Ohh man. Looks like things are about to get nasty quick between the blogosphere’s most prominent ex-Microsoftie and SD Times’ David Worthington. As you may remember, I blogged last night about David’s story. Well here comes Robert Scoble late last night with a stinging rebuke of the reporting.

Essentially, David plays Midori as the next coming of Windows, however he does not specifically say that it is anything more than research. It seems that Scoble did not pick up on this as you can read in his opening paragraph.

You are an idiot if…

…you believe Microsoft is actually going to have a completely rewritten Operating System before Bill Gates dies (which might be 20 to 40 more years).

I have to say one is much more of an idiot if they believe Microsoft will NOT do a rewrite of Windows in this period. In fact, I’d argue that a significant rewrite of the OS is coming sooner than everyone thinks.

Simply put, it’s time. This codebase is essentially the same as was first debuted 13 years ago in Windows 95. Portions of it are probably not far off from parts of Windows 3.1 either…. that is an eternity in technology.

Scoble seems to suggest a significant change to the Microsoft OS platform is all but impossible before 2020, if not later. That just seems ridiculous on its face. As it stands now, Windows is NOT built for today’s computer usage. Internet as it is now did not exist — when this codebase was first built the ‘net was not much more than an afterthought.

Maybe Robert would like to explain to his readers why Eric Rudder is heading this up? He’s not a researcher. Or maybe he would like to explain why Microsoft PR is in an absolute panic over the story’s release.

I can confirm Wilcox’s reporting as correct, although I can’t say much more. But to completely discount this story is at Scoble’s, and other’s, peril. I don’t think Dave is far off from what we know.

Bill Gates will not hamstring his baby. If you think that, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn I’ll sell you. He will acquiesce if it means Microsoft’s survival and maintance of its dominance in the industry.

As the song goes, “there is something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.”

http://furrier.org/2008/07/30/microsoft-showing-some-sizzle-future-microsoft-os-not-windows/

Update: In one of those ironic little twists, John Furrier, who was Scoble’s former boss, says “This story tickles the old software engineer side of me … I love this post.”