Piestar

So I was reading the Digg thread on people abusing the Javelin glitch in Modern Warfare 2 – The Javelin is meant to be an anti-armour only weapon but there is a bug where you can pick it up and cause it to explode if you die, killing everyone in a large radius.  Essentially a suicide bomber glitch which is apparently causing huge issues with people racking up massive scores by using it.

Apart from all the posts blaming Microsoft’s shoddy programming (despite the fact they had nothing to do with this game) and the EULA’s are bad, how dare they stop me cheating! rants there was one post which was particularly telling and inspired me to write this post:

I don’t need this issue to bash microsoft. They are a lousy company whose only REAL innovation is to use its size and marketing to steal or buyout ideas. What has microsoft really innovated besides mass marketing of existing ideas?

The question is, what companies actually have any original ideas?  And why are Microsoft held to a different, higher, standard than anybody else?  Why does Microsoft have to be 100% original or face the wrath, yet nobody else needs to be?

The iPod was entirely unoriginal.  There was hundreds of portable MP3 players out before the iPod yet it is deemed as being ‘original’.  Microsoft releases the Zune and apparently they are copying Apple.  Linux is essentially a clean room copy of UNIX, yet apparently Windows is simply a copy of Apple, despite Apple copying Xerox.  Apple releases the iPhone, are they accused of copying Microsoft as Windows Mobile is years older?  OR are they ‘innovating’?

Show me anything significant from a successful company and I will show you the idea that they ‘stole’.  The thing is innovation is a rolling, evolutionary process.  You don’t just jump into the market with mk1 entirely new product and sit there – it simply doesn’t work like that.

Company X uses a visual metaphor interface and you are using a CLI interface.  Do you:

1. Damn, they thought of it first, thats a shame as it would greatly enhance our product. 
2. That’s a good idea, lets incorporate that into our product.

Everyone rants about how horrible and innovation stifling patents apparently are, then get outraged when people (that is, Microsoft) does exactly what these patents attempt to stop.

What made the iPod successful was nothing to do with originality, as the Diamond Rio had it beat by a good three years (right).  Check out the scroll-wheel-esque ring in the middle.  Now tell me that the iPod is original.  Pretty damning isn’t it?

The success of the iPod was due to Apple taking an existing idea and doing it well.  The device was aesthetically pleasing, it was incredibly user friendly, it was marketed incredibly well.  It was a great product and although it did not invent the concept of a portable MP3 player it refined and improved the concept immeasurably.  I owned a third gen iPod and bought it for no reason better than it was better than anything else available at the time.  I certainly didn’t rant about how they were unoriginal, and then bought a PMP300 off of ebay to somehow ‘stick it to the man’.  That wouldn’t have made sense.

Correct me if I am wrong, but Microsoft is the only company that produces a commercially viable non-Unix based OS.  BSD, Linux, Solaris, OSX etc are all essentially copies of the original Unix.  They are viewed as innovative.  Windows, which has an almost entirely unique heritage, is not.

What is Windows a copy of?  While I do not doubt that there was similarities with the original Xerox implementation and Apple’s implementation, if you run modern OSX beside Windows 7 the systems couldn’t be further apart now.  There are common features that have been traded backwards and forwards between the two, but when it comes to basic implementation the two operate in entirely different ways.  You can get OSX theme packs for Windows, but it is fundamentally impossible to get the UI and interface to operate in the same way.

There are also certain ideas that are inevitable.  Window compositing is one of them – moving window management to the GPU is only logical and largely improves performance.  It also easily enables a whole raft of abilities which would have been incredibly hard to do before – expose, preview thumbnails, rotating cubes, wobbly windows, blending translucency – which all become almost obvious once the GPU comes into play.  Dynamic search, things like Windows search or Spotlight on OSX, are a result of improved computer power.  It’s only because computers now have the power to do it that it is getting included – not because it’s somehow a new innovation.  People often accuse Microsoft of ‘copying’ Spotlight from Apple – ignoring the fact that it’s capabilities were meant to be in WinFS as part of Longhorn well before any Apple announcement.

The claim that Microsoft somehow steals all it’s ideas (and by implication, everyone else is original) is simply an extension of the irrational Microsoft hatred so prevalent in the IT community.  There are utterly no facts to back it up and it’s very easy to argue Microsoft is more innovative than your average company.  It’s become so ingrained into the common psyche that even if Microsoft does it first (ala Compiz) they are still accused of being copycats.  A look at everything that was planned for Longhorn basically set the stage for a large amount of features that are considered de-facto in a modern OS and they came from Microsoft.  Where’s the credit?

To me, you cannot use the term ‘ripoff’ or ‘copy’ if very little of the original remains.  Is every text adventure a ripoff of Zork?  If every raycaster a ripoff of Wolfenstein?  Isn’t Wolfenstien a ripoff too?  Is Duke Nukem 3D a ripoff of Doom?  If you set out to make a copy of something with, at best, cosmetic changes then you are guilty of ripping off someone.  If you take a basic idea and make your own implementation then you are just expanding on the public domain.

Why is everyone allowed to make their own implementation of various ideas except Microsoft?  Why is expanding on an existing idea innovative, unless Microsoft does it?  Why is Open Source allowed to make near carbon copies of proprietary software with impunity – isn’t this a stone’s throw from simple software piracy?

I’ll leave you with a picture comparing ‘Frozen Bubble’, the hit Open Source game and ‘Bust-a-move’, an old commercial game that actually was quite innovative.

Either it is OK or it isn’t.  Anything else is hypocrisy.