Why are you at SLUG, and what do you hope to gain by being here?
(asked directly to the presenters) Who are you? What is your background? What is your position in Microsoft? What have you done for/with the
FLOSS community?
Given Microsoft’s past comments about and behaviour towards the
FLOSS community (which won’t cite because I’d be here all night), why should we trust you and work with you?
Expressions like ‘embrace, extend and extinguish’, ‘fear, uncertainty and doubt’ and ‘Microsoft Tax’ have in many circles become synonymous with Microsoft. Why do you think this is, and is anything being done about it?
IBM, who was once seen as the Big Bad Wolf of the IT Industry and the champion of proprietary development, did an amazing about turn to become one of the largest supporters of
FOSS. Can you see Microsoft making any similar moves?
Is there anything Cathedral-style development could learn from Bazaar-style development? And vice versa?
What do you think are Linux’ greatest strengths? Greatest weakness?
While there are many vocal people on each side of the proprietary/
FOSS fence, a great many people see benefits to both sides, depending on the situation. Does it serve Microsoft well to be as militantly anti-
FOSS as it has been in the past? Is that attitude changing? If so, how?
What is the profit margin Microsoft makes on its Windows and Office franchises? Are these margins indicative of a healthy, competitive market?
How profitable are Microsoft’s products and businesses aside from Windows and Office? What percentage of the total profit do they deliver?
Why is it that the
FOSS world and companies like Apple can create competitive software with only a minuscule fraction of the resources that Microsoft has at its disposal? With its massive budgets, why isn’t Microsoft the far-and-away technology leader in all market segments?
I have piles of electronic documents written over a decade ago in Microsoft proprietary formats. As a Linux user today, I cannot read many of them. Why must I pay Microsoft twice - first for the operating system, then again for the software - just to read my own work? I worked long and hard on on those documents - isn’t the data mine?
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Can Microsoft fully and unambiguously guarantee, now and into the future, that GPL2, GPL3 and other Free Software applications will be able to completely and legally implement the exact same formats used by current and future versions of
MS Office, including scripts, macros, formulae, schemas, images, binary blobs, password protection and DRM? Will Microsoft guarantee to fully document their formats, including any changes, in a timely manner? Will they ensure that any patents covered now and in the future are publicly known and clearly compatible with the
GPL and other Free Software licences? How are these things being achieved?
MS had plenty of opportunity to participate in the OASIS process that developed the OpenDocument Formats. Why has it chosen to create yet another set of formats instead?
will/has Microsoft updated its RAND and/or covenant not to sue terms following the
discussion on OOXML in mid-December?
Why is it that the formats used in Office 2007 aren’t compliant with Microsoft’s own OOXML
spec?
Parts of the OOXML
spec call for compatibility with existing
MS Office formats. Since they are closed, they cannot be implemented by anyone without significant reverse-engineering effort. Will Microsoft
open these older formats to ensure that OOXML is as openly implementable as they claim it to be?
Why have Microsoft removed
VB macro support from Office 2008 for Mac
OS X? Doesn’t this run counter to the spirit of interoperability and open formats?
When will Microsoft products properly (and fully) support open document formats like ODF and
PDF? This is important given that they are
ISO standards, and that many governments and companies are moving towards them.
Lately Microsoft have been talking about document formats that are open, but have at the same time been pushing proprietary document and information management solutions like Sharepoint and Exchange. Is the continued evolution of a lock-in strategy, or will Microsoft be allowing greater interoperability between these products and others? Will I be able to seamlessly interact between, say, Exchange and Zimbra, or Sharepoint and Alfresco?
What’s so good about the agreements that
MS has made with Linux distributors, like Novell, Xandros and Linspire? How do they help interoperability,
FLOSS and open standards?
It’s well-known that Microsoft benefits from a lot open source code, like the TCP/IP stack in Windows NT, some of the command line tools and the use of Ogg Vorbis and Speex on the Xbox series. It seems that Microsoft gives comparatively little (if anything) in return. Why is that, and is anything being done about it?
Prior to the mid 1990s, Bill Gates made many statements in favour of openness and against software patents and proprietary protocols. For instance, he had this to say in 1996: “Openness to me means that anything can be cloned... no patents... no IP that stands in the way of somebody creating something that’s compatible but better. And the beauty of that is that it forces you to keep prices extremely low and listen to the customer feedback about how you can do better”. Since then, as their stranglehold on the market has grown, Microsoft have increasingly become hostile to openness and interoperability. Why is that, and how will that change in the future?
Microsoft like to trumpet that Linux infringes upon something like 235 of their patents, yet they refuse to divulge which ones. This sounds awfully like the SCO case, which Microsoft indirectly funded and eventually died. Is this yet another SCO-style
FUD campaign? In contrast, Microsoft have been willing to disclose patent claims which may effect Samba as part of the EU competition process. If Microsoft is so sure of infringement, why do they need to be strongarmed by governments and courts of law? Why not just tell us what is being infringed upon so that we can work together to solve it?
Microsoft these days seem to be a champion of software patents, yet it also seems to be one of (if not the) largest recipients of frivolous patent infringement lawsuits. Considering this, how can Microsoft continue to back software patents in their current form?
Bill Gates said in 1998, “Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don’t pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they’re going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.” Such thinking has often be compared to drugs dealers. Considering that just the initial cost of a Microsoft software package can be more than a person’s annual income in many countries, what is Microsoft’s approach to bridging the digital divide?
What is the extent of Microsoft’s collaboration with the One Laptop Per Child project? Is it restricted to porting Windows to the XO laptops?
Why are Microsoft promoting crippled and obsolete technology to the developing world in the form of Windows XP? Why not port Windows Vista and Office 2007 to the OLPC XO laptops? Why not promote the latest software for all existing desktop computers? Why does Windows Starter Edition exist in the first place? Don’t people in developing countries deserve better?
Perhaps unlike other areas of the company, Microsoft Research seems to have earned some respect in the
FLOSS community. Are there any research activities that might be of relevance to us? Are there any problems in our community that
MS Research or just
MS in general might be able to help solve? Are there any grants, cooperative research or cooperative development priorities that
MS may have right now?
What made choose to pursue a career in Microsoft?
What do enjoy most about working for Microsoft?
Recent versions of Microsoft Windows (e.g. XP) have an arguably superior and more streamlined windowing system than Linux’ X-Windows (except that it doesn’t work across a network seamlessly, but that is solvable). Linux has a superior kernel layer, file system handling interface, command line shell, remote management, etc. Why not throw away your kernel, build a windowing system similar to XP or Vista on top of Linux (the windowing system could remain closed source or become open source), and be done with it? Then all applications would run on the one unified platform. Recent advances with WINE etc have proven that this is technically feasible, but more difficult without access to the source code (which Microsoft has access to), and MacOS post release X shows that it is acceptable in the marketplace as well.
With all the money put in the interoperability lab has there been any results? Have Microsoft made any visible changes to their products to better integrate with Novell? Have Novell made any visible changes to better integrate with Microsoft?
As Microsoft is working to interoperate with Linux are there any plans for Microsoft to port any of their core server software to Linux. such as Exchange,
SQL server,
IIS etc.
Are there any plans for Microsoft to port any of the desktop products like Office, Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer etc to Linux?
Microsoft has been known in the past for including third-party drivers, Web browsers, Web servers, graphical systems and so on into the core of their operating systems, and even inside the kernel. This has led to many problems with security, resource consumption and even anti-competition. How does Microsoft explain these decisions, and what is their current policy?
If Microsoft are serious about interoperability, when are they going to allow Linux to play their proprietary media formats, including the DRM-encumbered ones?
Microsoft have made the Free codecs Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora the audio platform of choice on their Xbox line of products (halo uses OGG for music, Speex is used for live chat). This appears to be an admission that these free codecs are superior to Microsoft’s own equivalents. Why did Microsoft choose to use them, and why aren’t they supported in other
MS software?
Is restricting people’s rights through DRM on the media they purchase really a pro-consumer stance? Owners of PlaysForSure players were slighted when the Zune was released. Can you assure us that this won’t ever happen again?
Microsoft’s relationship with compatibility tools like WINE and SAMBA has been known to be rocky at best. Actions like
MS apps deliberately checking for WINE and then refusing to run if it is found, and the alteration of the SMB protocol to confound SAMBA are well-known. What is the approach today?
Why do they as good as call me/others a thief, when after installing XP I still have to contact them to prove I have a valid copy. Sorry but I find this to be insulting and offensive, and am sure anywhere else would possibly be grounds to sue
If Microsoft are as pro-consumer as they claim to be, why is it so difficult to purchase a computer without Windows? Hardware manufacturers say that this is a requirement of their licensing with Microsoft. At the very least, I should be able to easily get a refund if I disagree with the EULA. Why isn’t this possible?
Why am I not able to transfer the copy (and accompanying licence) of Windows that I purchased to another computer?
With what appears to be customer backlash against Vista and a move to try and run Windows XP instead, will you be offering this option and for how long will this last?
How do you promote SLES where customers pick Windows over Linux or decide to run Linux alongside Windows?
How many customers have taken a coupon for SUSE Linux from your company?
With Linux and
FOSS solutions being found in a large number of consumer electronics (the eee, NAS devices, android (yet to be released, modems and routers) where do you see a Windows embedded solution spreading too?
How do you test how well Linux and Windows are about to communicate; and do you take potential intellectual property rights into consideration when doing so?
Do you consider Apple or Linux to be part of a single threat or separate entities? If you consider them to be separate, which is the largest threat?
Will Microsoft consider changing the ugly BSOD to something more akin to Apple’s warning message?
Do you consider Vista to be easier to use than Windows XP, given the increased warning messages and additional padding to the Windows Control Centre?
When will I be able to select “English (Australia)” when installing Microsoft Word, Windows or any other Windows product?
How or is Microsoft trying to become more environmentally friendlier, given that Vista requires new and fairly high end hardware to run?
Why is it Microsoft is hardly blamed for enabling people to run software to copy music, DVDs and other protected media from one format to another?
How does Microsoft as a company view ‘free software’, is it considered to be “free” as in cost, or are the freedoms considered? (given that in a recent Bill Gates interview conducted by Gizmondo, Bill Gates suggests that “free” as in cost software has been around since the start.)
If you accept a free Linux-based live CD of a given distribution other than Novell, will you be fired (someone can offer to give a cd after the talk perhaps?); or do people run Linux as their main operating system inside of Microsoft Australia?
On a more local patent note, is Microsoft worried about potentially violating the CSIRO’s patent on the 802.11 standard?
If Microsoft is allowing people to use Vista without activating it or providing a serial number, due to the “kill” switch being deactivated is this a possible precedent for free software from Microsoft in the future?
What does Microsoft think of the abilities of Compiz Fusion even on low end hardware? (the shiny 3d cube and other cool effects stuff- if an explanation is required)
How much influence does the Microsoft Open Source team actually have with the rest of Microsoft?
Given how much/little influence the
MS Open Source team has, what can you do for the
FOSS community that
MS can’t/won’t subvert in ways that are bad for the rest of us?
When do you think we will be able to engage with Microsoft without looking for the poisoned pill?
It’s hard to find accurate figures for desktop market share, but it seems that Linux desktops and Mac desktops are roughly equivalent in size (albeit very different markets). What would it take (e.g. what sort of demand?) for Microsoft to treat the Linux desktop market as seriously as they treat Apple? e.g. Office for Linux. NOT necessarily open the source for Office, but just port it to the platform.
Can you explain the concept of “Patch Tuesday”, and justify the reasoning as to why patches should be only be released on every second Tuesday of the month and not as soon as possible. With the current patch policy customers are left unpatched and vulnerable until the the “Patch Tuesday”. This could lead to a customer being exploited in between the date the vulnerability is disclosed and “Patch Tuesday”.
Bruce Schneier's Blog Entry It has been noticed by some security researcher that patches for DRM and other right’s management are given a higher priority over more real serious vulnerabilities. For example the program “FairUse4WM” which removes DRM from WMA audio files, there were patches to stop FairUse4WM released only three days after Microsoft learning about the program whilst other more serious vulnerabilities take longer, can you comment on this issue and justify the priority difference
Bruce Schneier's Blog Entry In the past some security researcher have been attacked for releasing vulnerability information publicly even Microsoft has been in contact with the security researcher and has had a large enough grace period to fix such a problem. For example H.D.Moore, the creator of Metasploit, an opensource security auditing and vulnerability exploitation framework cooperated with Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) to fix the vulnerability he had found with Remote Routing and Access service vulnerability (MS06-025). How ever after co operating with MSRC he was attacked for adding the exploit to his security framework while other security companies pay for exclusive rights for vunerabilties. In simple why are you biting the hand that feeds you
Metasploit Blog Entry,
Securiteam Blog Entry-
DRM has never and will never be perfect. Hackers will always find a method to break DRM.
DRM restrictions only hurt people using music legally. Illegal users aren’t affected by DRM.
The restrictions of DRM encourage users to obtain unrestricted music which is usually only possible via illegal methods.
The vast majority of music is sold without DRM via CDs which has proven successful.
