microsoft

Before you read this, you should read this. I regretted this post shortly after posting it.

I think Miguel de Icaza is an exceptional developer. He's also a fantastically effective community leader. And, though he's never displayed his best side to me, personally, I understand that he's a quality person that people like to be around.

For these reasons I can't help but wonder why he's squandering his talents on writing largely irrelevant code (Mono, Moonlight) that appeals to himself, Novell, Microsoft, and no one else.

It's not that Microsoft is a bad company. It's that Miguel could be doing so much more for the industry if he stopped cloning the Microsoft experience on Linux and instead drove forward the Linux/open source experience. Sam Varghese writes:

For a long time de Icaza, who is now on the staff of Novell, appears to have been trying to please the people at Redmond. First it was with Mono, his implementation of Microsoft's .NET development environment.… Read more

It's by no means the most interesting thing that I write about, but Microsoft tops the list of topics read by Open Road readers. In fact, it accounts for four of the top 10 posts on this blog since its inception in July.

The only open-source vendors to crack the top 10 are OpenAds and MySQL. For an open-source blog, that's a wee bit depressing.

Here they are:… Read more

It continues to amaze me at how overlooked Microsoft's crown jewel is: SharePoint.

It's not overlooked by the market, which has bought it up to the tune of $1 billion or so in license fees in its first four years. Yet its competitors have largely downplayed it as a threat--even partnering with it--as it pillages their installed bases.

Now Microsoft is taking its SharePoint story one step further by decoupling it from Windows Server.

I wish I could think of some nefarious reasons for this, but it actually seems to be worse for Microsoft, not better. If Microsoft were cutting SharePoint adrift of Windows, allowing the collaboration portal to work with something other than Internet Explorer, SQL Server, Windows, and IIS, then it would be a truly killer move. (That isn't the case. If you go SharePoint, you have to buy into the complete Microsoft ecosystem.)

It's just a separate download that still only works with Windows. Microsoft gave these reasons:… Read more

Microsoft, state prosecutors, and the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday said a federal judge needs more time to weigh whether Redmond should be subjected to a lengthier period of antitrust policing.

In a joint filing with U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who has been overseeing Microsoft's antitrust compliance, they asked for a soon-to-expire oversight period to be temporarily extended until at latest January 31, 2008. That way, the judge will have more time to weigh the merits of last-minute pleas from a number of state prosecutors to add another five years to the oversight regime.

Right … Read more

About 9 percent of the Mac OS X installed base upgraded to Mac OS X Leopard over the weekend, according to figures released by Apple and estimates supplied by financial analysts.

Apple sold 2 million copies of Leopard between Friday and Sunday night, which includes sales of boxed copies, online sales, and new Macs with Leopard preinstalled. When Apple launched Tiger, it took the company 39 days to hit the 2 million mark on a much smaller installed base.

Piper Jaffray released a research note Tuesday estimating that the Mac OS X installed base is around 23 million users at … Read more

Microsoft has hired Rob Conery, founder and lead on the SubSonic project, reports eWeek. SubSonic is a DAL (Data Access Layer) that helps a Web site build itself. Got that? Neither did I, but it sounds cool, if too technically complex for a layman like me.

This is all mildly interesting. After all, Conery has apparently been on contract with Microsoft for the past eight months and is an "MVP" (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional, which is a bit like being a community lead in the open-source world--it means you know your Microsoft stuff).

What is very interesting is that Microsoft will likely be including SubSonic with its products, and that SubSonic will remain under MPL 1.1:… Read more

Microsoft is apparently on a bi-generational education campaign.

This weekend at the national conference of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in San Francisco, the software giant hosted an exhibit designed to educate pediatricians on answering parents' questions about children's online safety. More than 750 doctors took Microsoft's 10-question quiz about kids and the Internet to receive a free copy of Vista, according to Adrienne Hall, the company's senior director of Trustworthy Computing.

"Physicians are getting a lot of questions from parents about Net safety, and through this (exercise), their awareness goes up," Hall said.… Read more

Microsoft is giving a booster shot to its Health Solutions Group, announcing on Monday plans to acquire clinical workflow software developer Global Care Solutions.

The acquisition of Global Care Solutions, based in Bangkok, Thailand, is designed to enhance the management of clinical workflow, medical records, billing and regulatory compliance at hospitals and other medical facilities. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Global Care worked with Thailand's Bumrungrad International Hospital to design its system, which serves more than 1.2 million patients a year from nearly 200 countries. The hospital uses Global Care's system to manage scheduling and … Read more