Microsoft menaced by open source

Unless I'm missing something, it seems that MS is whining because they have competition.

Why anyone buys MS products is beyond me.

I agree with MS. Opensource micro-voles do ape the mega vole. 
And all of us cows run helter-skelter.
Long live software industry.
Suresh

That Volish Problem is easily solved, INQUIRER Newsdesk, by Microsoft splashing some Serious Cash to those whom it identifies as needing it....... which would also be, deserving it in such cases.

It would be Real Dumb to do anything less if Open Source/open source/Open Sorcerors are so SMART.

Ps. Think Soros type Serious Cash for those who can Create a Big Splash .... for that may be the Type of Foe 42 Cause MS Woe? 

er haven't they been steadily copying features from Firefox and putting them into IE?

Needs to either put up or shut up, start suing people over infringement of IP or STFU already. As for stealing ideas people in glass cages really shouldn't throw stones.

Okay, so M$ proclaims that they, and only they, are the sole source of originality in the software industry and the open-sourcers are merely "copying" their creative efforts?

Uh, quite a shock, I'm sure, to the developers of OS/360, VMS, etc., to the good people of Xerox Palo Alto labs, and to all the other REAL imaginative and creative people that moulded the computer industry.

Let's see.... did Gates create BASIC? Noooo... that was done at Dartmouth College.... did Gates create DOS? Noooo... that was from others..... did Gates create GUI? Definitely noooo.... So what has Billy and his cohorts brought to the table? Why, the arrogance and conceit necessary to become the largest marketer of PC software, then try to shine up its image by hiring a bunch of questionable software hacks posing as computer "scientists" and claiming it has a "research" division pumping out meaningful, original software "intellectual" property.

Microsoft = Megascam

Go ahead, Stevie, quietly mutter on...
The rest of us will go on with our personally satisfying lives... free from M$ domination.

Yes that's right Microsoft, Karma can be a b!tch. What was the OS that you basically copied from that "fruit" company (Apple)? Oh yea, that was Windows. Not to mention the myriad of other products that you "innovated" by basically copying what was already available in another product, and in some cases giving it away for free (i.e./netscape). Let's all have a big boo-hoo for Microsoft, who might actually be force to innovate something or go the way of the dodo. Perhaps if you listened to your customers and didn't push bloated, slow code on them and forced them into a never-ending upgrade cycle, then maybey you'd get some sympathy.

I'm pretty sure all the base features of IE were built on by Firefox. This goes with almost every software developer in existence. 

In fact, if one does happen to create an original idea, they're usually gobbled up by the corporate beast for a sum of money.

It's called Venture Capitalism.

Though this isn't the case, it takes quite a bit of research to find if someone copied code, and even more money to take the company to court over a copyright. Either way, it's not cheap.

Cry, cry. Maybe if you too built your next Windows on the Linux kernel it'd actually be a decent product. Stop crying and get with the times. Monopoly, closed source, it's dead and hopefully you will die along with it.

If I were in a glass cage, I would be very grateful for some stones to throw around and break my way out with.
If I lived in a glass house, it might be a different matter...

copies microsoft? it's the other way around. Server 2008 is might as well be a rebranded Linux Server. Only install what's needed including gui's. Linux! Unix extensions in Active Directory. Linux! There are numerous articles on the web going over all the many many things Mickymouse has copied from Unix Systems in general on their latest greatest server. OH! let's not forget SELinux and how Vista copies the way it protects the kernel! This is a case of the Kettle(Microsoft) calling the china teacup(Opensource) black.

Come on now everyone, lets shed a single tear for Microsoft. I mean they only raked in around 17.7 billion dollars in profit during their last fiscal year and they still hold somewhere around 90% of the worldwide OS market plus hold the majority of the office software market. I mean come on, they're bitching about other companies making better products after they themselves supplied them with the basis for those products even if they were paid for it? Also if they don't want open source to gain in the market then here's an idea, stop dicking over your customers in favor of special interest groups like the RIAA and stop trying to force a crappy OS like Vista down the publics throat.

Look, we're Microsoft. We became the worlds largest company by copying other peoples ideas and adding our own special value to them. So when we say people are copying us, we know what we're talking about.

Want proof? Fine, remember Netscape? Yeah, we didn't even think the internet was going to be a big deal, but it was, so we copied them. Sure it wasn't as good, but it was free and people are slugs, so eventually it was our market. If it wasn't for that other browser we'd be done, the web would have already achieved perfection way back in 2000. This web 2.0 garbage would be dead, and wouldn't we all be happier if we didn't have to deal with that?

Not enough? Fine, how far back to you want to go? We bought MS DOS. We copied apple who copied xerox. We copied stacker. We copied... look it's not about who we copied, we did it, we're good at it, and we win. Unless you made a patent worth billions, we win. Even if you do have a patent worth billions we'll bury you in legal and then if you happen to survive, you get a few mill great, we still win.

But when we say the future of the pc is a table with a picture on it, thats ours. When we say we invented email it ours, open source is just copying our email concept and that's not fair. E in emails comes from Microsoft, thats why we don't have an E in our name. So when you make open source email solutions, you're stealing our E.

It's not fair. We know it, you should know it too. I'd go into this further but I just heard that open GL copied us too. Turns out they're trying to knock of the direct X api. We invented 3d and we're not going to stand for this. 
G

Does anybody else find it amusing that the company that was built on stealing ideas (DOS, Xerox, Mac, Netscape, Lotus, Wordperfect) is now accusing others of doing the same thing?

Yes, Vole is whining about competition. Who do you think was really behind that lawsuit based assault on Linux? Who had the most to lose from increased Linux usage on the desktop and in the data center?? MICROSOFT!!! They fear Linux. They couldn't kill it with a puppet and lawsuit and Vista is probably pushing more people to Apple and Linux than anything else. You know what would really put the death knell to Windows? If gaming companies and hardware manufacturers got together to port games to Linux and make better hardware drivers for video cards and such. If Crysis ran better on Linux than Windows on the same hardware, it would be amazing.

Let me see, now that Linux is maturing so that the masses can use it it is posing a threat. My Ubuntu does updates automatically with a couple clicks, Firefox installs needed plug in as required and it works. Open Office is maturing and is stable.
I think MS is starting to worry as they should. Good for Linux
Now what does any monopolist do when they are losing control, they cry foul as loudly as they can and start pulling out the lawyers to get the competition any way they can.
I foresee the days of Microsoft rule is coming to a close (due to greed) and within a decade the will be off the throne.

The Borg do not copy, they assimilate. In its former life, MSIE used to be the NCSA Mosaic web browser. Like all drones, it became a mindless image of itself.

The ONLY peeps hurting Microsoft is themselves.
New features are added to their products only AFTER someone else has them. They implement some things after other developers have determined them JUNK and dropped the projects.
They laid another almost rotten egg with Vista. They covered most of the advertised items with the exception of it being faster than XP. (It's the hardware required not the OS) Loose the DRM tighten things up so the beast fits the faster we were promised. I do like quite a few things with Vista, The DRM infestation just tells me MS thinks I'm a criminal ready to share my entire MM collection with the world. NOT!! I just don't get the performance I expect. File transfers to/from my file server take longer, OS seems to take more time playing with itself than doing what I've told it to. And why are some features built in to my hardware now having to be handled via software? (A Step backwards there folks and puts unnecessary load on the CPU)

Yet I digress... My conspiracy theory is still...
MS doesn't want to cough up the code because then we'd know where they nicked it from.

MS! Give your customers what they expect from a $200+ product, or go cry somewhere else. I don't need to hear it. Trust me.. Do it right, and we'll run it.

(This rant/comment brought to you by Linux Mint 5 and Firefox 3.0.1) LOL!!!

I buy Windows so my kids, wife, and self can play World of Warcrash without having to live the "crash" part every ten minutes. Products like Crossover are nice with SuSE and Gentoo but that doesn't let me use those nice voice plug-ins for big raids. Until we see some companies like Blizzard tossing bones to bridge crossers like myself; some of us will continue to pay Microsoft to cross over bridges. The analogy to put reality into context: No matter how much I might love Linux I will continue to buy MS Windows because it works with games, has idiot proof presentation software, great accounting and business management software, and Visio (To bad MS bought that one. I suggested to someone at Corel that they should have nabbed it!). Oh! I can get all of those packages to work together. I won't begin to mention Visual Studio. Linux won't be ready for the desktop until Microsoft is forced to begin to move MS Office products to Linux. That will begin to happen when Microsoft's commercial competition, and partners, make Linux the target of market growth opportunity. That is the sad reality after the fairy tale. Macs don't count! :) 

"These firms do not bear the full costs of research and development for the software."

Hello MS. It's Free Software, we share R & D throughout the community. We are collectively smarter, faster and better than you. Go wander off to teh tarsands now while the world passes you by.

We have lost thousands of plants and countless vegetables to the voracious voles. There are very few plants that voles will not eat. While voles are primarily hunting your chips, they've been known to consume Lotus and Word Perfects, as well as various file managers and operating tools. Voles got where they are by stealing ideas and benefiting from others intellectual properties. Voles also chew through revenue on complementary services and products. The voles layed claim to all the common ground, and growers were put down to cross it.
Some growers, unable to join the voles, have decided to use barrier controls to beat the voles. The voles believe in only one GUI, and evidently, he's not a full gospel capitalist, but perhaps a wholly FPO. Small world.

...or even PCs, but you'd never realize this from listening to them.

Microsoft's flagship product, Windows, is a crib from earlier work, and its not even a particularly good crib either. Its still got the DOS "file monitor" mindset -- single user, single system. Its had a lot of cosmetic development but the fundamentals have always been weak and they're now really showing their age. 

The basic problem with Windows is that its just one thing, a big hermetic brick, whereas a real operating environment is like Lego, its lots of components that are assembled on whatever hardware's needed to run them that do a particular job. They seem to have figured it out with their Midora project but in true big-company fashion they're reinventing the wheel just because they feel they have to "own" everything.

Hmmm, the big bad bully doesn't like being bullied around itself! See what happens when people get enough of a bullies' crap!

OpenOffice
Firefox
VLC

just to name a few, are taking some attention a way from the big bad bully. The big bad bully is getting it's lunch money taken! Poor baby!

Microsoft, why don't you guys dedicate yourselves to something worthy? Like finding a cure for crabs, or something. Not that I have crabs or anything. I mean, just because I itch down there "SOMETIMES" don't mean I have crabs! Does it?

Microsof has ideas? Microsof not stealing ideas from others?
So, there has never been IBM/OS2, Apple, Nescape, WordPerfect?

Somebody should have told me these things never took place in the past.

You're all doing Microsoft a massive disservice. They don't steal other people's ideas -- remember Bill's memo about the evils of piracy, or Steve's comments about how IP stops his family from starving? What they do, they call "innovation".

And Microsoft can hardly be blamed when competitors of all stripes adopt Microsoft's intellectual property into their own products. Even when they are using time machines to send the ideas back in time by years or even decades, the temporal-meddling scumbags.

What goes around, comes around ...

e.g.
Years ago, Microsoft did not want to gracefully join the OpenGL revolution (after SGI handed it's "GL" technology to the world as "OpenGL") and so Microsoft bought someone elses technology and renamed it Direct3D.

Microsoft could not create it's own browser (in time ?) and so bought someone elses browser and then renamed in Internet Explorer.

There are many other examples where Microsoft side-stepped innovation with it's cheque book.

Microsoft cannot expect to have it always go their way especially with the sometimes shady past it's had.

In my opinion, Microsoft could do so much more and be a better and more respectful company if it concentrated on the operating system space

e.g. "perfect" interoperability with other operating systems, enhanced user interface technologies, standard support for massive multi-processor systems, stronger role in device driver compliance, etc. 

and let the {community, other companies} deal in the "application" space.



Cade



Shows that Mozilla ought to use the GPL.

Linux is now better than Windows in most ways-it is the full house!! The only thing left is Google to make a Linux distribution. I have talked with many people that haven't tried Linux and most, if not all, say that they would definitely try Linux if Google made a distribution.

microsoft should not cast such aspertions - they commit plagiarism too yet they charge money for their products!

they poached the mp3 idea and made wma

they stole the idea for tabs from mozilla firefox

to name but 2

It's much more easy say 'we must change the way'. Why MS insisting in old software business model? We are in 21st century, not in 80's. The unpreparedness of Steve Ballmer frightens me. I don't know why MS support OS Softwares Foundations like Apache and the same time do patents threats. MS is insane. Soon, MS will threat again to increase their shares. A 
brilliant strategy.

IE was "conceived" from a product called Spry (which was built in Seattle circa 1992-93). 
Spry was built from NCSA Mosaic (the company "value" added a TCP/IP stack for windows - which, at the time MS didnt supply because we were all supposed to use NetBeui [sp?])

The reason Spry was developed by said company was to distribute price lists for Fish every morning in the Seattle Area. It was to replace FAXes...

MS purchased Spry for approx $10 Million. Spry became Internet Explorer....

...We get things like 'Bob'.
Otherwise they can't innovate their way out of a soggy paper bag, so they resort to copying or outright piracy. And they can't even get that right.

The door is that way, Micro$lop. Don't let it hit you in the rear on your way out, and kindly take your MafiAA friends with you.

After all, is this not Microsoft saying that what they have been doing is no longer working and that earnings will suffer in both the short and longer terms. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.