I noticed something interesting from Google Analytics for this site. It seems that three of the top ten keywords that lead people here are combinations of Microsoft and evil. It seems that in addition to being a popular meme on the Internet, it's also a way to drive traffic to your site.

When I go over the tools that I use for software development, it's not actually true (as a friend recently accused) that "if it isn't produced by Microsoft, Jacob won't use it." Still, while I don't hesitate to use tools not produced by Microsoft, there's no denying that the majority of what I use day-to-day has its origins in Redmond, Washington. The question Microsoft's detractors need to be asking themselves is why that might be the case.

It's Not the Hot and Cold Running Babes

Because here's the cold, hard truth: there's not a thing in it for me to continue using Microsoft products, let alone defending my use of those products, besides the utility of the products themselves. Indeed, as one with geek pretensions, there's a good deal of downside for me in admitting that I use Microsoft tools and like it. Like admitting I read romance novels among the English Lit crowd, it tends to produce one of those uncomfortable silences.

Microsoft isn't cool. It's strictly squaresville. Entire geek cultures have sprung up around hatred of Microsoft and in some circles mentioning the name isn't dissimilar to mentioning a certain Scottish play in the presence of Blackadder's thespians.

I suppose that I could cave to peer pressure and use the tools all the cool kids are talking about, but I've never cared that much about the opinion of others and I don't see the point in starting now. Particularly when Microsoft's software makes it so darned easy to do my job.

Bottom Line

Like any geek, I consider myself a rational person. I go out of my way to hear counter arguments to my current theories and I always try out new technologies when given a chance. My problem is the lack of seriousness in those taking Microsoft products on. I get more people trying to get me to feel stupid for using Microsoft than trying to convince me that something else is better.

Since I have a pretty high tolerance for feeling stupid, I'll keep using Microsoft products until someone bothers producing actual reasons for alternatives. Anybody taking on that job ought to at least attempt to understand why someone would use Microsoft in the first place and use that as a starting point. Appeals to authority, ad hominem attacks, reductio ad absurdum and other rhetorical tricks aren't going to play well in that endeavor.

There's a reason that my personal blog is named The Rabid Paladin—I form opinions easily and express them strongly, even as I attempt to maintain an even keel through my sense of integrity. What this means is that on those occasions when I enter an argument with the purpose of informing and/or convincing others, I try to remain open to valid points from other perspectives and the possibility that I might be wrong.

Letting Bias Show

Too often, people arguing their case will paint alternatives in as bad a light as possible—perhaps believing that their misrepresentations make their arguments stronger. The true effect is that it weakens their argument when it becomes clear that their biases have colored their analysis. Technologists are particularly ill-served by this tendency. Computers function logically so there's an expectation that those who are able to understand and manipulate computers will be similarly logical.

So it's often disheartening to me when I see blatant bias in developers and other technologists. Note, I'm not talking about people whose opinions differ from mine or who value some aspects differently and thus favor other technologies or solutions or approaches. I'm talking here about people who want things to be a certain way and let that desire cloud their judgement and rhetoric.

There are a couple of good examples of this at work in the comments to my post about Microsoft. I actually struggled about doing this in a full-blown post because I don't want to pick on people who took the time to post here. I want to encourage people leaving feedback and don't want to give the impression that I'm trolling my own blog for people to make fun of. That said, the bias against Microsoft is something that I've been thinking about a lot lately and this gives me an opportunity to illustrate things that I find off-putting.

Sloppy Equations and Florid Adjectives

The very first comment is by "LKM".

How about "they engaged in blatantly illegal business practices in order to destroy their competition"?
It's not like they were not found guilty of this by a US court.

Now, it's not clear if the reference is to Microsoft being a monopoly or the broader point of Microsoft being evil, but the terms used here clearly show a bias against Microsoft. First off, being found guilty of violating a U.S. law is hardly proof of being either evil or having a monopoly. Name one company Microsoft's size and age that hasn't been sued successfully.

The cold, hard, unfortunate fact of corporate life in the U.S. is that large companies make attractive targets for lawsuits from individuals, corporations, and government entities. Being ethical (or "not evil") isn't protection from being sued, nor is it a shield against conviction. The worst you can say about Microsoft from the fact that they were sued successfully is that they were sued successfully. Any further conclusions that you wish to draw from that conviction still have to be backed up by reason and logic.

Second, LKM's description of Microsoft's business practices as "blatantly" illegal is an example of an intensifier that ends up undermining instead of emphasizing. If their practices had been blatantly illegal, then the trial would have been extremely short if it had gotten to court at all. Microsoft didn't get to where they are today by being stupid about how they spend their money and there's nothing dumber than trying to defend the indefensible.

Frankly, describing Microsoft's actions as blatant also indicates LKM's opinion of those who don't agree. Used maliciously, framing it that way could be seen as a way to cut off debate by implying that you'd have to be blind to disagree. I'm not saying that LKM was deliberate in this or that it was intended as such. Still, this is a form of what I meant in the conclusion of my prior article when I say that painting Microsoft's users and/or supporters as stupid is not a useful way to convince them that you are right.

Ignorance and Hyperbole

Syd from Fairground Town is a little more articulate, but in the end comes off as much more biased.

For me, the incident which summed-up MS was Genuine Advantage. It wasn't the fact that they did it, which I guess was fair enough (what with it being their software 'n'all) but their spokesperson on BBC Radio telling us that "Customers have been crying out for a way to know if their copy of Windows is genuine." This was a breath-taking "big lie", worthy of Goebels, and it was the "last straw" that made me shut down my ten-year-old Hotmail account and buy a Mac.

The beginning here seems like Syd is going to be reasonable. It's a good first step to acknowledge that someone has the right to do something even if you (presumably) disagree with them doing it. He undermines this by displaying both ignorance and extreme hyperbole further in, though.

Now, I didn't hear the spokesperson in question so I can't properly contextualize the quote Syd offers, but I'm willing to bet that Syd doesn't work in a large IT department—a context where the spokesman might actually make sense. While it may be the case that BBC Radio failed to contextualize the quote he heard (making his initial ignorance not his fault), it's important for someone actually trying to be reasonable to look for how a statement that seems so ludicrous actually could be true. Few people lie deliberately or blatantly in a forum guaranteed to reach millions of people. Microsoft's spokesman had to have had a reason for this statement, even if you end up disagreeing with it. Understanding what that reason is should be the very first step in an incident you plan to describe as motivating some action on your part.

Personally, I have worked with a couple of companies where one of the largest headaches of the systems guys was tracking licenses so I understand where the spokesman could be coming from. Licensing was a particularly onerous task at XanGo because our growth was so extreme. The anti-piracy folks at the BSA have managed to win enough cases and levy heavy-enough fines that companies really don't want to go through the expense of an audit that finds that they are out of compliance. One aspect of Genuine Advantage includes the ability for sysadmins to track this automatically and I suspect this is what the Microsoft spokesperson was talking about.

But really, Syd loses me entirely with the Nazi reference. As we gain distance from the horrors of WWII, people seem to be increasingly willing to use Third Reich references to vilify people they disagree with. It makes me wonder if they know anything about the reality behind those events except as a way to put their opponents beyond the pale. It's an obnoxious rhetorical trick and one I've come to despise. I'm to the point any more where I automatically discount anyone making a comparison to anything Third Reich, even if I suspect I might agree with them. The strength of the hyperbole automatically disqualifies them as someone I'm willing to take seriously, let alone support. I mean, if you break it down, Syd is implying that a spokesman for Microsoft is on the same level as someone who covered for the wholesale slaughter of men, women and children.

This comparison is so extreme that it leads me to suspect not just Syd's sincerity but his veracity as well. I suspect he already owned a Mac and already intended to shut down his Hotmail account (assuming he had one). In fact, it's reminiscent of the rhetorical device where a commenter will claim an affiliation they don't have in order to lend weight to their statements (like someone describing themselves as a lifelong member of a political party even as they regurgitate the talking points of the opposition).

Passion, Conviction, and the Right to be Wrong

Now, I'm not saying that either commenter had no right to their opinion or passion. I'm too passionately opinionated myself for that to fly. What I'm saying is that having passionate opinions doesn't mean you should paint counter arguments as less than they are. Doing so diminishes all participants in a discussion, starting with yourself. Indeed, both Syd and LKM ended up undermining themselves to me more than they did Microsoft with their arguments.

I like to tell people that I maintain the right to be wrong. I know that I've been wrong in the past (with a stellar example on this blog just last week). I know that I'll be wrong in the future. Knowing this, I have very few convictions that aren't open to reasoned argument. But please note the modifier there. I don't think that I'm alone in being put off by argumentation that is long on passion and short on logic. Particularly when the terms of those arguments attempt to railroad me or use rhetorical trickery.

And I continue to believe that implying someone is blind, stupid, or allied with murderers is a poor way to convince them to take you or your arguments seriously.

I've been considering this post for a while now, but have been afraid to actually write it. So here's the thing: I've noticed that most of those who talk about how evil Microsoft is don't bother supporting that assertion. They tend to assume the rightness of their position and hence the wrongness of whatever it is that Microsoft has done. Microsoft stifles technology! Microsoft is a monopoly! Microsoft engages in unfair business practices!

Do they really?

No Consumers Were Harmed in Making This Software

There's a couple of problems with the whole monopoly thing. For one, at least in the U.S., being or having a monopoly isn't itself illegal—using the position of a monopoly to harm consumers is the illegal part. Now, some courts, and popular opinion, assumes that the fact of a monopoly is, itself, harmful to consumers, but that has never been proven to my satisfaction. Indeed, many of those who testified against Microsoft in past years rested on this assumption by equating harm to them as harm to the consumer.

Here's a tip: the fact that a company cannot compete and goes out of business isn't really evidence that consumers were, in any way, harmed. Let's make this concrete with an example. The fact that Microsoft started giving Internet Explorer away for free and that doing so tanked their competitors in the browser market doesn't actually harm consumers. After all, consumers are now getting something for free that companies wanted to charge money for. If Microsoft began charging money for browsers after their competitors tanked, well, that'd be a different story. At that point, you'd have to ask if the new price for browsers was higher than it would have been with competitors still in business. The thing is, Microsoft didn't do so. Indeed, if those whining about Microsoft got their way, we'd be charged money for browsers today and that, in my opinion, is far more harmful to the consumer than Microsoft's decision that something should be free.

But here's the thing: Microsoft isn't even a monopoly. Seriously. Let's take the primary definition of a monopoly from reference.com.

mo·nop·o·ly      /məˈnɒpəli/ [muh-nop-uh-lee]
–noun, plural -lies.

1. exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices.

See that. The key to having a monopoly is having exclusive control or enough control that makes possible the manipulation of prices. It's obvious that Microsoft doesn't have exclusive control, but the fact of the matter is that Microsoft doesn't have the power to manipulate prices, either. While Microsoft can determine the prices they charge for their own products, doing so does nothing to control the prices of anybody else's product.

That's because software is inherently uncontrollable.

The reason for this is because you cannot control the supply of software in any compulsory way. Unlike any other product, software can be reproduced at will by anybody who owns the rights to the program (and by many who don't). You could gain a monopoly over practically any other product if you can somehow control the supply of a key component. Software doesn't have a key component crucial for its replication. If every owner of Microsoft Vista wanted to migrate to OS X tomorrow, there's nothing that Microsoft could do to hamper Apple from creating as many copies of OS X as they wanted to create and charging whatever price Apple wanted to charge (including no price at all) for those copies.

Note that I'm relying on the distinction that controlling the price for a product is not the same as controlling how much you can charge successfully. Microsoft gave IE away for free. That rather hampered people being able to charge money for comparable software. It did not alter the ability of those companies to charge whatever price they wanted to for competing browsers. You cannot actually be said to be capable of manipulating price until you can move it up or down at your whim. The ability to move prices down is inherent in the marketplace and your ability to compete in it. The ability to move prices up is the key to being an actual monopoly.

It Isn't Fair!

The second largest complaint is that Microsoft engages in unfair practices to privilege their software because they "own" the OS. Now, I haven't been a fan of the "it's not fair" defense since my kids grew up enough to employ it. I personally stopped expecting life to be fair a long time ago. The thing is, I'm enough of a libertarian that as long as all parties to a transaction are informed and consenting, I don't have much problem with them working out whatever deals they think they can.

Still, you can't deny that Microsoft likes its shady deals. I certainly wouldn't dream of denying it. In fact, I'm all for exposing those deals as soon as they're known, and the sooner the better. Does Microsoft have a deal with Dell that includes Dell anteing up for every PC purchased? Doesn't matter to me, but by all means, get the news out if you discover it to be true. I mean, as far as I can see, Dell wouldn't be doing so if the net cost to them weren't cheaper than doing it the other way. As long as Dell is able to compete in its markets for computers, I'm not really that interested. After all, if Dell raises the price of computers that don't have some version of a Microsoft OS, you have to know that they'll get hammered by their competitors who aren't trying to recoup such costs.

That's the magic of capitalism. You only get to set the price, you don't get to set the demand. If somebody else can do it cheaper, then they'll come in and prove it in the only way that matters—by offering their product at a lower price.

Does Microsoft sometimes fail to, ahem, document their complete APIs for external sources? That certainly appears to have been the case in the past. Insofar as they might have claimed to have documented the entire API, they have violated the law and should be held accountable for doing so. Outside of such a claim, I don't see how we have any standing to demand otherwise. Not that we shouldn't ask for better, but there's no cause to be slinging charges of moral depravity. You can't simply decide that a company has to release their full API when they haven't agreed to do so and expect to be taken seriously. Certainly, nobody expects the same from Apple. Fortunately, one consequence of all those shady deals makes Microsoft the most scrutinized software company on the planet so its ability to hide things is, shall we say, limited.

Scrabbling for the Top

Microsoft's dominance of the software market seems like it must have a monopoly somewhere. The fact that we can't detect it doesn't mean it isn't there, right? After all, random chance should dictate that some companies would successfully compete with Microsoft and their dominance would wane.

Ah. But since when did random chance have anything to do with markets, let alone software? There is, in fact, one thing that all successful companies do to become (and stay) successful: they attack #1. Indeed, those companies that rise to the first position and later fall always do so because they stop attacking #1. You see this with Sun. There was a period when they owned the corporate server market. The thing is, they stopped attacking themselves. Their resting gave their competitors an opportunity to come in and steal their lunch. Dell and HP saw that Sun's prices hadn't dropped even though the cost of hardware was falling steadily. They saw an opportunity and Sun is left wondering what happened. The same thing is happening with Oracle in the database server market and Sun (again) with the hot development language, Java.

And that's what has allowed Microsoft to dominate the OS and Office Application spaces for so long—they haven't stopped attacking #1, even when it's them. Microsoft, for some reason, has mastered the paranoia and internalized the lesson that they are only a couple of motivated geeks in a garage away from the #2 slot. Witness Office 2007 and the ribbon control. Microsoft could easily have sat on their dominance in the Office Application space. They didn't. Time will tell if that innovation makes their product better, but so far, it seems that it has.

The Beauty of Creative Destruction

Which brings me to the software development space. Microsoft has done here what they do in all the markets they come to dominate: stake out some initial territory and then expand to become the best value in that space (note that I said value, not software, or price, or technology). That's how they continue to dominate in business programming even though they charge money and the new kids on the block don't. Yeah, you can do some interesting things with Ruby on Rails, Java, or Eclipse. I'm not denying the achievements of others.

All I'm saying is that for me, the business developer, Microsoft makes the development decision an extremely easy one. For a paltry $2k a year, I can own everything Microsoft produces in one package—OS, IDE, servers, and Office Applications. I don't have to find out which distro is most popular. I don't have to research GNome vs. KDE vs. Xfce. And I don't have to browse a single Man page or HowTo.

Not that I wouldn't move if Microsoft stopped anteing up, but they don't seem to be doing so right now. Whether it's IronPython or Silverlight, or even Ruby, Microsoft shows no signs of letting others come in and eat their lunch. This is part of what makes it easy to be a Microsoft developer. If a good idea crops up in a space not currently dominated by Microsoft, you can bet that it won't be long before it's available in my dev environment either as a third-party add-in or from Microsoft itself.

The Wise Use of Power

All of that euphoria aside, Microsoft does have its problems. With great power comes great responsibility and Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on ethical people in positions of power (uh, the "duh" is understood there, right?). Undercutting NUnit was a waste of community effort and good will. And what's happened with TestDriven.net is a bigger one. Indeed, with the details we have about the TestDriven.net case, it's obvious that Jason Weber at Microsoft behaved like an arrogant jerk and he deserves to take heat for it and Microsoft does as well.

Being a complacent consumer leads to complacent companies and products that never improve. So by all means, give Microsoft hell when they ask for it.

All I'm saying is that Microsoft isn't the dominant force it is in the markets it dominates because people are stupid. Any position that concludes that people don't know what is best for them is a position that I'm becoming increasingly impatient with. Brow-beating developers who don't kowtow to your party line isn't going to actually win you converts in whatever crusade you've decided to embark upon. By all means, give me your best pitch, I want to hear it. But don't assume that I don't have perfectly valid reasons for the choices I've made and even if I am a lazy bastard who couldn't program my way out of a wet paper bag, you are probably not best served by mocking me for it. Although, come to that, I sort of ask for it when I call OSS folk cry-babies with no justification...

Since I stuck my foot in it on the NUnit issue, I've been paying particular attention to the most recent Microsoft controversy with TestDriven.net. By far, the best comment I've seen is the brief analysis by Leon Bambrick at Secret Geek where he separates Microsoft from the individual at Microsoft who made a tough job worse than it had to be through arrogance and ego.

UPDATE: Well suck. It turns out neither Martin nor Ayende deserve my censure here as NUnit uses the zlib license (which is extremely permissive). I managed to mix NAnt (which uses the GPL license) with NUnit. My bad. I hate when I mess up enough to invalidate my own points...

A number of bloggers take for given Microsoft's antagonism towards Open Source Software. Quotes like this from Martin Fowler are representative.

I was particularly sickened by Microsoft's reaction to NUnit - an excellent XUnit testing tool, elements of whose design were lauded by Anders Hejlsberg at OOPSLA. Microsoft ended not just bringing out a competitive library, but deliberately making it incompatible. That's not the kind of reaction that encourages people to invest their time in the platform.

Who Shot First?

The thing that these bloggers are overlooking is that Microsoft didn't open this licensing war. Open Source Software started this with the "CopyLeft" or "Viral Licensing" movements. These began with a set of licenses that deliberately forced anything a developer worked on that was "related" to the project to accept the same terms as that license. That meant that developers working on one of these projects could compromise the copyright of their employer if the projects could be construed as being similar. Special note about litigation: typing code instructions on a keyboard for the computer to interpret could have been construed to be "similar". The "Free" software movement thought this was a great idea and all but salivated at the opportunity to "liberate" corporate software.

That these same advocates were shocked, shocked I tell you, that companies like Microsoft then forbade their employees from working on Open Source Software even at home shows how disingenuous they can be. Again, the terms of some of these licenses were openly antagonistic to corporate-owned software and designed to jeopardize corporate software licenses. Unable to spend the resources to review every conceivable license all the projects their employees might work on, it's no surprise to me that a company will chose to go with a total ban on Open Source Software. Microsoft, in particular, is an attractive lawsuit target so it's no surprise that Microsoft was one of the first companies (if not the first) to ban its programmers from contributing to Open Source Software projects.

Things have calmed down a little from the initial hostility in the Open Source Software community as more and more devotees discover that they can't dictate terms to people with more resources than them. There are still nutballs on the fringe who maintain that Microsoft is simply evil and anyone who uses Microsoft technologies to develop applications is evil by association. While these strident voices are few, Open Source Software still has features that derive from these antagonistic forces.

The GNU General Public License

Robert Heinlein taught me that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. I have found this assertion to be true.

Take, for example, the much vaunted GPL license. The GPL claims:

The GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users.

Most people have no idea what the specific terms of the license are and are content to take the FSF's word that GPL == free. This is not the case—it is not designed to give you freedom to share and change software if you ever want to recover your costs of development.

Specifically, the GPL license is an irrevocable license that includes requirements for anything "derived" from a work covered by it. These requirements include that anything you try to improve in a GPL licensed project is automatically and forever a commercial dead end and that you are required to release your source code for your improvements. In other words, all resources spent on a GPL licensed project are guaranteed to be thrown down the rabbit hole. That's hardly "free" use of the software.

As if that weren't bad enough, GPL carries a notification requirement such that anything that runs based on GPLed (or derived) code must present the GPL license information "conspicuously". I shudder to think what would happen if Microsoft had to include a conspicuous GPL notification on every installation of Visual Studio. The confusion over what's covered and what isn't is enough to set lawyers circling like sharks around a sinking sushi tanker. Plus, it amounts to free advertising for an organization that is, at best, antagonistic to Microsoft's interests. It'd be like forcing developers to open Internet Explorer in order to start Firefox (or vice versa). Not. Going. To. Happen.

Microsoft vs. NUnit

NUnit uses the GPL license, so I take both Fowler and Ayende Rahien to task for either ignorance or disingenuousness when they claim it is Microsoft's fault that NUnit wasn't picked up to become Visual Studio's unit testing framework. If you want Open Source Software to be picked up and improved by large companies, then don't use licenses that are antagonistic to large companies. I don't see how that's so confusing or controversial.

In addition, a project that is as popular and widespread as NUnit that has a GPL license associated with it is a project that Microsoft not only won't be able to adopt, they also won't be able to release anything compatible with that project without opening themselves to all manner of unseemly accusation and lawsuits. It's an unfortunate fact of the real world today that a number of highly motivated people are out to sue Microsoft. In that kind of environment, Microsoft has to take steps to reduce their legal liability and this is one of those steps.

A Middle Ground

There is hope for the future. Many licenses are in wide-spread use today that don't have GPL's more onerous terms. I don't have a feel for which licenses are most popular, but if you sincerely want to see Open Source spread into corporate environments, like Microsoft's, I recommend taking a close look at the license you are using for Open Source projects. Creating licenses that aren't directly antagonistic to corporate interest is a good step in the right direction.

On the other hand, if you continue being hostile to corporate interests, don't act all surprised when your work isn't picked up by large corporations. Cause, meet effect...