The Principles
 

It's sure to be picked over, examined with a fine-toothed comb for loopholes, with questions about their motives, etc. but good god damn, it's an improvement. Here is the statement Microsoft should have made from the start. It would have changed everything. As it is, though, it may well help improve their reputation.

Hopefully it will help rescue the company too, changing it from being a closed, predatory, punishment-oriented competitor, to one that wants openness so to truly compete on quality.

Nahhh, I'll believe that part when I see it.

Windows Principles: Twelve Tenets to Promote Competition

Holy smokes...what planet did this come from? It's obviously written by Bizzaro MSFT. And they just bought Sysinternals, too.

Xob: is this what happens when your "hero of the common user" billg quits as CEO?

Isn't step one of a twelve-step program admitting you've got a problem? Whether or not they live up to these principles, they never would have even admitted they were good principles, before. Nice.

Just because he gave me a silver bullet and rode off into the sunset doesn't mean he didn't have a hand in this.:p

Quite unlikely. Top management becomes corrupt - loses touch with reality - when it lives in the ethersphere more than 10 years. Some remain in better touch after a decade. They are rare - ie Bill and Dave (HP), King of Jordan, Warren Buffet, etc. Noted elsewhere is that BillG was almost completely blindsided - almost put out of business - because Bill had no idea of the internet. Founder of DEC did the same thing. Most who live in an ethersphere for 10+ years end up stifling innovation - and too often take on a corrupt attitude. Too many decades in top management means they even deny how corrupt they have become.

MSFT needs new management. Balmer is an MBA and Balmer has been there too long. Therefore MSFT has virtually no new innovative products - a symptom of top management that has lived too long in the ethersphere. BillG really was mostly separated from MSFT. Balmer for the past 10 years is why MSFT has so few promising products AND why the OS design group is in such bad shape.

I think the general problem is that MS needs to keep their stock valuable (which generally means increasing profits). It's hard to sell shit without some sugar-coating / forcing.

I wonder if that means we'll stop having to pay the Microsoft tax on machines that will be running free OSs?

Then Colossus will seal up the mountain and retarget the intercontinental ballistic missles to suit it's own agenda and we will all be treated to a more orderly, stable, and polite society. We will be cared for. Protected. Safe.

That is what AT&T did for some decades as they consumed their own capital to pretend to have profits. You should know why AT&T does not exist (why even its name was sold).

GM is doing the same thing. Been doing it for decades. As a result their top management will reap major incomes while their pension funds will be dumped on you and me. GM is also selling surge coated crap. And doing so because, again, so many Americans like sugar (and 'heart attack of America' Chevys).

In each case, the only solution is management change. It happened in to make IBM became productive in the latter half of 1990s. MSFT needs management shakeup. Hopefully that public statement comes from a management change - and is not frosting from Balmer.

Again, notice that MSFT is having product development problems now that Steve Balmer has been running MS. Balmer is an MBA.