Microsoft's Martin Taylor Responds 627
We passed on your requested questions for Martin Taylor, Microsoft's global general manager of platform strategy, and we got a slew of them. Instead of emailing your questions to Martin, we did this interview by phone and added in a few follow-up questions. You can listen to an MP3 of the call, read the transcript (below), or both.
Roblimo: Ok, this is Robin 'Roblimo' Miller of Slashdot. I'm on the phone with Martin Taylor of Microsoft. How are you doing today?
Martin: I'm doing great. I'm very excited to have a chance to talk to you. I know that we've been trying to get together for quite a few months now. So I apologize if my schedule has made it difficult. But I'm glad that we're finally getting it done.
Roblimo: Me too. At long last. (Martin laughs) We have questions which are all from readers. The first one is from Greyfeld - Slashdot user 521548 - and he asked, "Have you ever used Linux? For what purpose and what was your personal experience using Linux?"
Martin: I actually have a couple of machines here in my office that are running Linux. It's mostly just to take a look at what works and doesn't work. We also have probably about a hundred or so servers running, you know, Red Hat, SuSE, Debian, Gentoo, you name it. So, you know, we can take a look at how things work and do some comparative analysis and things of that nature.
My personal experience? I use some earlier versions of Linspire and Xandros, and as an end user that is not as technical as some other people, I would say I found it somewhat challenging, downloading and installing some applications and getting Internet access through our proxy server and some of those things.... device plugging in and plugging out was not quite as seamless as I thought they might be. However, I would say the basic user experience of clicking and moving around and things like that, you know, was fine.
Roblimo: Ok. This is a follow up. Askadar asked what is Linux doing right? "I assume that you must have evaluated Linux. While doing that, what did you find about Linux that you think is good?"
Martin: I think a couple of things. One, you know, for the user who really wants to really tear things apart, do things on their own, build their own distribution, they really have, obviously, that level of source code access where they can do things like create a customized distribution with a very, very small footprint with only what they want and not a bunch of other things. You know, Linux is attractive to that class of a user. Linux is attractive to, let's say, Google - a large company that really wants to build a big server farm. They want to hire quite a few very talented engineers to really tune that on a daily basis and things of that nature. So I think that when you get to like specific niche areas and those areas where people really want to get deep on their own and take on a lot of that responsibility on their own, you know, I think Linux is attractive on those scenarios. And obviously that's where you see a lot of the market pick up on Linux on that basis as well.
Roblimo: OK. Lets move on to a different question. This is from your favorite Slashdot poster and mine, Anonymous Coward. This is a question that didn't make the cut, but, I assume... Do you read Slashdot?
Martin: I do. I probably go to Slashdot at least a couple of times a week, but depending upon the news of the day, the news of the week I might be on it multiple times a day. (Roblimo Laughs) Because it depends on what's happening in the world in same way that I would go to MSNBC on big news days and small news days, lets just say.
Roblimo: I understand. This is an Anonymous Coward's question. When Microsoft seems to tout its desire to facilitate interoperability, do you mean interoperability seamlessly between your operating system and environment with alternative systems such as Mac OSX, Linux, Sun Solaris, etc? Or, do you mean interoperability between Microsoft products?
Martin: Yeah, I actually look at two things. I actually call Microsoft products working well with other Microsoft products, firstly, I call that integration. A little bit. I don't know if these are defined terms in any Microsoft textbook or Slashdot glossary. I don't know but...(Martin laughs).
Roblimo: We don't have a glossary. We're not that formal.
Martin: But personally, you know, I say hey, you know, when I think about Microsoft products work with another Microsoft product - I look at that as more integration. How well those things work together. And then I look at interoperability as Microsoft products working with non-Microsoft products. And, I think we work really hard to facilitate something. You can go all the way back, let's say, to integrating with Novell days where we wrote our own Novell client, we wrote our own IPX/SPX stack to allow us to integrate with Novell servers.
Roblimo: What about now though?
Martin: And then, bringing it all the way forward. Even now, with SMS... to allow us through OpenWeb ... to get to Unix and Mac clients and Mac servers and Unix to Linux servers to manage those things, distribute those things. I look at the work that we've done with Services for Unix that allows us to integrate with Unix to Linux environment - NFS gateways, NFS hosts, NFS clients. So I think that we can really look around and say, what are the things that we need to do to either partner with our clients like in the (Gnutella - not clear) case or like in the services for Unix case... find a way to interoperate in different scenarios.
Roblimo: Another question none of the readers asked but really dovetails here. Are you willing to cooperate more closely with the Samba project than you have in the past?
Martin: I think that we're always open working with people in a variety of different levels to make sure that, again, that we can work well together. Now, I would say that most of the things that we do from an interoperability perspective are driven more by customers and less by industry, meaning that when we have customers say, "Hey, we need these two things to work together and then," you know, that's where a lot of our (Gnutella?) projects and channel partnerships come to play with that Unix to Linux integration. That's the work that we're doing with Services for Unix and some of those other spaces. We won't say no to discussing things to anybody but at the end of the day we're gonna really work hard to do what the customer asks us to do.
Roblimo: Next question, from ProteusQ, Slashdot user no. 665382. He's asking about protection against malware and he's asking you Martin Taylor, "What applications do you run to protect your windows license from malware (viruses, trojans, spyware, etc.) and what do you pay for this protection for a year? How does this cost compare to the costs incurred by other Windows users and compared to what you would pay for the equivalent protection offered in Debian?"
Martin: Got it. So first of all I actually run, obviously, Windows XP. I run XP SP2. I also have downloaded the beta of the spyware product that we recently, one of our recent acquisitions, into a combination of XP SP2 and spyware product that I downloaded. That's pretty much how I protect in running both my desktop pc or my laptop I use here at Microsoft as well as the 3 PCs that I have in my house - a very similar configuration.
Roblimo: How much would these add-on programs cost you? People like you and me, lets say, as a journalist, I too can get free software from anybody. What would it cost you as a regular user?
Martin: Well today, XP SP2 is free if you're a genuine or a valid Windows XP user. It's just a matter of downloading. And today the spyware product that I've downloaded is also a free beta and we've not announced any pricing terms or plans for the product as of yet. So everything I'm using today is free.
Roblimo: Ok. And this is all the protection you need?
Martin: It's all that I have today and it has served me pretty well so far. But I'm hesitant to say its all that I need because I feel, I would be honest to say, that I'm probably not as deep in terms of really analyzing everything that I need but today I have not had any major problem in any shape or fashion with the current configuration. The spyware technology or the anti-spyware technology, I should say, helps me a lot and that was one of the biggest gaps, I would say, in my desktop profile. And, you know, in the spirit of full openness, before we had the spyware technology when I bought a Dell machine for at home for my wife, we actually had, I think, there was some Norton tools that shipped with that PC and again there was no extra charge for that, you know, maybe Dell bundled it into the price, I'm not sure. But I have not personally had got to go out and purchase or download and pay for any additional security product at this point.
Roblimo: Ok. Question that I'm gonna have to ask you personally. This is not from a reader that will segue into the next reader's question. Obviously I run Linux.
Martin: Real quick, what do you run? What version do you run now?
Roblimo: I run MEPIS, which is essential Debian. And right now the browser I have open is Firefox.
Martin: Got it.
Roblimo: So I don't have all those popups and things. How do you keep from seeing popups?
Martin: Windows XP SP2, we have a popup blocker, part of that update to Windows XP that allows me to, you know, deny popups, but also give me a pretty functional bar where I can right click on it when it tells me something has been blocked if I need to see that popup because then, as you know, mini web sites might have the type of transaction engine where they do have something that might appear to popup that you need to get the information to continue whatever transaction you're driving on that website and so...
Roblimo: Firefox has that too.
Martin: Yeah but I'm saying that's what I use - Windows XP SP2.
Roblimo: Here's a related question from Doug Dante. He's asking about open source applications helping Windows compete. "To what extent are open source applications on Windows helping it to be more competitive versus Linux? For example," he says, "I immediately install OpenOffice or, Firefox, and Thunderbird over a virgin Windows install?"
Martin: Yeah, I'm sorry, I heard the initial point saying, "How do open source projects help Windows compete?" I'm not quite ... Repeat the question again. I missed that ...
Roblimo: What he's saying... I'll turn his question around from the way he wrote it.... He's saying when he installs Windows, he takes a virgin Windows install and immediately adds OpenOffice.org Firefox, and the Mozilla based Thunderbird email programs to it. And he's asking, How are these helping Windows to be more competitive versus Linux?"
Martin: Yeah, I guess I don't look at it that way necessarily. I don't look at it saying, "Hey, are there great open source projects that are available on Windows?" I think, let me try to paraphrase it and answer it. I think what he's saying is hey, the new breed of applications available on SourceForge(.net) and open source application, you know, are they making windows become more relevant or helping it compete against Linux, because at the end of the day Windows and Linux are just operating systems and the application stack above that that allows them to be for people to choose. Is that a fair way to look at it?
Roblimo: I would say yes.
Martin: I would say I don't see from that perspective anything different today than yesterday. We've always had a pretty good, let's call it, an application catalog some written by us, most written by everybody else. And so in some way you can say open source as a development model just created a bunch more applications that all can run atop of Windows. And so, you know, people are always shocked by this. They don't know that there's literally over 10,000 projects up on SourceForge for the operating system alone - just for Windows 2000 and Windows XP. And, you know, you can go to SourceForge and browse around and you'll see quite a few applications out there. And that's actually, you know, I'm gonna extend the question a little bit if you don't mind.
Roblimo: Go ahead.
Martin: One thing that really frustrates me a little bit, and you can say this is partly because of us at Microsoft and hopefully we're getting better here, is that people try to position us as Microsoft versus open source. I really don't view the world that way and I know that we don't view the world that way. I think that we view the world saying, you know, take OpenOffice. We think Office, the product that we have, is a great product and we want to make sure that we can show that product in a value offer over OpenOffice.org. Or over OpenOffice or StarOffice every chance that we get. That doesn't mean that we are anti-open source. It means that we think we get a better product compared to that one. Whether that came from open source model or proprietary development model. The same way that we look at Corel or what you still look at - AmiPro or WordPerfect or whatever. And so, you know, to close outthe question. So, yeah, there's application code written for Windows, you know, and underneath the open source model if its licensed underneath the GPL, the, you know, different types of licensing models and open source, then great, God bless them and Godspeed, and that increases the application platform availability that we have.
Roblimo: I'm gonna ask you sort of a question in here that's not in my original list. And I'm actually looking on Slashdot right now. For, again, that you just really led me into, and even if I don't find the exact question I can paraphrase it.... There were over 1,000 comments, you know, on this interview call for questions.
Martin: About midnight last night I was anxiously reading Slashdot. And I was wondering where you're gonna take me, Roblimo. And so, yes, I read everything as of midnight last night, I read every single thing. I think 1,096 was the number I saw at about midnight.
Roblimo: Crazy, crazy. See, you're loved. Everybody loves you.
Martin: But I love everybody. (both laugh)
Roblimo: Anyway the gist of the question is... I can't seem to find it... there are so many. I've got to cut to just plus five questions but there's fifty-some of those. This one was asking about the chronic Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt thing, if it's true that Windows and Microsoft products are that much better, why do that? What's the point? Isn't that like Ford spending their time knocking GM rather than just using Ford?
Martin: I think I know what you're referring to based on some of the stuff that I read last night. And so if I can and you can say I'm cheating, I don't know. But let me kind of, sort of, aggregate about eight or ten different postings I saw last night that kinda speak to that. I think the real...
Roblimo: That's what we're trying to do here.
Martin: They're fresh in my mind, I remember them all, so let me tell you kind of what I heard or what I read last night in aggregate. Pretty much saying, "Hey, why have this get the facts campaign if your products are better as you suggest they are in different categories and why do you feel the need to tell people that they're better...
Roblimo: No, that's not the question.
Martin: Ok.
Roblimo: Why do you, not from you per se but from some of your co-workers, from Microsoft executives, seem to lash at virulently with anger against Linux and open source?
Martin: You know, on this one, I actually think that we've made a lot of progress and so let me be very open with you and kinda give you what I feel is history and I love your read on this as someone who watches us and watches the industry and the things that you do over the length of time you've had. I would say years ago we did not fully understand - I'm speaking aggregately as a company - did not fully understand Linux and open source and so whatever you're dealing with something that is a bit of unknown, I think it's natural to have somewhat of an emotional reaction to that. And also if things didn't quite make sense to you, when you thought people might be acting somewhat irrational, then again it led to somewhat of an emotional response in some ways. And so I think that was the early view. I would also say, you know, that it's a shared responsibility issue because, again, as an avid reader of Slashdot, I would say that many of the folks who participate on Slashdot are somewhat... viceral.
Roblimo: Really! What might have led you to that belief, sir? (laughs)
Martin: And their feelings towards us. And so I think that there was a point where we both maybe kinda at each other a little bit. I think that we need to get past that to the point where everyone benefits from a more constructive, pragmatic dialogue to the point where, you know, it's not an emotional thing saying Linux is bad or open source is awful or those types of things, but it's a more pragmatic customer oriented thing that says "Hey, here's why I think we've got great value added here, here's why I think we have a better TCO story. Here's why I think that our integration ..."
Roblimo: Let's move on to a TCO question. It's where you gonna go anyway..
Martin: No, no, no. I was basically gonna say...
Roblimo: No, no I have a question about TCO.
Martin: Hold that for one second.
Roblimo: Ok.
Martin: So I think that we've come a long way from where we were years ago. Can we handle everybody on every comment everyday? No, but I think in aggregate, and I hope you would agree, what you hear coming out from Microsoft is a the different tone than you heard three years ago.
Roblimo: A compassionate, proprietary software company. (laughs). Alright let's talk about ...
Martin: (Laughs). That's a good tag line, I have to pay you if I use that in my next PR speeches?
Roblimo: Absolutely, pay me what it's worth, namely zero. (laughs) Here's RailGunner who's a registered user no. 554645, he wants to talk about Windows TCO versus Linux TCO. And he asks, "Why do you claim Windows has a lower Total Cost of Ownership yet you do not add the cost not incurred by Linux and FOSS beyond open source software of a Virus Scanner, Microsoft Office on the desktop or IIS/SQL Server on the server, plus the damage that is done by such worms as the Blaster and Slammer?
Martin: Yeah, so it's kind of a two-part question. The first thing I would say is, you know, when you go take a look at the Total Cost of Ownership of studies that were done both by Forrester, by Giga, by IDC and by some of the other analysts, they go to the entire solution. Some of those solutions do have some level of Web server and application server as part of it and some are more than just simple workload scenarios. I think that rarely do we say Microsoft gives you lower Total Cost of Ownership." I think what you'd find us really saying when you get to the next level is "Hey, for this solution, for this scenario, this set of products compared to these other set of products, Microsoft can deliver lower Total Cost of Ownership." So it's really more of a product and a scenario based thing to take a look at, and then all those elements that come into play there. So that's the first thing that kinda covers the first part. The second part you mentioned was the notion of how you account for, let's say, some of the security issues from that perspective.
Roblimo: They never seem to be included, right. In the studies that I've read - believe me - I've been to all the Microsoft market materials and independent studies. Independent studies done by companies which are supported at some point by Microsoft, however, I must put a disclaimer that Microsoft is a major advertiser on OSTG - and we thank you for your support.
Martin: And these kinds of companies are also supported by IBM and HP and Red Hat and other companies as well because of kind of the way that our industry moves. All that being said, so, on the second part, we've been looking for way on how you model that out. Yeah, how do you model out what you do about security. Yeah, you could always do, let's say, the analysis post-hurricane, and take a look at, "Ok, what were the damages based on this scenario?" But that really doesn't give you a view of Total Cost of Ownership or anything like that, so we've been trying to find a way to model out, let's say, Total Cost of Security, or something like that where you can be somewhat predictive. But it's incredibly hard to do and so, you know, I'll ask our wide community of Slashdot users - if someone out there has a model where they can do some type of predictive modeling, because that's really what it's about, it's about predictive modeling on what will the cost be over the next three to five years. How does that look? You know, I'd love any input and guidance, but I know some of the analyst firms are also grappling with this idea, as well.
Roblimo: And most of these people read Slashdot too...so you will get answers.
Martin: So,you know, we'll figure this out at some point in time but the way to do that is not to say, "Look, we spent X amount of money to due to Blaster, you know, so now I think now the right thing to is ask, "Hey, what does it cost us to design a secure environment? What does it cost us, you know, to innoculate our environment? What does it cost us from a people resource perspective to build the right redundancy required should something happen?" So those are the costs that... I think you'd want modeled out and look into when looking at Total Cost of Security from that perspective. But I could be wrong and I'd love some feedback.
Roblimo: You'll get it. And here's sort of a question that I pulled out of one of the thousand-worders that was cogent... This is a theme that runs throughout the TCO studies that Microsoft boosts. He asks us, "Do Linux geeks really pull in that much more money salary-wise than Windows geeks?" That's a common theme - that it costs more to hire a Linux admin. And he says, "I find this claim hard to swallow especially in today's economy."
Martin: OK, well. This is kind of a my-word-against-your-word thing that I don't want us to get there. But I just hired 16 Linux consultants for a project I'm doing. And I asked the company that was doing the hiring to actually - I also had to hire 16 Windows and .NET architects as well. No question that 16 Linux guys I hired cost me a lot more. And it's just a matter of, its just economics - its simple economics. There's way more people out there that I know that might be unsettling for our friendly Slashdot readers.... I don't mean this a bad way... But in all honesty, there's way more guys out there that know Windows than know Linux. That's just the reality.
Roblimo: Is it possible that it was just hard to find Linux-skilled people who are seriously into it... skilled people who are willing to work for Microsoft?
Martin: It wasn't a, it was a third-party. They didn't know that they were working for Microsoft.
Roblimo: Ahh. Ok.
Martin: I had a third-party go out there to hire 16 topnotch Linux developers/architects and 16 topnotch Windows architects so I could do some comparative studies on some work that we're doing. And no one knew that Microsoft had anything to do with this in terms of hiring people to work on this.
Roblimo: Interesting.
Martin: And so anyway, again, its less about that. It's more about the fact that, hey, there's just less skilled people out there, you know, in aggregate, in our IT population. And so, I think, that's the big issue.
Roblimo: Ok. The salary thing does contradict what I see here in Florida. But aside from that, again like you say, you know, I've seen two thousand salary surveys and three thousand answers.
So, here's another question - very different - about Microsoft - breaking it's own software from Aim Here (765712). "All these serial number checks, dial-home schemes, registration schemes, digital "rights" management schemes, crippled 'starter' versions of Windows, and now all sorts of anti-piracy checks whenever someone wants to patch their Windows box - Microsoft spends an awful lot of time and effort deliberately making sure their software doesn't work unless the customer jumps through the appropriate hoops. Aren't you worried that this continual (and increasingly intrusive) process of deliberately breaking and/or crippling your own software is going to alienate some of your customers and make them feel like criminals, particularly since the makers of the free software operating systems that you're now competing against have no need of any of it and can concentrate all of their resources on trying to make their software work?"
Martin: OK. You said a lot there. I won't cut and parse through that early part.
Roblimo: Bottom line is, here I am running Debian and if I decide that I want to add three more computers, I will take the CD and slap it on, end of story. And my net cost for a complete desktop is zero and I don't have to register it. I can't do that with the one instance with Windows that I do have, I can't slap it into another computer.
Martin: A couple of things. One, I would say when you look at commercial companies now they adopt and deploy Red Hat and the commercialized distribution.... There is a registration process if I want to install Red Hat on another server and has support for that server. Yes, I can go freely copy it wherever I want, but if I want to have supported servers as most organizations do and/or supported desktops, there is a registration process. So I think that we don't look that dissimilar in our model of, you know, asking people to register or at least, you know, fill out/verify the legal copy that they are using.
The second thing I would say is, one thing that I wasn't sure from the statement that was made by, I think, Aim Here, was that "we require people to go through hoops in order to patch those systems." That is not the process today. Today if you're running on Windows and you need a security patch, you know, there is no additional hoops or things you need to go through in order to install a security fix for your technology today. So that was a little bit weird as well. And again, and lastly, I think we're working super hard to make whatever this process is incredibly seamless. You know, I, again, I recently bought a Dell computer for my wife at home and it was literally seconds that it took it to go up to Microsoft.com, verify its ID and then come back down.
So I think that, you know, what you're going to begin to see is the continual evolution of kind of a community-to-commercial approach that's happening in the Linux, or, let's call it, really, the distribution world. Because, yes, you'll always be able to install, you know, Debian or something like that on a million machines if you'd like. But again, as things become more commercial as they are with the Linux distributors, you'll see similar processes in place because that's the only way that they can verify users so they can offer them a support model.
Roblimo: So what you're saying is that you have to register for support with Linux.
Martin: I mean, I'm not an aggressive Linux user as some of our Slashdot audiences are. But the servers I have running and the desktops I have running here, I do have to register those with Red Hat to be in agreement with my Red Hat support agreement.
Roblimo: OK. Not everybody uses Red Hat.
Martin: No... Most commercial customers that I've talked to primarily use Red Hat or SuSE as their distribution for commercial customers.
Roblimo: OK... Let me ask... Let's move on here. We have, really, two more questions and this is the last long one, from JimmytheGeek ... (laughs)
Martin: I'm worried already.
Roblimo: He's been around for a while on Slashdot user number 180805. And he's saying, "One of the myths about Windows is that there is a company behind it you can hold responsible for flaws that impact an organization." "But," he goes on, "if you read the EULA, the End User Licensing Agreement, of any Microsoft product, even an update, it disclaims any responsibility whatsoever. They specifically avow that they are not fit for any purpose. So what's up with that?"
Martin: Yeah, this is a broader conversation, a broader question. I actually read this question last night as well from Jimmy.
Roblimo: I've read the EULAs. I'm the only person you've ever met who's probably read every single licensing agreement for every piece of software he's installed.
Martin: There's a couple of lawyers that we have here that read quite a few EULAs as well.
Roblimo: They are sick, too....
Martin: (laughs) Nevertheless, there's a couple of things. First of all, I would say, really when we talk about the kind of accountability and standing behind it, there's a few things that we reference there and where we spend our time. One is, for commercial customers, you know, how we can provide this level of roadmap, this level of ownership and all these types of things today on that perspective, let's just call it from the general support perspective, and how that works. I mean anyone will agree that Red Hat or IBM or even Novell with SUSE, they can only take, you know, things to a point at the end of the day, because at the end of the day they don't own the kernel, they don't take the final decision on what's in or what's out of 2.6...
Roblimo: Well, no, they can modify it however they want.
Martin: No, of course but when they do, then you could be on a different path, or you can be on a different path or fork on a different tree, but essentially they start with what level of mods that they do. And so the point of that is to say, "Hey, we have that all the way in the end level of ownership where we can deal with that."
The bigger issue that comes up of this accountability issue is around this notion of indemnification and protection. This notion of "Hey, I can tell any one of my customers, if there's any issue from an IT perspective, you know, patent, copyright, trade secrets..." Microsoft fully takes care of you and we extended all the way down to any end user where that wasn't a part of our normal EULA. As of November we made that change as well - EULA being in the End User Licensing Agreement. And so I think that's the issue where a lot of accountability come into play. But how do the vendors, or how do the distributor or software provider fully protects and indemnify any customer that is using their software from ...
Roblimo: I don't think that's the question that we're trying to ask. He says, and I can give you the full thing.. "Open source licenses usually have the same thing, but those are generally free products. You guys have taken in a couple hundred billion. Plus, we can use the code as we like. So you can't claim any kind of equivalence." So I think what he's talking about is the one big glaring thing - that Microsoft in those EULAs does not claim the software is fit for any particular purpose or that it will work, essentially.
Martin: Yeah, I don't think we quite ... it won't work. I don't know ...
Roblimo: No, for any given purpose.
Martin: C'mon Rob, I know that's the broad surface. Go read Red Hat EULA and Red Hat will pretty much say, "Hey,we can't guarantee anything with the software either." I've read it. Read their filing statements. It's the same thing, right?...
Roblimo: Well I use a different variety of Linux, perhaps...
Martin: Right, so I think it's impossible for any software provider to say categorically their offer can do any single thing that you ever want to do in the world. Right?
Roblimo: Mmmmm, yeah, but it's always been an amusement part, you almost have to laugh...
Martin: Fine, so it's fine that people can have good sport with it, but when you get down to the kind of the brass tacks at the end of the day, again, I don't know any software provider that says, "Hey, our software can do anything in the world that you want to do, so go do it."
Roblimo: There's implied fitness in most products, like, if I were to go buy a Jeep Cherokee - I have one - there is an implied fact both by their (being on) sale and the FTC forces them... and other government agencies force them to imply that it's safe to drive on the road, or reasonably. Not that it's safe for me to drive drunk with no shoulder harness and go crazy at 120 miles an hour, but that it's fit for the purpose of being, you know, a transportation device.
Martin: Right.
Roblimo: And this is something that, you know, again, maybe the software industry in general needs to work on, wouldn't you say?
Martin: Yeah, I would actually take us up on that. This is not a Microsoft specific issue, because I don't think we're that unlike any other commercial software provider, you know. And with regards to that, it's probably easier to make fun with us than anybody else. But nevertheless...
Roblimo: One last question that you sort of touched on earlier... Augustz - with a "Z" on the end - asks this very bluntly: "Are Google morons given that TCO is significantly less for Windows than Linux?" and his reference is the Microsoft advertising and "Get the Facts" literature. "Are the folks at Google morons for using Linux? They use a lot of computers, and TCO has got to be important to their environment."
Martin: That's one of those, let's call them niche environments where I would say, I'd personally... Well, let's be honest. Your average commercial company will not pay for the staff that Google has to run their engine. I mean, they hire quite a few very senior, very technical people to do a very specific function. And from that perspective, they're very different from your generic IT scenario. Most companies, I mean, given that most companies are not technology companies, most companies that I talk to, they're not in business to hire a whole bunch of people to drive a stack of servers. They're in business to, you know.. they are airline companies that put people on planes. They are soda companies that to get people to drink. They are news companies like Slashdot to get people news. And so, anytime that they can reduce the complexity of their environment and not have to hire people to manage or maintain that, that's a good thing for them. And so, I can tell you that again that's a different usage scenario in terms of how they've optimized around that based on a more general purpose scenario.
I'm not gonna go and say "Oh my God, they're crazy, they're gonna have an incredibly high cost of ownership because of what they've done. I also not going to go on record to say that they could go to Windows servers and their TCO would drop in half. Again, as I said earlier, when we look at Total Cost of Ownership it's by solution, by scenario - not a broad, sweeping all-things-are-made-of, all-people-type-of-statement.
Roblimo: That's all the questions I have planned. Are there any we failed to include but we should have?
Martin: No, I'd say as I read last night, there were some that we probably can never talk about publicly because... (both laugh) which was fine. But I have their names and emails myself so I can answer them. And then there's some kind of around this whole "get the facts" thing and I do maybe, in closing, want to talk about that a little bit, if that's ok.
Roblimo: Go right ahead.
Martin: Let me give you a little bit of history on kinda why I'm doing what I'm doing the way that I'm doing it. You know when I joined, I tried to go figure and work on some of this, I was amazed at reading Slashdot and reading some other things... just how aggressive people were on Microsoft isn't this, Linux is this. But it was (usually) grounded in one instance meaning, "Hey, I did this one time and here's why I think one or both or neither are better or good or bad," or it was just not grounded at all on any level set of data.
And so a big push that I wanted was to just get the facts, and say "Hey let's move this out of an emotional, aggressive discussion and let's really kind of have it based more on a practical, pragmatic discussion." Actually I even got that from customers.
I'm not a deep, deep technical guy, I'm not a deep, deep industry guy. I spend more of my time talking to customers, trying to structure the work that I do based on what they ask. And customers are asking, "Hey, can you help me understand TCO, Microsoft versus Linux for this scenario in the work that we do? Which of these technologies... help me understand this or that..." And that's the kind of work that we do.
And so, if you read the details, which I'm sure you have, if not, we're not 100% favorable to Microsoft. There are some things in there that say why Linux is good, there are some things in there that say why the Web work load, one of our older studies, you know, gave good TCO for Linux and Apache against IIS 5.0. So there are things out there, and I try to be as transparent as possible on all of those types of things. I mentioned earlier about another company, I used another company to hire these people, I didn't want to bias the study in any way by people knowing Microsoft was hiring these engineers, so I had a third party hire them. And, of course, once everything is done, everything is transparent, so you can see everything in terms of the server configuration, who we hire, you know, how the whole thing works, but there's a deep level of transparency that I try to provide.
But again, on that one that I mentioned, I wanted to make sure that they weren't biased because I was hiring them. So I work really, really hard to make sure we don't bias these things and they're aa pragmatic as possible. And so, if there are topics that, you know, people think we should undertake... again, I hear from customers all the time, and that's what we spend time on but, you know, I'll keep reading Slashdot, and when people post stuff and issues into them, then we'll take on some of those discussions and challenges as well.
Roblimo: I'll tell you what, here's an open invitation that's a good idea. When this is posted, there will be discussion. Do you have a Slashdot login?
Martin: I do not have a Slashdot login but I feel bad about that, and so as of tonight I will have one. Will it cost me any money?
Roblimo: It will cost you just as much as Debian Linux and all the software on my desktop.
Martin: Oh that'll cost me a lot of money to manage and maintain but... Robin, Oh no, no, you can leave it alone. It just works (laughs) In other words it will cost you nothing.
Martin: No problem. So I will get a Slashdot account tonight.
Roblimo: I'm saying you're absolutely welcome to jump into the discussion, and I think your participation will be very valuable.
Martin: Got it.
Roblimo: So, thank you so much for your time. This has been, as always, a pleasure.
Martin: Ok Rob, thank you so much, and I apologize for taking so long to do this and I look forward to maybe doing it again. Ok?
Roblimo: I love it.
Martin: Ok, thanks. END
The reason he answered by phone (Score:4, Funny)
Question (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Question (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Question (Score:2, Informative)
I had a major beef with some auction tool people used on eBay for a while, which left off closing tags and broke tables, etc. Granted I make a typo myself now and then by leaving the / off my closing tag and an entire post is in italics, but it's still readable.
I noticed IE was somehow able to resolve the ebay posting breaks, possibly by recognizing an end to a section and realizing some things needed to be resolved and fille
Re:Question (Score:3, Interesting)
I use Firefox, and love it. I only bother with IE on those few sites where Firefox doesn't seem to work. But the truth of the matter is, if a site has broken HTML, Firefox tends to just give up, IE at least tries to act intellegently about it, whether it gets it right is beside the point. This would be a nice feature to see in Firefox, if a site's code is broken, at least give it a best effort to clean it up.
Of course, given ev
Re:Question (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, the point more to the point may be....many sites feel they HAVE to use broken code...to get IE to render the way it should do with proper code. Have you ever had to jump through the hoops with CSS to get IE to work a box model properly?
There's often kludges you have to throw in to get IE to work properly, and many s
You jest, however (Score:5, Interesting)
I still recommend Firefox over IE, since broken code that screws up isn't that big of a problem and teh other benefits of Firefox more than make up for it, but it is something that IE genuinely does a better job of.
Re:You jest, however (Score:5, Interesting)
One possible quibble about this: sometimes you don't want broken things to "work properly". I know this will sound silly to some, but for certain things and in certain instances, it's better for broken things to be broken.
Re:You jest, however (Score:4, Funny)
In a perfect world everyone should check their spelling, typing, and grammar too.
Re:You jest, however (Score:5, Funny)
Birds of a feather, flock together.
Re:You jest, however (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously. It's one of the things I like about strongly typed languages; the ability to utterly restrict input to what is supposed to be inputted. One of the big weaknesses of
What it should do is ignore it, or treat it as text, or throw an error. What it does is try and execute it, because it recognises that it is code and it thinks that's what it should be doing. IE and microsoft get in trouble with that all the time.
Re:You jest, however (Score:5, Funny)
Parse error: syntax error on "inputted", sentence disregarded.
Re:You jest, however (Score:5, Insightful)
Laughing is ignorant. Lax parsing is indeed a security risk.
For example, you can filter out all resources but those of text/* and image/* media types at an HTTP proxy. It won't matter, because you can label an executable as text/plain and Internet Explorer will ignore RFC 2616 and treat it as an executable.
If you are writing a web application, for user-submitted data, you have to filter out not only everything harmful, but everything that could possibly be interpreted as harmful. For instance - comments are safe enough, right? Nope. Internet Explorer lets you hide JScript in comments, and it will be executed.
If it were that simple I would agree. But it isn't. If common web browsers interpreted HTML and CSS rigidly, users wouldn't see any errors because web developers simply wouldn't upload broken files in the first place.
Last time I checked, tar just stops processing when it encounters a broken tarball. The GIMP can't open corrupted image files. GCC doesn't guess at what you mean when you make syntax errors in your C source code. Why is it such a crime to have a web browser that works dependably too?
Lax parsing is why the Web rules the world (Score:3, Insightful)
If common web browsers interpreted HTML and CSS rigidly, users wouldn't see any errors because web developers simply wouldn't upload broken files in the first place.
... and the web would be about 0.1% of the size it is now.
No, really, this is a vital point. You want to know why the web got so big, with so many people coding web pages?
Re:Is Gracefulness Next to Insecurity? (Score:3, Funny)
There is a big difference between failing gracefully and ballsing it up and pretending nothing's wrong.
Re:You jest, however (Score:3, Insightful)
No it doesn't. It's just that if it's broken in Internet Explorer, virtually every web developer will go back and fix it immediately. Thus the broken code on the WWW is strongly biased to the type of error that Internet Explorer happens to handle adequately. The same cannot be said for any other web browser, simply because Internet Explorer has overwhelming market share.
Re:You jest, however (Score:5, Insightful)
The browser shouldn't render the intent, it should render what is written. The fact that it is so forgiving is not a plus, it is a minus. It allows for people to create sloppy code that isn't compatible with other browsers, isn't compatible with the web standards. IE's forgiveness of bad code is one of its worst "features."
Re:You jest, however (Score:5, Informative)
So, don't bash Slashdot prematurely guys ;) It's not their fault.
Re:You jest, however (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I think it's FF, not Slashcode. I'm sure slashcode has its share of bugs, but...
ANY ONE OF YOU TRASH TALKING IDIOTS CAN EXPLAIN WHAT'S WRONG WITH SLASHDOT WHENEVER YOU CAN SPARE THE DAMN TIME!!! Put up or shut up.
Re:You jest, however (Score:5, Funny)
Well go figure, it has to be able to display stuff generated by FrontPage.
Re:You jest, however (Score:3, Insightful)
or
"Looks good in IE, which is what everyone in the organization uses, so I don't need to make sure it works in anything else"
Neither is a good excuse, but both are valid reasons.
Re:Question (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
It makes you wonder... (Score:4, Funny)
Instead of emailing your questions to Martin, we did this interview by phone
What, Outlook acting up again?
I realise that's a joke, but (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:MP3 of the call (Score:2)
Re:MP3 of the call (Score:3, Informative)
I think you should have made the file an AAC out of spite. Or, maybe a WMA out of deep admiration for Microsoft.
Why not an OGG? I have experimented with both OGG and MP3 for encoding speech. I have no idea how it performs for music. But for speech, I can get decent quality for a much smaller size that I can with MP3. Not only that, but OGG is Free Software(TM). I would think that Slashdot would rather promote a free alternative over a patent encumbered and technically inferior alternative.
Re:MP3 of the call (Score:3, Informative)
I too want this in Ogg (since the patents on MP3 playback were discovered) before I will listen to it.
Please encode it using an open Ogg encoding--I suggest ultra-wide-band VBR Speex but even Vorbis would be better than MP3.
Can't talk publicly? (Score:3, Insightful)
Does the very fact that you can't talk publicly about some of this stuff not strike you as odd? Are Microsoft so unsure of their stance on particular subjects that they can't discuss it in a public forum?
Anyway, since you're apparently going to be reading this, can you answer my question [slashdot.org]?
Re:Can't talk publicly? (Score:5, Insightful)
So yeah, there are definetly things he can't talk about publicly, like Xbox2 launch dates, pending litigation (everybody has pending litigation). Then there will be other stuff that he won't even know about -- MS is a big company.
Personally, I'm releived that we've actually got somebody with a voice in MS who certainly appears not to be a dick. It gives me some hope.
I'd really like to know if it is conceivable that MS would actually offer a "Windows" window manager to run atop linux. No reason they couldn't, and I'd sure as hell buy it for the windows boxes I have to run at work.
'We back our product' (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:'We back our product' (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm certainly not a lawyer, but I think the overall point is that EULAs are written in that way because companies do not want to make a guarantee that their software is fit for any given (or specific) purpose.
This says nothing about the actual or attempted backing: if I release a piece of freeware I wrote in my spare time, and stick the same EULA on it that Windows has, Windows still has better support. End users can trust that Microsoft is going to going to actively support that OS through it's planned end of life, but I may never answer a single email or release a single update or patch for my freeware app.
In other words, EULAs are simply a necessary evil in our overly-litigious society. You need to look at companies' actual track record to predict the level of support you're likely to get. Depending on your situation and personal opinion you will have a different opinion whether OSS-style or MS-style support is better, but it's all about the track record, not the EULA.
Re:'We back our product' (Score:3, Insightful)
Terms and phrases like "merchantability", "fitness" and "suitable" have specific legal meanings that don't necessarily mean what the common man think they mean. It is like the idiots trying to put stickers on textbooks saying evolution is just a "theory" and not knowing t
Re:'We back our product' (Score:3, Informative)
Well done (Score:5, Insightful)
(Except, seemingly, for the answer about TCO. I didn't get that one)
Re:Well done (Score:4, Insightful)
Having said that, I would still agree that it was indeed a good interview overall.
Re:Well done (Score:5, Insightful)
He squirmed a lot on the disclaimer of fitness thing, too. He's totally correct that pretty much all software (OSS included) makes this disclaimer, but he didn't really adress the issue that the barrier of responsibility is much lower for something thats provided gratis than for a commercial product.
Re:Well done (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that's something that all software companies, and IT companies in general, need to address, not just Microsoft. Unlike in other professional industries like medicine and law, there is no kind of guara
Re:Well done (Score:4, Interesting)
And I think the real issue here is that Microsoft tries to make "lack of support" an issue with Linux. They've tried in the past to give themselves positive spin based on the claim, "Well, with us, you have a real company standing behind the software. FOSS doesn't offer that."
Wriggling (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only that, but I don't think Roblimo nailed him quite enough on the fact that, okay, no company can really back their software, but MS is the one making the claim, linux isn't. It's another instance of one of MS's promises not standing up to mean anything. It was Roblimo's basic point, but he let the MS guy confuse the issue there and wriggle off the hook.
Also, with the issue of indemnification, who would be a potential litigant against linux when SCO's dead? Novell, who owns SuSE? IBM, who has banked a lot of their business on linux? Pretty much leaves MS. So that could be interpreted as a threat, in the style of mob racketeering/fire insurance. Would have loved to see Roblimo follow up there - would MS consider pursuing legal action against linux? Would MS promise not to?
That said, it was a good interview by Roblimo. Overall did a good job of avoiding the guy's spin.
Re:Wriggling (Score:4, Insightful)
I think his point was sound...you can't create an operating system and then promise it will be able to do something when you don't know what that something is. Microsoft has no idea what kind of crazy ass configuration you are going to come up with. They have no idea how two arbitrary pieces of software will interact. They can hardly certify in advance that things will all go to plan.
On the other hand, they have an excellent support organization available. They will get Windows to do anything it is capable of if you pay them enough money. Same with Red Hat support.
I don't blame them here at all. Unless you know an exact configuration of software, hardware, etc you can't make any promises. You just can't, and you never will be able to.
Re:Well done (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank you, Martin, for taking this interview on and treating it seriously. I'm sure the slashdot community would love to have this be a more regular thing.
Mike
Re:Well done (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well done (Score:5, Interesting)
The bad apples are the enterprise sales teams. Their policy is to milk each customer for what its worth, and as a result you _cannot_ get honest pricing answers out of them. (To be fair, other enterprise vendors -- bar Sun's new licensing -- are as bad or worse, but MS has to deal with the added stigma of bad press every other day).
Re:Well done (Score:5, Insightful)
I admit I only skimmed, but I'm actually pretty impressed about how Martin Taylor handled an interview with the world's greatest mass of Microsoft-haters - specifically, without lying or resorting to their usual business tactics to justify themselves. Good interview!
Not only that. He gave the impression, especially for a non-technical guy, that Microsoft is very methodical and serious about how they evaluate their competition. I am not talking about the "club them over the head" approach. I am specifically talking about the "several hundred" Linux servers they run. The evaluations of usability and features that they do.
I enjoy a good MS bashing as much as the next guy, but I think this really shows that the Open Source movement has truly begun to achieve one of its stated goals: better software. Whether you use F/OSS (which I think is better), or MS products, the quality is proving because of the competition. Top it off with MS lowering their proces to compete with "free" and there is no denying that everyone wins in this situation.
Huh ? (Score:5, Funny)
Most spyware is free
Re:Huh ? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but the Total Cost of Ownership is much higher than with commercial spyware.
Re:Huh ? (Score:2)
Then how do spyware companies make any money?
Volume.
Finally, a situation where the old joke actually makes sense.
Great interview (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Great interview (Score:4, Interesting)
Centration is a problem experienced by young kids, 2-6, where they are incapable of seeing the world from any point of view except they're own. The kid eats, sleeps, and so forth, so naturally the kid thinks your car (for example) eats when you put gas in it, sleeps when you park it at night, and so forth. It's the reason your kid will hit another kid, and then cry when he gets a time-out or whatever, he's incapable of seeing that he did wrong, he only sees what you're doing to him (the time-out).
We just covered it in my Intro to Psychology class.
Here's an article on the subject. [google.com]
Correction needed (Score:5, Funny)
You mispelled assimilate....
Re:Correction needed (Score:5, Insightful)
One aspect distresses me... (Score:4, Insightful)
I just really think that if you are going to have someone in a role to do a comparison right, you really want a person with deep technical understanding in that role to really understand any comparison at a deep level.
And more fundamentally, I just have trouble believing that anyone working for a company can produce a study that is truly useful to external companies for evaluation. At some level you are subconsciously supporting your company, and that comes into documents you produce... also I think it would tend to lead to a slant of trying to find the weak areas in your own products that could be addressed more immediately than long-term.
An example of that is the whole spyware scene. Microsoft sort of addresses that by saying "Look, there is a free solution now in terms of patches and this other spyware program we bought". But it really doesn't answer the deeper question as to what a roadmap might look like to take people to a world where lots of people do not run as admin, and things like ActiveX are simply turned off to start with.
Re:One aspect distresses me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:One aspect distresses me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, like any high level person in a big company, you have to hire and rely on really good people underneath you. It is an age-old argument, really. For example, do you need a CTO who is a brilliant coder, or do need someone who can hire someone who has the ability to properly interview and hire brilliant coders?
I don't get the impression this guy is an technical idiot- I think he is just being honest, which is uncommon. He probably has a lot more technical skill than your average business user, but he realizes that this is less skill than someone who writes code or works as a server admin 40 hrs a week. Kudos for that. I've worked for high level execs before who think they know everything- and it sucked.
Best interview in a while (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy has a point, it is a sad state of affairs when we're suprised (at least I was) to see such reasonable responses and banter from a Microsoft employee. I don't know if it's because we want to hate them, but certainly there is a sort of pervasive feeling that they are a bunch of ignorant assholes. This is probably primarily because of their bullshit TCO studies that set up straw men in order to make nonsense assertions. I don't care WHAT he says about his TCO comparisons, it's a bunch of horse crap. Assuming you didn't get hit with all kinds of malware, it's either because you have your systems locked down so far it's hard to do real work, or because you spent a bunch of time and money locking down your network and everything that comes into it. With Linux or any other non-Windows OS, it's a non-issue. You just don't have the kinds of problems you have on Windows. Whether that's technical or simply because there are more Windows boxes and thus more interest is a matter for debate which cannot be solved without a thorough look through the Windows sources, but it's probably technical, and so the whole TCO thing is a bunch of crap. Talking about a total cost of security as if it were a separate thing serves only Microsoft.
Probably the best thing in the interview is when he talks about the ability to make what you want from Linux as a strength, and not a weakness. In the past there have been attempts to portray the fragmentation of Linux as a weakness but the fact is that the niche uses of linux do not devalue it any more than the niche uses of Windows, such as the Xbox.
I really hope that Mr. Taylor becomes a frequent slashdotter, at least insofar as he is capable of making comments that he doesn't have to clear with legal.
Re:Best interview in a while (Score:5, Insightful)
Bill Gates is a good person.
Yes, even Ballmer is a good... um, ape.
But when they're all put together, all trying to make as much money with as little effort (the goal of any corporation) and put in positions of great power, they start becoming asses.
And, since it's a corporation, Microsoft is legally a person, just like you and me. So it's okay to hate Microsoft, just not the people it employs.
But I love everybody. (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, these were exactly the same words that Erich Mielke [wikipedia.org] used right before the Berlin wall fell. He was head of state intelligence and secret police in the German Democratic Republic. Being questioned about his actions by an angry crowd, he said:
"But I love, I love everybody..."
Re:But I love everybody. (Score:3, Interesting)
There's more (Score:3, Funny)
Martin: Ok Rob, thank you so much, and I apologize for taking so long to do this and I look forward to maybe doing it again. Ok?
Roblimo: I love it.
Martin: Ok, thanks. END
Roblimo: And... we're off.
Martin: I love you, too. Rob.
Roblimo: I know. I know, Martin.
Martin: Kiss me, you magnificent fool!
Roblimo: Yes! Yes! Place your hands upon my heaving bosom.
(Smoochy and slippery sounds)
Chorus: Oh, my! This can't be good.
Dr. Lector: At this point, I shall make my escape. Mr. Talyor's liver will have to await my culinary skills another day.
Indiana Jones: Not so fast, Lector. I've got you covered. Hey! My revolver turned into a walkie-talkie!
Jar-Jar: Meesa tinkin dis universe not so well thought out. Laws, yes! M-O-O-N, that spells thought.
Meanwhile, the Xaat Fleet Of The Dead, a vast cluster of fifty thousand ships shaped like heiroglyphs that can drive sentient beings insane, drifted in orbit above the unknowing Earth. The Lord Commander Of Time Apocalypses sat brooding in his command cocoon as, pondering the planet's fate...
The lost question... (Score:2, Funny)
Martin: You mean Cthul--errr--Mr.Gates?
Only the surface of DRM? (Score:4, Insightful)
*sigh* Maybe I'll hold my questions for the next 'ask slashdot'.. or
It's a long way... (Score:2, Funny)
Welcome to Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
Charge for Slashdot? Only someone from Microsoft would think you could charge for a slashdot login
"Martin: Oh that'll cost me a lot of money to manage and maintain but... "
I have to had this if Martin is reading. We have both Linux and one Windows server and a bunch of XP desktops. The amount of time dealing with the Windows server vs the Linux servers is about the same. The difference is the Linux servers run our mail system, firewall, database server, and Subversion. The Windows box runs the accounting system. We find the Linux boxes to be a lot more useful and a lot more secure than the Windows boxs. We are a small company and not Google. Our next big dive into Linux will be for our new phone system. Not saying you are wrong but you do not have to be a Google to make Linux work well for you.
Martin came across much better than Roblimo (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the part about the TCO when looking at malware, virus, and trojans, too many people here ignore one major fact.
If you get enough people to use a product your going to have a large number of idiots in that group. It works this way in any large group of unrelated people (unrelated by trade/social group/etc). An example I like to use is a MMORPG. You can find many people who are great to play with but at the same time you are constantly having to deal with the effects the idiots and the exploiters have on your enviroment.
Simply put, with the widespread availability of Windows you are going to have many people who are too stupid to own a computer let alone use it.
I found the portions explaining integration versus interoperability a little light. While Martin made good in his replies I don't think the questions were phrased well enough to get the response that was hoped for.
The EULA comparison to cars was where I found Rob being truly petty. Apples and Oranges. Exceptions have to be made. When you sell something commercially you pretty much have to exclude yourself from claiming what it can do as someone will attempt to extend that meaning into realms it does not belong. This works the same in cars. That Jeep might imply by the fact it has 4-wheel drive that it would work in situations without roads. Yet I guarantee that the manufacturer has all sorts of warnings about how that isn't true. Again, people as well as corporations must protect themselves from idiots. Can we truly blame a corporation that doesn't try or are we to blame them for the fact they didn't try hard enough?
Wow (Score:2)
One comment on the TCO... yes, the studies examine one particular scenario. But the ads that trumpet the TCO studies sure don't make that clear (that the study is for a couple specific scenarios and leaves out a large part of 'real ownership costs' that you'd run into in the real world).
Reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of the questions were rather silly. Rob asked him what he does about popups? Come on, SP2 has been out for what, over half a year now? When it came out, Slashdot ran about two articles a day on it. And he still didn't know it came with a built-in pop-up blocker?
I would have liked some meatier questions. Like what the guy thinks of some specific cases of Microsoft "business strategy" from the past or what weaknesses he sees in the Windows GUI.Instead, it was EULA this, EULA that. I think Slashdotters are the only people so worked up over EULAs, and it just bores me! Where are the questions on Longhorn and what they plan to accomplish with it? I don't care what Linux distro Rob uses or how his software didn't cost him anything, you know?
One Quote that Indicates that MS... (Score:5, Interesting)
Martin: I think a couple of things. One, you know, for the user who really wants to really tear things apart, do things on their own, build their own distribution, they really have, obviously, that level of source code access where they can do things like create a customized distribution with a very, very small footprint with only what they want and not a bunch of other things. You know, Linux is attractive to that class of a user. Linux is attractive to, let's say, Google - a large company that really wants to build a big server farm. They want to hire quite a few very talented engineers to really tune that on a daily basis and things of that nature. So I think that when you get to like specific niche areas and those areas where people really want to get deep on their own and take on a lot of that responsibility on their own, you know, I think Linux is attractive on those scenarios. And obviously that's where you see a lot of the market pick up on Linux on that basis as well.
Most of us here fall into this "niche". But I really don't think it's much of a niche, but more a growing segment of the IT industry. I would even go so far as to say the common home user. My current exploration of AMD Opterons for 64 bit computing in addition to clustering [sourceforge.net] and virtualization with projects like Xen [sourceforge.net] prove that the average home user is moving in this direction. People aren't interested in having plain old PCs that only have a two year lifespan at home anymore. It's inefficien[tt], expensive and limiting. Most home users want clusters with a centralized home application/file server that can suspend and restore virtualized sessions for high availability (HA). HA is not just for "geeks" anymore. After all, I'm not a geek, I'm a musician/artist and I'm working heavily with this stuff because it applies directly to my main interest which is using computers to make music and visual art. There aren't too many people these days that just want to buy a PC that can only run a handful of applications and wastes a lot of CPU cycles doing nothing. For the people who ARE interested in that, there is the Mac Mini (which is the best way to go in terms of being efficient).
Re:One Quote that Indicates that MS... (Score:3, Funny)
Um, right. And you aren't caught in the Slashdot reality distortion field either.
Re:One Quote that Indicates that MS... (Score:5, Informative)
can you name me criteria for a group of computers users counting more than a million that can understand what you wrote completely and are embrasing them as you claim?
no, home users aren't looking for plain old PCs with two year lifespan - because for what they use, PCs last a lot longer than that. there are quite a number of people out there still using windows 95/98, etc. those machines are a lot older than 2 years. and those machines don't feel outdated to those people because they still accomplish core functions as far as those users are concerned.
MP3? (Score:2, Funny)
What no Ogg? Oh, I get it, proprietary software vendor -- proprietary software codec.
Go figure... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow - you mean all Microsoft employees aren't corporate drones out to steal your money? Here's your proof, Slashdot.
And most of the thing that Martin says make a lot of sense. I definitely agree that Linux is still a niche product. For web servers, research institutions, and hardcore geeks, Linux may be the flavor of choice. Like it or not, though, Windows is still easier to use for most people.
This is partially due to market share (it's what people are used to) and partially because they've simplified and hidden key components that 90% of people will never touch. MS has also shown a lot of responsiveness in their efforts to get standards-compliance built into their browsers and their focus on increased security lately (now that the market demands it).
I sincerely hope that Linux becomes user-friendly, more widely adopted and makes a run at the market. I absolutely believe that free (as in speech) software is better. I just think Microsoft takes far too much crap around here for doing what all businesses do - playing the market and trying to make money.
Disengenuous jumping through hoops answer (Score:3, Informative)
Now, I seem to recall that if a company bought a windows PC, and then wiped the drive and re-installed their windows build, which could have exactly the same or less software on it, MS demanded that they pay an additional license fee on top of the one that was paid for with the system, even though the net number of licenses in the organization had changed by excatly zero.
Is this guy aware of that?
-Peter
SAMBA raises an interesting problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Protocols and file formats should belong to the customer, not the company that makes them. Instead of Microsoft having legal control over the Word format, I as a paying customer who has data in the format, should have total legal control over how I use the format. If I want to pay Sun to support OpenOffice to create a filter capable of moving my data around, Microsoft should have no legal say in this. File formats and network protocols are not products, they are amorphous ideas that define how we send and receive information from one computer or part of a computer to another.
And to be fair, yes I believe that if Microsoft wishes to they should have a legal right to reimplement the entire Flash file format for Windows Longhorn. My gripe isn't so much with Microsoft, but with the legal system that has effectively introduced and then systematically reinforced aggressive, nigh sociopathic behavior in corporations.
Let's face it, if Ballmer wanted to open up all of Microsoft's protocols and file formats, Microsoft would easily face a shareholder lawsuit. Why does the system give standing to a lawsuit over something so petty? The system should not only zap all control corporations have over their file formats and protocols, but shield them from shareholder lawsuits when the company freely lets others compete based on merit, not litigation-dodging finess. I am sick of these lawsuits where some pipsqueek sues a company under such pretenses. Do you own even a percentage point of the stock? I own stock in Wal Mart, but I don't lord that over the greeters.
It has generally been my experience that those who support software patents are willfully ignorant about the differences between software development and most other industries. They want to have it both ways, get to hold up the fast pace of innovation as a sign that capitalism works (and it does), but then they want to impose a legal regime that they know runs counter to the nature of that industry. Software patents would work if we weren't held by our balls by WIPO and had to give such large, "fair" patent durations to every industry, but instead could give them out based on the nature of the industry. And people wonder why I think the Senate needs an enema, the 17th amendment revoked and the every treaty (and the treaty ratification power itself) in the last 20 years revisited. More than 3 years for a software patent is a guaranteed way to make sure that the only innovators are lawyers whose rhetorical innovations keep the courts flooded with useless drivel and every would-be small company founder sleepless at night worrying that several years of hard work could get stolen by several months of frivolous (but well-financed) patent litigation.
EULAs (Score:5, Interesting)
Martin: Yeah, I don't think we quite ... it won't work. I don't know ...
Martin kind of ran aground on that question, but I don't think there is any good way to answer it. This is a real problem (most) software companies have. They refuse to accept (in writing) any level of responsibility for their product once you install it.
Rob's analogy is a good one. No car maker could get away with making customers sign a form relieving the maker of any responsibility. If the brakes fail 100 meters from the dealership, you can bet they will have to make it right, and consider a recall if the incident isn't isolated. Yet software companies (not just Microsoft) routinely act like you are being reckless for trusting their software to do anything.
This problem isn't going to clear up soon, either. If anything, it will get worse before it gets better. Look at the constant debates we've had here on /. about who is to blame when you get infected with trojans / malware / spyware etc. Some say Windows should be more secure. Some argue users should be more careful, or be armed with more knowledge. If MS made even the slightest promise that their software was fit for use, then one of these malware-infected idiots would drag them into court and try to hold them accountable for what happened to their computer.
I honestly don't know how I'd like to see something like THAT turn out, unless there is some way they can BOTH lose. :)
Some points (Score:4, Insightful)
2.) Reading the phone interview verbatim is really hard. I much prefer the email interviews, or an edited text from the phone interview, or at least the appropriate use of punctuation. The interview was very hard to parse, Roblimo.
3.) To all the folks who complain that Windows is hard to protect against malware: you're clueless.
Here's how you keep your network safe:
1. Install and properly configure a firewall.
1a. Maybe install a web proxy server that blocks access to spyware/malware sites.
2. Create an AD domain
3. Join your clients to the AD domain
4. Install Software Update Services
5. Configure all clients to update off of your SUS server via GPOs
6. Install anti-spyware software via GPOs
These steps are not hard, and provide for stellar enterprise management capabilities.
On a network of over 5,000 machines, we have had exactly ONE (1, uno, etc) problem, and that problem was on a rogue machine (a personal laptop) and employee plugged into our network.
4.) The Slammer/Blaster/FooFoo were released a great deal of time after Microsoft released a security patch for the problem. Most of the time, these things infected machines that were heavily unpatched.
5.) Yes, Microsoft's software is still too bloated, too complex, too insecure and too extensible, but they're seeing the big picture. They're getting better, getting smarter.
Look at Windows Server 2003, look at IIS 6.0 (which stomps on Apache imho, something I never thought I'd say)
Most of the naysayers hate Microsoft so much, they'll blather any lie about them. They hate MS so much they don't even know the products in-depth themselves, recycling garbage from the Win95/Office 2000 days. Please, just STFU.
While you all are bitching and spreading FUD, Microsoft is slowly and quietly getting better and better. They're watching OSS and learning.
Where's your enterprise directory? (don't even start on about Novell, nor OpenLDAP)
Where's your web development environment that even comes close to ASP.NET? (don't say PHP, it isn't. don't say Mono, they're far from MS's ASP.NET implementation, although Mono rocks bigtime)
You're behind the curve, and getting farther behind by yapping and attacking.
Re:Some points (Score:4, Insightful)
For 10 machines that turns into a lot of running around running Windows Update or the purchasing of an expensive server license.
For 50 machines, one person is going to spend a lot of time keeping the server oiled and making sure all the GPO's and software policies are up to date. It may not be any harder to administer 5000 machines than 50, but its an unreasonably high cost-per-cpu for the administration of the 50.
A good solution is this: Indoctrinate your users not to use Internet Explorer or Outlook. You'd be surprised how many spyware problems disappear.
Yes, you can GPO Internet Explorer to use a 0.0.0.0 proxy, but then you break Windows Update.
What I'm saying is, for small networks, GPO's and AD's and server licenses are a big time sink.
Probably because the little guy is already locked in, Microsoft doesn't put much effort into making a better experience for them. They are really trying to get into the server room though, so their products are geared toward that.
Oh please (Score:3, Insightful)
3.) To all the folks who complain that Windows is hard to protect against malware: you're clueless.
Oh come ooon -- I challenge you to repeat this statement and your instructions to any of the 50+ million "average home users" out there to which Microsoft Windows is marketed without sounding like a fool.
Or are you really just admitting that although Windows is a usable solution for controlled corporate environments where experts can be hired to secure the desktops, but an abysmal solution as a home OS? (I'
Screaming hard drives (Score:3, Funny)
I hear the sounds of hundreds of hard drives spinning up right now as some rabid Linux fans scour their resumes with sweat dripping off their faces to see if they inadverdently ended up working for the the 'man'.
Roblimo's secret plan... (Score:5, Funny)
Devilishly clever.
Hostile Interviewer (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish this hadn't been a phone interview. It seems Roblimo wasn't mature enough to conduct it in person, and as such email would've been a better medium. As an interviewer, your goal should be to get answers. The second you start mocking your subject, you lose objectivity, and fail at your goal.
A few examples:I'm no Microsoft fan, but if they have the good grace to agree to an interview, at least treat them with courtesy and respect when conducting it. You screwed up a pretty good opportunity with your childishness. Way to go.
That time of the month again? (Score:4, Insightful)
For instance, "Will it cost me any money?" sounded like Martin was joking with Rob, and Rob joked right back with "just as much as Debian."
Maybe you're just too used to IM to realize that professional interviews don't included smileys for the humor-impaired.
Re:Hostile Interviewer (Score:3, Informative)
Or, if this is trying, it's even worse.
Re:Hostile Interviewer (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The interviewee didn't seem to think so? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, his question about the cost of an account highlights philosophical differences pretty well. Roblimo's lack of social grace and professionalism in responding reinforces some sterotypes just as well.
I'm not eager to pick this inte
Reality? (Score:4, Insightful)
> little bit, and you can say this is partly because
> of us at Microsoft and hopefully we're getting
> better here, is that people try to position us as
> Microsoft versus open source.
Read an example EULA [msdn.com] that seems to prohibit anybody from using the MSFT technology in question in a project that uses the GPL (or any license that requires the source to be included in the distribution).
To Mr. Martin: look, you can't have an EULA like that and say you're not against open source. This is not the first EULA that stops people from choosing whatever license they like to cover their IP.
It's strange, too, that MSFT made this business decision. There will consequently be fewer projects released into the open with this technology, and possibly fewer people paying for OS and development tools. All because the EULA says (IANAL) to me "you cannot distribute the DLL if your project distribution must include source code."
That just doesn't make sense. It's almost like MSFT is cutting off their nose to spite their face.
Finally.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me be the first to say welcome.
After reading that interview, its my opinion that Mr. Taylor is one of the most honest corporate figures to ever talk to /. His willingness to get across certain messages and to try to show improvement with in his organization was very pleasing for my eyes to see. So many people are willing to judge quickly and forget slowly, and that doesn't work well in such a fast moving industry. I mean, its 2005. IBM is a new sort of hero. Real has turned a 180 from its position in the 90's (as THE most bloated and crap infested program of that time), and has given the Linux community an excellent, free player that even includes legal MP3 support on their dime. Microsoft can change to. That seems to be the major theme.
As the environment of the industry changes the corporate environment must change as well or perish. Sure maybe now to many people Microsoft is the enemy, the creator of bad licensing and DRM. But this interview proves that at least the company has some sense to hire some sense which means it has a good chance to survive. I mean.....if it grows to the point where it is superior in every respect, what prevent Microsoft from releasing a Linux or a BSD a couple of years down the line?
Ask and you shall receive (wma, FLAC, many others) (Score:4, Informative)
In order of size:
WMA (small at 1.32MB): http://technicallyincorrect.org/mirrors/martin_on
MP3 (original encoding): http://technicallyincorrect.org/mirrors/martin_on
OGG, just because: http://technicallyincorrect.org/mirrors/martin_on
WAV (for the ultimate compatibility (©): http://technicallyincorrect.org/mirrors/martin_on
MP4 (AAC): http://technicallyincorrect.org/mirrors/martin_on
FLAC: http://technicallyincorrect.org/mirrors/martin_on
And yes, I AM bored.
unix consultant vs Microsoft consultant Payscales (Score:3, Insightful)
Two suggestions for Roblimo: (Score:3, Insightful)
(1) at the beginning, Martin apologized for taking so long to do the interview. In so doing, he implied that his "busy schedule" was the reason. Later in the interview, we find he's quoting very recent things in MS's defense: IE's popup blocker, the anti-spyware program, an SP2 that is mature and accepted. It would have been good to see his response to a suggestion that he had waited till it was in MS's interests to do the interview.
(2) on the FUD question, Martin says that up till recently MS "didn't really get" Linux and Open Source. What does it say about the biggest software company on the planet that they didn't get it for so long? What does it say about companies Google and IBM and Apple that they got it a long time ago? He's dodging the question here, and really shouldn't be allowed to get away with it.
Overall though, an enlightening interview, thanks for doing it.
-Pete
why theres 'more guys out there that know Windows' (Score:3, Insightful)
One reason there's a whole lot more windows 'guys' out there is because backyarders can now get paid $50/hr to install anti-spyware on the average joes 'slow' computer. A friend of mine has been doing this for over a year.
Walk in, install Adaware and AVG Anti Virus (both free for non-corporations), run them, have a coffee then walk out $50 (or more) richer.
Easy money baby.
Talk the talk... (Score:3, Insightful)
* I am hearing you saying that you will aim to cooperate with projects like Samba. I want to see it happen. Document the custom extensions to SMB. Similarly, open up document formats for Office. In both cases patented formats, even if open and documented cannot be considered open formats. If you are serious about interopability then these are logical steps. You cannot tell me that this will be a lot of work for Microsoft (you mention that you are working hard to do this), as this must be documented for internal purposes.
* FUD, studies etc. I want to see Microsoft publish a study that acknowledges Linux has a lower TCO. The studies I have seen proving a lower TCO for MS take one situation and expand this to apply in all cases. Conversly, even if Linux is not cheaper in general, there are some places where this is true (google being one, read below for another). Micrsoft has published a lot of misleading studies, I would like to see the balance redressed, or at least an even handed approach taken.
* If microsoft is not hostile to Linux, why not look at porting some applications to run on Linux? SQL Server would be a favourite. Just to point out here that I have read Inside SQL Server 2000, and do understand that SQL Server is very tightly tied to the OS. Nonetheless, there is a demand for this and it would sell licenses.
* Regarding hoops to jump through for OS/App activation. A PC at my house tends to get partially or completely replaced at a regular intervals. I build my own. I also format any of the boxes I personally own pretty much every 12 months or so. Product activation is a huge headache for me. For example a box that I have actived with WinXP might have every part except the case replaced in the case itself. The headaches are such that for personal use I am more inclined to either use a version of OS or app that does not require activation, or look as some means for working around it. I should add I am scrupulously carful for have licenses for what I run.
Just to put this in context for me I am speaking here as someone who writes code on a Microsoft platform for a living, however in general I use what works. I really like some MS stuff. 2K was a great step and XP was a slight improvement on that again. I also particularly like Excel and SQL Server, and I am looking forward to the release of Yukon.
Aside from that I run a debian file server @ home ($150 AUD for the box) and I am planning to install a web/mail server (debian, also anticipated to be ~$150 AUD for the box). I'll just point out that the cost of the software on those two boxes in a MS environment would be thousands of dollars (AUD).
Incidentally if you want to contact me directly to respond my email address is david [ at ] uberconcept.com.
Re:My question (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My question (Score:5, Insightful)
Who's developing it? The geeks. Who gets the most use out of it? The geeks.
That being said, unless someone comes up with a distro that can provide just as good of an end-to-end user experience than Win32 or OSX can, it won't catch on for the home desktop. Corporate desktop is another matter; if you have a farm of cubes full of accountants, secrataries, telemarketers, or anything else that has needs to be met by OO.o and Mozilla, LTSP is a seriously viable and cheap and easy option that a number of companies have already jumped onto.
Re:My question (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I really don't care if home users e
bucking the trend (Score:3, Interesting)
I continue to struggle with this, just in my own opinion. Linux does not need the n00b opinion. I think that dumbing down the Linux desktop will kill it. However, what it does need is more of a non-geek opinion. I want USB devices to "just work" under Linux out of the box, but I still seem to have problems with them. I am not a n00b, but I don't want to have to futz with EVERYTHING on my
Re:I used to work with Martin Taylor (Score:3, Funny)
Re:one you know to many (Score:2)
I think the transcription of the interview could've been a lot better. Without the "you knows", and it'd probably also be nice to cut out the repeated questions and things like that. If I want to know exactly how the call was, I'll download the MP3... When reading I don't need that kind of irrelevant things...
But having said that, quite a nice read indeed.
Re:Interesting but utimately boring (Score:2)
Re:Interesting but utimately boring (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, your questions are silly.
1)If you went to a car dealer and bought a car for $30,000 and you found out it only cost the dealer $3,000 would you feel ripped off? If yes - isn't that what MS does with MS Office?
That analogy is completely broken. Do you really think that Microsoft has a 90% profit margin on Office? If you have a philosophical objection to commercial closed-source software ala the FSF, fine, that's a valid viewpoint although there's clearly room for debate. But your analogy is broken to the point of hurting whatever point you were trying to make. What point were you trying to make, exactly?
2) How do you feel about governments spending hundreds of millions of dollars on software in countries where a large percent of the population is homeless and hungry (eg Brazil). Wouldn't the governments be better off spending the money locally on support than importing software from the US?
Interesting point, but remember that the price of software is insignificant compared to the other costs. That $100 WindowsXP license is peanuts compared to the $800 computer it's running on, or the annual salaries of the employees, or even the cost of the office space that computer is sitting on. Hell, the cost of electicity for that computer might be over $100 a year alone. The numbers are going to be different in different countries (like Brazil) but the same principles apply. Waste is waste, no matter if it's 1% or 50% of your total costs, but try to keep some perspective.
Besides, you could apply that "argument" to any form of spending, ever. Should they run Linux on eBay'd 386s instead of buying new computers? Why not walk into a post office, pick up a stapler, and start screaming about how the $5 they spent on the stapler could have fed some kid in Africa? Should government spend absolutely zero dollars on anything as long as there's one homeless person somewhere?
What it boils down to, regardless of any rhetorical pathos about THE STARVING CHILDREN PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN, is whether or not the cost of Windows is worth it. And I think this is a valid discussion and there are lots of cases where the cost of Windows isn't worth it, but your histrionics aren't going to bring anybody closer to a sensible answer... and the optimal answer varies on a case-by-case basis anyway.
3) What companies/products are highest on the MS radar? Oracle/IBM/SAP. If you could grind one competitor into the dust which would it be?
Yeah, he'd really be willing to answer that. You don't need truth serum and an interrogation room to figure out the answer, though. Just look at the competitors that Microsoft's ads target. Obviously Linux is extremely high on their radar.