The Head Lemur Speaks

[Warning! Warning! Extremely long post, sorry sorry]

As you probably know, Gnomedex 5.0 had an announcement about RSS support by Microsoft. I mentioned that you should pay attention for a number of business reasons and ignore the good vs. evil arguments that always happen when Microsoft announces anything.

My previous entry is here if you want to read it.

One of the comments was from the Head Lemur, a fine gentlemen who I keep missing at various conferences. He pointed me to his blog entry where he presents his view regarding the Microsoft announcement.

That full post is here. You should go read it, then come on back as I'm going to take a shot at responding to some of this.  Go, we'll wait.

Welcome back. Quite the read, eh?

Please insert my standard previous Microsoft employee disclaimer here. I'm either a disgruntled X employee or a kool-aid drinking shill depending on how you read this.

First, the important point about his commentary is there is some truth to it from a number of perspectives.

Typically, it's hard to get Microsoft (or any other large tech company) to start jumping on outside technologies. NIH is a problem both from the ego/culture perspective but also the simple big corporation working on a zillion things perspective. Doesn't imply evil, implies normal big company stuff.

The "late to the party" comment is a shot but, more or less, accurate.

Who cares #1. Late or not, having the company that (like it or not) supplies a major client operating system and browser, supporting something as an infrastructure play will help everybody. It could be argued both ways. One side, goofs were late and the other side is faster, more nimble people got RSS off the ground a whole heck of a lot faster then a bunch of corporate wonks trying to make "standards" which have to take into account everybody's corporate agendas. 

Dave Winer answers to nobody and got this stuff rolling. He gets and deserves the credit.  So, agreed, it took Winer (and others) not a big corporation to get RSS going. I suspect all truly great things will always get done this way. Amen.

Next up, the evil word "enhancement."  A hot button if ever there was one. Personally, if I were the guy driving the Microsoft bus on this one, I would have avoided that part of the announcement and saved it for another day and another approach. But thems the cards that got dealt so we play em.

There is a bunch of paragraphs in Lemur's post attempting to make the point that when Microsoft says enhance, they are going to take whatever was free/open and turn it into a "works better on Microsoft stuff" pile of bloated goop. Not a direct quote, but I think I got the gist of the bitch right.

Speaking as one who played this game in the past, let me just say that which was doable in the past is way harder today.

In the past, you wouldn't have seen support for "pure" RSS. Not on my watch, boyz. Nope, what you would have seen is yours truly hawking something along the lines of SIR (Surround Isolate and Replace) Technology or RSS+.

You would have seen an announcement about RSS+ which will work with the standard stuff, but, puhlezz, why do that when you can kick butt with RSS+ on the Windows platform. I'd then have deployed about a million CDs, had jump start sessions all over the globe, and let developers around the world ship the RSS+ modules ahead of a pending release of Windows.  Or, heck, we'll take a shot with something like Active Desktop. Need I say more?

Dave Winer (and others) would have screamed bloody murder about Microsoft co-opting a standard and screwing it up and I would have droned on about making life better for developers slaving away in garages around the world. And Winer would have (and did/does) call BS on this dribble before the ink was dry.

I'm exaggerating (not much) to make the point about "old" behavior.

That process is impossible today.  The nature of the Internet as a delivery platform simply makes this strategy impossible.  Today's world of blogging, mass (really mass) adoption of a technique or strategy by virtually "everybody", gives things like RSS enhancements a rapid thumbs up or thumbs down before Microsoft or any other big player can dictate the game.

Enhancements, like the simple lists mentioned, will get thumbs up or down quickly by the community. Today, vastly different then "before", the mass community will simply not use anything that locks them in.

Lemur's argument can be reasonably classified as a worry but not by any means a case where Microsoft "will create crap that others will have to work around" because as open as RSS is, people will ignore anything mucking things up, an option harder to do in the old days.

Lemur makes the following comment:

"Anybody who views this as a positive development, needs to step away from the keyboard. Microsoft is the last company in the world to do anything for the people. This is about Microsoft maintaining market share for it's software."

The first two lines, well, what can I say.  It's the last line that actually interests me to wit I respond; "Uh, yeah, your point?"

Who cares #2. Forget the damned if you do, damned if you don't argument, that's obvious. If by signing on to support RSS means people stick with IE, Windows, Word or Microsoft Works, that shouldn't be a bad thing at all as Microsoft is a business, in business to make money which, last time I checked, is still an okay thing to do. I don't expect a profit making machine like Microsoft, IBM, Sun, etc, to make business decisions "for the people."  I expect them to exhibit good corporate giving to United Way, etc, "for the people" but not technical decisions on what protocols, standards, or gizzmos to support.

To be fair to Lemur, in his comments section he says this:

"It's not about good or evil. My point is not to have expectations regarding Microsoft suddenly becoming an open source company with their software.

I will be happy to be wrong, but I wouldn't bet on it."

On this point, Lemur is dead on. Microsoft is totally not an open source company as open source is probably defined by 90% of the world. I'd offer up some wonderful 1990s slides about Windows Open Services Architecture (WOSA) but I don't want toilet paper in my trees, sugar in my gas tank, or being on the receiving end of 10,000 virtual wedgies.  So, for sure, don't think for a second that Microsoft is an open source company.

Who Cares #3. The whole point of business is to make stuff or offer services people will like, buy and recommend to others.  The point of technology, as it applies to this goal, is to make that process easier for the builders and users of the stuff or services. Period. It's not more complex.  If putting RSS support into IE and Longhorn lets my portfolio companies make better stuff which makes them (and me) money, that's okay. 

I have zero expectations that Microsoft's management and 50,000 employees are going wake up next week and turn the company into a shrine for Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation.

I no longer work for the company. I'm a VC which means I view announcements like RSS support for IE/Longhorn as a business opportunity, nothing more, nothing less.

If the company announced "Active Simple Content" as some sort of new -n- improved "RSS like" thing and offered to make it a standard, I (along with a zillion other people) would laugh the company into the next century.  Anybody programming in J++? Didn't think so.

The point is let's give the company some minimal amount of credit for seeing RSS, noodling on it, and deciding to get with the program vs. coming out with something goofy as an alternative.  The company decided that getting in front a speeding train is probably going to hurt and got on board vs. being run over. A few kudos are in order, eh?

Lemur makes a number of points to support the assertion that Microsoft has dumped on Open Source and trashed non-centralized innovation. Yup. For years IBM hawked some of the most proprietary Hardware/Software combinations ever created. GM, Ford, and others spent billions making me go buy special tools to work on my cars as well as making it damn near impossible to get a custom sound system put into my car. Yup.

And lots of that stupidity caused more then one near death corporate experience.  I own no stock in Microsoft but I assume most shareholders would prefer that Microsoft, to the maximum extent possible, avoid a near death experience in order to "get with the program."

My point is that it's okay for Lemur to snicker and take shots at Microsoft's new found religion. Personally, I think he'd find more then one Microsoft employee agree with him and say it's about damn time this place stopped with the centralized our way or the highway crap.

Finally, Lemur points to an excellent paper written by Doc Searls and David Weinburger called "What the Internet is and how to stop mistaking it for something else."  On that one, sir, I agree 1000%. Run, don't walk, and download that paper.

So here's to the Head Lemur. A great post with some interesting commentary that will cause lots of people to think. In the end, that's a good thing. Did the roof finally get finished?

Comments

[Stan Krute]

Hi Rick

Great post.

MS is in a tough position these days.
OpenOffice is a strong competitor for
most uses of Word and Excel. Longhorn
offers nothing that's going to cause
a massive wave of upgrades. More importantly,
there are lots of MS employees feeling frustrated.

The RSS move makes sense. Good for MS, good
for the 'net. Good on the meta level of
a new set of pathways for the company.

-- stan

[Carl]

I care. Microsoft has embraced RSS. Microsoft is attempting to extend RSS (let's wait and see if this is an enhancement). Microsoft *will* try to control RSS. They are a business. They have stock holders. It is in their interest to do so. Will they succeed? I wouldn't have thought so but with Dave Winer sucking up to MS and MS sucking up to Dave, I have a feeling that this love fest might provide MS with the opening that they need. Eventually both MS and Dave will stop using each other, but that might be too late in the game. Dave is already telling people that the common feed stuff is suspect and he says the the list extensions are too complicated. However, this was after he called Microsoft's embrace of RSS a "home run" and before he even looked at the specification. If Microsoft does what it usually does (I see no incentive for it to change its stripes for this occasion) and ends up wrecking RSS then Dave should definitely get the credit he so deserves.

[the head lemur]

Hi, Rick!
Starting from the bottom. Yes the roof is done although there were a few tense moments
http://theheadlemur.typepad.com/ravinglunacy/2005/05/roofing_adventu.html
http://theheadlemur.typepad.com/ravinglunacy/2005/05/roofing_adventu_1.html
http://theheadlemur.typepad.com/ravinglunacy/2005/05/roofing_adventu_3.html
http://theheadlemur.typepad.com/ravinglunacy/2005/05/roofing_adventu_4.html
http://theheadlemur.typepad.com/ravinglunacy/2005/05/roofing_adventu_5.html

I am way beyond that now however.
http://theheadlemur.typepad.com/ravinglunacy/2005/06/my_name_is_alan.html

Moving on to the 'Microsoft Situation'(will we need to call in Mr. Wolf?), your commentary is pretty good in terms of trying to make a case for Microsoft and RSS.

[Disclaimer: 99% of my business activity and profit comes from babysitting Microsoft products. It is not good or evil]

In your analysis which is much less vitipurative than mine, you make a number of points

''Who Cares #3. The whole point of business is to make stuff or offer services people will like, buy and recommend to others.''
BZZT!! The whole point of business is folks striking out on their own , either because they think they can do it better, faster or cheaper.
That they grow big is confirmation that their thoughts were correct.

No, I don't see, Bill, Dave and Richard line dancing anytime soon either.

If you do make money because your companies make money using microsoft technologies, great. I will want to talk to you about diversifying your portfolio and moving into light manufacturing, specifically laundry baskets with handles.
http://theheadlemur.typepad.com/ravinglunacy/2004/12/laundry_baskets.html
There is money here.
Wow! A blog Pitch!

Who cares #2.

Agreed. Big Business is Big Business, and Bill and Melinda's Foundation gives astounding sums of money to good causes.

Dead people don't buy software.

Who cares #1.

I do. Like you said, It is harder to enhance/extend/or corrupt what is working in order to support business goals. But my whole point is that they are still late to the party, and despite playing nice, there is no company on the planet, who can leverage their power and resources, to get their way.

An excellent example of this behaviour is the IE Browser itself. It took years for someone to figure out a way to run two versions on the same machine. IE upgrades by replacing the new files with the same filenames making rollback almost impossible. Although, they did make it possible to rollback from 6 to 5.

According to everything I have read, IE7 will only run on XP. What sort of community empowerment is that?

The automatic or manual update feature, and I really like the idea, does the same thing. Win2000 takes about an hour to install on a 80gb harddrive formatting NTFS. It takes 5 hours to download and update the OS with service packs, which end up being larger than the original Install.
Yes I have a high speed pipe.

This 'support' feature alone gives me a feeling of great trepidation over any thing Microsoft says, let alone what their future behaviour may be, and neither you nor I can predict that.

But again, I am still betting that Microsoft will 'enhance' RSS.

Remember Smart Tags?
http://www.lemurzone.com/edit/converse43.htm

[Matt]

Even as a member of the "Microsoft is evil and the world would be a better place without them" brigade, I find a great deal of difficulty in viewing this with panic.

As much as Firefox and Opera users might wish otherwise, IE is still the web's dominant browser. And yet...there are very very few sites out there that don't work adequately with at least one alternative, and most still work with anything that speaks HTML. The market-share war is lost (and probably forever), but they've been remarkably unsuccessful in killing off open standards.

To the extent that they try to subvert RSS the way they tried to subvert HTML, I suspect they will fail at least as badly. And to the extent that they're merely adding a useful feature to a product whose most recent upgrades have been decidedly behind-the-curve, feature-wise, I call it a good thing...even if they are Microsoft.