Grover Ponders

SlashDot and ComputerWorld are reporting that Microsoft has submitted the next version of Windows to the AntiTrust regulators for review. There will be lots of commenting on this action - and Microsoft is hoping to help "prove" that it is sincere in embracing this whole "competition" thing, and "Open Source" community.

But what you don't see mentioned is that Windows 7 is not slated for release until 2009 or 2010. So this basically a pure PR move. Microsoft is not well known for keeping it's promises where competitors are concerned. In fact, they have done everything they can to squeeze the Open Source developers and promote "Vendor Lock-in" to the Microsoft platform. As a business I understand this desire. But as a human being, I do not understand the blatant lack of ethics and transparent nature of their false promises. I can just hear the fan boys out there - "ooh ooh ooh - but they REALLY mean it this time!". Did they mean it when they said OOXML was an "open" "standard"? Did they mean it when they tried to out do Java? The list of broken promises is really long.

I have this theory about life - if you get burned once, well, that's life. If you get burned twice, there's a pattern emerging. If you get burned 3 times - you deserved it. Microsoft will again be burning many companies with Windows 7. I've even heard bad things about Windows Server 2008 already and it's only been on the market for a couple of weeks. My contact tells me he won't even look at 2008 for another 6 months - just to see if they get the mess sorted out.

So, here we have MS showing an early version of their software to the regulators. Who will likely put on a show of examining it, and then rubber stamp the product as "non-monopolistic". I expect this process to take about a year. In the meantime, MS isn't just sitting around - they'll still be coding the system, working out bugs, and/or adding features. But I also fully expect that a good number of these bug fixes / features will introduce things that would easily be considered monopolistic. But which version is being inspected? Not the one down the road, but the one that is still 2 years away from release.

And there is the final problem with this announcement. MS has created Windows 7 for TODAYS hardware. Sure they'll do things that demand newer hardware, but taking up more memory to get a task done is not the same as making use of better hardware. This 5+ year development cycle MS has adopted will be the rope around their necks. If the consumers don't outright revolt first. (But those shareholders, they'll be happy - MS will make sure of that.)

I hate to be so cynical regarding Microsoft because I see some excellent software projects being driven into the ground to satisfy the "profit" mantra. But I've also been burned enough by the company and seen the lack of business ethics to get their way. So I'll continue happily with my Open Source products (Ubuntu, Open Office, and the other tools I use daily). And I'll be a few years ahead of Windows 7 when it is finally released. I'll be 10 years ahead of the NEXT version of Windows. Microsoft is getting left behind.

/Rant mode off