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Microsoft GNU is Not Unix Software IT

Bill Gates Claims OSS Has Poor Interoperability 565

Posted by timothy from the intrigued-by-ideas-desire-newsletter dept.
XeRXeS-TCN writes "In yet another example of Bill Gates seemingly 'not getting it' (or getting it just fine and spreading FUD), he has sent out an email to all MSFT's corporate customers, stating that if they are looking for interoperability, they should not look to Linux or OSS software. What he really means of course, is free alternatives trying to interoperate with Microsoft's non-documented proprietary standards."
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Bill Gates Claims OSS Has Poor Interoperability More

Bill Gates Claims OSS Has Poor Interoperability

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  • What is this world coming to? (Score:5, Funny)

    by bigtallmofo ( 695287 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:07PM (#11584129)
    What's next!? Cigarette companies are going to claim that they aren't harmful to your health?

    • Re:What is this world coming to? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by danormsby ( 529805 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:12PM (#11584182) Homepage
      Guess they don't attempt to interoperate between three different version of Office within their organization.

      Guess they can afford the upgrade licenses!

      • Linux is pretty bad in this regard (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Nailer ( 69468 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:50PM (#11585768)
        I hate to defend this guy, but there's other things you should be attacking him over. From a user point of view. Different Open Source distros are really like different Operating Systems.

        How do you install software in Red Hat? Debian? Windows 95? Windows XP?

        How do you change what IP address will be used for eth0, in Red Hat or Debian? Windows 95? Windows XP?

        In both cases the 6 years different versions of Windows are more similar than the latest versions of both.

        • Re:Linux is pretty bad in this regard (Score:4, Interesting)

          by vsprintf ( 579676 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @09:24PM (#11586673)

          I hate to defend this guy, but there's other things you should be attacking him over. From a user point of view. Different Open Source distros are really like different Operating Systems.

          Well, they are. The only thing they share in common may be a version of the kernel and the user tools.

          How do you install software in Red Hat? Debian? Windows 95? Windows XP?

          If you want to make an apples-to-apples comparison, then compare Mandrake 7.2 to Mandrake 10.1 versus Win98 to WinXP. Software installation is essentially the same accross the board except that Mandrake won't install something just because you put a CD in the drive.

          I must have missed it when the law of computer usability was written. Who said everything had to work according to the Microsoft way? I guess that OO should break the document format with every new release if that's the standard.

          • >> Who said everything had to work according to the Microsoft way? I guess that OO should break the document format with every new release if that's the standard.

            Well, it was the standard. However, that standard has now been upgraded and is not backwards compatible. The new standard is to just pay Microsoft money. However this standard is unfortunately incompatible with many slashdot users and is currently being rewritten to be as inclusive as possible.

        • In both cases the 6 years different versions of Windows are more similar than the latest versions of both.

          Might be more to do with Microsoft not innovating rather than anything to do with the maturation of Linux. Putting a new skin on the GUI does not equate to innovation.

        • Re:Linux is pretty bad in this regard (Score:5, Insightful)

          by 0BoDy ( 739304 ) <mrgenixus@SLACKW ... com minus distro> on Saturday February 05, 2005 @10:02PM (#11586883)
          I think you've lost sight of what Linux is, and why it's here. Linux isn't the environment. It's not even the command-line, it's just the kernel. It's definitely NOT windowing environments.

          I think a lot of the misconception regard the differences between Linux and GNU software relates to what is what, and who wrote it, what they believe and if you agree with that. Whether they're written by RM Stallman et al, or Linus et al, or by distribution developers is important.

          Linux is the kernel. The kernel, just like the CPU in your computer, is extremely interoperable. It works with all kind of peripheral applications, you access it using external commands, shells, etc. Linus wrote it because, to an extent he agreed with RMS ideology about software: that it should be free as in freedom, as in beer, and that you should be able to do anything with it.

          Richard M. Stallman, creator of GNU (GNU's not UNIX), wrote many of the other applications terminal junkies get fired up about: bash, emacs, less, man and others. The GNU system applications and the kernel are what make up a complete Linux base system. Anything above that is written by the gnome group or kde, or someone else. These things are written for Linux but are other applications, just like null-soft winamp, AOL, Aqua, Macromedia Dreamweaver, or Flash.

          On top of that, many distributions have designed "ease of use" solutions for X11-based graphical display servers. Interoperability has very little to do with configuration changes from distro to distro; that has more to do with the base OS, ifconfig, bash, sysvinit, and the flat files in /etc. Deficiencies of that software are the ones that ought to be addressed here. So if you have complaints about GUI features not being present cross-distribution: complain to Novell, Red Hat, et al that they're not supporting Linux upstream*. Distros are there so you can choose the way you want to learn to do it. Learn it once, or learn it again because you see a better way to do it. Most change isn't bad.

          Also, only administrators should be worrying about interoperability, software installation, ip addressing, network configuration, boot up, accounts, etc. The "user's" point of view isn't really relevant there, a good administrator should know GNU/Linux, the base OS, configured with flat files, in terminal. It's easier anyway, once you've been trained to do it that way, because it doesn't change, because that's actually what GNU/Linux is.

          I think you need to get past your bad experiences in the GUI environment and evaluate the OS. I agree there needs to be A GNU installer framework, perhaps even GNU selected GUI configuration utilities, among other things, but many distributions ideologies will get in the way. Red Hat wouldn't use it, now; Suse has YAST; Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, and derivatives use the gnome / KDE controls or else the terminal and would use them, but even so, there will inconsistency as long as Linux is free as in freedom. You can't expect an OS that's based on user input to be the same across multiple branches and ideologies; choose wisely. I choose Linux, because no matter which distribution I use, I can still fix it, rely on it, and be happy so many have put hard work into it.

          *Few distros make fixes and actually let the original authors know, and help them catch all of Linux. This results in some other minor changes from distro to distribution. ** I hope this hasn't just been a big pointless rant, I've spent about an hour trying to write it well.

          • I think you've lost sight of what Linux is, and why it's here. Linux isn't the environment. It's not even the command-line, it's just the kernel.

            I think you're severely out of touch with the rest of the Linux commuinity, who generally use the term kernel to refer to kernel (kernel.org) and Linux to refer to a suite of applications you use as an Operating System. Compare kernel.org and linux.org.

            Do you think Gates was referring to kernels in the article?

        • setup.exe=shar (Score:3, Insightful)

          by goldfndr ( 97724 )

          How do you install software in Red Hat? Debian? Windows 95? Windows XP?

          The Windows "setup.exe" method is analogous to the shar format [wikipedia.org], which is still supported by Red Hat/Debian et al.

          Alternatively, Microsoft does now offer a package manager for Windows [wikipedia.org], but I'd be surprised if many people are using it with Windows 95; it'd be like alien on Debian.

      • "Guess they don't attempt to interoperate between three different version of Office within their organization."

        My previous company had a mixture of Office 97, Office 2K, and Office XP running all at once. There weren't any interoperability problems. (On a side note: There wasn't much difference to upgrade past 2k, either.)

      • Funny how that interpolation suff works (Score:4, Funny)

        by argoff ( 142580 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @07:59PM (#11586197)
        Funny you should mention that,
        just a day or two ago, a secretary in the office couldn't open up a power-point file sent to her by the boss. They were both created on different versions of Microsoft Office, but it woud crash every time she opened it.

        I had her send it to me, opened it up in OpenOffice and re-saved it in a generic powerpoint format. I sent it back to her and it now works fine!

        So yes, with a little effort - different versions of Microsoft Office can interpolate :)

    • Re:What is this world coming to? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BoomerSooner ( 308737 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:15PM (#11584218) Homepage Journal
      Bill Gates is trying to maximize shareholder wealth. When you find an honest publicly traded company let me know (mind you I used to work at arthur andersen and most private companies aren't honest either).

      Gates makes his money by selling, pushing & shoving his inferior product on everyone. If he truly wanted an interoperable system he'd open up those undocumented api's etc...

      I personally like windows but I also like OS 9, OS X, Linux, BeOS, Solaris, ...

      An OS should be like a screw driver. It does its job and doesn't need to be redesigned every week.

      • Re:What is this world coming to? (Score:5, Funny)

        by BetterThanCaesar ( 625636 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:38PM (#11584430)

        An OS should be like a screw driver.

        One part vodka, three parts orange juice?

      • Re:What is this world coming to? (Score:5, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:47PM (#11584495)
        I'm sick of Slashdotters jumping to conclusions about Bill Gate's honesty. Maybe Bill's trying to let the public know Linux isn't interoperable with his software's 13 new security vulnerabilities [slashdot.org].

      • Re:What is this world coming to? (Score:5, Funny)

        by bman08 ( 239376 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @04:18PM (#11584731)
        Microsoft makes products that are like a screwdriver. It just happens to be one of those screwy star-shaped ones that nobody has.

        If phillips had his way, it would be against the law to reverse engineer the X shaped screw, and you'd have to pay for his proprietary driver. They just didn't think to buy enough politicians to pass the MCSDA. (Mechanical Century Screw Driver Act)

      • This is backfiring (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rseuhs ( 322520 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @04:27PM (#11584788)
        Bill Gates is trying to maximize shareholder wealth.

        I think they are failing at that.

        IIRC the dollar lost 26% of it's value in 2004 (compared to Euro and Yen), so the 6% increase in revenue (10-12 2004/2005 in dollars) don't look so great anymore.

        Sure, they have cut 1.5 billion of R&D costs, which is impressive, but only revenue can keep a company alive.

        Currently Microsoft's anti-Linux strategy seems to be:

        • Constantly badmouthing Linux, thus keeping Linux in the mind of decision makers
        • Pushing XML which has it's roots (via SGML) in the Unix-community.

        This won't work.

        It will have these effects, all bad for Microsoft:

        • Big customers realize that Linux is a powerful way to threaten Microsoft, thus they have much more power during negotiations which means less margin for MS.
        • All customers realize that if Linux is such a threat to Microsoft, it can't be that bad.
        • Customers who realize the value of an open format like XML are also much more likely to realize the value of open formats and standards in general in which open source has a big advantage.

        It seems Microsoft is getting pretty desperate.

        • Re:This is backfiring (Score:3, Insightful)

          by dvdeug ( 5033 )
          Sure, they have cut 1.5 billion of R&D costs, which is impressive, but only revenue can keep a company alive.

          That's impressive? To me, cutting R&D means you have just that much of a harder time creating the next product that will keep your company afloat when your current one becomes outdated. Cutting R&D is what many companies have done before they got ran over by their (innovating) opponents and headed to bankrupcy court.

        • No it is not (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Bender Unit 22 ( 216955 )
          No it is not.
          Sigh, this explains the strange "signals" I have gotten the last few days about migrating central systems at work to MS even though they have nothing to do with the problems they want to solve.
          To some, MS is the bible. To reuse a old sentence "You can't get fired for choosing Microsoft".
          There are tons of clueless managers that happily will "upgrade" working UNIX/mainframe systems to MS. And when the new system crumbles under the load, and doesn't deliver the rock solid performance of the old sy
    • quite possibly !


      Or closed source proponents saying that you can't interoperate with their stuff because you don't know what's in the box. Like say autocad (open file format, yeah right, I bet you even they could not reimplement a 100% compatible reader/write from their own descriptions) or errr Microsoft for that matter. Oh Wait...


    • Mister Gates makes a good point, though. If the entire planet switched to non-Microsoft software, where would we get our daily dose of Clippy?

  • This coming from the man... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mikeophile ( 647318 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:08PM (#11584137)
    who brought us Windows ME, an OS that isn't even interoperable with itself.

    • Re:This coming from the man... (Score:5, Informative)

      by tehshen ( 794722 ) <tehshen@gmail.com> on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:13PM (#11584201)
      He also brought us Microsoft Word, so uninteroperable with itself you sometimes have to use OpenOffice Writer to recover its documents.

      • Re:This coming from the man... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by NutscrapeSucks ( 446616 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @04:47PM (#11584914)
        Let's put 8 different versions of OpenOffice Writer on millions of machines (10% of which have defective hardware, viruses, etc), and see how well works.

        This really seems like a "grass is greener" issue. MSOffice has been everywhere for a long time and of course problems sometime crop up. But nobody really knows if OpenOffice interoperates better with itself because it has never been tried.

        (And yes, I know about the XML format, but that doesn't prevent intrepetation/implementaiton issues.)

        • Re:This coming from the man... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by MemoryDragon ( 544441 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @07:00PM (#11585841)
          Actually that would still work better, see the doc format is an undocumented mess with memory dumps in it, while OpenOffice uses plain clearly readable and well documented XML. Besides that Microsoft constantly altered the doc format to break the revers engineering efforts by the competition, and thus broke constantly its own compatibility between versions.

        • Actually I've done that... (Score:4, Informative)

          by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @08:28PM (#11586374)
          et's put 8 different versions of OpenOffice Writer on millions of machines (10% of which have defective hardware, viruses, etc), and see how well works.

          I know you're implicitly shilling Microsoft's shoddy products by implying other folks work is equally bad, but I hate to break the news to you: it isn't.

          To take your example, I've what you're suggesting (on hundreds of machines, not millions, but the point remains) and guess what? They all read, write, and exchange one another's openoffice files perfectly...even the crappy windows boxes which do, from time to time, get hosed by the trojan, virus, spyware, or worm du jour.

          Version deployed among colleagues, freinds, and relatives include:

          OpenOffice 1.0 (Linux)
          OpenOffice 1.1.1 (OS X)
          OpenOffice 1.1.2 (Linux, Windows, OS X)
          OpenOffice 1.1.3 (Linux, Windows)
          OpenOffice 1.1.4 (Linux)
          OpenOffice-Ximian 1.1.53 (Linux)
          OpenOffice-Ximian 1.3.5 (Linux)
          OpenOffice-Ximian 1.3.6 (Linux)
          OpenOffice-Ximian 1.3.8 (Linux)
          NeoOffice/J 0.8.4 (OS X)
          NeoOffice/J 1.1 Alpha 2 (OS X)
          NeoOffice/J 1.1 Beta (OS X)

          Platforms include assorted versions of Windows, numerous distributions of GNU/Linux ranging from Debian, Red Hat, and Suse to Source Mage and Gentoo. Mac OS X Versions include 10.2.x on iMacs and 10.3.x on assorted systems, including my powerbook 17".

          It all works and interoperates flawlessly ... something Microsoft can't do, with its own products, on its own platforms.

    • Bigger Irony: Letter But not Spirit of Law (Score:4, Interesting)

      by reporter ( 666905 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:45PM (#11584482) Homepage
      Recently, Microsoft agreed to establish its Office formats as an open standard [techworld.com] in order to comply with Massachusett's laws stipulating open standards (but not necessarily open source). Now, according to the article starting this thread of discussion, Microsoft opposes open-source solutions that use Microsoft formats.

      Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do we have a case of complying with the letter of the law but crapping on the spirit of the law?

  • typical (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ginotech ( 816751 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:08PM (#11584144)
    OSS can't work with MSFT stuff for the same reason that some websites only load in IE...microsoft doesn't like to follow the rules

    • Re:typical (Score:5, Funny)

      by JNighthawk ( 769575 ) <NihirNighthawk.aol@com> on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:23PM (#11584294)
      Um... so? Don't you know the golden rule? He who has the gold makes the rules.

    • Re:typical (Score:3, Informative)

      by GlassHeart ( 579618 )
      OSS can't work with MSFT stuff for the same reason that some websites only load in IE...microsoft doesn't like to follow the rules

      Allow me to quote Ian Hickson, who was commenting on this specific topic. Hickson works for Opera, and should be nearly as bitter as they come.

      The odds of anyone intentionally "sabotaging" a standard or proposal in this way is basically zero, and not really worth any thought, IMHO.

      As far as I am aware, every occurance of a "sabotage" in the Web world in the past 15 years has

      • Re:typical (Score:3, Insightful)

        by zcat_NZ ( 267672 )
        was that comment made _before_ or _after_ Microsoft got caught detecting the Opera browser and returning a stylesheet so broken that no browser (even MSIE) would display the page properly?

      • Re:typical (Score:3, Insightful)

        by antiMStroll ( 664213 )
        I'll wager he doesn't feel that way about standards outside of the industry such as food quality, rules of the road, medical practices, etc.. He probably wouldn't accept the 'oopsie defense' should he ever suffer harm "due to misunderstandings, an accident, oversight, or plain stupidity", "none were intentional or malicious."

  • SPAM !! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:10PM (#11584155)
    Sorry I didn't get the email, my email client thought it was a SPAM !!

  • You want interoperability? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mr.Bananas ( 851193 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:10PM (#11584157)
    You want interoperability? Just dump Microsoft and use everything else.

  • Interoperating spyware (Score:5, Funny)

    by The I Shing ( 700142 ) * on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:11PM (#11584162) Journal
    I love how the spyware the Windows OS attracts interoperates with other spyware on the system.

  • How can you question Bill Gates on this? (Score:5, Funny)

    by taustin ( 171655 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:11PM (#11584165) Homepage Journal
    He is the world's leading expert on lack of interoperability, dammit! He knows what he's talking about!

  • Studies show... (Score:5, Funny)

    by chia_monkey ( 593501 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:11PM (#11584166) Journal
    Bill Gates would say the human body doesn't need oxygen if it meant a few more billion dollars worth of profits. Little snide remark aside, let's ponder this. Bill says to his customers "Linux isn't good with Microsoft products." Big surprise. The real fun part though will be when the "independent" studies start confirming Bill's claims. You know, the studies done from independent research firms...that just happen to be 95% bankrolled by Microsoft...
    • [Scene: Lister and Confidence on a spacewalk]

      Confidence: [following Lister] You're hot. Take your helmet off.

      Lister: I'll die!

      Confidence: Why?

      Lister: There's no oxygen out here!

      Confidence: Hey! Oxygen's for losers! Come on.

      Lister: I need oxygen!

      Confidence: You don't need anything, King. You're the King!

      [Lister has reached the end of the Catwalk.]

      Lister: You're crazy! [Lister grabs the handrail and vaults around behind Confidence.]

      Confidence: Who told you you needed oxygen, huh? Some loser

  • I got one, text of email follows (Score:4, Informative)

    by Thng ( 457255 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:11PM (#11584167)
    The email in question:

    Every day, businesses face an ongoing challenge of making a wide variety of software from many different vendors work together. It's crucial to success in streamlining business processes, getting closer to customers and partners, or making mergers and acquisitions successful.

    This email outlines some of the work Microsoft is doing to make its products interoperate well in a diverse IT environment; it is one in an occasional series of emails from Microsoft executives about technology and public-policy issues important to computer users, our industry, and anyone who cares about the future of high technology. If you would like to receive these emails in the future, please go to *link removed* to subscribe. We will not send you future executive emails unless you choose to subscribe.

    Whether you are connecting with partners' systems, accessing data from a mainframe, connecting applications written in different programming languages or trying to log on across multiple systems, bringing heterogeneous technologies together while reducing costs is today a challenge that touches every part of the organization.

    Over the years, our industry has tried many approaches to come to grips with the heterogeneity of software. But the solution that has proven consistently effective - and the one that yields the greatest success for developers today - is a strong commitment to interoperability. That means letting different kinds of applications and systems do what they do best, while agreeing on a common "contract" for how disparate systems can communicate to exchange data with one another.

    Interoperability is more pragmatic than other approaches, such as attempting to make all systems compatible at the code level, focusing solely on adding new layers of middleware that try to make all systems look and act the same, or seeking to make different systems interchangeable. With a common understanding of basic protocols, different software can interact smoothly with little or no specific knowledge of each other. The Internet is perhaps the most obvious example of this kind of interoperability, where any piece of software can connect and exchange data as long as it adheres to the key protocols.

    Simply put, interoperability is a proven approach for dealing with the diversity and heterogeneity of the marketplace. Today I want to focus on two major thrusts of Microsoft's product interoperability strategy: First, we continue to support customers' needs for software that works well with what they have today. Second, we are working with the industry to define a new generation of software and Web services based on eXtensible Markup Language (XML), which enables software to efficiently share information and opens the door to a greater degree of "interoperability by design" across many different kinds of software. Our goal is to harness all the power inherent in modern (and not so modern) business software, and enable them to work together so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. We want to further eliminate friction among heterogeneous architectures and applications without compromising their distinctive underlying capabilities.

    This may seem like an obvious approach, but the desire for interoperability is sometimes mixed up with other issues. For example, interoperability is sometimes viewed merely as adherence to a published specification of some kind, either from one or more vendors or a standards organization. But simply publishing a specification may not be enough, because it overlooks much of the hard work it takes to successfully develop interoperable products - namely, ensuring that the "contract" defined by a specification is successfully implemented in software and tested in a production environment.

    Sometimes interoperability is also confused with open source software. Interoperability is about how different software systems work together. Open source is a methodology for licensing and/or developing software - that may or may not be interoperable. Ad


    • Any CTO who is worth the paper on which his/her stock options are enumerated, should see it the same way. Unfortunately, as we've seen, there are many in upper echelons of management that are quite clueless. All anyone has to do is ask, "How much choice do I have using Microsoft products? Let's see...there's Microsoft, Microsoft.....and Microsoft!".

    • Re:I got one, text of email follows (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:55PM (#11584560) Homepage
      Hee hee...the Slashdot blurb is pretty misleading. The e-mail rarely even mentions Linux. In one place where it does mention Linux, it's to say that MS is trying to play nicely with Linux:
      • Microsoft software can talk to mainframes and minicomputers from IBM and other manufacturers; other operating systems such as the Mac OS and various UNIXes including Linux; ...

      The only thing that even remotely sounds like the Slashdot blurb is this:

      • Additionally, the open source development approach encourages the creation of many permutations of the same type of software application, which could add implementation and testing overhead to interoperability efforts.
      Translation: being interoperable is easiest when you don't have to interoperate with more than one implementation.
    • "Additionally, the open source development approach encourages the creation of many permutations of the same type of software application, which could add implementation and testing overhead to interoperability efforts."

      Uhm, yes. Interoperability takes adherences to standards and a lot of testing and work. If we all use the same software, that's not interoperability, that's software hegemony. Silly.

      I'll tell you about Microsoft's interoperability. It's Apache Axis having to add an API just because th

    • These efforts are centered on using XML, which makes information self-describing - and thus more easily understood by different systems. For example, when two systems exchange a purchase order, the attributes of that purchase order are described in XML, so any receiving system can use that description to translate and use the enclosed information.

      This kind of reasoning never ceases to amaze me.
      Sure, XML can make information more self-describing, but:

      • Microsoft doesn't even do that. The MS Office XML Sche

  • There are a lot of issues with open source software, but he's really not one to talk on issues of interoperability. Nothing to see here, really. The article doesn't go into much depth.

    ..."open source development approach encourages the creation of many permutations of the same type of software application, which could add implementation and testing overhead to interoperability efforts," Gates wrote

    Partially true, of course, but I haven't actually seen it cause many interoperability problems...

  • Yeah, right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:11PM (#11584170)
    I'll accept that the day Office doesn't have problems opening .doc files from different versions.

    PS: It's all marketing, that's what Microsoft's about. Can we please move to something else?

  • He's right, of course (Score:4, Funny)

    by rscrawford ( 311046 ) <rscrawford&undavis,edu> on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:11PM (#11584171) Homepage Journal
    Linux and OSS are compatible with less than 1% of the viruses, worms, and trojans that have been created by third party Windows developers! If you're running Linux (or even Firefox on Windows) you're denied the rich environment of advertising available to users of MSFT products!

  • He told the truth (Score:4, Insightful)

    by FunWithHeadlines ( 644929 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:11PM (#11584173) Homepage
    "the open source development approach encourages the creation of many permutations of the same type of software application, which could add implementation and testing overhead to interoperability efforts,"

    Gates is telling the truth here. If the whole world standardized on one set of standard software, it would (obviously) make interoperability a lot easier. That's common sense. And we can understand why this vision would appeal to him, especially if the world decided to standardize on his software.

    However, there is far more to choosing software than just that. OK, so we work harder to make interoperability work between software. It's worth it so people can have choice.

    • Re:He told the truth (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Aadain2001 ( 684036 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:22PM (#11584283) Journal
      There is a very simple issue: settle on a set of standards that are open and free and then even if 100 different programs that do the same thing, like calendering, come out they could still all interoperate. The users would win since they could use the program that they liked the most, not the one that is holding their data hostage. Open and free standards leads to more inovation because it encourages developers to try new things and not worry about loosing users because they can't use their old data. This is what scares Bill and MS the most and why they will NEVER use open and free standards in their products. They will "embrace and extend" standards, which means making their own version and then not giving it out and blaming everyone else for "not following the standard".

  • About damn time (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've been trying to get all these email viruses to
    work on my Linux box, but it won't run them. About time
    someone had to point out the poor interoperability of
    these important programs. Until something is done
    to make it easy to run these programs with only a mouse
    click, Linux will only be second rate.

  • interoperability (Score:4, Funny)

    by Xerp ( 768138 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:12PM (#11584187) Journal
    So does this mean Microsoft are going to fully adopt Open standards? Surely they aren't going to keep everything totally closed and proprietary if they are aiming for a good level of interoperability? That would be obviously hypocritical!

  • Windows interoperability (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Beolach ( 518512 ) <beolach&juno,com> on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:13PM (#11584199) Homepage Journal
    Yeah, if you want Windows interoperability, you should just go with Windows. Just make sure you have the exact same versions of everything you want to have interoperate.

    A while ago I set up a home network. Linux gateway/fileserver running Samba, other boxes on the network running Linux, Win98, WinME, WinXP Pro & Home. Everything could see & use the Samba shares on the Linux fileserver. All the WinXP Pros could see & use shares on the other WinXP Pros. Trying to access shares between WinXP Pro & WinME - no can do.
    • I've seen the exact same thing. My samba shares are always seen by other computers (even the xbox), however winxp shares come and go. It's very frustrating when setting up a home network that should "just work".

  • Interoperability? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nybo ( 815582 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:14PM (#11584207) Homepage

    Then how come M$ not keen on using open standards?

    Take Outlook for instance.
    Works great with M$Exchange, but how about the support for SyncML, iCal, vCard and so on?...

    -Nybo

  • Yeah, funny that. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:16PM (#11584229) Homepage
    I find that every single product I could possibly use or buy has wonderful interoperability, except those Microsoft makes. I even find every operating system I could possibly buy-- from Apple, from Sun, from Redhat-- natively runs the same (POSIX) programs... except the ones Microsoft makes.

    Bill Gates is right, of course, that switching away from all-Microsoft products makes interoperability with Microsoft products harder. After all, he specifically engineered things that way. It's too bad the antitrust "settlement" a couple years ago was an absolute sham; if something like that settlement's "document your protocols and formats" clause had actually been enforced, Gates wouldn't be able to engineer them that way anymore, and interoperability would no longer be a problem anywhere.

    Anyway, this is a common tactic in advertising. Attack your competitor for flaws you have but they don't; that way you tie up your competitor's ability to attack you on that grounds because they're too busy defending themselves, and you lessen the impact when people point out your own flaws since there's a perception your competitor has those flaws as well. Like, say you're a political candidate with a disreputable and possibly illegal military history? Get your supporters to pay people to claim your opponent has a disreputable and possibly illegal military history. Works like a charm.

  • That's slander (Score:2, Interesting)

    by KiloByte ( 825081 )
    OSS has an excellent interoperability with anything that doesn't try to opt out of interoperating or even doesn't try hard enough. And Microsoft is pretty much the only company that really cares about preventing that -- Apple smells like they deliberately made the DRM the record companies demanded weak, so Apple attempts to avoid being evil.

    So, according to MS, who is the epitome of good interoperability? Uhm, let's see... isn't that the main culprit itself?
    Come one, this is a criminal act. False adver

  • It's true... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sonicattack ( 554038 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:16PM (#11584234) Homepage
    ...that OSS is sometimes playing catching up with proprietary protocols and file formats, trying to find a way to be interoperable with something that is perversely designed to deliberately be hard to work with in order to lock in customers, and re-inforce monopoly status.

    So in that respect, what he says is true. Much like a robber slowly pulling the knife out of his victim, while muttering "this street has become too dangerous".

  • That man is right... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grumbel ( 592662 ) <grumbel+slashdot@gmail.com> on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:18PM (#11584254) Homepage
    That man is right or at least not totally wrong. Just because you have the source it doesn't automatically make your software work together. Simple examples:

    - open a OpenOffice document in AbiWord
    - copy&paste between different applications
    - embbed an Gnumeric chart into some OpenOffice document
    - try to edit a LaTeX document with Abiword or OpenOffice
    - try to open a Gimp xcf in anything beside Gimp
    - try to copy&paste some webpage in a Office application and get something more then plain-text
    - ...

    None of this works or only in a much less smooth way then it does under Windows or MacOSX with similar software. Free Software has improved a lot in these regions in the last years, but there is still lots and lots of software floating around that doesn't operate much with other software at all. Sure, you can always export to .png or plain-text and somehow get the job done, but smooth interoperability is something else.

    • Re:That man is right... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jonastullus ( 530101 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:45PM (#11584478) Homepage
      - open a OpenOffice document in AbiWord

      well, that is really a shame. i would have thought that the abiword guys had an import plugin for this...

      - copy&paste between different applications

      yes, this IS a serious drawback which stems from the different GUI toolkits. drag&drop also is very problematic between GTK/KDE/X11... but if you use KDE with KDE-applications this problem is much less worse ;-(

      - embbed an Gnumeric chart into some OpenOffice document

      hmm, should this actually work? you mean like the COM stuff in windows (if that is the right buzzword ;-)? this is not really intended under linux and thus an odd example. windows can't do many of the things that linux can do really well... there is enough lacking in linux to reduce the criticism only to the CORE problems ;-)

      - try to edit a LaTeX document with Abiword or OpenOffice

      i haven't tried this because abiword nor openoffice are text editors, but it is perfectly possible to do so! or do you mean that abiword/OO should present the document in a LyX-like fashion? this is such a wrong approach!!! abiword/OO are word processors while latex is a typesetting system! two TOTALLY different domains!
      that would be like using the Internet Explorer as your default image viewer... *hey, wait a second*

      - try to open a Gimp xcf in anything beside Gimp

      XCF is an internal format of the Gimp just like PSD is for photoshop! these formats are not really intended to be opened by other programs!

      - try to copy&paste some webpage in a Office application and get something more then plain-text

      i never understood the urge to do so! my mother always does this as a means of pasting together different bits of information, but why would i want to paste the color, font and background image together with the text?? i am not saying that it is a useless feature and maybe it would be nice if it were possible under linux, but i really don't see any application for this! even worse, i'd REALLY like to know how to disable this questionable feature under windows!

      jethr0
    • Given the number of different programs for one purpose that we have created, OSS is incredibly interoperable.

      I guarantee that if all the Linux and BSD and HURD developers picked one kernel, GNOME and KDE picked one working environment, etc..., we would blow the pants off Microsoft.

      However, that doesn't coincide with OSS ideals.

    • Re:That man is right... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Coryoth ( 254751 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @05:36PM (#11585277) Homepage Journal
      As some have pointed out, some of these are valid complaints, but some are just silly.

      open a OpenOffice document in AbiWord

      Yes, its unfortunate that doesn't work. It isn't for lack of potential interoperability though - both formats are open and documented. The fact that the Abiword team hasn't gotten around to writing an import filter is a little disappointing, but if you're going to damn them for that:

      Try opening an OpenOffice document in Microsoft Word.

      Not much interoperability from Microsoft either. OpenOffice is fairly widely used and popular, and the file format readily documented. It wouldn't be hard at all for Microsoft ot be interoperable if they wanted to be.

      - try to edit a LaTeX document with Abiword or OpenOffice

      Try to open a QuarkXPress document in Microsoft Word. How about an Adobe InDesign document in Microsoft Word? What's that? A different application domain? Then please think again about your example. TeX is not a word processor, even if there are programs like LyX that do a good job of providing a word processor like interface for it.

      - try to open a Gimp xcf in anything beside Gimp

      Try opening a PSD document in anything besides Photoshop. There are actually some programs that read it (like GIMP, heh), but your remarkably interoperable Microsoft Office suite will choke on it. Likewise there are programs that will read xcf (its an open documented format after all), but most don't expect to need to, so don't bother. As to GIMP - I hear they're working on an even more open and easy to access format.

      Jedidiah.

  • Interoperability between IE and Outlook Express (Score:3, Funny)

    by LoverOfJoy ( 820058 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:20PM (#11584274) Homepage
    So when someone designs a virus for outlook express it can even work when opened at the hotmail website with internet explorer.


  • Windows would be nothing without TCP/IP.

    If it wasen't for TCP/IP - Windows would still be using BEUI or whatever the *$&@ they called it.

  • Interoperability (Score:3, Informative)

    by Sivar ( 316343 ) <charlesnburns[ AT ]gmail DOT com> on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:23PM (#11584300)
    While interoperability with Microsoftware is sometimes difficult due to their use of proprietary technologies, a pure Microsoft environment is generally better in the interoperability department than a pure Linux environment. MS Office is integrated with IIS which is integrated with the OS which uses the MMC for a variety of administration tasks (including those outside of IIS), etc. Even under the application level, the GUI is integrated with the OS (it's part of the kernel).
    All this comes at a price, however, because extremely strong integration (Microsoft's method for implementing interoperability) means that removing certain pieces is difficult to do. Servers usually do not need a GUI, because they sit there and run headless, doing their thing for years at a time with little local interaction. A GUI uses memory and adds a great deal of running code and therefore bugginess. In Unix, to rid yourself of the GUI, you simply never start X. In Windows, it is sort of possible to never start the GUI, but it is very difficult to do and the aforementioned integration of everything means that even if you do manage to accomplish this feat, you will have limited power over the system since at its core, Windows is designed to be administered with GUI tools.
    Unixy OSes, Linux and the BSDs in particular, can be stripped down so thoroughly as to run on a wrist watch [freeos.com] or low-power PDA. In order to run on PDAs at all, Microsoft had to develop an in-house custom Windows system, CE, in order to operate under the constraints of a limited system, and it is still far more resource intensive than a Linux system can be.
    Granted, Linux has to be stripped down to run on such hardware as well, but since the source code is available, it can be done. You won't find any companies selling custom imbedded copies of Windows made by anyone but Microsoft.

    That said, the use of open standards is a system that will eventually overtake even the best fully integrated but proprietary system because any company or group can work on improving the system, products, and ideas, to differntiate themselves. No matter how many resources Microsoft or any other closed company has, "not microsoft" has more.

  • Oh for Charlie Mingus' sake (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Knights who say 'INT ( 708612 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:25PM (#11584321) Journal
    This not only is a dupe, but it's a dupe rephrased in a misleading way. Granted, most of the fault is on silicon.com. But "Linux makes interoperability harder" does not necessarily mean "Linux has poor interoperabiliy" (it could mean "Linux developers aren't working with us"), and nowhere in the text Gates says what the headline says. The actual quote on interoperability is:

    "Open source is a methodology for licensing and/or developing software - that may or may not be interoperable. Additionally, the open source development approach encourages the creation of many permutations of the same type of software application, which could add implementation and testing overhead to interoperability efforts"


    Any mention of Linux? Nah, some noserubbing on the Great Forking Problem.
  • This is something I wrote a bit ago for some friends. I'm sure it nicks bits from other things i have read on the internet over the years, never the less.... Have your management forced you to consider this new fangled Unix thing? Do you miss the old days where you were kept busy rebooting machines? Do you think that an OS that goes a month without crashing is a travesty? Do you believe that 24x7 is overrated anyway? Well now there is an answer, Microsoft UNIX, the only closed source unix which closely

  • interoperability of microsoft office (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jonastullus ( 530101 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:28PM (#11584348) Homepage
    *Yeah*, let's all use microsoft office because that's the only way to achieve interoperability between different parties!

    unless i totally misunderstand that word, aren't open standards BETTER in terms of interoperability than closed, proprietary ones??

    i say we publish official and open standards, protocols and file formats for all major interactions and make it everybodies choice whether they like to have an open client for the standardized communications or if they'd rather take proprietary tools!

    obviously, not every program can be delivered with full source, but if a vendor wants to reach various platforms, there is either a common standard in place (like POSIX for example) or some porting is in order *tough luck*.

    why did mr. gates fight java as language and instead went with .NET. i can assure you that interoperability is NOT the reason!

    why would a quasi-monopolistic company preach interoperability when this can only weaken its own position???

    jethr0

  • Interoperability (Score:4, Insightful)

    by unoengborg ( 209251 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:34PM (#11584403) Homepage
    According to Bills dictionary:

    The ability to read, and only read, old data formats into new versions of software from the same vender. The aim of interoperability is to simplify upgrade from one version of software to the next.

  • Translation: Use OSS and ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by IgD ( 232964 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:37PM (#11584423)
    This letter amounts to a veiled threat: Use our software or someone might get hurt. Gates and company plan to make it as hard as possible to prevent interoperability with OSS. If you use OSS they will make as life as difficult as possible for you. They've engaged in this sort of behavior before and are doing it again.

  • Of course it does (Score:3, Insightful)

    by symbolic ( 11752 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:38PM (#11584431)

    And Mr. Gates is doing everything in his power to see that Linux/OSS remains as uninteroperable with Windows as possible- let alone other competing interests.

  • If MSFT is preaching interoperability (Score:3, Insightful)

    by HangingChad ( 677530 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:56PM (#11584565) Homepage
    That means there's money in it somewhere for MSFT. The product activation, prove you're not a pirate to download updates, DRM, back-stabbling EULA from hell people want to set interoperability standards. Riiiiiight.

    How about I give you the finger...and you don't tell me how to run my operating system?

  • Well, he is right you know... (Score:3, Funny)

    by bhunachchicken ( 834243 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @04:27PM (#11584791) Homepage
    I mean look at all the problems people have using Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.

    LAMP will never catch on. Nope. Never.

    Good thing my website doesn't use any of tho... oh, wait.

  • It's been said a bazillion time before... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ridgelift ( 228977 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @05:41PM (#11585308)
    For those of you new to Slashdot, here it is again to put this story in perspective:

    First they ignore you
    Then they laugh at you
    Then they fight you -- OSS is here right now
    Then you win.

  • Whatever prompted Bill to say such a thing? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by OwlWhacker ( 758974 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @05:42PM (#11585316) Journal
    Interoperability may not exist between certain OSS products; but, because they're Open Source, they can be made to interoperate without encumbrance - and you can be sure that this won't change.

    Can the same be said for Microsoft software? Can developers 'freely' interoperate with all Microsoft software? Does Microsoft give assurance that developers can continue to freely interoperate with its products in the future?

    Additionally, the open source development approach encourages the creation of many permutations of the same type of software application

    In layman's terms, this means that Open Source encourages that evil thing called 'competition'.

    Has Bill Gates ever said anything positive about Open Source Software?

    I wonder why not?

  • Not FUD and he DOES get it (Score:3, Insightful)

    by KidSock ( 150684 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @05:47PM (#11585348)
    I don't like Microsoft's business tactics any better than you do but this point from Billy is dead on. He is NOT refering to OSS interop with non-OSS software. OSS applications do not interoperate with other OSS applications. I won't bother to post a list as you can pick just about any application and find that importing and exporting data from it is highly application specific. This is just the cost of a distributed development model and why open standards are so important to OSS. Unfortunately there is very little activity on open standards for many critical things - particularly on the Desktop (e.g. COM style discovery).

  • I don't remember where I saw this... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hacker ( 14635 ) <hacker@gnu-designs.com> on Saturday February 05, 2005 @08:04PM (#11586226)

    I don't remember where I saw this quote, but I've had it here in my logs for awhile, and I think its relevant here:

    "Microsoft properly asserts that OpenOffice is not 100% compatible with their product. Microsoft, however, has apparently decided not to support the OpenOffice formats either, for which they have no excuse: the standards for OpenOffice documents are publicly available, whereas Microsoft makes it a habit to sue people for reverse engineering their own formats."

  • Fine... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sapgau ( 413511 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @11:57PM (#11587590) Journal
    Mr. Gates, could you tell us what are the interfaces/protocols that aren't working when talking to OSS?

    Microsoft supports open standards RIGHT?

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