Joel on Software's How Microsoft Lost the API War argues that the Windows API has "a terminal disease" while Cory Doctorow tries to convince Microsoft Research that DRM systems don't work, are bad for society / business / artists and that "DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT"!
Now I'm no Windows developer, although I did have some experience of developing for a Microsoft 'architecture' (early MSN) in the mid-90s - and, boy, was that fun when, e.g. they updated the component mix less than 48 hours from launch deadline. So I can well believe Joel's assertion that:
Outside developers, who were never particularly happy with the complexity of Windows development, have defected from the Microsoft platform en-masse and are now developing for the web.
en-masse? Definitely some. Probably quite a lot, in fact. But surely not most (existing Windows developers, that is)? M$ is still the largest game in town, and will be - by Joel's own admission - for quite some time to come. Although his later wage comparisons do give an indication that certain skills are now paying a rarity premium.
What's more compelling is his argument that:
...you've got the Windows API, you've got VB, and now you've got .NET, in several language flavors, and don't get too attached to any of that, because we're making Avalon, you see, which will only run on the newest Microsoft operating system, which nobody will have for a loooong time. And personally I still haven't had time to learn .NET very deeply, and we haven't ported Fog Creek's two applications from classic ASP and Visual Basic 6.0 to .NET because there's no return on investment for us. None.
The cracks are beginning to show, especially if this is true:
The big meme at Microsoft these days is: "Microsoft is betting the company on the rich client."
A bet they can't afford to lose, but the only bet they know how to make!
Cory, on the other hand, ends his talk with a startling request...
You know what I would totally buy? A record player that let me play everybody's records. Right now, the closest I can come to that is an open source app called VLC, but it's clunky and buggy and it didn't come pre-installed on my computer.Sony didn't make a Betamax that only played the movies that Hollywood was willing to permit -- Hollywood asked them to do it, they proposed an early, analog broadcast flag that VCRs could hunt for and respond to by disabling recording. Sony ignored them and made the product they thought their customers wanted.
I'm a Microsoft customer. Like millions of other Microsoft customers, I want a player that plays anything I throw at it, and I think that you are just the company to give it to me.
Yes, this would violate copyright law as it stands, but Microsoft has been making tools of piracy that change copyright law for decades now. Outlook, Exchange and MSN are tools that abet widescale digital infringement.
More significantly, IIS and your caching proxies all make and serve copies of documents without their authors' consent, something that, if it is legal today, is only legal because companies like Microsoft went ahead and did it and dared lawmakers to prosecute.
Microsoft stood up for its customers and for progress, and won so decisively that most people never even realized that there was a fight.
Do it again! This is a company that looks the world's roughest, toughest anti-trust regulators in the eye and laughs. Compared to anti-trust people, copyright lawmakers are pantywaists. You can take them with your arm behind your back.
...and Bill Gates' worst fear: "Because if you don't do it, someone else will."
Posted by lankyphil at June 22, 2004 11:19 PM | TrackBack