Requiem for Redmond - Free software will kill Microsoft, says former staffer (ITB)

[Drew Wilson]

Bill Gates probably will not sing the praises of Keith Curtis, a programmer with Microsoft for 11 years who's now left the fold and written a book about why the Redmond way will fail. Oh yeah, Curtis is not afraid to speak his mind as a Linux guru, either.

The mantra Curtis repeats throughout his book After the Software Wars: proprietary software is holding us back as a society.

In the book, Curtis says that while proprietary software made Microsoft one of the most successful companies of all time, it's a model destined to fail because it doesn't let software programmers cooperate and contribute, and thus stifles innovation.

Curtis did programming work on Windows, Office and research at Microsoft and never actually used Linux, he says, until he quit his job in late 2004. The ensuing years have made him a Linux fanatic, and he is convinced that free, open-source software is technically superior. As long as Microsoft and its proprietary model dominate, Curtis says, we will live in "the dark ages of computing."

More.... (http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?sub=true&id=53280)

Via Digital Copyright Canada (http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/5030)

[Signa]

Sadly, I think he is right. Even if he's not, I don't think that making a more open program would hurt either. MS has become a lumbering titan, and they are just too huge to see everything that come their way. They are so big now, they can't even scratch their own ass properly.

[1cooldude]

Microsux Winblows: A sixty four bit graphic cover up of a thirty-two bit extension and graphical shell of a sixteen-bit patch to an eight-bit operating system originally coded for a four-bit CPU which was written by a two-bit company that can't stand one bit of competition .

I would have to agree with Mr. Curtis.

[Signa]

I would have to agree with Mr. Curtis.
That is precisely what I'm talking about. Windows needs to be rebuilt from the ground-up at this point. It would be a huge endeavor, but they will have time if they let Windows 7 take as much time as XP to have the market. The duct tape is starting to show on Windows, and Vista was nearly catastrophic. I doubt Windows 8 will be any better than Vista for its time, unless it's not windows 8, and is a new program entirely.

[1cooldude]

That is precisely what I'm talking about. Windows needs to be rebuilt from the ground-up at this point. It would be a huge endeavor, but they will have time if they let Windows 7 take as much time as XP to have the market. The duct tape is starting to show on Windows, and Vista was nearly catastrophic. I doubt Windows 8 will be any better than Vista for its time, unless it's not windows 8, and is a new program entirely.

The model that Keith Curtis is speaking about is applicable to more than just a software development. Microsoft has been involved in numerous antitrust violations around the world for the obvious reasons. Having this much control on development of most common and highly used operating system is backward. The fact that there is so much piracy only confirms that their model does not work at all. Unfortunately, making Windows an open source code to be improved and extracted may not make the Microsoft shareholders very happy.