5 ms·
They're the only company with the means to take on such massive, unprofitable projects, and at the same time enough street cred that everyone won't immediately
by neilc 17y ago
They're the only company with the means to take on such massive, unprofitable projects, and at the same time enough street cred that everyone won't immediately assume they're trying to make the web proprietary.
They are hardly the only company doing this. Microsoft Research do a ton of pretty visionary / far-reaching work, much of which has nothing to do with MS-proprietary platforms. For example, the VL2 architecture for data center networks: http://sns.cs.princeton.edu/2009/10/new-datacenter-networks/ http://sns.cs.princeton.edu/2009/10/new-datacenter-networks/
- Xichekolas 17y agoAnother example: Simon Peyton-Jones and Simon Marlow, which make up a huge chunk of power behind Haskell and specifically GHC, are Microsoft researchers. (Although Haskell and GHC are not Microsoft projects, they get paid by Microsoft to work on them.)
- rbanffy 17y agoIn return, Microsoft gets a ton of concurrency-related IP that could be used to stifle the market for non-Microsoft implementations in the future. This makes me uncomfortable. You just don't trust your money to an apparently unarmed bank-robber.
- sketerpot 17y agoThe Simons publish their work freely, and go to a lot of effort writing their papers well so that their work spreads beyond Microsoft. And as far as I know, their code is all open source.
- rbanffy 17y agoAny idea if there are patents pending on any of this IP? I would see that if the patent was applied for before the paper is published, the paper would not be considered prior art and would not invalidate the claims. As for licensing, Microsoft owns the said IP and can re-license it on a whim. Not all of Microsoft is evil, but they, as a company, cannot be trusted to behave in a civilized manner.
- neilc 17y agoI don't think there's really a big ethical difference between MS, and other big companies like IBM and HP. Each company does a lot of research that benefits the community at large; they also need to recoup that investment via patents, technology transfer and the like. Trusting IBM, for instance, any more or any less than Microsoft is a little naive.
- rbanffy 17y agoI must disagree. Even if IBM has a chequered past, Microsoft has a very nasty recent history of anti-competitive and plain unethical behaviour under the current administration. I agree IBM cannot be trusted, but claiming someone should trust Microsoft because IBM is no better (a disputable allegation in itself) is a logical failure.
- Xichekolas 17y agoI am not a patent lawyer, but is there any evidence that Microsoft is even trying to protect this particular IP? AFAIK, the Simons publish research papers freely, and GHC is licensed under what amounts to a BSD3 license (by the University of Glasgow... not Microsoft).
- JulianMorrison 17y agoMicrosoft are long past the day when they were evil. It's just that, unfairly or not, if they tried to do this people would be going through the license with a fine tooth comb in the certain expectation of traps. I wonder if Microsoft will one day redeem themselves to the public like IBM did?
- rbanffy 17y agoLong past?! I don't regard the shameful approval of OOXML as an ISO standard, and all the questionable things Microsoft did in order to accomplish it, as a particularly nice thing to do. There are a lot of NBs that were formed specifically for that purpose that were never again heard from. As it is now, the damage to ISO seems irreversible. Also, there is the trolling about "Linux infringes 4 bazillion of our patents" empty threats (because if they weren't empty they would have acted) and the failed attempt to sell some of those patents to trolls that would go after Linux users. The fact if failed (because a non-invited group won the auction and donated the patents) makes it not less evil. No. Being evil is in their soul. They may be less evil now - I can agree on that. But it's so much more because they are far less relevant now than they were in the 90s than any particular change of heart. They deserve no redemption.
- pohl 17y agoFrom my perspective, they are developing their web browser at the absolute minimum rate necessary to avoid a precipitous decline in its market share - not fast enough to avoid a decline, but not so slow that it would vanish quickly, and certainly not fast enough to add value to internet standards or web application performance. I'll only come around to your view when they stop dragging their feet in hopes that Silverlight hits an inflection point.