It’s late in the day, I’m on a flight to Portland from Dallas, and I’ve only been home once over the past fifteen days or so. It might be that I’m really tired and cranky right now, but the Letter From the Editor in this month’s issue of Linux Magazine has really gotten my dander up (that’s a saying, right? I never know when I’m mixing metaphors because so few of them make any damned sense).

Since I doubt that a letter from me to the editor of Linux Magazine would get printed (both because of the topic/tone and the length), I’ve decided to respond here on my own little corner of web real estate.

I’ve also decided that I’m going to write this without bashing Linux or its community (I will say things about open source which aren’t complimentary, but entirely to make a point – not simply to bash). Martin’s column was so far out of line that he does enough on his own to make the open source community look bad (although, fortunately, he doesn’t represent it – I’ve met plenty of people in the OSS community who have tact and a sense of diplomacy).

Without any further introduction, then, I’ll get started.

Martin begins his letter with this:

Poor, poor Microsoft. It has gobs of cash, a small army of employees, the greatest monopoly of all time, and it’s still boring as hell. Longhorn. Snooze. MSN Search. Yawn. Windows 2003 Server. Like watching grass grow. Why if it wasn’t for Windows security breaches and blue screens of death, Microsoft would provide no excitement at all.

I’m not going to try to argue that there’s anything particularly exciting about Windows Server 2003, but then I’m also not going to try to argue that there should be. I’m not even certain what one might consider “excitement” to be when talking about an operating system.

Windows Server 2003 is a business platform, and the last thing that most businesses want in their server rooms is excitement.

Older Microsoft server platforms, however, have been exciting, and it never did the company any good. It was probably exciting to watch the calendar and wait for that magical day to roll around when you had to run off and reboot your NT 4.0 server. Reboots of production environments are always exciting, and especially when you don’t know if the machine will come back up again. There are many very good reasons why we try to get companies to upgrade their NT 4.0 installs (and, yes, before anybody else gets the chance: money is one of those reasons – duh – you caught us – let’s move on now).

With Windows Server 2003, we have a worthy platform for delivering network based applications. It isn’t exciting, but stability and consistency never are.

Which, in a strange way, is kind of exciting. We’re getting better.

But rather than sit here and gloat, and in the interest of promoting healthy competition, Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer, here’s my advice.

I guess you’re going to tell us how it’s done, Martin.

While I certainly can’t claim to speak for Gates or Ballmer, I also can’t keep my mouth shut, so I’ll be responding myself.

I hope you don’t mind.

1. Join the standards club. Yes, creating your own standards is fun for your developers, but you’re alienating the countless hordes of developers and users that don’t have a Microsoft 401(K). Make Office interoperable, make Internet Explorer compliant with World Wide Web Consortium standards, and lose the innards of CIFS.

I totally agree. I would personally love to see Office’s formats opened up and documented. It’s already a fact that companies and developers who want to reverse engineer our formats will. In some cases, the reverse engineering leads to products that will actually help sell Office, so why shouldn’t we make this easier?

I would argue that the strength of the Office line isn’t in its file formats, but in the quality of its applications. I might be crazy, but I don’t see how playing nicely with the rest of the world would hurt us there, so we’re in agreement here.

I also agree about IE and standards. I’d love to see us put out a kick-ass browser that conforms to standards.

Agreed, agreed, agreed.

2. Pick a ship date for Longhorn and hit it. The other pesky Fortune 499 companies tend to dislike uncertainty. It costs them money and money tends to keeps [sic] them in the Fortune 499. Oh yeah, it’d be nice if Longhorn did something more than just run Word 2007. Scratch that. Word 2006. Well, you tell us.

Thinking a few years back, I recall waiting impatiently with the rest of the world for version 2.4 of the Linux kernel to “ship.” We all wanted it, and some people were quite vocal about it.

What was the answer we got? Time and time again?

“It will ship when it’s ready.”

And this is still the mantra of open source. But guess what: You guys are playing in the same field as the rest of us now, and you, too, are running the risk of pissing off customers by letting release targets slip (or by simply not revealing release targets in the first place).

Money aside, let’s go back to a line in the opening paragraph:

Why if it wasn’t for Windows security breaches and blue screens of death, Microsoft would provide no excitement at all.

Here’s the deal: Do you think we ought to ship a product early, or do you think we ought to ship it finished?

In some ways this really is a tough decision, but I think it would be accurate to say that developers in Redmond are tired of hearing the same old crap about blue screens (which, for the most part, are caused by poorly written third-party drivers over which Microsoft has little or no control).

I think execs are tired of it.

I think that even the janitors don’t want to hear it anymore.

People inside the company have looked at some of the biggest problems that we’ve dealt with in the past, and now there’s an effort to correct them. It’s required a lot of change and a lot of effort, but it’s going to result in tighter products that are more stable and secure. Is that a bad thing?

Another reason for the pushbacks is that Microsoft is extremely good at listening to customers. We’ve implemented features in products because one customer asked that it be done.

We’ve been paying attention to feedback on Longhorn (as well as other products), and it turns out that there are some things customers would prefer we did very differently. So we are.

Open source projects are notoriously developer-oriented. This isn’t a bad thing, but ignoring user feedback is an easy way to stay on schedule, and it’s not an option we’ve provided ourselves.

Apple, with its North Korea/Iron Curtain secrecy, isn’t set up to deal with this kind of feedback.

Longhorn is currently running on machines all over the world in various states of readiness, and we’re hearing from those people all the time.

It slows things down, yes, but it’s also hopefully going to result in the best desktop operating system we’ve ever released.

3. Stop spreading FUD. As my grandmother used to say, “Talk less, do more.”

First of all, we’re competing. Linux vs. Microsoft vs. Oracle vs. Your Mamma. It’s a giant ring of companies, organizations, and technohippies stabbing each other in the back.

And what do you expect? That’s business, and we aren’t the only ones guilty of doing it.

Oracle spreads FUD. Apple spreads FUD. And, yes, the open source community spreads FUD.

In fact, “FUD” is the only good way that I can think of to describe the content of the letter from which I’ve been quoting this whole time.

FUD:

Fear

By saying that one of the only “exciting” aspects of Windows is the beating we’ve taken regarding security, you’re indirectly warning people not to use our software because it might be insecure. To balance this out, you could begin by mentioning at least a few steps we’ve taken in the right direction regarding security, such as automatic Windows Updates. We often have patches and fixes for problems, but people just won’t download and install them.

I’ve never had a problem with viruses, worms, trojans, or spyware on any of my XP boxes. It’s quite possible and even easy to keep XP clean. We just need to make it easier for customers.

Uncertainty

When you talk trash about Microsoft missing ship dates, you’re raising questions about our ability to get a product out the door on time. If you had dug a little deeper and examined why we might be delaying products, you could have found a silver lining.

But you didn’t.

Doubt

Your entire letter has a tone which does little to promote anything but doubt about whether or not we could possibly do a good job.

I mean, there’s FUD everywhere throughout.

My name is Kettle, and it’s nice to meet you, Mr. Pot.

4. Require vendors to neuter PCs. The real source of your security woes is those damned Ethernet adapters. And in any case, the personal computer is soon to be replaced with cell phones, set-top boxes, game machines, and other dedicated devices. The real opportunity is porting Windows to a new generation of truly personal computers…

You gotta love people who do their research.

Your idea to port “Windows to a new generation of truly personal computers” is a good one…

…that’s older than the Linux kernel.

We’re in phones, DVRs, a rather popular “game machine,” portable media devices, watches, and more. The list goes on, and I’m not going to spend my Friday night writing it all out.

We are, in short, all over the damn place.

So your idea, it turns out, is a very good one. It’s just a little late.

…as you’ll read in this month’s special section “Linux Solutions: Government,” Linux and open source are becoming more and more influential. Standards are widely supported, the software is innovative…

Innovative?

You mean the graphical UIs like Gnome and KDE which, in many default configurations, mimic Windows and its Start menu?

Applications like OpenOffice which are modeled on our Office line of products?

Software that’s supposed to replace our own with open source versions?

One of the most popular open source applications is a Photoshop clone for which a hack was recently released to make it even clonier.

I guess I just don’t see the innovation, and I’m not being flippant.

It’s a silly argument anyway. There isn’t anything about either platform which inherently drives innovation. It’s up to the people using the tools to design for the platform, and I honestly believe that Microsoft is the leader here.

And before anybody tries to argue that I’m just blinded by all the dough that Microsoft is paying me, keep in mind that I could triple my salary by going to work as a consultant on open source products. Microsoft does not pay that well – you work here because you want to work here. My bank account is lower than its been in four years, and I don’t care because, finally, I’m actually happy. I’m doing what I want to do.

The dough is most definitely not the reason I’d say any of this, but I’m guessing that it would come up, so I thought I’d handle it before the comments section was filled with “shill” accusations.

Of course, Linux isn’t controlled by any single company, so it’ll never be a monopoly. Windows will always be superior in that regard.

I’m a little confused at how the word “monopoly” is being used here.

If Microsoft has a monopoly on Windows, then Coca-Cola has a monopoly on Coke, Ford on Mustangs, Colgate on Colgate toothpaste, and so on.

However, Coca-Cola doesn’t have a monopoly on cola, Ford doesn’t have a monopoly on cars, and Colgate doesn’t have a monopoly on toothpaste.

Likewise, Microsoft doesn’t have a monopoly on operating systems. We have competitors, and some of them are putting up a real fight.

If you want to insist that Linux has any significant market share, then you’re going to have to stop hiding behind all this tired old crap about monopolies. If you truly believe that we have a monopoly on operating systems, then you’re just saying that Linux hasn’t made any headway at all.

You and I both know that this isn’t true, so you have to decide: Are we a monopoly, or are you a successful competitor?

Whichever it is, I must say that I’m shocked that, with all the “innovation” and “excitement” in the world of Linux, you couldn’t find anything better to write about in a monthly column of a Linux magazine than Microsoft.