IP: Dot-What?

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

>Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2000 16:40:24 GMT
>To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
>From: dave@scripting.com (DaveNet email)
>
>DaveNet essay, "Dot-What?", released on 6/25/00; 9:40:24 AM Pacific.
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>
>***Good morning!
>
>Given my current Web-centered writing routine, my Web readers know a lot 
>more than the email readers. Let me catch you up.
>
>On Thursday I went to Microsoft's Dot-Net announcement. I was covering the 
>conference, real-time, updating Scripting News as the conference 
>continued. The mood swings. Gates is Gates, he doesn't really smile, and 
>this time the feeling (from the past) that he knows something that I don't 
>isn't there for me. Subsequent speakers talk like Jeff Bezos, in outbursts 
>of excitement, but with a sense that the enthusiasm is acting, not from 
>the heart.
>
>Then Ballmer comes on stage. What a great speaker! He shows humor and 
>vulnerability, casting aside a cat-call from the audience in a loving 
>paternal way. (From yours truly.) Somehow the slogan "Happy Warrior" 
>applies, although Ballmer is nothing like Hubert Humphrey. As he spoke, I 
>wrote into the Web, using the technology that was being talked about on stage.
>
>When Ballmer thanked me for working with them on the stuff they announced, 
>my heart swelled, it felt great. Steven Levy, who writes for Newsweek, 
>said later "You're famous." I thought that's cool, now we can get some 
>work done.
>
>***Duality
>
>My journalist-developer duality, which was uncomfortable for a few years 
>now feels just right. If I can be a journalist, so can everyone else. The 
>ability to share a point of view openly without help from a PR firm is the 
>right and responsibility of every CEO, imho. The better your company does 
>this, the more effective you will be.
>
>I like to get out front, so if people are uncomfortable with a CEO who 
>writes and influences others, let's go through that, because it's going to 
>become more commonplace.
>
>(And if you're a CEO who wants to do this, please get in touch with me, we 
>can help.)
>
>Now onto commentary about the Microsoft announcement.
>
>***Oh Marc!
>
>Red Herring: "Microsoft got a surprising plug from former competitor Marc 
>Andreessen, who spent the afternoon calling media outlets to announce that 
>his new software-services company, Loudcloud, was 'adopting the whole 
>Microsoft stack, from top to bottom.'"
>
>To which I say, I wish we had gotten together on this when Netscape was 
>strong. If only Netscape had embraced this vision, in 1998, we'd be 
>further along now. Today it would be better if Marc would lend his good 
>name today to a process that includes Microsoft, but doesn't revolve 
>around them.
>
>In response to Marc's claim, there is no Microsoft stack. I'm pretty sure 
>most of the "media outlets" understand this. Now understand how 
>superficial the hype is. Good net standards involve opportunism, for sure, 
>but they also require patience and balance, consideration of other points 
>of view, and participation. Andreessen is a newbie here.
>
>***To Sun and IBM
>
>I was surprised, in a way, that Microsoft's announcements on Thursday 
>didn't include Sun and IBM, both of whom have backed SOAP, which is the 
>technology underlying Dot-Net.
>
>As a partner in the SOAP process, I want to extend a hand to these two 
>companies, who have been instrumental in accelerating the adoption of SOAP.
>
>IBM co-authored the spec and did the first implementation. Sun went 
>through their more recent animosity with Microsoft, presumably seeing the 
>good SOAP can do for Java, and endorsed it anyway.
>
>(When the Sun announcement came, I asked "Did hell freeze over too?" ;->)
>
>Without Sun's and IBM's participation, Andreessen's position might have 
>some power. If it were my stage, Microsoft would have been there, in a big 
>way, but so would Sun and IBM.
>
>***Dot-What?
>
>The processing continues.
>
>And now we swing around to the choice of name for this vision of Microsoft's.
>
>It's so hard to type, and so hard to say, you can't put .NET in a story 
>without completely screwing it up.
>
>Typography matters, even on the Web. If I mention .NET five times in a 
>story, my reader's eye sees imbalance. In order for the name to be 
>recognizable as a brand as you read a sentence, you have to capitalize it. 
>All-cap words loom large and create imbalance. Much of the coverage has 
>been awkward. How do I refer to this? Is it a product or a vision? Is it 
>really a brand-name? Isn't .NET a pretty generic thing?
>
>I'm sooo confused!
>
>(I liked Whee Win much better.)
>
>***What is Dot-Net?
>
>Pushing aside the statements of intent, what did Microsoft actually 
>announce on Thursday?
>
>I know what it is, but it's hard to explain if you don't have the 
>prerequisite background. Let me try to explain by filling in the blanks. 
>This column is written for non-technologists, so I have to start at the 
>beginning.
>
>Inside every computer there's a constant chatter of program modules asking 
>other modules questions and getting back answers. Every mouse click 
>launches thousands of these software conversations. Like any conversation, 
>the conversants must agree on a language. If I don't know Italian, I can't 
>understand much of what an Italian says. That's cool, sometimes ignorance 
>is bliss. But I digress.
>
>We call these modules "procedures". When one procedure asks a question of 
>another procedure it's said to "call" it.
>
>Now of course when we connect computers over a network all we're doing is 
>making it possible for a procedure on one machine to call a procedure on 
>another machine. These are called Remote Procedure Calls, or RPCs for short.
>
>Until May it mattered very much which language each piece of software was 
>written in, or what operating system it ran on. Java, Windows, Macintosh, 
>they all talked different languages, so like an American in Italy, they 
>could connect at some level (the Web) but to have a sophisticated 
>conversation, there had to be a higher level agreement.
>
>Until May the conversation between technologists was more like a 
>playground conversation. "You have to use Java!" said Sun. Microsoft said 
>"We like DCOM!" and everyone else kicked back and waited for something 
>interesting to happen.
>
>On the SOAP mail list, someone said "This is all politics!" and that's 
>right. But that's not the same thing as saying it's pointless. SOAP, the 
>common language we agreed to, is just enough BOGU for everyone, it's truly 
>a miracle, because the sandbox argument was cast aside. The playground 
>kids grew up. "We'll work together," they said. "Let's agree that this is 
>the way procedure calls work over the Internet."
>
>Now, in this context, what is Dot-Net?
>
>Microsoft says "Now that we have a common language, this is what we want 
>to talk about. Would anyone like to talk with us?"
>
>(Hey, that's what I hear. You can choose to hear something else.)
>
>What do they want to talk about? Membership preferences, through Passport, 
>for example. This raises a question. Do I want to give my personal 
>information to Microsoft? Hmmm. I don't want to do that, at least not at 
>this time. But can I agree with Microsoft how to do this? Absolutely, no 
>problem with that. Can I operate a Passport-compatible server? Of course. 
>Good idea.
>
>(Let's have minimal and understandable docs. Lots of working sample code.)
>
>There are a bunch of other conversations they want to have, you can read 
>about them on the Microsoft Web site. Before going in too deep and getting 
>lost in the details, that's all there is. We have a common language. Now 
>we're going to start talking.
>
>Microsoft wants to talk about things that any Web technologist in 2000 
>would want to talk about. And of course we like talking with Microsoft 
>because they have good technologists and lots of people use their software.
>
>***The magic of SOAP
>
>It's worth noting, because it might otherwise be missed, that SOAP has had 
>a magic life.
>
>Talking with one of my Microsoft co-authors, Mohsen Al-Ghosein, last week, 
>he said he didn't like the way SOAP turned out. This should come as no 
>surprise to Microsoft people, because Mohsen doesn't mind sharing his 
>opinions. With Mohsen, Don Box and Bob Atkinson, I discovered something 
>that had been eluding me my whole career. People *could* work 
>cross-company. I had never seen it happen. Our minds worked together, the 
>egos took a back seat. That's why this spec works, even though it has lost 
>some of its simplicity along the way.
>
>But the magic continues, even if Mohsen and I find the spec difficult to 
>follow. I gave the complexity to another brilliant man, Andre Radke, who 
>works for me. He didn't like me for doing this to him, but Andre is a 
>persistent man, and he got SOAP working in Frontier. Now I don't have to 
>see the details. I just design systems and deploy them. And they work with 
>systems written in Java and Python, and soon with those from Microsoft, 
>and shortly from everyone else.
>
>SOAP has Big Mo now.
>
>That's its (new) magic.
>
>***Tea-leave reading
>
>Now we get to the wild speculation.
>
>First, Microsoft didn't get to where they are by being stupid.
>
>But taken at face-value, there's something really stupid about 
>broadcasting your five year product plan to your competitors.
>
>They even named them, AOL, Sun, IBM, Oracle and Linux.
>
>Without a doubt, the key strategists at these places must be poring over 
>every detail they can get about Dot-Net. What are they concluding?
>
>"We could beat them to market, by years."
>
>Now, remember, they're smart at Microsoft. Are they laying a trap? I think 
>not. It's a chess game, but with a twist.
>
>"To get the government off our back," I imagine the Microsoft thinking 
>goes, "we have to have real competition."
>
>I think Dot-Net shows the others how to do that.
>
>***Clutching the parachute
>
>Earlier this month I wrote a story about how a baby eagle learns how to fly.
>
>http://scriptingnews.userland.com/theBabyEagleStory
>
>It may sound like a bedtime story for kids, but it's not. It's a story for 
>adults, powerful people who, if they reflect on the past, can realize that 
>they know how to fly.
>
>When we were in our 20s, with something to prove, we didn't need a 
>parachute, we risked it all every day. In our 30s we established our place 
>in the world. Now that we're in our mid-40s, something else is going on. 
>Having accomplished so much in our 30s, it can be hard to put it all on 
>the line, bet everything on the fairness of the universe. What we did so 
>easily in our 20s, inverts itself in the 40s, now we want to hold on to 
>what we got, and some of that is evident in Microsoft's strategy.
>
>It's not totally a curveball for their competitors and the government. It 
>reflects an understandable desire to turn the clock back and return to the 
>moment of glory, when everything coalesced, when everyone looked to us for 
>where we were going.
>
>Yesterday I said to Atkinson, who I consider a personal friend, maybe when 
>this is done we can retire and let the young folk take over, satisfied 
>that we completed our jobs. I say the same to the management at Microsoft. 
>We're out of the plane door. One hand is flying free but the other is 
>holding on to the parachute.
>
>If we want to have the kind of fun that's available to people who are 
>pushing 50, it's time to make way for the next group of technologists, to 
>pave the way for them, and step aside and let the universe work its magic. 
>There are young people at Microsoft today who think the world is fair and 
>fun and who have the desire to create a place for themselves. That's what 
>we need to tap into.
>
>***Dave Winer
>
>PS: Trust me, you don't want to know what BOGU stands for.
>
>PPS: I'm sorry Tod Nielsen left Microsoft. At just about this time I'd 
>want to talk with him about next steps with developers and partners.
>
>PPPS: I use Dot-Net-like software to send DaveNets via email.
>
>
>
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>(c) Copyright 1994-2000, Dave Winer. http://davenet.userland.com/.
>"It's even worse than it appears."