As the outline of an approach came in, it became clear that putting together a deep technical and business relationship independently of resolving the legal issues that were pending was not likely to succeed. You've got to have the emotional energy to do a deep technical and business deal; you've got to put a lot of work into it. And if you've got something else out there, it's hard to align all those different sorts of energies.
When you were doing Harmony, were you originally thinking that it might lead to a resolution on the legal side as well?
We thought that Harmony was a good thing to do, and we did it because
it was better for customers. And then having done it, it became a
vehicle for engaging in conversations with Microsoft about
compatibility and interoperability.
We didn't create it as a stalking horse, we created it because we thought it had merits for customers. But having created it, I think it showed a level of technical rigor and strategic commitment on our part to interoperability, so it probably helped establish a basis for technical collaboration between the two companies.
But then you also had to ask, in addition to the technical collaboration, can you reach common ground on economics? After all, we were settling a legal action that had value to it. And then can you reach agreement on a marketing approach. So in order to get something like this to come together, you needed to get three different rings to work together in harmony, so to speak. That it took a fair amount of time to do wasn't surprising, but it did in fact come together.
Over the last month we flipped the switch, and it went from something we thought we could do in theory to where we were convinced yes, this looks like something that's really going to happen.
So until the last month it was still theoretical, and things really got serious over the last month.
Literally, the deal got signed at midnight last night. It was probably...
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Talkback
I'm guessing someone didn't read the fine print.
17 Oct 05 23:19 ReplyBut that will show within a couple of years.
As things look now Harmony looks promising as an additional vehicle to get DRM pushed around and it seems Microsoft wants to invest in that.
Now why would a very rich company like Microsoft want to invest in pushing DRM? To make a small profit out of it perhaps? Or a much bigger profit based on proven internal business tactics like Windows and Office have shown?
Time will tell.