September 16, 2003

Ok, I know what you're thinking – "This McGuire guy has totally lost it. His mind, his credibility, my attention – he's lost it all." I hope you're wrong. Let me start by saying that I'd be the last guy to dream up any "end times prophesy." I believe what Jesus said – that it is not for us to know the times which God has set for these things to happen. And yet, Jesus also warned us to be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. When we see a company acting in a manner so similar to what the Bible describes as the work of the anti-Christ, we should certainly sit up and take notice.

What am I babbling about? I'm talking about the plans that Microsoft has for the next release of the Office set of productivity tools.

If Microsoft has created an exceptional set of products, it would be the Office suite: primarily Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. The documents created by these tools have become the lingua franca of the business world. When I say "can you e-mail me that document?" – what I expect to receive is a Microsoft Office document – a Word document if it's text, an Excel spreadsheet if it's numbers, or a Powerpoint presentation if it's a slideshow. If you operate in the corporate world, then you use Office.

The government is also a heavy user of Office. Visit the Census Bureau web page and download census data as an Excel file. Download publications in Word format from the Small Business Administration web site. Check out the latest Powerpoint presentations by commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission Internet site.

I'm sure there are those who will disagree, but in general, Microsoft came to dominate the office productivity software market not through anti-competitive behavior or sneaky tricks, but by building a better spreadsheet product than Lotus, a better word processor than WordPerfect, and a better presentation graphics tool than Harvard Graphics. Microsoft won the market the right way – by better serving the needs of their customers.

However, that was a long time ago, and now that commerce and government are dependent on these tools, Microsoft is ready to spring the trap.

You see, up until now, you could actually create documents in the Office formats without buying the Microsoft products. Most competing commercial and open source solutions could read and write Word document files, Excel spreadsheet files, and Powerpoint presentation files. You weren't forced to use Microsoft products to participate in the business community or to access information from government agencies. But that's about to change.

Microsoft Office 2003 is hitting the street next month featuring Microsoft's Information Rights Management (IRM), a proprietary mechanism for securing documents. "Securing" – as in making sure that only authorized people can read and modify them, but also "securing" – as in making sure that only the newest Microsoft tools can read and write them.

At it's most innocent, this strategy is just the latest in Microsoft's consistent brute-force approach to "encouraging" their customers to upgrade to the latest version of software. If any of my business partners upgrade to Office 2003 and use any of the new features, I will need to upgrade my systems to Office 2003. And I'll probably need to upgrade all of my systems simultaneously to keep documents flowing within my company.

In the past, Microsoft has used gentler tactics, such as switching the pricing and licensing terms overnight or suddenly dropping support for previous versions of software. This time, Microsoft is torpedoing the backwards-compatibility that software vendors have typically provided to keep their customers happy. I guess Microsoft isn't worried about whether customers like the company or not.

However, of course, it goes deeper. In addition to forcing Office customers to upgrade to Office 2003 more quickly than they may be comfortable (given Microsoft's reputation for bug-ridden first releases), this will also force many individuals and companies who have never purchased Office (being able to use competing solutions) to convert to Microsoft's product.

Even worse, to use the features in Office 2003, you'll need to be running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition. This is not an inexpensive product (one pricing sheet on the Microsoft website listed one small component of this architecture at over $18,000). Many companies have chosen to go with Linux or Unix servers in their network, while keeping Windows on the desktop. These Microsoft customers will now either need to convert to Windows Server or run two sets of servers.

It's also helpful to have a very high level understanding of how the IRM feature in Office 2003 works. This is a very complex mechanism, so I'm going to over-simplify it to get to the bare basics. When you create a document using Office 2003, you can specify individuals or groups who have different levels of access to the file. For example, some can read it. Others can read it and modify it. To do this, you simply specify their name or e-mail address. What really happens is that this information gets passed to the Windows Server Rights Management Services (RMS) system. When the other person wants to access the document, he must validate himself to the RMS. This is done using a mechanism called public-key/private-key authentication.

In the Microsoft world, every human being will have a piece of digital data to identify themselves. This piece of data will consist of a private-key that only you will secretly hold, and a public-key which you will give to the government, your employer, your trading partners, your friends – anyone with whom you want to securely exchange information. They will use this public key to authenticate that you really are who you claim to be.

I think you see where I'm going with this.

In the Microsoft world, if you want to use Microsoft's products, you will have a string of bits – yes, a binary number – assigned to you. It may not be stamped on your forehead or on your hand, but it may as well be. If you choose not to participate, not to receive this number, then you will not be able to exchange information with anyone else who does choose to use the Microsoft products. It probably won't take long before that includes virtually every large business, every bank, every mortgage company, every health care facility, every insurance company and every government institution.

This is what scares me. The parallels to the description in chapter 13 of the book of Revelation is downright spooky. Listen to the Word of God: "And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slave, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name." (Rev 13:16-17)

Do I believe that I have special insight that the end of the world is near and that Microsoft or Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer is the anti-Christ? No, of course not.

Do I believe that Microsoft is acting in a dangerous and self-condemning way and we need to be alert and proceed with utmost caution? You bet I do.

He who has an ear, let him hear.