9 lines
2.1 KiB
Plaintext
9 lines
2.1 KiB
Plaintext
Open Letter to Steve Lohr & John Markoff
|
|
<p>You’ve described only symptoms in <a href='http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/technology/27soft.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&emc=th&adxnnlx=1143454048-XUCsb3JgU5ZXxMZCAX0x7A'>Windows Is So Slow, but Why?</a>, not the underlying problem. Closed-source software development has a scaling limit, a maximum complexity above which it collapses under its own weight.</p>
|
|
<p><span id="more-280"></span></p>
|
|
<p>Microsoft hit this wall six years ago, arguably longer; it’s why they’ve had to cancel several strategic projects in favor of superficial patches on the same old codebase. But it’s not a Microsoft-specific problem, just one that’s hitting them the worst because they’re the largest closed-source developer in existence. Management changes won’t address it any more than reshuffling the deck chairs could have kept the Titanic from sinking.</p>
|
|
<p>Apple has been able to ship four new versions in the last five years because its OS core is open-source code. Linux, entirely open-source, has bucketed along even faster. Open source evades the scaling limit by decentralizing development, replacing top-heavy monoliths with loosely-coupled peer networks at both the level of the code itself and the organizations that produce it.</p>
|
|
<p>You finger backward compatibility as a millstone around Microsoft’s neck, but experience with Linux and other open-source operating systems suggests this is not the real problem. Over the same six-year period Linux has maintained backwards binary compatibility as good as (arguably better than) that of Windows without bloating.</p>
|
|
<p>Microsoft’s problems cannot be fixed — indeed, they are doomed to get progressively worse — as long as they’re stuck to a development model premised on centralization, hierarchical control, and secrecy. Open-source operating systems will continue to gain at their expense for many of the same reasons free markets outcompeted centrally-planned economies.</p>
|
|
<p>The interesting question is whether we will ever see a Microsoft equivalent of glasnost and perestroika.</p>
|