News and commentary from the cross-platform scripting community.
	Mail Starting 7/6/97

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From: Gary_Rieschel@zd.com (Gary Rieschel);
Sent at 7/7/97; 4:42:05 PM;
Re:The Ken Olson Question

It is interesting - it was the exact hyping of the Net as the end-all and be-all for technology's future that drove Gates and Co. to decide it was something that they could not let pass. What if 6 more months had passed before Netscape had been trumpeted as the "winner" of the WWW sweepstakes? i think that 6 more months of work by Netscape and others would have made Microsoft's Net resurgence much more difficult - it is to Gates' credit that he saw it was real and moved as quickly as he did.

To create real competition for the major players today (MSFT, Intel, Cisco, Oracle) I begin to believe you need 'stealth tactics with broad market acceptance' - interesting challenge when there is an almost pathological urge for small companies to talk about what they are doing before they are ready for the market (with all the appropriate qualifiers on how that may be necessary given funding requirements, etc.). Building something of scale quietly. Hmmm.

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From: abridge@wheel.dcn.davis.ca.us (Adam Bridge);
Sent at 7/7/97; 9:23:41 PM;
Re:The Ken Olson Question

I agree with the assessment that Olson never made the leap. Part of it came from the design of the VAX -- a computer that came from the era of expensive memory and complex intstructions just at the time that memory was becoming inexpensive. What DEC needed as a RISC version of the PDP-11 -- and I remember Gorden Bell, the chief architect of DEC's blue-ribbon CPUs -- talking about the need to design CPUs with wide words, grabbed in chunks. This while the RISC arguments were being made in Berkeley and Stanford. Of course he was talking about very large instruction word machines -- a generation ahead of their time. But we didn't hear that. And DEC didn't go that direction.

Instead they built a really nifty PC -- the Rainbow 100 with it's dual processors -- but it wasn't standard. It didn't really run the same OS as the IBM PC did. And it was too expensive. And there was the forgettable Pro-350/380 machine. I could go on. I still have a VAXstation 2000 under my desk.

So what DEC reminds me of is Apple -- they could never execute in the marketplace. The labs loved them -- their software was a pleasure to develop on -- years ahead of anything you can buy on the PC market in terms of reliability and features.

And even after all this time I still smile and think of Rhapsody running on the Alpha under OpenVMS -- geek sex appeal? You bet. But a fine way to go..

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From: kfong@mayfield.com (Kevin Fong);
Sent at 7/7/97; 3:32:04 PM;
Re:The Ken Olson Question

Nice piece. Provocative and I agree with you. In the past when I've looked at dinosaur companies I've often used the analogy of them being like big trees. It takes a long time for them to hit the ground and many times they're falling but don't know it. The analogy goes further as well...when the hit the ground deep in the forest do they make any noise? You might say that the forest around them gets very isolated (and unpopulated) as they are falling. Everybody runs. Will we care when Novell disappears? Or Digital?

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From: ccline@sbforums.com (Craig Cline);
Sent at 7/7/97; 1:54:48 PM;
Re:The Ken Olson Question

What the ABM folks forget is that generally the market - that is customers - likes single-company standards because generally it means less pain and hassle when setting things up. for example, when I need to buy a new VCR I always buy a Hitachi, because m y first machine was a Hitachi, I know how to set it up, all my remotes work with it without modification, etc. Sure, there's probably spiffier VCRs out there, but I don't care enough about their gee-whiz features to lose the advantage of backward compati bility.

I once moderated a session about software standards, which had speakers from Oracle, Apple, Microsoft and the San Jose Town Government MIS department on the panel. Predictably, both Oracle and Apple argued for industry developed - that is, ABM - standard s, which not coincidentally excluded Microsoft's standards. Microsoft naturally argued the opposite, and added that the market decides standards, hence Microsoft's dominance. Speaking last the MIS guy from San Jose agreed with the speaker from Microsoft , saying that he recommended Microsoft's OSs and applications because it made his people's jobs easier, and also meant that they'd be less likely to be fired or to lose sleep on weekends because of their decisions.

This was the same argument advanced by those who used to buy IBM exclusively. Its not that the market wanted to stop buying IBM, but rather IBM's blindness caused it to misread the market's needs. Remember the Microchannel debacle? OS/2?

So it's easy to think of Microsoft as being evil, but you gotta ask yourself why so many people are willingly buying Wintel machines and applications. As you point out, its Microsoft's willingness to not make the same mistakes that IBM made - willingness to turn on a dime, and abandon failed or misguided programs - that makes it as formidable as it is. Maybe the ABMers are right - their only hope is to get the government to break Microsoft up. My guess is if they should ever succeed in doing so, the sum of the parts will turn out to be greater

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From: rbrandt@upside.com (Richard Brandt);
Sent at 7/7/97; 12:41:12 PM;
Re:The Ken Olson Question

Surprising though it may sound, coming from one who thinks that the Microsoft PR machine is frighteningly good at spin control, I tend to agree with them when they tell you Gates is not as rich as he seems.

Bill's wealth and Microsoft's wealth are not the same thing. Sure, Bill controls Microsoft's money, but he does it in a very calculated, limited way. He delegates responsibility to others, and every penny Microsoft spends is done for the good of Microsoft, not for the good of Bill. Two years ago he insisted the Web was not a platform and Java was insignificant. But for the good of Microsoft he overcame those biases. Microsoft is not the same as Gates. That's why Bill is so wealthy (on paper), by the way, and why he's no Ken Olsen. He knows how to make Microsoft succeed despite himself.

Bill's personal wealth is only paper wealth tied up in Microsoft. I just read that Leona Helmsley is thinking of selling billions of dollars' worth of real estate that her husband acquired over the decades. If she does, she will have far more disposable income than Gates, who could never and would never sell off billions of dollars' worth of his Microsoft stock at once. He controls more money than he needs, but he does not control all the money he has.

Every donation Microsoft makes is done for the good of Microsoft, including donations to schools. It wants students to use Microsoft products. When Bill donates his own money -- at Lakeside and Stanford -- it is for himself, to make his name live on. He has said he plans to give away big bucks when he retires, and I'll bet he will, and those donations will be to promote his personal agenda.

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From: dwiner@well.com (Dave Winer);
Sent at ;
Re:The Ken Olson Question

I wonder what you mean when you say I changed my point of view on MS and BG. My point of view on everything changes as things change. I don't believe in judgement, good or bad.

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From: amy@home.cynet.net (Amy Wohl);
Sent at 7/7/97; 3:25:39 PM;
Re:The Ken Olson Question

Okay, I agree. DEC is all but dead. Billl finessed the Net magnificently.

That begs the question, you know.

The question isn't can he finesse the death spiral once, but can he go it forever (or at least for our lifetimes). Maybe, but I doubt it. In any case, it's fun watching. Economic history says that someone will eventually come up with the Next Big Thing somewhere else, while Microsoft is thinking about something else, and while their attention is elsewhere, the world will move on.

It keeps me looking.

But I do have a question for you. I've always admired Bill and Microsoft. I don't think success is bad unless you do something grossly unethical to gain it. Being sharply smart isn't evil -- although it is very annoying to the losers.

You seem to have changed your point of view on Microsoft and Bill. Is that true? Why? Just curiosity. I assume it's on the level of admiring that combination of technical excellence and success that we strive for.

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From: HESS@ithaca.edu;
Sent at 7/5/97; 12:06:17 PM;
Re: Doc Searls on Bill Gates

Microsoft's "market success is the just reward for the service it has rendered to the public."? Was this meant to resemble a maxim out of "1984" or does it just sound that way to me?

I have a theory about Microsoft's success that doesn't make Bill Gates into the current incarnation of "Reddy Kilowatt", Big Brother, or the antiChrist: Using a computer represents a big cognitive leap for most people and can generate some serious vertigo. Computer-phobia is, I believe, a far more common malady that most of us wish to acknowledge. When we are insecure and feeling threatened, there is much comfort to be gained by joining the herd. I can thus explain to myself why I use Microsoft's Word and Excel products although I know very well there is better software to be had.

I keep searching for an appropriate analogy to visualize Microsoft's success, but the one that keeps coming to mind is lemmings. Surely I don't mean to impute that sort of outcome to a phenomonon in which I imagine myself to be willing participant. Do I?