 2007, more than double the industry-wide rate of 15%. The analysts also found that while most people tend to believe Macs cost 20-30% more than comparable PCs, the actual difference is more like 16% for desktops and 9% for laptops.

Meanwhile, Forrester analysts posited that Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo is partly about fending off Google in the enterprise. Google has moved tentatively into the enterprise software market with a cloud-based model, adding enterprise capabilities to online applications — including the ability to work offline and to sync your library of saved files with your local computer. Productivity and collaboration software in a cloud-based model has clear benefits — it’s potentially much less expensive, easier to manage, and  available anywhere, at any time, on any computer.

Microsoft remains a threat but the company seems to be standing still, getting nibbled at from all sides. Vista stands in the way of true virtualization, but it won’t stop the virtualization of applications, which will sweep the industry and loosen Microsoft’s stronghold on the industry (which is based on tying the operating system to the user through applications). Nor will Microsoft be able to put the breaks on the virtualization of servers and ultimately personal computers, which will be capable of running multiple operating systems if need be. Microsoft will very likely acquire technologies to keep competitive with the emerging software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms.

Apple will continue to be a source of innovation for truly personal computing, communications, and entertainment. Google and Apple will work together to change mobile computing, and the pair have a big head start on Microsoft/Yahoo. Google will certainly win the battle for advertising with Microsoft/Yahoo in the short term. Both sides will get heavy with acquisitions this year, so innovation may in fact slow down for a time as these mergers settle. But Google has plenty more big plans up its sleeve, and you would have to be extremely optimistic to say that about Microsoft or Yahoo.

The very nature of software applications will change so radically and provide so much choice over the next five years that people will look back on the operating system wars, Windows domination, and the Microsoft monopoly with amusement and nostalgia. Yes of course we will.

In the world of business IT, everything is moving toward on-demand business services. To excel in a competitive market a high level of autonomy is required, including the freedom to select the appropriate supporting IT systems. Services-oriented architecture (SOA) is a corporate means of normalizing the aspects of IT systems to make them more shareable, rewirable, dynamic, and integrated. SOA is converging with Web 2.0 technologies because companies are tired of waiting for a return on their SOA investments and the demand for change is pushing IT to search for new, more effective approaches, especially using the Web. As the intangible concerns with highly federated data and software get surmounted, expect to see the proliferation of just-in-time enterprise mashups and the tools to create them. These solve situational business problems and support dynamic business processes — the biggest potential benefit of merging SOA and Web 2.0.

As a result, it will be less important which kind of personal computer you have, which operating system you use, and indeed, which device you use to access business applications. Mobile devices will embed workers into business processes and collaboration, and mobile applications will explode. Microsoft Office, Outlook, Exchange, and all the rest of it will be obsolete as these mobile applications take hold. You probably are already using software as a service and your budget most likely does not include any packaged applications next year, so your ties to any particular operating system (Windows, OS X, Linux) evaporate.

And there you go. If you haven’t already decided to “get off Microsoft” you probably won’t do so consciously, but it will happen anyway. Even if you buy a Vista PC and run Office. At some point you will be using software as a service — even Outlook as a service — and bit by bit your computing activities will be virtualized: only loosely coupled to whatever operating system or PC you are using, loosely integrated with whatever applications you are using. Microsoft will no longer have a hold on you.

Unless, of course, you like to be held. Good luck with that.

Yes, this is the one, the one they call Windows 7. It’s supposed to be the operating system to replace Vista in three years (or less). Microsoft has supposedly learned from its mistakes with Vista and will position Windows 7 for consumers directly, offering a point-release update of Vista for business users right up to 7’s launch.

These are the rumors, but some blog pundits wonder if there’s a deliberate seed-planting effort going on by Microsoft (indeed, here’ an insider talking about it). But Mary Jo Foley doesn’t think so — she thinks Microsoft really wants to keep a lid on it. It’s just harder to do that and still get developers to test builds.

Sources on Neowin.net indicate that Windows 7 should be finished in the second half of 2009, three years after Windows Vista. Highlights include imitations of Mac OS X features such as network-aware connections that detect which network you’re in and switch your settings and devices accordingly, and (with a Live account) the ability to carry your Internet Explorer settings and favorites with you. Screen shots on rumor blogs are almost identical to Windows Vista with only minor changes. One is a new gadget called “Windows Media Center” that displays whatever is playing on your WMC.

Now that Bill Gates has left the building, will Microsoft continue to be as big a threat to innovation as it was in the past? Certainly not with as much wit. Microsoft will very likely acquire technologies to keep competitive with the emerging software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms. And count on Windows 7 to be locked into Microsoft’s online services. Windows Live has taken ownership of most of the service-connected features in Windows, including Mail, Messenger, and Photo Gallery. You can expect to see a Windows Live release in the same time-frame as Windows 7 that makes the “Windows + Windows Live” combination a marketing hit — and a potential Trojan horse for deeply integrated capabilities that lock consumers into the Microsoft world. If that world includes all of Yahoo’s services, well, that makes sense to Redmond, doesn’t it?

Care to stick with Vista and wait for the Oz-like world of Windows 7? Good luck with that.

If you are content with your Windows XP machine, you might see no reason at all to buy a new computer this Christmas, possibly because most of the new PCs and laptops on retail shelves run Vista. And Vista by itself seems not to be a compelling reason to buy a PC.

Security no longer seems to be an issue; people simply don’t believe that Vista is that much more secure. Corporate customers looking for benefits in managing PCs over networks and connecting mobile devices see only incremental improvements in Vista — not enough to drive businesses to upgrade. Most businesses have worked with Windows XP long enough to develop their own tried-and-true manageability and mobility solutions and best practices, so why bother. And yet, many corporate customers are signing Vista licensing agreements without doing the upgrade yet, future-proofing their businesses for future Vista upgrades, and this helped Microsoft project a glossy revenue report.

And so the Microsoft inertia continues, despite evidence that Windows and Office vulnerabilities are off the charts this year. Apparently it’s still extremely lucrative to exploit vulnerabilities, especially those in Excel and Word. The older Windows XP with Service Pack 3 offers about twice the performance of the new Vista, according to recent benchmarks. And it is possible to cut down on the bloat in Windows XP that leaves it so vulnerable by turning off services you don’t use.

So what will change the landscape and make it possible for larger numbers of users, especially corporate users, to overcome Microsoft inertia? Here are the leads I’m tracking:

1. Software delivered as a service will help corporate customers break the Microsoft operating system habit. Successful service operators like Salesforce.com (now Force.com) and NetSuite are changing the business landscape. Web applications like Zoho and Google Apps are helping small businesses and consumers break the Office habit.

2. Apple will continually expand its alternative installed base of machines running OS X, and may soon make a huge marketing splash about running Windows XP applications on Macs.

This is not so far-fetched. Apple developers suspect that Mac OS X Leopard contains at least the building blocks for Apple to one day add a compatibility layer for running Windows apps right alongside Mac OS X apps — without Windows. I think Robert X. Cringely had it almost right back in April, 2006, when he wrote that Apple would offer the ability to run native Windows XP apps not by using compatibility middleware like Wine, but rather by implementing the Windows API directly in OS X. That didn’t happen in the current version of Leopard, but it could happen in the near future. Cringely wrote back then:

I’m told Apple has long had this running in the Cupertino lab — Intel Macs running OS X while mixing Apple and XP applications. This is not a guess or a rumor, this something that has been demonstrated and observed by people who have since reported to me.

Could it be the best of both worlds? Corporate users would be able to transfer existing XP licenses and applications they own. No need for emulation that would be vulnerable to Microsoft meddling.

3. Smartphones are growing in popularity as productivity devices, and the drivers are Google with its Android smartphone software platform, and Apple with its iPhone. Lacking a innovative, dynamic and easy-to-use interface to mobile devices, Microsoft Windows is weak even with the proliferation of Windows-based phones. There is no compelling reason to use a Windows-based smartphone, as the applications that tie corporations to Windows don’t run so well on them.

4. Linux will grow exponentially, especially in overseas markets. You can now order a Dell Inspiron 6400 notebook or Inspiron 530N desktop and have Ubuntu 7.04 pre-installed as an option in the U.K., France, Germany, and the U.S. General reports indicate that laptops normally work out to about $50 cheaper compared to Dell’s “Home” versions running Vista.

Linux also has a major push coming from the XO Laptop, billed as the best Linux laptop ever made, from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project, which will soon be available to Americans, as long as you buy two for $399 and allow one of them to be donated to a child in the developing world. The XO laptop is based around an AMD Geode LX-700 CPU. It also has a 7.5-inch LCD display, two USB ports, an SD memory card slot and Wi-Fi, and is encased in a “hard” case with built-in carry handle.

It’s official: the Apple Mac is by far and away the most popular alternative to Microsoft Windows. Mac shipments were up 34% during the last quarter, the most successful period of computer sales ever for Apple. Overall, Apple sold 2.2 million Macs, 400,000 more than the previous record for Mac sales set just last quarter.

Despite press reports of the “halo effect” of people buying Macs because they like their iPods and iPhones, more Windows users are switching to Macs because their Windows PCs are out of date and Vista is just not that popular. Besides, people have finally figured out (after about a decade of it being true) that there is no penalty in switching from Windows to the Mac. Superior design, high-profile marketing, and the switch to the Intel common-denominator processor platform did far more to boost Mac sales than anything else.

Security is also a major reason. The worm, Trojan horse, and bot combination known as Storm has become the most successful piece of malware to date, having infected nearly 50 million PCs worldwide. It has been around for nearly a year (see Bruce Schneier’s report in Wired) and the anti-virus companies are powerless to stop it. While Storm has been associated with some pump-and-dump stock scams, not much has happened yet in the way of criminal activity, but rumors are circulating that Storm is only in a “phase 1″ implementation and that “phase 2″ will be spawn outrageously high criminal activity because Storm is already, or will be, leased to criminal organizations and perhaps terrorist groups.

This is not a joke, and it’s not going away. Scams designed to steal identities, data and ultimately money are on the rise. And of course, like all other malware, Storm affects Windows PCs; the Mac OS X seems to be immune, even as the Mac’s market share grows.

Blackfriars’ Marketing points out two security features of the new version of OS X (Leopard) that make it more secure than anything else on the market: tagged applications, and signed applications. Before OS X runs an app for the first time, it asks for your consent and displays when it was downloaded, what was used to download it, and what URL it came from. This run-time validation, combined with signed applications that ensure integrity, make OS X more secure than Windows.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is working overtime to outflank the press with its flack onslaught about how “open” Microsoft is becoming. Microsoft’s supposed capitulation to the European Union is really a case of Microsoft dragging the legal fight out to its bitter end. The EU had already smacked down Microsoft’s appeal and the company really had run out of legal options.

Microsoft is now supposed to offer free and unfettered access to the Microsoft work group server protocols that will benefit open source developers. But patent lawyers are the only winners: Microsoft can still engage in patent litigation and can still collect royalties (though the royalties are a fraction of what they were before). As reported in the blog walking with elephants,

A careful parsing of the Commission statement makes clear, however, that the Commission may have obtained access to the protocol documentation from a copyright and/or trade secret standpoint, but the same cannot be said on the patent front. Noticeably missing from the Commission statement is any affirmation that open source software developed to implement the protocols will be free from patent concerns.

The net effect is that Microsoft has turned an unruly enemy — the European Union — into an unwitting PR flack. With the continued use of “open source” throughout the EU’s statements and help of the business press, Microsoft can now continue to insist it is open-source friendly when in fact it is not. The company essentially dragged out the legal process long enough to serve its PR purpose.

Imagine if Microsoft spent all that legal money on researching and developing better products.

So you want to develop open source software that interoperates with Microsoft’s protocols? Good luck with that.

The Microsoft brand is getting pummeled overseas, in the music industry, and in the server market. Can you even estimate how much good will has been lost? Gates and Ballmer must get indigestion every morning as they scan the headlines on their pocket PCs:

The European Union has reaffirmed its “No” to Microsoft, siding with regulators in an antitrust case. The ruling could force Microsoft to change its business practices in Europe, but more importantly, embolden antitrust regulators to pursue Microsoft in other countries. All over the world, national and local government agencies, institutions, and corporations are considering alternatives to the Windows and Office monopolies. While its business practices are still relatively safe in the U.S. due to the U.S. Justice Dept. decision in 2002, Microsoft has had to spend vast sums to settle issues brought up at those hearings with many of the competitors (such as RealNetworks and Sun Microsystems).

Microsoft’s effort to make its Office XML format a standard has been delayed for another six months after a “no” vote in the international standards committee. Microsoft Office continues to sell at a record pace, but the freely distributed OpenOffice.org package is keeping up with the Office feature set (now at version 2.2) and increasing its market share, while online services such as Google Docs are providing a free alternative for individuals and small businesses. Office is already a has-been on the Mac platform, with Apple’s own iWork replacing it.

Microsoft’s Zune is faltering, having lost the online music war to Apple’s iPod without even a skirmish. Prior to Apple’s announcements of new iPods in early Sept., Microsoft cut the price by $50 — the 30GB Zune now sells for $199.

Vista is not as successful as the company hoped it would be. Vista in retail form is being outsold nearly 2 to 1 by the older version, Windows XP. Contrary to Microsoft’s plans, XP version will remain a standard for many years, replaced only as people buy new PCs preloaded with Vista.

Vista is also not as secure and failure-proof as Microsoft would have you believe. The company’s stealth updates and bug fixes for Vista — performed without user knowledge or approval, and even when automatic updating was turned off — have raised many more questions than Microsoft answered when it admitted doing it this week. For example, is this silent update capability a security vulnerability that could be exploited by others?

As confidence in Vista falls, Microsoft’s dominance of the computing industry is eroding slowly. Vista is seriously challenged by Linux and the Mac, and by technologies such as virtualization. With companies like VMware and XenSource leading the charge, virtualization is moving directly to the hardware — enabling a computer or server to run several operating systems simultaneously. This is a battle over the layers that control the hardware. Microsoft does not want to cede its monopoly position of providing the foundational software and is therefore trying to make virtualization a feature of the operating system — where it isn’t as effective in providing the benefits of virtualization (one of which is to be able to move an active system from one server to another without interruption). Bottom line: the virtualization technologies that map directly to hardware will win. VMware and XenSource just announced products that run from flash memory built into a server instead of being installed on the hard drive, and embedded virtualization technology is the reason why VMware has partnerships with IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, NEC and Fujitsu.

The value of Microsoft Windows used to be the guarantee that you could pick and choose among standard PC components to run it. Where has that value gone, in a world where Vista only makes sense if you are buying a new, Vista-tuned PC? That value has moved to virtualization technology, where you can pick and choose among operating systems and applications. Or perhaps that value has evaporated: what people want is a consistently easy-to-manage computing experience.

For my money, the Mac provides exactly that on the desktop and laptop, while Linux provides the same on servers. Viva alternatives!

Question: What segment of the market has $600 to spend on a smart phone but hasn’t ever bought an iPod or any other product from Apple?

Answer: Corporate executives and managers, account executives, small business owners, and professionals — just about all of whom use Microsoft Windows and software. (The rest of the population that can afford one — the younger generation, consumers, and early adopters — all had iPods before the advent of the iPhone, and many are Mac users.)

Now think about the survey that found that three of 10 Apple iPhone buyers were first-time Apple customers, and 40% had never before bought an iPod. Those people are all Microsoft customers (or, perhaps, former Microsoft customers). This explains why Microsoft is worried, and why the Gartner analysts that adhere to Microsoft’s way of thinking took the first propaganda shot against the iPhone, calling it unfit for business due to lack of security measures.

Microsoft has sold an estimated four million cellphones running Windows Mobile in 2006 (up from two million in 2005). Apple’s stated goal of 10 million by the end of this year is likely to be surpassed — iPhone sales are well ahead of expectations. That puts Apple in the lead in the smart-phone industry, usurping Microsoft. Apple has blindsided the Redmond giant twice: first with the iPod, and now with the iPhone. In each case Apple has taken market share from Microsoft as its customers defect to Macs (or at least to iTunes over Windows Media Player) and now to iPhones.

As for the Gartner scare, it is conveniently vague and easily refuted. It turns out that the iPhone isn’t any more risky than a BlackBerry or Treo. iPhones can connect to Microsoft Exchange servers, so there is no need to support Blackberry or Good Mobile Messaging servers (which are mostly used as middleware for connecting with Exchange) — a deficiency Gartner cited that is pure misinformation. As for the argument that the iPhone is not supported by major mobile device management suites and mobile-security suites, the analysts conveniently forget that the iPhone is designed for Web 2.0 services, and most business software packages can do the simplest Web 2.0 things such as posting to the Web or sending email.

The iPhone’s security could even be better than other smart phones on the market due to the lack of a software developer kit (SDK). Developers may not like it, but Apple is forcing early adopters to consider using Web 2.0 technology exclusively, which shifts the burden of security to the servers and keeps strange software from doing unexpected things on an iPhone. The device is under intense scrutiny by hackers, but those who want to gain financially from malware will probably stick with infecting Symbian OS-enabled phones which represent about 50% of the world market.

Microsoft has lots to worry about and can’t point fingers at iPhone security while living in the glass house of Windows Mobile. The list of new iPhone widgets and applications is growing exponentially and the buzz will last through the rest of the year. I expect major improvements to occur this year and be available by download directly to the device. I see the iPhone as a platform despite the fact that this first version is not quite complete. With all of its workings and interface in software, the design can be easily improved with downloaded updates. With adherence to standards in video, email, WiFi, and Web 2.0 technologies, the iPhone is the first truly smart phone that can change the phone industry and take considerable market share and influence away from Microsoft.

P.S. Check out my first impressions of the iPhone and accumulated links to reviews and news in “Shut Up and Play Your iPhone, Volume 2” on my blog, iTimes.

What’s interesting in the war of words between Bruce Chizen of Adobe and Dan’l Lewin of Microsoft is that Dan’l used to work at Apple and has a perspective from Apple’s old days that Microsoft software was essential to the Mac’s early success. He cites several examples of interoperability leading back to Apple, including the Microsoft Office suite, but then he wants us all to think about Microsoft in terms of “Java, Linux, Open Source, IP access, open standards, and more.”

Ouch. Microsoft was once sued by the creator of Java, is now threatening patent litigation in exchange for deals with Linux vendors, and is certainly no fan of Open Source. Do we really want the company meddling with IP access, open standards, and more? As Dana Blankenhorn points out in Open Source (regarding a Harvard Study that explains Microsoft’s political problems with Open Source software), “Controversy and suspicion follow Microsoft wherever it goes in the open source world.”

Bruce Chizen of Adobe has good points. He cited Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer as examples of Microsoft products that are still being developed for Windows but have been ended for the Mac platform, and he suggests that Microsoft’s new Silverlight will suffer the same fate. (Silverlight is a recently unveiled browser plug-in that allows Web content providers to offer a rich video and interactive media experience from directly within Web sites. It leverages Vista’s graphics framework, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), and Microsoft is promoting it as a direct competitor to Adobe’s Flash.) Adobe’s Macromedia division knows interoperability, and developers (such as YouTube) have depended on this feature of Flash. I don’t want to champion or defend Adobe more than I have to, but Adobe has a far more illustrious history of interoperable solutions than Microsoft, dating back to PostScript, EPS, and the now ubiquitous PDF. You would have to go back 30 years to find a Microsoft that cooperated with the rest of the industry to build interoperable products.

Coincidentally, as I write this I’m unable to use my Mac to open a document sent to me by a normal business that tells me they are using Microsoft Word. I have in my arsenal the Mac version of Word, OpenOffice 2.0, NeoOffice, TextEdit, and on the Web, Google Docs — all of which open older Word docs and standard formats. Sure enough, the only program that would open this file is Word running on Windows XP, and only after installing some kind of unspecified converter from the original CD-ROM. Maybe this is just a glitch, or some form of temporary insanity while we all adjust to a world of Microsoft “standards”.

Peeking inside with BBEdit, I see that the document appears to be a variant of XML. This document was saved that way by a normal business that has other things to do than change default settings so that documents can be opened on other systems. And this is how Microsoft gets away with “interoperability” — co-opting proven standards (like XML) and turning them into Microsoft pseudo-standards, which are then set as defaults for the program while offering the real standards as options. Normal businesses don’t realize how these default settings — which keep them locked into Microsoft products — disrupt rather than unify our multiple-platform world.

Of the many definitions of extortion, this one is my favorite: “Illegal use of one’s official position or powers to obtain property, funds, or patronage.” While one might question whether it is illegal (and therefore truly extortion), Microsoft is certainly using a threat to litigate as leverage to obtain patronage from the Open Source community — in this case, the cooperation of Linux vendors to work with the jolly Redmond software giant on various compatibility issues. The return for this patronage is protection from any patent litigation involving Linux.

Microsoft’s shakedown of the Open Source community turned Novell into a Microsoft partner with SuSE Linux; now it has turned Xandros into a partner as well. Microsoft made them a deal they couldn’t refuse. The Open Source community has already decided to “grandfather” (or should it be Godfather) the Novell-Microsoft partnership into the final draft of version 3 of the General Public License (GPL 3). The controversial section of this license — on blocking future patent agreements — is now inapplicable to the Microsoft-Novell agreement (for details, see “How the last-call draft of the GPL 3 impacts the Microsoft/Novell agreement” by Ryan Paul in Ars Technica). Most likely the community will also sanction the Xandros agreement.

Like garbage hauling contractors in the Northeast Jersey of The Sopranos, Xandros and Novell have nothing to lose by paying tribute to Microsoft. In fact, the Linux desktop implementations, as well as Linux servers (well we knew that), are thriving in the shadow of Microsoft’s cold war. In particular Novell’s SuSE Linux is kicking ass and taking some customers away from Microsoft. It’s difficult to gauge what resistance there might be for businesses to adopt Linux in the shadow of Microsoft’s patent threats, but whatever resistance there is melts away in the light of Microsoft’s protection racket. That makes SuSE Linux and Xandros look more attractive for small and medium-sized businesses than other Linux distributions.

There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence. Whitelaw Twining, a Vancouver, Canada law corporation specializing in insurance and construction litigation and a Novell customer, evaluated a move to Vista (as well as to Xandros) before selecting SuSE Linux. “Novell had the best desktop solution for us,” said Richard Giroux, IT Manager at Whitelaw Twining. “We evaluated solutions based on the ability to create a safe environment, as well as what it would cost us in time and money to maintain them.” According to the IT manager, migrating from Windows 2000 to SuSE Linux was no more difficult than migrating to Vista. At the very least, Whitelaw reduced its hardware costs by 30% with the ability to run on cost-effective PCs, and reduced desktop maintenance time by 20%. The Nevada Department of Corrections, another Novell customer switching to SuSE Linux and Novell’s Open Enterprise Server, is saving potentially millions of dollars in software licensing costs.

OK, so if legal firms and government agencies feel safe, Microsoft’s protection racket must be working. Novell benefits from it now, and Xandros will benefit shortly. Are you a Linux vendor going it alone but looking for a way to protect your large customers and developers from legal ramifications in Redmond? Good luck with that.

Microsoft is resorting to a Cold War on Open Source and Linux, using fear and uncertainty as it primary weapons — even as key blogs within the organization are telling developers not to worry and be happy. According to Mary Jo Foley in All About Microsoft, Microsoft’s public relations agency began circulating the patent infringement story among the press on May 14, timing it with the release of a Fortune magazine interview with Microsoft’s head top lawyer Brad Smith. In the article, Smith alleges that the Linux kernel violates 42 Microsoft patents, while its user interface and other design elements infringe on a further 65. OpenOffice.org is accused of infringing 45, along with 83 more in other free and open-source programs. News stories like this one from CNET News.com fanned the flames of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD).

What’s happening is really of no concern to users who buy computers, though it may concern large companies that customize Open Source software for their own use. Microsoft is using this threat to bring Open Source developers and Linux suppliers — and their large clients — to the bargaining table to pay licenses. The large clients have no political reasons to fight and will pay up to avoid costly legal bills.

Show Me the Patents!

Microsoft’s patents should be challenged, because many of them are probably suspect. Microsoft is not known for innovation but for adapting other inventions into products (such as the Windows interface). The only patents that might carry weight would be in the realm of Microsoft Office, especially Word and Excel, which were developed a long time ago by Microsoft; yet even Excel is based on Lotus 1-2-3. Check out Mike Masnick’s analysis in Overhype, “Microsoft’s Claims About Linux Patent Infringement Are Old News And Old FUD“:

…this really is all meaningless unless Microsoft actually is willing to point out the 235 patents, say where they believe the infringement occurs and is willing to defend itself in court and at the Patent Office on those points. So far, we haven’t seen that. Perhaps that’s because Microsoft recognizes how badly that would backfire. If there ever were a high profile case that might get the Supreme Court’s attention on whether or not software patents are legal, Microsoft trying to knock down the success of Linux seems like just such a case. [Emphasis mine.]

But these patents probably won’t be challenged in court, because Microsoft does not want a public legal fight. With its monopoly on operating systems, Microsoft can’t afford the bad publicity of opening a can of worms with the Justice Department over whether or not the company is using patent laws to maintain or expand that monopoly — which would likely violate antitrust laws. Besides, Microsoft does not want these patents studied, disputed, or worked-around. It is likely that of the 235 patents, half are vague enough to be disputed. U.S. patent laws allow for time to rectify errors or transgressions (assuming they weren’t knowingly committed), and the Open Source community would probably jump on the opportunity to devise work-arounds for the rest of so-called infringements. That would leave Microsoft with a dwindling supply of patent infringements to claim. Microsoft would rather keep the Open Source community muttering underneath its breath, and reveal nothing.

So no, Microsoft really doesn’t want to make each patent infringement a federal case. Even the claims are not new, except perhaps to Fortune magazine, which is pretending that Microsoft is making the claim now for the first time to drum up publicity (and of course the story is all over the blogosphere as a result). So why do it? It turns out that Microsoft’s campaign falls right in line with its past efforts to scare people out of using Open Source software and in particular Linux.

Remember the SCO

We all should remember the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) story — the company that couldn’t kill Linux with lawyers (although the SCO fight is still not over). Once a fun-loving group of programmers in Santa Cruz, Calif., the original SCO epitomized the image of a company run by long-haired, bearded hackers rooted in counterculture values — and more inclined to use Elmer Fudd as a marketing tool than FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt). Alas, by 1995, the market for Unix had dwindled, and Novell, which had bought the Unix source code from AT&T, sold its Unix business to SCO. As the original SCO programmers faded back into the labyrinth of nearby Silicon Valley or moved to other companies, SCO was taken over by lawyers who had probably never seen the beach at Santa Cruz. The mission of what is called The SCO Group is as remote from Santa Cruz culture as you could imagine. The company exists to sue anyone who uses Linux or develops products or solutions using Linux.

Microsoft knows a good disruptive effect when it sees one, so it jumped on this bandwagon and helped ensure that SCO could mount this fight by providing major financial help. In early 2003, Microsoft started paying SCO what eventually grew to $16.6 million for a Unix license, according to regulatory filings. Microsoft provided a second, though indirect, boost later in 2003 when it referred SCO to BayStar Capital, a fund that arranged a $50 million investment. The two moves demonstrate Microsoft’s ulterior motive — after all, why would Microsoft want to help prop up a company that is demanding millions in royalty fees from it? “Microsoft obviously has an interest in this,” Larry Goldfarb of BayStar Capital told CNET in 2004, “and their interest is obviously in keeping their operating system on top.” While SCO’s plan to raise revenue from licensing largely failed, the company succeeded in spreading clouds of doubt over Linux, even though a Michigan judge threw out all of SCO’s claims against DaimlerChrysler, and SCO’s lawsuit against Novell was dismissed. But large customers such as General Motors started demanding indemnification from any lawsuits concerning the origins of Linux. As a result, companies that distribute Linux, including industry leader Red Hat, now routinely indemnify their customers.

Undermining the GPL

So, FUD works… for a while. Microsoft is simply at it again, and the timing has a lot to do with the impending release of Version 3 of the Free Software Foundation’s General Public License (GPL). So says Mary Jo Foley in “GPLv3 the impetus for Microsoft’s latest Linux attack campaign” (ZDnet’s All About Microsoft). “The company’s latest decision to go public with claimed patent infringement numbers and other inflammatory statements, to me, shows Microsoft must think the GPL v3 has teeth.”

And as the Fortune article noted, the GPL v3’s provisions regarding the Microsoft-Novell deal suggest that Microsoft itself could be considered a “Linux distributor,” and thus beholden to the GPL v3 terms. And even if that doesn’t happen, under the GPL v3, other Linux distributors would be barred from doing deals like the one struck by Novell and Microsoft. Unless some company stands up to the patent challenge, Microsoft’s campaign of fear might cause problems for the adoption of Version 3 of the GPL.

What’s really happening? Why is Microsoft overhyping the patent issue again? Companies have stopped paying these licensing fees now that the SCO legal fight is winding down. Version 3 of the GPL is a threat to Microsoft’s ability to partner up with companies like Novell. And the lawyers need something to do, as there are still vast amounts of money sitting in Microsoft’s coffers waiting to be spent on pummelling the Open Source movement in public.