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Why Don’t People Talk About Breaking Up Microsoft?

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Re: Why Don’t People Talk About Breaking Up Microsoft?

#51
post #29
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that more secure implementations than MS's can offer a transition for organizations dependent on it.

Microsoft has one of the best software security teams in the world, one that arguably created the template that Google and Apple used to create the other best security teams in the industry. The idea that a Microsoft breakup would have improved computer security is an extraordinary claim.

We can reasonably disagree about the quality of their security. More generally though tech diversity makes a difference in security: Dan Geer did an excellent talk about this.

Re: Why Don’t People Talk About Breaking Up Microsoft?

#52
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's less of a walled garden than OSX, which isn't even virtualisable.

It actually can be virtualized, but it isn't as easy as Windows. I'd argue that neither of them should be used in government though.

I'd posit that the primary reason it's not as "easy" to virtualize macOS is because Virtualbox, VMWare, et al haven't poured enormous sums of money into optimizing for macOS performance, as they have Windows.

Re: Why Don’t People Talk About Breaking Up Microsoft?

#53
post #15
post #8

1) Nobody takes the Microsoft Store seriously 2) People barely take Bing seriously 3) Nobody cares about LinkedIn as a channel for free expression, nor is it a breeding ground for dangerous ideologies 4) Microsoft is generally much more enterprise-focused than these other companies, which all have very active footholds in the lives of regular people. When it comes to something like the power to make or break democrac…

Antitrust law isn't a tool to secure democracy but to secure competition. I don't think the worry is about actions taken by Microsoft hurting democracy; the concern is MS systems being insecure owing to a lack of competitive pressure and, as a consequence, being vulnerable to democracy-disrupting attacks.

That's fair; I guess the current discourse has muddled antitrust and the other problems with big tech together in my mind, at least in terms of steps being called for and/or taken.

Re: Why Don’t People Talk About Breaking Up Microsoft?

#54
post #51
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has one of the best software security teams in the world, one that arguably created the template that Google and Apple used to create the other best security teams in the industry. The idea that a Microsoft breakup would have improved computer security is an extraordinary claim.

We can reasonably disagree about the quality of their security. More generally though tech diversity makes a difference in security: Dan Geer did an excellent talk about this.

What Dan Geer & co wrote about software monocultures is pretty much the last thing anyone seriously wrote about the topic, which hasn't had much predictive power in the ensuing years. The major bastions of software security on the Internet today --- Apple's iOS hardware/software platform, and Google's Chromium --- are both monocultures, and selecting yourself out of either of them will materially reduce your security (this is not a point HN commenters tend to enjoy reading, but it is nonetheless true).

Geer & co wrote their paper right after the first "Summer of Worms", in which the insecurity of Microsoft's software was such a hot topic that there were congressional hearings on it. His analysis presumed that Microsoft wouldn't commit itself, organization-wide, to correcting the problem, because no other large organization had.

But that's exactly what Microsoft did. On an edict from Bill Gates, the whole company pivoted towards security. They hired a huge number of software security people and contracted out essentially the entire software security consulting industry to assess everything from the TCP/IP drivers to Minesweeper (they now host an internal conference, "Blue Hat", to socialize the results of 3rd party audits from blue-badge vendors and internal researchers). They delayed and re-roadmapped whole projects around security, Longhorn being probably the most obvious example. They trained all their software teams on software security, and enacted company-wide controls on "safe" and "unsafe" library functions.

Essentially, Bill Gates did the same thing in reaction to the Blaster worm that Theo de Raadt did with his fork of NetBSD: a site-wide top-to-bottom audit (I was, somewhat peripherally, involved with the OpenBSD audit of the 1990s; I had some findings and wrote the advisories but was very far from the most productive person in the project). But unlike Theo, Gates had a cubic fuckload of money to throw at the project, and it showed.

The results, I think, more or less refute Geer's argument. Microsoft was able to (significantly, albeit incompletely) address its security gap because it had the resources to do so. Moreover, each major component of Microsoft's software security risk was, individually, huge: a desktop operating system, an office suite, a browser, etc. All required vast resources, and many were able to effectively share resources between each other. Diverse, (necessarily) smaller organizations could not have pulled this off, and, had they existed in 2004 when Geer wrote about them, they'd have started with approximately the same tech debt Microsoft had.

And so today, if you're looking at a desktop operating system and choosing between one secured by the former monocultural bohemoth and another run by a dedicated and passionate band of volunteers, you will in fact usually be better off with the former. If instead of desktop operating systems we look at mobile platforms, the difference is even more stark, to the point where if you're not using either Apple, or Google's flagship supported platform, you're almost surely running something with grave vulnerabilities.

Re: Why Don’t People Talk About Breaking Up Microsoft?

#55
post #54
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can reasonably disagree about the quality of their security. More generally though tech diversity makes a difference in security: Dan Geer did an excellent talk about this.

What Dan Geer & co wrote about software monocultures is pretty much the last thing anyone seriously wrote about the topic, which hasn't had much predictive power in the ensuing years. The major bastions of software security on the Internet today --- Apple's iOS hardware/software platform, and Google's Chromium --- are both monocultures, and selecting yourself out of either of them will materially reduce your security…

What an informed reply! Thank you for pointing out the influence of mobilized, coordinated resources on security. I will have to factor this perspective into my own and reconsider.

Re: Why Don’t People Talk About Breaking Up Microsoft?

#56
post #55
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Dan Geer & co wrote about software monocultures is pretty much the last thing anyone seriously wrote about the topic, which hasn't had much predictive power in the ensuing years. The major bastions of software security on the Internet today --- Apple's iOS hardware/software platform, and Google's Chromium --- are both monocultures, and selecting yourself out of either of them will materially reduce your security…

What an informed reply! Thank you for pointing out the influence of mobilized, coordinated resources on security. I will have to factor this perspective into my own and reconsider.

I appreciate the warm response! Usually when I marshal a wall of text to rebut someone on HN, they're less happy about it than you are. :)

Re: Why Don’t People Talk About Breaking Up Microsoft?

#57

Because PCs and Office productivity software are a niche, and it’s hard to argue their market leadership in a niche is being illegally exploited to take over other markets. What markets? Well, the only one that matters right now is cloud, as it’s gradually eating the entire enterprise software and hardware industry, with hundreds of billions of dollars at stake. Put another way, Microsoft certainly bought their #2 po…

Is it really that niche if it has powered Microsoft to being the most valuable company in the world?

Not sure what my conclusion is, but Microsoft is an interesting anti-trust case now that I am thinking about it.

Re: Why Don’t People Talk About Breaking Up Microsoft?

#58

The main reasons are: 1. The monopoly in desktops is old and considered waning. 2. It is the only competition for the others in some areas (Azure for AWS, Bing for Google) so we kind of want it around. 3. Also, it charges for services so, perhaps, it doesn't need to advertise. (Pros and cons)

>1. The monopoly in desktops is old and considered waning. Yet their desktop monopoly is as strong as it ever was. I think people just lost interest in the desktop. Still I don't think there's a point to breaking up Microsoft, there's not much to gain. They aren't really misusing their desktop monopoly. People can actually picks alternatives, if they really wanted, both for the desktop, and the applications they run.…

I'm wondering how much desktop / laptop OS competition (and thus hopefully quality) would increase if Microsoft was broken up...

Re: Why Don’t People Talk About Breaking Up Microsoft?

#59
post #3

My guess is because they've been marketing themselves extra well lately and tech folks are eating it up.

This. All that tech people see is Microsoft positioning itself as this open and FOSS friendly company. But this is just a tiny fraction of what they do and mostly fuelled by a tiny fraction of their employees. The corporate facing rest hasn't changed a bit. Quite the contrary. Their licensing has become even more opaque, their overreach regarding what they shove down user's throats has increased, and you can't be sur…

It's quite a bizarre thing. With one hand they embrace FOSS, stick a Linux kernel in Windows, etc and with the other they force updates that erase user files and break drivers.

Re: Why Don’t People Talk About Breaking Up Microsoft?

#60
post #48
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what you'd believe if all you'd known about the Microsoft antitrust case was what Wikipedia records about it it in the short "Settlement" section of the Microsoft Antitrust Case article. In reality, the case broke Microsoft's monopoly on pretty much everything but desktop operating systems (the market broke that later on) and a chastened Microsoft was unable to apply its 1990s tactics to the emerging mobile m…

What Wikipedia records about it is precisely all I knew about it. Thank you for the exposition and commentary. I don't think Linux nerds' taking the case personally is weird, though: antagonism towards Microsoft specifically is a cultural self definition for many of them. As with any court case that parallels a cultural narrative, it was felt personally.

OK, "weird" is the wrong word. You're right, I do understand where it's coming from.

A thing I'd add is that the Microsoft case didn't just chasten Microsoft, but also the industry as a whole. In at least a couple of FAANG cases, I know firsthand that antitrust concerns altered product decisions (sometimes for the worse!). I don't think the case was, in the industry, widely considered a win for Microsoft.

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