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[FiRe] Craig Mundie, CTO, Microsoft
These are notes from the Future in Review conference. More here.
Craig Mundie, one of Microsoft's very top managers, described his job as two-fold in that he (a) works with the other executives on Microsoft's long-term strategy and (b) concerns himself with technology policy questions on a worldwide basis. He spoke about a host of issues, some of which follow.
Most promising technology areas: reducing the complexity of assembling computers, all wireless things, the general Web Services model.
Some Microsoft issues: Microsoft sees fundamentally two parts to its business: platform business, applications business. Windows is the brand for the integrated platform, but its various flavors do indeed have relatively separate code bases. .Net is the service component of the platform, but it's also Microsoft's brand for Web services.
WiFi: It is one type of a traditional radio system deployed on unlicensed spectrum. General problem: Someone can be jammed by other people in the same space. Should there be a MAC (media access control) in the unlicensed spectrum space? He has evangalized for regulating spectrum better ("spectrum management", "spectrum allocation"). The FCC is not sure how to proceed, but has a task force. One problem to solve is that the military radar works in spectrum that needs to be used in commercial areas (5GHz).
Identity issues: What is indentity on different devices? How does it permeate different applications and layers? -> Government are awakening to the idea that they are the root of all identity for individuals. -> Global, federated, individual identity systems.
Open-source movement: What will have happened within five years? -> It will continue to grow quite successfully. There are several business models in open-source. IP issues will be partially sorted out. Microsoft wants to explain the GPL as a licensing model and its concerns about that. It is an important part of the software environment in general, and it will evolve.
We are big supporters of open-source in a variety of ways, and we will continue to be.