Microsoft and the Power of Free
I have to think that somewhere at this moment Richard Stallman is either laughing or crying, or at least scratching his head. Stallman, of course, is not only the founder of the Free Software Foundation and all around computing pioneer, but he's also known to have been one of the world's first hackers at MIT during the 1970s. I had the chance to interview him briefly a few years ago, and he actually seemed like a pretty amiable guy, but I just have to think that someone with his background, and in particular his philosophy regarding commercial software products, might find this whole Microsoft Security Essentials situation pretty ironic. For, at one of the most critical junctures in the history of computing security, the company best known for selling more software than anyone in the world - not coincidentally also the same company blamed by many for the pervasiveness of today's IT security problems, Microsoft, is about to do something that could radically shift the tides of the consumer anti-virus market - it's going to give its new AV programs away to users for free. It's a pretty crazy notion in a lot of ways when you think about it. Now, Microsoft is far from the first company to offer free AV, as companies such as AVG have been doing so for years. However, Microsoft is the first company to give away free security software who also happens to have a significant footprint on almost every new PC shipped around the globe. No matter what the AV market leaders tell you about how customers will still buy their products because they know something like Microsoft's Morro beta is just a simple AV tool, compared to their robust endpoint protection suites, I really do have to wonder. Certainly Morro would appear to represent just a sliver of the device security programs that one actually needs to defend themselves these days. Yet, one of the biggest problems in fostering better consumer security over the years has been merely reminding people to update their signatures, or to renew the AV licenses that come bundled with their computers. If at some point they start getting more free security tools pre-loaded by the OS vendor, or they're even just encouraged to download them as part of an update package, will they really go out and seek additional protection on their own? Typically when you make something free and easy for people to avail themselves of, folks tend to flock to that. A couple of years ago when Microsoft was first hinting at all the security features they were planning to put into Vista, AV giants like Symantec and McAfee started flipping out. The security companies said at the time that this was mostly related to some proposed design features that would have made it harder for them to build effective "advanced" security programs, like behavior detection tools, but Microsoft was also introducing its initial free onboard AV defenses, in addition to Morro's paid predecessor - Live OneCare - and many market watchers observed that Symantec, McAfee et al were trying to prevent the OS vendor from diverting their consumer market opportunity. The AV crowd even started to mutter the word "antitrust," but Microsoft relented a bit and everyone made nice and moved on. But if I were those companies now, looking at the potential for the OS giant to either someday bundle more diverse and advanced security programs like Morro with Windows - or even just push users to defer to its freely available tools through automated updates and the like, I'd have to be a little bit frightened. There's no question that most businesses, and savvy end users will still seek out the best security products available and pay for them, keeping the endpoint security market going strong. And Gartner only yesterday noted that even in this horrible economy, security software revenues are still expected to increase. However, with the prospect of Microsoft giving away more advanced security technologies, and the established indifference of the masses in terms of being more proactive about securing their endpoints, this all seems to add up to a pretty unique situation to me, one that's fairly unprecedented in the eventual affect it may have on the endpoint security market, and the general level of security maintained on most consumer PCs. For a long time, people like Richard Stallman and many leaders of the open source community have been trying to convince us why the best model for software, and for end users in particular, is for products to be free. Now it seems that Microsoft was actually paying attention after all.
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Comments (17)
Richard Stallman isn't about releasing software for free. He is a believer in releasing the source code... There is a HUGE difference between Richard Stallman and MS philosophies! BTW, did you not hear that MS will only release a certain number of downloads???? In other words, prepare for a subscription service down the road. It if it walks and sounds like a pig...
Posted by ronmac | June 23, 2009 8:06 AM
You've seriously missed the boat, guy.
Don't confuse Micro$oft's closed and proprietary AV software available at no charge for Free Software. Free Software is a matter of liberty, not price. Likewise, don't confuse Stallman with the Open Source Movement which was started quite some time after his Free Software Foundation.
Why must you drop the man's name that many times in an article about Micro$oft, especially given the obvious fact that you don't follow his philosophy at all??
Posted by Anonymous Freetard | June 23, 2009 8:09 AM
OK, to be fair, maybe I got a little cute in trying to make an open-ended point (as is my wont to do), and obviously sarcasm doesn't translate well to the typed word...
But here's what I was basically trying to say... (and I honestly love it when anyone calls me "guy" and I'm not joking about that in the least, people who will call you guy are open and frank, I'm all about frank openness)
So like, if Microsoft is giving away AV software, starting to give it away, ever so slowly moving toward including it with Windows or Windows updates for free... whatever it becomes... if it somehow encourages fewer people to buy AV, etc... that's pretty ironic that it's by giving its software away after all these years.
FSF, open source, all the movements that have sprung up over the decades essentially as a foil to the commercialization of software (which obviously I'm currently involved in)... to me it just has to be ironic to those folks to see that a big market giant like MSFT could enact a dramatic shift that could have a huge eventual affect on (consumer?) IT security in general... it's just pretty interesting.
Perhaps the point was poorly executed in its affect to invoke some history, as what occurs to me in considering Morro is how much it does link back to what happened with the AV co.s before Vista got launched. They were hopping mad because they said Microsoft would start bundling AV with Windows (along with cutting off kernel level access for security purposes), and that it would be horrible for their businesses. These guys used the word "antitrust" at the time...
I guess the shortestest way of saying it is it will be ironic in the end if Microsoft is able to take over a large piece of the AV/endpoint security market by GIVING AWAY its products.
I just thought for a dude like RMS, hacker, FSF guy... has to be sort of weird to see that happening.
Thanks!
MH
Posted by Matt Hines | June 23, 2009 9:53 AM
Seriously? You've been writing about IT for more than a decade and clearly have very little understanding of the FSF and its philosophies. There is a differnence between free as in free beer (price, MSFT) and free as in freedom (liberty, FSF). If you would have read the GPL, you would know that the FSF believes software source code be made available to the end user, making the software "free."
Posted by sorry no thanks | June 23, 2009 9:55 AM
As I recall MS has had a habit of giving away certain software products when it suits its own goals. If memory serves, MS gave away many developer tools in its early days. I suspect it did so to make have more software on the store shelves than then rival Apple...but maybe that's just me
Posted by cjoki | June 23, 2009 10:19 AM
SNT, of course I get it, I guess I just didn't execute my lame attempt at sarcasm very well.
Though, it does that most free (Patrick Henry free) software is free (open source free)... doesn't it?
Free software from Microsoft... is it really free? Does it free end users from having to plunk down cash on AV? Does it free the market of a level of competiton?
And how does it affect the uptake of actual free software of every ilk? MSFT not known as wildly free spirited, right?
Again, I guess I failed in making a sideways inference-laden analogy.
But isn't it all intriguing?
Thanks,
Matt
Posted by Matt Hines | June 23, 2009 10:32 AM
Microsoft is not in the business of giving away anything for free. The price for their AV software is that more people will feel safe using their secret, proprietary OS, which is a net loss to society.
MS software will never be "free as in speech." You can't study it, add to it, make it better, or *sell* it. Truly free software can be sold by anyone, to anyone.
Posted by Anonymous | June 23, 2009 10:38 AM
1st post bad, apology worse. I have to echo 'sorry no thanks' above. This is the exposition of a person without a clue about what the fairly glaring differences between what MS is doing (the cocaine approach - the first sniff is free..) as a pure business approach to selling proprietary software and Stallman's philosophy. This doesn't meet the standards of a personal blog, much less an eweek-sanctioned column.
There are good reasons for both FLOSS and proprietary software, but clearly, you weren't listening when you interviewed Stallman.
Posted by hjmangalam | June 23, 2009 10:42 AM
What has the Microsoft AV software to do with open source or fsf? Nothing! Microsoft released it because without some kind AV, Windows does not last 1 hour of net surfing. With a mac or linux you're safe without security software because they are secure by design.
When you buy the new windows don't forget to count the money you pay for the AV soft.
Posted by hacker | June 23, 2009 10:43 AM
I think others have made the point that free and free aren't the same thing. I would rather pay for open source software that I would ten "own" than rent proprietary, or as they call it "licensing."
That said, I think the whole MS anti-virus misses the boat. Here we have a program that that is made by the people that make the program everyone is making viruses for. With such weak security, wouldn't it be better if they spent their money fixing the issues that make viruses a problem? Or even better, they could switch to a UNIX based kernel, like Apple did, and focus on their biggest weakness, IE. Just making one more "free" product means that cost will rise somewhere else, like the new MS, or will the money made on their new search engine be paying for this?
Posted by Dave | June 23, 2009 10:44 AM
What Dave said is sort of the answer to the half-cooked multi-tiered question I was trying to get at.
I regret that the RMS/free vs free analogy doesn't work well.
But hell at least the post is getting comments.
LoL.
Thanks,
MH
Posted by Matt Hines | June 23, 2009 10:51 AM
Geez, you need some kind of antivirus to run Windows, I can't believe they haven't bundled anything before. This looks like a news item that should have happened years ago (I don't use Windows, so it shocks me).
And it doesn't have anything to do with Stallman.
Posted by Jimbo | June 23, 2009 10:52 AM
quote :
FSF, open source, all the movements that have sprung up over the decades essentially as a foil to the commercialization of software
Your premise is wrong.
FSF is a movement for free expression.
most certainly not anti-commercialization.
any idea of anti-commercialization is purely secondary.
Posted by dave | June 23, 2009 10:54 AM
It should be noted that Microsoft's "free" AV service will be using an online database, which the end-user's computer must contact to check if a file is "clean" or not - thus MS will be collecting data *directly* from the computers of anyone foolish enough to install their spyware "AV" application.
Software which collects your personal data and delivers it to a commercial exploiter of that data is NOT free. In fact, I can't think of any software that is more expensive.
Posted by Old Man Dotes | June 23, 2009 11:23 AM
This isn't any change for M$.
Convincing people that things are "free" when they are not is just business as usual. That's where Windows gets its marketshare - it's certainly not from value or quality.
Folks get convinced that the OEM copy of Windows that came with their computer is "free." Teachers, Professors, and Students get nearly "free" copies of M$ Office to keep the businesses and government offices - that the Students will one day work for - paying FULL PRICE for the same software. Micro$oft looked the other way on software "piracy" in Asian territories for years; saying that anything goes as long as the population doesn't get acquainted with Linux. And what happened when Linux started to gain a foothold in the netbook market? Oh! time to un-retire XP and make it nearly "free" - and that Win7 upgrade with cost how much??
Posted by Anonymous Freetard | June 23, 2009 12:56 PM
Microsoft's move benefits consumers, and the security of the Windows ecosystem as a whole.
Posted by JohnJ | June 24, 2009 8:30 PM
I am SO interested in knowing how Stallman has maintained his hacking skills. Granted, security software from his day involved navigating around a few bytes of code in order to gain access to a few KB of data, but I still wonder if he is able to weave his way in and out of networks like he used to back in the day!
Posted by Mike | November 9, 2009 3:09 PM