Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

scriptingNews outline for 4/29/2000

Author:Dave Winer
Posted:4/29/2000; 6:45:18 AM
Topic:scriptingNews outline for 4/29/2000
Msg #:16763
Prev/Next:16761 / 16764

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Microsoft played all the angles

NY Times: Breakup of a Giant Is Seen Reigniting Competition in the Software Business. "There is all kinds of gobbledygook coming out of the Justice Department," said Randy Komisar, "They are hoping that by creating an applications company as aggressive as the OS company, the new company will do things like make bets on Palm and Linux. That way they will crack open the operating system market."

First, Microsoft's apps are already available on Mac OS, which is the only other large-installed-base desktop system, after Windows. So that part of the argument is weird, Office has already been ported. Would it make any sense to port Office to Palm? Hmmm. The screen is much smaller and there's no keyboard. That makes a pretty big difference. Microsoft has been trying to create a suite of palmtop apps for quite sometime, without much success.

Then, why would I want Microsoft's apps on Linux? I totally see Linux is a server OS. Long way to go before it's ready for people who use Office. What does this proposal do to help Linux get more apps that aren't from Microsoft? Further, from what I know of MS (I've been visiting them for almost 20 years), if there were a market for the Office apps on Linux, they would be there.

Where are the software historians? Did you see how they undermined MS-DOS by moving to the Mac in the 1980s? They taught the rest of the industry to stop tying one product to another. Lotus refused to support Windows in the early days, they didn't want to help Microsoft, and learned the lesson that Microsoft taught so well. Stop believing your own bullshit. Same with IBM and the tie-in between PS/2 and OS/2.

Microsoft was unique in that they played all the angles. They are the original jump out of the plane with no parachute people, as far as I'm concerned.

Excise the browser, embrace WINE

Again, imho, the best remedy is to split out the browser, and only that, into a separate company. Windows must forever ship without an HTML browser. A one-click install screen, baked into Windows, with a set of choices approved by a panel of independent Web developers. The first choice in the list could not be the former Microsoft HTML browser, for three years. No more than ten choices would ever be offered.

That would fix any problems caused by the untimely demise of Netscape, which any reasonable and impartial person would have to admit was at least somewhat caused by mismanagement at Netscape.

Here's another thing we could ask Microsoft for. Make WINE really work. Make it easy for all Windows apps migrate to Linux, not just Microsoft's. It totally makes sense. Open the floodgates Bill. Show them how easy it is to turn the software industry upside down, without wrecking your company.

Fun and games

I updated the new SOAP weblog with comments by Andre Radke on yesterday's IBM/Java SOAP 1.1 release.

I also added a FAQ page for SOAP.

Todd Blanchard is confused about parts of SOAP.

Another way of looking at the hard side of our sites. A complete backup fills four writeable CDs. This is called "content".

Frontier 6.2b10 released. Fixes in threading, XML parser, XML-RPC implementation, new NT kernel verb for serving files super-fast, fixes to Mac TCP implementation.

New demo app: Scripting MailToTheFuture through XML-RPC.

The Tech Info page on MailToTheFuture.Com is now up to date. Frontier users can download mailToTheFuture.root, and you can even open it in Pike, which is in public "beta" (and free).

Added limits to the MTTF application to prevent it from being used to send spam. No more than 10 messages can be sent in any 15 minute interval and no queue can hold more than 100 messages.

"It's even worse than it appears"

I watched a bunch of roundtables on TV last night about the Microsoft breakup plan, there wasn't a software person in sight, and certainly no Web developers.

Politicians, attorneys, journalists and professors have taken over. They're turning our industry into fodder for Larry King and CNBC, really dumbed-down stuff, and software is complex.

It may be time, once again, to consider making pottery and sailing the Meditteranean, which seems relatively simple.

"I know the rent is in arrears. The dog has not been fed in years. It's even worse than it appears."

"jerry"

PS: Andrea and Andre finished their trip log today. So sad!



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