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Microsoft Mix & Mash Meeting Moot? (and Vista plagiarism)
You've got questions? We've got IT Blogwatch, in which Microsoft courts some "influential" bloggers at a meeting in Redmond, deftly dodging some questions but saying some surprising things. Not to mention the NY Times proving that Vista doesn't copy Mac OS...
Fourteeen influential bloggers spent time meeting with people from Microsoft in Redmond on Wednesday, concluding with an hour-long session with Bill Gates ... asking Gates whether Microsoft played a behind-the-scenes financial role in support of the SCO Group's Linux-related litigation ... Steve Ballmer's recent claims about intellectual property violations in Linux ... "What's on your Zune?"
It's a rush once the world's richest man and one of the most influential people in business and world affairs sits right down across a table from you. A bunch of us were overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the moment. I have never met a President of the United States but this sure felt like it for me ... He opened up with a brief rundown of where he feels Microsoft is today. He was bullish about Microsoft's big launches in 2007. He said that the company likes to roll out a super strong product then see how it connects to other things. ... also talked about his transition to becoming a full-time philanthropist. Most product reviews will transition to Ray Ozzie, with other initiatives falling under Craig Mundie
...
Q) What's on your Zune? (This was my question)
All of the U2 stuff plus a lot more musicals than you might expect - for example, Wicked.
He hinted at partnerships with car companies to be announced at CES and mused at the vast difference in business models -- small, private sales to the military versus advertising -- that have been applied to the data Microsoft uses for Virtual Earth ... I asked which applications he forecast to live within the browser and which outside of it. He replied that the distinction would come to be silly from a technical standpoint, but that the necessary movement toward web APIs does present challenges on the business side.
An exhausted Chris Pirillo was allowed out of the house:
I asked Mr. Gates what he wanted to be when he grew up ... Bill responded: "A lawyer. I admired the work that (my father) did. When I got enthralled with math, I thought I would go into mathematics. Then computers came along."
Ryan Stewart called the day, "Surreal":
We got to look at a lot of cool products today ... WPF/E ... is going to support managed code cross platform in addition to Javascript -- I hadn’t realized this but it’s big news for .NET developers ... The weakness of Microsoft has become the fact that it is trying to do battle on 500 different fronts. However the strength of Microsoft is that it’s doing battle on 500 different fronts.
Kelly Goto not considered harmful:
Today I asked Bill Gates, “What’s on your Christmas list?” and he answered: “I’m a pretty hard guy to shop for.” ... I asked him what his thoughts were on the $100 laptop ... “For rich people to supply laptops to the poor seems like it’s addressing the wrong problem ... Our solution is to put PC’s into every library.”
Michael Arrington notes a surprising Gatesian slip:
I asked [about] the long term viability of DRM. I don’t hide the fact that I think DRM isn’t workable ... Gates didn’t get into what could replace DRM, but he did give some reasonably candid insights suggesting that he thinks DRM is as lame as the rest of us. Gates said that no one is satisfied with the current state of DRM ... says no one has done it right, yet. There are “huge problems” ... His short term advice: “People should just buy a cd and rip it. You are legal then.”
...
Highlights of the day included ... seeing the look on Gates’ face when he walked into the room and every single one of us had a Mac open on the desk in front of us
Of course, you aren’t really [legal] -- at least not in every jurisdiction. Canada has a private copying levy that allows you to make copies for personal use (and Britain is considering one) but other countries don’t. In any case, Bill’s point about DRM being too complicated and not easy enough to use is a good one. In many cases, of course, it is also an attempt to turn back the clock and prevent you from using music you have purchased in ways you could before digital music existed, and that is probably my biggest beef with it.
Molly E. Holzschlag questions Bill's commitment to Web standards:
I hope you'll find ... my five minutes of Web standards banter with Bill Gates ... as intriguing, charmingly stubborn and witty as Mr. Gates himself.
Niall Kennedy asked about SCO:
Gates claimed he had never heard of BayStar Capital, an investor in SCO Group and their litigation against large corporate supporters of Linux. According to recent court documents BayStar founder and managing member Larry Goldfarb claims Microsoft wished to promote SCO Group through independent investors such as Baystar, backing a $50 million investment with supposed guarantees from Microsoft.
...
I asked Gates about the new interest in patent swaps with open source operating systems. Gates claimed patent cross-licensing is common practice in the software industry, protecting companies who indemnify their users from software risks.
Which brings us back to D'oh! Todd Bishop:
The bloggers who spent an hour with Bill Gates yesterday are taking a little heat today for not asking tougher questions ... In defense of the bloggers, I can say from experience that coming up with good questions for the Microsoft chairman isn't easy. It isn't enough for the questions to be tough, concise, relevant and interesting. They also need to bring out informative, original responses from someone who has been asked thousands upon thousands of questions over the past three decades.
...
If there's ever another session like the one held at Microsoft on Wednesday, the bloggers might want to consider working with each other -- and their respective readers -- to collectively generate a list of top questions beforehand. At the same time, it would be best to do it in such a way that Gates and others from Microsoft wouldn't see the questions in advance.
[Yeah, and perhaps Microsoft would like to invite your humble blogwatcher, too]
Buffer overflow:
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Previously in IT Blogwatch
And finally... David Pogue proves Vista doesn't copy Mac OS
Richi Jennings is an independent technology and marketing consultant, specializing in email, blogging, Linux, and computer security. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. Contact Richi at blogwatch@richi.co.uk.
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