Skip to main content

Against the Open World

The journey of Microsoft as a company can be paraphrased into three leaders and their approach to the industry. When bill gates developed a proprietary OS, he knew he had hit the potluck. Over the next few decades, he ensured that the Microsoft ecosystem kept itself updated and remained a close source. Given the philanthropy that Bill is known for, many expected the then-richest man to let go of the closed head and let the CS community have a look at the masterpiece, but Bill's wrath against open source was second to none. He and his successor Steve Balmer would call the open-source OS like Linux cancer.

However, at the turn of the millennia, they were hit by rivals like Google in terms of the biggest tech company. Unlike Apple, Bill hadn't been able to trap its customers into an ecosystem. Therefore the battle moved away from OS to browsers, where the once reigning internet explorer faced an upward struggle from two emergent, one which its earlier rival had open-sourced to, and the other being google chrome. Microsofts struggle in this battle coloured the whole of Steve Balmer's reign, from his desperate attempts to get a smartphone OS to that of trying to buy all companies they found relevant. After a long stint at the open-source hate, Microsoft turned a new page with Satya Nadella.

Nadella's pet project was Azure; he believed that Microsoft needed to bring their game into the open source or at least seemingly free domain, where revenue was not earned from proprietary licences but from advertising to the large number of users they host on their platforms. Ever since the Microsoft journey has been different. VS Code, TypeScript and GitHub now facilitate massive open-source enthusiasts, something that theGooglee ecosystem boasted of. But the new era has put questions in front of both Giants.

The AI question. Unlike Google, Microsoft found intelligence in investing in OpenAI, while Google wanted to remain at the game's top. In the battle today, Google is losing quite a ground to open AI, but yet again, they aren't focussed on open source players. Although proprietary software seems to work much better, it's open-source, allowing engineers to experiment and develop out-of-the-blue solutions. A ship locked to a target island, that a net 0 probability of figuring out anything better, even if it lay a few kilometres from the ocean. 

Like Netscape went open-source to beat internet explorer at its game, it could be a company like stability.ai, which poses a real threat to the giants in the current AI domain.

Popular posts from this blog

The persistence of war

Countess authors have written on war, whether war and peace or the art of war. It's sometimes astonishing how pervading the idea of a war is over human civilisation. But the nature and structure of war have mainly changed, while the similarities are uncanny. But without just being philosophical, let's understand how the terms that are floated today are a realisation of power and limitation of its projection. In that sense, this piece is a treatise on peace or, if I can, a seeming decline in war's enticement. Wars were fought for the expansion of one's territory. But it remains a question of how and who the war served. In that sense, the armies were a protector of the ruler. Thus, the war was intended to gain rule except when it was led by vengeance or the decree of a religion. But what was expected was that most of the greatest conquests were in the form of an expedition, thus having to have a geographical continuity, which became necessary for people to establish loyal
dive in...

The Gems on Coursera

I found myself in a rare situation this April. Had things stuck to their schedule, I would have completed my graduation curriculum and would have been ticking off any college goer's dream check-list, which did include a few travel and adventure. But, the situation as of 2020 has a different story to tell. With no end to this quarantine insight, the check-list became an impossibility.  So I took the Coursera COVID offer for colleges and started my odyssey to various areas of studies, my mechanical engineering syllabi had prevented me from. So without much ado, here are the "Gems" on the courses platform, each one must give a shot at.  Model Thinking This course gives an unusual approach to what we have accepted as complex socio-political phenomena. With simple logical and mathematical principle, Prof. Scott E. Page recreates results which have puzzled global leaders. He argues that this approach to reality is a must for all in this 21st century, and I could not agree mo
dive in...

Election afterthoughts

The unfolding of the Indian election might have come as a surprise to many, for one is the BJP who steamrolled the campaign seasons with slogans of "400 par". While it remains 240 seats popular in a house of 520 members, a few stories should not go unnoticed. First, the BJP's popularity and the win for a third term is no ordinary feat. Only a few leaders of the past have managed such an elusive feat. This, indeed, is the trust that the brand Modi has built over the years. In politics, we often get acclimatized to the situations, in certain aspects too critical of it. When the young generation looked at Indira Gandhi's cabinet, they vowed never to again let such a solid mandate to a single party that its chief could declare an emergency, and no structures would be able to prevent that. This, however, ended up in fragmented colours in the Lok Sabha, the era of coalitions and surprise prime ministers. Needless to say, the horse-trading of MPs and the mindless corruption
dive in...