Slashdot Mirror
Will The DOJ Split Microsoft In Three?
cbull writes: "Yahoo! has an article that indicates the judge in the Microsoft case thinks splitting Microsoft into three companies is attractive to him. This is based on a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the
Computer and Communications Industry Association and Software and Information Industry Association."
And mfinke wrote: "Just saw the CNN article here about Judge Jackson's ruling that DOJ's proposal to split the company will still be considered when he rules. " Finally, mizhi pointed out this ZDNet coverage of the proceedings, saying "Basically, the government says that instead of splitting Microsoft into an operating system company and applications company, it should also split it into a third independent company for Internet Explorer."
It may never be possible, but I would just love it if Slashdot could get the Judge to answer questions in an "Ask the Judge anything" article. Come on, Taco, find a way to get him on.
Probably not until after his part of the trial ends, of course, lest he the interview induce something that the appeals court could use to throw out his work.
Only because they don't have a market share worth speaking of ! so nobody really minds.
- Apple refuse to ship their hardware with anything other than their own OS. How many other OSs are available for Macs?
- Sun bundle netscape and hotjava with their OS
- Sun gives away StarOffice for free in order to gain market share (sound familiar?)
- Sun uses its server market dominance to push Java and JINI down people's throats. (Recall how panicked they were when MS thereatened to take this away from them by making J++? )
This is only for starters.
For the record, I do not have a problem with these sort of tactics, it's just a part of business, and ultimately benificial to the consumer. It's unfortunate that it is illegal.
What I am saying is that all the companies do it; MS is only copping the flak at the moment because they are the largest.
According to the NY Times, the government seriously investigated a horizontal breakup, but could not find anyone who wanted to buy rights to Microsoft's code.
r ticles/30remedy.html
http:// partners.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/04/biztech/a
The proposal called for forcing Microsoft to auction the source code for the Windows operating system to other companies, which would develop and improve it, creating competition in the operating system business. [...]
But as the states quickly found out, there was one big problem. When they talked to the various companies that might be bidders in the Windows auction, they learned that none had any interest in bidding. The consensus was that the computer code was too complicated, and the price was likely to be too high.
Presumably, Oracle was one of the companies that wanted nothing to do with a horizontal split.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Hey, that's clever!
All this time I thought it was just for some entertainment when you were bored.
(mods +5, Insightful)
Here's a clue: Read my post, particularly the part about, oh, I dunno, differences between natural and artificial entities?
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Could have been a troll, but I've seen too many people expressing the very same thoughts here. Valid questions if you don't know much about what's gone on, which many people apparently don't. Might as well take the opportunity to inform some people.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I'm afraid I haven't got the experience to comment on Borland's stuff. Basically my boss has a "standardize on MS software" approach, which has its advantages and its disadvantages.
Regarding winsock; there is a fair amount of documentation in MSDN library that is just plain outright incorrect - does not work, e.g. there are docs for IP Multicast that tell you can "setsockopt(sock, IPPROTO_IP, IP_ADD_MEMBERSHIP, (char*)&mreq, sizeof(mreq))" when the mreq struct does not exist at all and that option isn't an option in "setsockopt".
There are hundreds of things like this in MS documentation. The DirectX docs are riddled with stuff like this. My sockets example was really just an arbitrary example. The WinCE docs that come with the toolkit tell you very explicitly that you can use standard C calls like "fopen" and "fprintf", and even the header files in the SDK refer to stuff like this. Yet they are not supported (they were supported in a later version, but the fact remains that the documentation does not reflect the SDK. There is also some MFC functionality for WinCE that is documented as supported, yet clearly isn't.
DX is exceptionally messy, yes. I don't know if there are wrappers on Borland, but our company has anyway now written our own wrappers (which include transparent OpenGL or DirectX support.)
MFC also has some socket abstraction classes; but I decided against them, since we may have to be portable with Unix/Linux sometime in the near future, plus I wanted to actually know and understand the stuff. It wasn't all that painful (compared to some other MS API's), but it was more painful than it could have been with better documentation.
1. Corel (Corel Linux)
2. Corel (Draw, etc. etc.)
3. Not yet...:)
4. Corel (owns Borland)
Why do you not complain about Corel? You can bet your bottom dollar that they will use their influence in one field to affect the others. It is likely that they bought Borland for the sole purpose of porting it to Linux and enhancing their Linux market share. Similarly, their Linux interest means a greater market share for their apps. And so on.
You can bet that Kylix will be for Corel Linux, and run with impairments (if at all) on other distros.
Wake up - this is called business.
I really don't see how breaking Windows into two versions will solve anything on the desktop front. You're thinking too short term. Imagine the Apps and OS are completely seperate... the Apps people will notice that there are all these OTHER OSs out there... soon Office 2000 begins appearing on the Mac (they're still on 98... which is just a port of 97), Linux, BeOS, Solaris, etc. And now that they're not bundled with every new computer, they have to drop their price to stay competative. The OS company now has a lot less leverage. (Many companies, including the one that I work, HATE windows, but are dependant on the Office file types for external document sharing). Hardware vendors suddenly realize that they don't want to have the only video card not supported in Linux/BeOS/whatever... Soon all the OSs are competing on a level playing field. Windows HAS to improve or just die off. We end up with better OSs and software. And we all have punch and pie.
More like they'll move to the Indian sub-continent, where they already have a programming staff in place; that way the relo costs are reduced....
"The Internet is made of cats."
And, it seems to me, that Microsoft has to be divided according to where the income is. Seems to be the best 3-way split would be as...
1. Windows 98 OS. Include the consumer level operating system stuff here. Put IE in this company.
2. Windows NT OS. Put all the backend stuff in this company.
3. Microsoft Office
This would result in some kind of OS competition, between the OS and 98 style operating systems. Also, all three of these groups would be viable companies. If Microsoft baby's still played weird monopoly games, the DOJ, could also divide it up again to even more companies later on, I guess.
http://junglevision.com -- Shamus for Gameboy
Argh. Just read the news on the Judge moving to break up Microsoft. This doesn't make sense to me at all! What makes sense to me is forcing Microsoft to open-source Windows.
If anything makes Bill Gates nervous, it's the prospect of open source software putting him out of business. There's a very good reason for that, and this move would drive at the heart of that matter. Think of how Microsoft brought upon the downfall of mighty IBM by helping to spawn the PC clone industry. We'd see exactly the same kind of clone industry springing up here around the Windows platform. That would be healthy for the entire industry. Plus, minimal government oversight and intervention required.
Microsoft says they don't have a monopoly with Windows and they should be allowed to innovate. Fine. Then this shouldn't affect them at all. Consumers would still buy the Microsoft version because it's superior, right? In other words, if Windows weren't worth "monopoly value" to them, then they shouldn't care much. But it would benefit the rest of the industry by opening up the de facto platform standard and giving Microsoft real competition in the form of Windows clones. However, if Windows is of "monopoly value," well, then that's exactly the kind of remedy needed. Fight fire with fire: that's the only game they know how to play.
-jrc
Whatever. Look, MS may have "established" themselves in the hardware arena through leveraging OEM relationships, or they may not have. As a consumer, I don't know.
Yeah, the sheeple don't know much of anything. That's why Microsoft gets away with all this crap for so long. I don't give a damn how good their hardware is. They should NOT be able to force it on the OEMs, which is exactly what they are doing, with hardware and software both. They've been doing this crap for nearly 10 years. Microsoft has way too much power over the OEMs for the market to be fair. With that kind of control, the OEMs can't ship a better product, even if some peripheral company makes one available to them, without charging the customer a hefty premium for that product, which makes it very difficult for that peripheral company to compete with Microsoft. Thus the market is tilted heavily in Microsoft's favor. That's not a healthy market.
The difference here is that Microsoft actaully does research into usability and ergonomics. Their products are the results of billions of dollars of said research.
Ahh.. ok, now I see exactly why we should let them force the competition out of the market by leveraging their monopoly to strongarm the OEMs. It's all perfectly clear now. Yeah right. What difference does it make how much money they spend on researching stuff? Why should that give them the right to illegally stifle competition?
Also, regardless of what is shipped with a new computer due to OEM relationships with ANY company, the user is empowered to change anything they want.
Yeah, you're right. We should just give our money to Microsoft for crap we don't want like good little sheeple. Then we can go out and buy the stuff we really wanted in the first place. I don't see any problem with that. Anyone else have a problem with that?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Is the government prepared to compensate Microsoft's shareholders for the devaluation?
No, why the hell should it? As the Metallica fans are always saying, they broke the law. Why should shareholders be rewarded for paying money to fund a lawbreaking corporation? If Michael Milken goes to jail, do his investors get compensated for losing money by investing in crime?
Those first two are some of Microsoft's best technologies... the last one is pretty debatable.
You're making some assumptions here that aren't necessarily warranted:
1. That there is communication between the Mac Office and Windows Office teams. I had friends who worked in both, and from what they've told me, there isn't any to speak of.
2. That there is shared code between the Windows Office and Mac Office groups. Again, from what I understand that isn't the case. They have shared features, yes, they can read each other's files, yes, but the underlying code is quite different. It has to be -- the architecture of the two systems they run on (hardware and software) is very different.
There is, however, a great deal of communication and code-sharing between the Mac Internet and Mac Office groups. In my opinion, splitting that up would be more detrimental to their products than dividing them up along product lines.
That is what I mean by "it would make sense." You are right in saying that the Mac applications will be more profitable for whichever entity ends up with them than they are for Microsoft as it's currently constituted.
I also happen to believe that Mac users, who rate plenty high on the fanaticism scale, would be more willing to buy from Mac-centric companies than from companies for whom the Mac is just a small division of some other small division. I don't have any hard figures to back that up -- just a gut feeling from having spent a great deal of time in the Mac community. Perhaps it's the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field at work.
--
Someone you trust is one of us.
I'll stick with my Happy Hacker keyboard. When was the last time you used Caps Lock or the num pad or page/ up page down/home/ end etc
Good point. I won't actually call it "a joy" but it is easy enough to use and the doc is quity good (much better than the usual UNIX API doc at least). I would think that "opening" the Windows API makes no sense, it is already open, the core API at least. What is not so well documented is the COM API provided by IE, Office etc., _that_ should be opened. The interaction between OS and IE/Explorer etc. is unclear to say at least and should be revealed but the OS API is ok.
First off, Microsoft is hurting me personally because the Microsoft monopoly software is more expensive than it should be. This makes everything I buy more expensive. Modern economics: everything affects everything else.
Secondly, let me point out that the meaning of a corporation is that its stockholders are (up to a point) not legally liable for what the Corporation does. That liability protection is incredibly important; Paul Allen would probably rather we take away his company's copyrights than take away his liability protection. But when you are acting through such a protective entity, you *don't* have human levels of freedom. It's a trade-off; you don't have to take it, but if you want to be absolved of much legal responsibility, you can. The Microsoft founders did, and shouldn't pretend that they're still entitled to do whatever they want. With respect to their company, they have *given up* their natural rights.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
So someone still needs to monitor all the communication between the companies? For how long?
This all seems completely unworkable and hopelessly naive (not unlike most government decision making where technology is involved - sigh).
Why not just take away Bill's billions (maybe pay off some 3rd world debt), fire all the employees and sell Office and Windows to the highest bidder.
N.
http://partners.nytimes.com/ etc. (article has since moved)
The new and supposedly brilliant URL is
http://partners.nytimes.com
Now, since you are so wise, you want to explain why that's an improvement? Cripes, indeed.
--
I think you have good ideas but lack a bit of COM experience.
an ActiveX control is a COM object with a few visual properties, but these days the terms are used interchangeably. COM is designed to encourage developers to docuement their interface, altho it's not compulsory of course.
Most of the documentation for COM is VC++ specific, but it is possible to do it in other environments. I have figured out (eventually) how BCB does it, and I use that.
I'm not too up on how well IE's interface is documented, so I won't comment further. I don't think it has to be a requirement of a documented OS that its components are replaceable though.
Otherwise we might see all sorts of Windows distros.
You might as well program in OpenGL. It's WAY easier than DX, and it will run better if your video card is GL-optimised, as most are these days.
On Windows, software OpenGL runs over DirectX anyway, but is about 10% slower.
(Well, due to an old report -- don't know if the speed difference has changed now).
Patents are intellectual property, and the government has to pay whoever owns it if they take it away.
You are confusing intellectual property with real property. Patents and copyright are government granted licenses. They don't exist unless the government grants them. Like with any license, what the government can grant, the government can deny. The government grants licenses for people to extract ores from government property. The government can and does revoke those licenses (for cause). Governments license drivers, the courts routinely revoke drivers licenses for even minor transgressions.
Copyright and patent are monopolies granted and guaranteed by federal law. A federal court *clearly and certainly* has authority to to strip these monopolies or to declare them void. Courts invalidate patents all of the time.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
Corel does not have monopoly power. Leveraging is only illegal if the product that is leveraged is a monopoly product. Since Corel is nowhere near being a monopoly, there is no foul.
Additionally, Corel Linux is just one distribution, and it is basically compatible with the other distros. Hard to leverage that.
There's also the issue that most of Corel's products only run on Windows, although this is likely to change.
If Corel does eventually become a monopoly, then yes, they should face the consequences of abusing that monopoly, just as Microsoft should.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
1) A second trial on the SAME matter as a previous trial (namely IE integration in windows) is held by the SAME judge as that previous trial. The previous trial is overruled in higher courts, making the judge of this trial loosing his own verdict... -> personal anger and ground for bias.
2) Just 1 single person will decide what to do with a 500BILLION$ company, a company that produces products which make numerous other companies live and make money, a sum far far larger than what most countries on earth are spending each year. Oddly, this judge has lost the same trial to a supreme court already earlier on. A biased, single person will now decide how this all will end.
Personally, if you don't understand WTF this trial is all about, just reading the 2 points above makes you wonder why just 1 single person is able to judge about this company PLUS why is this SAME judge doing this trial and not another judge (because of possible bias). The judge is biased, or CAN be biased, because of previous experiences with the company involved.
Judges are also humans and not machines. True, a true true professional won't be having hard feelings about a previous lost trial, but this is very rare to happen. My parents in law are both a judge here in The Netherlands and they said to me it's totally not possible to exclude even the slighest bit of personal opinion in verdicts, no matter how hard you try....
At least 3 judges on this massive case would have been reasonable. It's not Johnny's Cookiestore, which is at stake here. (Sorry, anti-M$ fanatics: real life facts are real life facts, the money in your pocket could be at stake too, even if you think you earn every dime with just NON-MS products. Think about it)
--
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
no sig
Courts won't take them away without prior art / security classification. Supreme Court precedents and such. Xerox lost its lawsuit vs M$. Therefore the patents are Microsoft's and the US would have to reimburse them in order to release those patents into the public domain. I'm not making this up. Unfortunately I also can't seem to find the precedent. I read it in PolySci 102, and it's tough to hyperlink backwards in time.
At this rate it'd probably be faster for me to search the
-jpowers
-jpowers
1. OS (DOS, Windows operating environment, NT)
This corporation gets Bill Gates' ego, and his stroke video collection, as well as his white persian cat and monocle.
2. Applications (Office, Games, Wordpad, Solitaire and other apps that are now included in the Windows operating environment)
This company gets the Jolt cola supplies. It also gets all the paperclips, and all the unsold copies of Microsoft Bob.
3. Media (MSNBC, MSN (including Hotmail), MicrosoftPress)
This one gets Steve Ballmer's teeth.
Good post - and well written
Actually, I don't believe the purpose of pushing and then giving IE away was to win the "browser wars". From my understanding, MS felt threatened by Netscapes proclamations of being able to replace the desktop completely and IE was MS's response to the threat to Windows itself. I doubt MS would have cared unless it believed it was a threat to Windows or it was an application area with a lot of money to make.
Maybe I'm naive but I believe both MS and Netscape try to stick as closely to the W3C standards as closely as possible - except when they see this "really cool feature" they can implement which will make their browser better than the competitors - I don't blame either for doing that - it's a good thing in the interests of technology and the best way for it to advance - it would take just too long to wait for a standard to be approved by the W3C
Mmmm.. Donuts
That was how they ended up making most of their money, but not the original business plan. It was free to promote sales of their server software.
Opera sells their browser because it adds a feature - speed. IE and Netscape have been locked in a battle of one-upsmanship for years. One adds a cool feature, the other mimics it and adds something else. Iterate. IE has captured market share, but only because it is bundled and integrated into the shell. Neither browser is noticeably better than the other. Don't think for a minute that people wouldn't switch in droves to Netscape when faced with the prospect of paying money.
An IE-only company could make money perhaps by offering a different product. IE Lite, along the lines of Opera for example. Something - anything. But I never seen Microsoft innovate in such a way, and I wouldn't expect its ilk to..
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Good thing that code is finally available so you can start rolling your own... one with REAL news for REAL people with comments that matter.
Or better yet, dig us up some REAL stories so we can all get down and dirty for some serious comment-ating.
Microsoft is using its desktop monopoly to deadly effect to ensure that it controls the servers too
You are absolutely right, of course, but that's a seperate case, so it's probably a long way off, even if there's any willpower left after this is over.
Restructuring the company might help the situation -- currently it's probably the case that Windows 2000 subsidizes the BackOffice applicaitons, allowing them to do things like sell SQL Server at far lower price than other RDBMSes.
Also, Microsoft has the tendancy to try to tie their server applications to their Windows/Office monopolies, which usually means that the server product is braindamaged in some respects. (Case in point, the whole Windows DNA perversion of a real intranet infrastructure.) A smaller company might not be so arrogant and would be more accepting of open protocols.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
m15 on Win32 still won't run stably *for* *me* for more than about 10 minutes before crashing and burning (or rather just sucking mud). YMMV, of course.
--
Cheers
Cheers
Jon
[...]
Maybe they'll be forced to sell IE. Maybe they just do a public offereing. More likely, they'll start selling web server software to support their IE product
Netscape used to make its money from the server software. Which was why they used to do so much 'embrace and extend' on the HTML standard. Which is part of why their browser share collapsed (obviously there are other reasons including MS including IE with Windows, and NS4 being a buggy piece of...)
But surely the whole thrust of the likely judgement suggests that the browser company wouldn't be allowed to do server software for, what was it, ten years from the judgement? Otherwise you might as well let the OS company write apps and the apps company write an OS.
And it would also be interesting to see what the judge considers to be browser, and what he considers OS. After all, you could argue that by including TCP/IP in Windows, MS destroyed the market for products like Trumpet Winsock (thankfully).
TomV
Servers is the only arena in which Microsoft (as today) is really vulnerable. Linux (and other non-ms OS) are competing well on the servers, but except for a (admittedly large) couple of geeks, are not used on the desktop.
I do a great deal of development for MS backoffice platforms, IIS, SQL-server etc. The advantage of developing for a MS platform serving MS Clients from a MS desktop is scary.
That is why Back Office must be separated from the OS company just like the regular Office suite. No bundling of Word and IE with Windows 98, no bundling of IIS and SQL server with Win 2K.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
The fact is, many of ./ers [including me :-)] like the sound of their own voice more than anything else. All editors need to do is just give us excuses to post our version of THE ONLY AND COMPLETE TRUTH.
I guess I could always send a mail to myself, but it wouldn't be the same.
Ciao
----
FB
As much as I can't stand M$ soft products they do make a decent keyboard and mouse occasionally....
Funny and I thought Perl == Paid employment recently located
It's just a browser!
Here's an article about the subject in the NY Times.
IF M$ is made into several separate companies, there will be 3 monopolies instead of one. Only they will be untouchable because they've already been separated. It would be better to put restrictions on M$ instead of splitting it up.
You are such a stupid fuck with no clue what you are talking about
Do you feel better? It feels good to resort to explatives when you have nothing intelligent or creative to say doesn't it.
Why is everyone talking about throwing in development tools with applications? That's utterly ridiculous! VC++ belongs firmly in the OS company. There's no way an applications company should have control over the API for an operating system, which VC++ does. VC++ isn't a cross-platform dev tool, and I would never expect it to be. If the apps company wants to develop for other platforms, they'll use appropriate tools for it, or do their own x-plat tool.
If you're looking to approximate pi, then the last digit would be better off as a 3.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
MS broken an important law designed to protect people. Not punishing MS would be morally wrong, just like it would be morally wrong not to punish a murderer or rapist (no, I am not saying ms is a murderer or a rapist)
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
1 OS 2 Apps 3 FUD!
b0rk b0rk moose
Minesweeper's for left-click, right-click, and both-click.
Solitaire's for double-click and drag-and-drop
Win3.11 gained Hearts to teach about networking.
I suppose Active Directory needs something based on the old [3 cups and one walnut, watch carefully as I shuffle the cups, can you tell which cup the walnut's under now] game.
TomV
Sun: As much as Larry Ellison wishes it was, Sun is not a monopoly.
Huh? I think You're confusing Ellison with McNealy. Ellison is the CEO of Oracle, not Sun.
He has a damn nice boat. That's good enough for me.
...Larry will be touting that week's flavor of Network Computer...
Ever notice that Microsoft's "DNA" looks a heck of a lot like Oracle's "Network Computer Architecture" (NCA)? Except, everything is Windows-ized, of course...
on the right lines, but you just fell into the old US-centric trap again.
The internet is an international communications network, and there are no international public officials - there's no appropriate jurisdiction. One country, no matter how extensive its technical and economic leadership, enforcing open standards on the internet will not lead to a set-it-and-forget-it solution to keeping the internet open and free for anyone. I only post this because of your emphasis on the word all
TomV
Two points:
There are more communistic countries in the world than Russia.
Nobody lost the cold war, that's why we're still alive. Well maybe the people who lost their jobs and went to prison in the states, because they were called communists, maybe they lost in the cold war.
I will rant now:
I'm sick and tired of people who don't know dick about communism talk as if it was a bad thing. The philosophy was never flawed. In many countries the implementation left something to be desired which doesn't necesarilly mean the idea is bad. Get your narrowminded facts straight.
Eagles fly, but weasels don't get sucked into jet exhausts
I would PAY good MONEY for a decent graphic browser for the platforms I use, and providing the Internet Explorer sprog was not the one Satan kept control of, I would have no problems buying that. However, it's out of the question that I pay so much as one filthy penny to $ so long as Gates and his cohorts are in control. Principles are principles.
Adam:What kept you?.
Adam:What kept you?
God:Rome wasn't built in a day
Like anyone else, I like to get my kicks from time to time. If the courts stamp on mycrapsoft until they squeal, I'll go celebrating for a whole week! I don't really care what the bastards did to other companies, it's what they've done to ME with their piss poor products that has me screaming for vengeance.
Adam:What kept you?.
Adam:What kept you?
God:Rome wasn't built in a day
Richard Stallman's suggestions are good, but I would suggest that his or any other remedy imposed on Microsoft should also be imposed on all of the other software companies. Would it be fair to only impose these remedies on Microsoft?
*** On the Internet, no one knows you're using a VIC-20
Read the recommendation first, post later. The internet company would get IIS (nothing to sniff at), as well as MSN (direct competitor of AOL). These two cash cows, alone would allow the company to be very profitable.
That's just my point -- it would be horrible to have both content and presentation companies locked together.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Wouldn't it be a third Internet company? Including IE, MSN, etc?
I have a website. It's about Macs.
I think you mean, "This of course led to some really cool things (like tables) and some not-so-cool things (like blink, marquee, frames, and scripting, etc...)".
HTH, HAND.
Ok, lets see a show of hands...
Who owns Albanian pyramid scheme shares...?
I have no pity for those who are so eager to reap pretend profits off buying and selling the kind toiletpaper dealt with on NASDAQ.
If the 'hightech economy' cannot handle a single overvalued company being punished for criminal activities, maybe the 'hightech economy' _should_ go down the drain. It isnt exactly a surprise, and anyone who isnt either totally blinded by some rosy pretend reality IPO rush or totally mindbogglingly stupid saw the writing on the wall on this one years ago.
...except rendering Web pages...
--
Cheers
Cheers
Jon
Notepad can be uninstalled. Internet Explorer cannot. This is the problem.
I want to use Windows (for now), I also want to be able to choose the sole browser for my system. I can choose the sole text editor for my system.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Ah... but herein lies the rub. Once MS can no longer bundle OS/server/browser/etc. it would not be in their interests to make other's software incompatible with theirs. A server that only works with their browser means netscape/etc users will find those sites useless. Vice versa: a browser that is incompatible with everything else will be replaced with mozilla/whatever. Users aren't completely stupid - they want to use something that works with everything. Same goes with sys admins. The only reason MS is getting away with it now is due to their market dominace. A breakup will level things out (at least to a certain degree), and people will start using what works best with everything.
--
You're still using Windows?
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
-Possum Lodge Motto
What do you mean by "COM API" ?
IE is an ActiveX control, and your IE browser is the control with a few buttons and menus slapped onto it.
As with any COM object, you can query it for all available methods and properties -- and use them yourself. (For example, I made a browser in 5 minutes once by putting an IE control on a blank form, and adding an address bar.)
"The existence of C++ wrappers (MFC, VCL) makes it even easier for newbie programmers to break into GUI programming"
You have clearly either had a fairly limited amount of experience with MFC and/or Win32 and/or DirectX programming, or you have never really used any other API's for UI and gaming, or both.
If its a case of the former, give it a few more years. MFC is one of the most poorly designed hideous UI API messes ever to hit the earth.
If its a case of the latter, then perhaps you just don't know any better.
MFC helps if you write simple applications. Likewise, the documentation (for all of the above) *seems* OK - when you're writing simple applications.
I say give it a few more years experience - try to do some more advanced things with MFC. Write some multithreaded DirectX MFC applications. Throw a couple other API's like sockets and maybe some COM or DCOM stuff into the mix. I think then you may agree with me that MS documentation is up to shit. Its outdated, its incomplete, and in many many cases its just plain *wrong*.
Yes, they have lots of samples. But the samples seldom or never attempt to do anything vaguely non-standard. Try to create applications with dockable dialogs (arbitrary example here) (CDialogBar) and you'll probably give up. How many professional windows apps use these controls? Answer: none. Reason: They are incomplete, unflexible, broken, and don't integrate properly with the classwizard. How about trying to create a CToolBar with more than 256 colors on the bitmaps? (This is the 21st century. 16-color toolbars come rocketing straight out of 1992. MS is waay behind in interface stuff, and always has been.) MFC classes are incredibly unflexible. They only work well and work easily if you stick rigidly within the narrow confines of the limited viewpoint from which they were "designed". People I know who worked at MS on Visual Studio have even told me that when they pushed MFC 1 out the door they knew it was a fat balls-up, but once it was out they were stuck with it.
Try get hold of the WindowsCE toolkit and write some CE apps - ha - then you'll truly know the meaning of incomplete, inconsistent and just plain wrong documentation. Or try to write some networked applications with DCOM.
I've done Unix/Linux programming as well, and I've found the documentation to be far more complete and consistent than on Windows. Heck, I had to use the Linux sockets man pages recently just to figure out windows sockets programming, their sockets documentation is so vague and outdated, and their examples of how to do IP Multicast are completely wrong, just doesn't work.
Don't even get me started on DirectX.
At first I thought your comments were sarcastic, but I suspect perhaps you just haven't gone deep enough yet into the joys of programming with MS API's.
Two Symetrical OS Companies
Two Symetrical Applications Companies (including Internet applications such as IE & MSN, and including the hardware Microsoft markets)
I have a website. It's about Macs.
One problem. Microsoft doesn't have Coke machines. They have coolers full of free drinks.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Ok, now its ActiveX and not COM... :) What I meant is that the _meaning_ (of more complex components) is not really clear. Of course you can query all methods but the use of it is an other matter. As a matter of fact I once tried to write a scripting host (like IE is for example) but found the documentation _very_ lacking, finally I found a working example somewhere but it was very VC specific etc. While it is quite easy to add an ActiveX control somewhere this does not mean that is it clear how the interface of more complex components interact, especially if you intend to write you own. To make this clear: It is easy to use IE somewhere but it would be very difficult to write a compatible (!) IE replacement.
LOL
Actually, I do think that frames and scripting are pretty cool - they're just REALLY misused. (Frames that don't link out to the top level for outside-site links, or worse tries to hijack content -- I'm not even going to get into the evils of scripting, particularly ActiveScript (some of which are only now becoming apparent - ie: LUVbug, etc...)).
But just because these "features" are misused doesn't mean they're not cool. I tend to be anti-frames myself, but when used properly, they're not that bad. I get a bit peeved when someone overwrites the status bar with their corny message - but intelligently used mouseovers and DHTML forms that calculate order totals without a page reload (or sending any data back to the originating server) are wonderful.
Of course, without people abusing the technology, we won't see its flaws and limits very clearly - and there will be little in the way of progress, so even the misuse isn't that bad in that respect.
Still, there needs to be a balance of functionality with security - these loopholes in the code that allow scripts like LUVbug to occur are tough to justify or forgive.
It's easy under the circumstances to say that scripting is a "bad thing"(tm) because of this. It's like saying "guns are bad" because people can be shot by them, without taking into account the legitimate uses (hunting, protection, etc)
(Although [getting a bit off topic here] I'd love to see guns and artillery on the whole abandoned in favor of more personal means of combat - it's easy and takes very little skill to shoot someone - but to use a sword or axe effectively takes considerable skill, and is MUCH more personal - putting a greater emphasis on human life in general - I figure we'd have a lot less conflict if it meant going toe-to-toe with your enemy rather than just pressing a button or pulling a trigger.)
Or a science major taking a grammar test. ;-)
There's no such thing as Scotchtoberfest!
http://www.ccianet.org/amicus5-19-00.htm
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Interesting summary. Slashdot may have started out as summaries and links to stories of interest, but what Slashdot _is_ good at is provoking commentary. On dull days, they may have to stretch things a bit, but they do seem to pick up, with some sort of introduction, on anything that is actually significant. I'm not at all sure what the significance of Judge Jackson's pronouncement is, but I'm rather sure that it is significant. Things should get real interesting if IE is forces to survive on its own merits.
For myself, I use Slashdot as an indicator of "What's Happening", with the content in the comments. The summary is more along the lines of "Would I be interested in this (or the commentary provoked)". The deluge of comments is what makes Slashdot a "news site". Somehow I'm reminded of feeding time in the shark pool.
Parasitic, maybe, but realize that symbiosis is actually mutual parasitism. We are also parasitic in using Slashdot at the cost of one easily ignored ad.
I'd much rather see IE be part of Office, and split off the content side of MS all alone, so you can surf free...
They'll probably have to take other applications/ parts of the company with it. Maybe MSN or some other stuff to support it. That way you get:
1 Windows OS + LAN Stuff
2 Explorer + Web + WAN Stuff
3 Office + Development (VisualWhatever)
Anyone know what the friend-of-the-court brief looks like? Are they more detailed on what splits off with what?
-jpowers
-jpowers
I don't know if this is the right solution, but it does address the current problem: MS seems to be trying to leverage its desktop dominance into server dominance.
When I get in a programming mode
Compile and run
It is so much fun
"If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, what would you like it to be about?"
I suppose I may be overly vengeful but I do prefer the corporate death penalty.
Liquidate them. Hopefully this would get much more of their code in the hands of open source companies.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
The whole point of splitting the company rather than doing something else is that it's simple and won't require further government supervision. If Microsoft was only forced to release the code once, rather than make derivations open, then they'd change enough stuff in the next version that they could start pulling away from the pack. For that matter, is there enough comments for us to even be able to understand it? If Microsoft understood it, maybe they would fix all the bugs. :)
Personally, I think that splitting the company is better for Linux than opening up the code. Other than DirectX and the Wine project, most of the code is useless to us. But if the application company isn't tied to the OS company then we should expect to see Linux versions of Office and IE -- which would be the last step to widespread acceptance. (Who knows, maybe the new management would even review the Halloween memos and have a change of heart...)
The Openlaw Microsoft Case page has more of the filings.
-- Openlaw: Fighting for fair use and the public domain
It is not inconceviable that the internet services sections could go with IE. Think about it, there are lots of companies that have specific, special versions of IE for their ISP services (like RoadRunner). The custom programming is very likely not for free.
Wrong, you can do it yourself. Have a look at ieak.microsoft.com.
Seperating (most) applications would be easy; just get them a new office and send them on thier way with the developer tech support numbers. Instant company with no insider benefits.
Seperating IE and Windows is would not be so easy. Something like this could require a fundamental redesign of both IE and Windows which could take a significant amount of time and money before the seperation could even be attempted.
I just don't see a plan like this working from a software perspective. The two are now so closely tied that they're siamese twins. They don't work very well together, but they can still survive. Seperated, the vital organs have to be divided between the two, which could mean death for either on if a bad surgeon is performing the operation.
I'm sure it wouldn't take long for AOL/TW to buy up IE once it was created. Just in time for the next great american monopoly case. :-)
--www.mp3.com/kruhft--
If you can't tell the difference don't worry about it.
Which brings up another good question... since AOL owns Netscape.. why do they ship IE on all those free AOL disks? :)
With all those point and others I haven't thought of it would take years to resolve this and MS would be continuing on there way as they always have before. Then the source code that is released would be obsolete. Putting us right back where we are.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
I really shouldn't care what happens, but I really like their split keyboards and their new optical mice.. they are just so gosh darn cute ;)
seriously though, is hardware just going to be abandoned? or will it be put in the applications "devision"?
alex
OK, the various Baby Bill employees chat, and technology gets transferred under the table. Hard to control.
But money is another story.
Under this split, the IE company would have to find it's own money, not get financed by raising the price of the OS - which is possible due to the monopoly.
The point of the whole IE situation, if you think back, was to shut down Netscape, which was threatening to make Windows less relevant by providing an alternate platform for applications.
So MS developed IE, but the software didn't gain enough market share. So they gave it away. Still not good enough. So they changed the OS (which, you may recall, you pretty much had to pay for unless you bought a Mac or built your own computer) so that you had to have IE. At which point, %50 percent market share was guaranteed even if nobody ever used the software. And most people prefer not to have two different software packages that do exactly the same thing.
This enabled Microsoft to raise the price of Windows.
So yes, I like this idea. It directly addresses the problem.
Our secret is gamma-irradiated cow manure
Mitsubishi ad
We apologize for the inconvenience.
1) Everyone will. Because you won't be buying it from Joe Schmoe, but from companies like Dell or Gateway, or from places like Red Hat (when the PC maker outsources it's OS development)
2)It will happen... whenever a windows developer wants to know how it really works under the hood, or feels it is better to fix the OS then to make the code work around the OS.
3) Standards will form. MS may champion the standards, but they will have to comply with places like Gateway and Dell. If they try to hijack the standard they risk open rebellion from the PC makers. Customers will be hesitant to buy something they can get for free, so software that depends on non-open standards risk failure.
No arguement on 4)
W
And the Appeals court has the power to overrule Judge J.
Having IE in its own company is a stupid idea. The only result will be to kill IE - I don't see any good being done to anyone at all.
Mmmm.. Donuts
The friend of the court brief is here
None of the cited articles include the best item of all, which is that the Gates "make life hard for Palm" email was unsealed. A brief quote: "We really need to demonstrate to people like Nokia why our PDA will connect to Office in a better way than other PDAs even if that means changing how we do flexible schema in Outlook and how we tie some of our audio and video advanced work to only run on our PDAs..." What a dimwit to use the word "tie" *after* the trial...
Internet Explorer will be like so many of the 'new economy' companies. Their product is free which will hopefully give them a large market share after which they can charge money for it. IE does have an advantage though, they already have a huge marketshare. The name is also very well established.
Internet Explorer (the company) will probably be able to use their marketshare by including banners in their product. Another way for it to make money would be to sell some of their technology to other companies. Or sell customizable browser components. Yes, of course, Mozilla also offers that for free, but many people will still go for IE because of the name.
Of course this is all a pretty thin layer to build a company on. However, if IE's stock price is high enough they can start buying classic companies. My guess is that IE will try to buy a 'old economy' company as soon as possible.
Illiad at UserFriendly already had the best 3-way split:
Marketing
Legal
Finance
I don't know why the DOJ is complaining about the monopoly status of these parts though, as there are plenty of lawyers, accountants & PR flacks to go around. Still, a breakup in this fashion would let the rest of us ignore the other useless corporation entities (OS, Apps, and that networking stuff) that these guys prop up.
The Internet has no garbage collection
How about making each employee a separate company?
What ever happens, the IE division should not be split seperately from the other divisions. That would be bad news for everyone.
Think about it. If that precedent was set, then what would happen when Apple decided that using IE sucks, so they develop their own web browser and include it as the default standard web browser for Mac OS XI?
And what about BeOS? They've included a web browser from day one (or at least from the first version that worked on Intel).
-- Superlame http://catpro.dragonfire.net/joshua/
the sad thing is all three links (to Yahoo!, ZDNet, and CNN) consist of the exact same damn story VERBATIM...all three reputable news sources just copied and pasted the same little blurb from some other original source..probably AP News...
stupid.
Kawlyn provided a brief response that is a very short summation of part my oppinion, but I thought I'd add more.
There are at least two massive flaws with the idea that open-sourcing windows would be a useful way to break Microsoft's monopoly.
First off, there is the issue that Kawlyn mentioned: the cost of other companies diving into the Windows source code. It would be an enourmous expense for a company to get developers to the point where they could do anything useful to the source code. Buying programmers from Microsoft would likely be equally expensive. And Microsoft would definitely still have more than enough money to buy them back, leaving you behind ground zero. Getting the incoming capital to do this would be hard, in great part because of the second flaw.
The second major flaw is the marketing problem. Microsoft, for good reason and with a fair bit of truthfulness, can push the advertising angle that these other companies don't know Windows as well, and can't provide the level of support that Microsoft can. Other comapnies that try to do something useful to the Windows code base before they understand it fully are likely to introduce bugs, and so Microsoft can, for once, truthfully claim that their product is more stable and reliable than the competitor. The only market share that won't fall victim to this marketing is the part of the market that cares more about cost than quality. And Microsoft, given its enourmous coffers, can probably undersell any competing company that is still trying to pay its develoeprs to understand what the hell the source code is doing.
Open sourcing Windows might make it more stable in the long run, but unless the open sourcing was to a license that forbade commercial sale[1], it probably would have minimal effect on Microsoft's monopoly.
[1] The problem with this is that Microsoft could probably win an appeal against this because it would basically be forbidding them from doing business in that market sector. As much as Microsoft pisses me off, even I don't think that such a thing would be just, especially because of the precedent it might set.
However, I don't think that breaking up Microsoft will do a lot to reduce their monopoly. It will split the monopoly into pieces, but those pieces will probably retain their monopoly. Microsoft's applications already are geared to work well with Windows. Splitting up the company won't change that. It would make it easier for other companies to gain inroads, however. The government could make reasonable demands that would limit the amount of sharing of secret and/or undocumented APIs between the babysofts. The government could require that such APIs are made available to competitors.
Even with that, though there is the age old problem of our love of stagnation, despite its lethality. Companies and people alike don't like change, and for good reason. It takes significant time and resources to migrate from one version of a software package to another. Upgrading from one version to another can be painful too, but it usually isn't as painful as switching. Every sane company includes in new versions of their software the ability to import data from the old versions.
So, if a breakup of Microsoft is to break the software monopoly, at least for something as big as the office suite, the government would almost have to demand that the babysoft assigned to applications create worse software than it previously did!
So what is my solution? I don't have one. I haven't thought about it very hard, either, to be honest. It's a tricky problem, and it is likely that the only real solution is to stop the further expansion of the monopoly, provide some incentives for competition, and then let time do its thing. All things are impermanent. Microsoft, Linux, *BSD, BeOS, and even our current concept of an operating system or a piece of software will eventually be left behind.
-Matt
-Cheetah
Oh. Wait. That's what we've got already and are trying to get rid of. My bad.
So why hasn't anyone suggested tossing them into Mount Doom? :-)
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
"The Source will be with you... Always."
I disagree.. Netscape managed to stay solvent whilst still 'giving away' their browser. In the later days, they were only really making money from their portal business, right? What would make IE so different? Giving them MSN and MSNBC gives them the needed portal revenue, and not being mandatorily bundled to the OS would put them in a very competitive position if they did decide to charge for future revisions..
.sig: Now legally binding!
So all of the stuff MS gave us for free, we will now have to pay for? Thanks, U.S. Government!
Well, the judge has shown just how incompetent he is by thinking that IE should be it's own company. Clearly the judge has no clue the IE is a trivial application...little more than a user-interface really, that ought to be part of the operating system (largely replacing the traditional windows shell in this case). Microsoft didn't invent this concept of browser=windows-shell, that was Netscape's grand scheme.
Breaking up a software company is much different than breaking up a telephone company or oil-company too. Unlike the previous, there is no concept of territory to divide amoung. For the most part, all of Microsoft resides in one location...what are you going to do, have all the companies on the same campus? Make them waste 2/3 of their infrastructure over this? No, breaking up makes no sense at all, especially for the relatively minor violations they have done.
You could solve all these problem by requiring that Microsoft simply have published price schedules for all their products and an inability to discriminate on who they sell to.
How to make money? Simple, just charge the OS division for it since they can't remove it from the OS (as they have often stated) they will have to pay. It's not like the OS division would get to use IE's code for free.
i disagree that they should be anything different. IE is IE, or at least it should be, so InternetExplorer Inc should produce IE for Windows, Mac, Solaris, and HPUX (and IMHO Linux, BSD, BeOS, and everything else).
My reasoning is that adobe, for instance, supports the same product line over several platforms; they don't have some other company work on the ports.
An app is an app, regardless of platform.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
Yeah but -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- the main incentive to "open source" the code isn't so much to create an alternative operating system from the existing codebase as it is to allow developers to examine the current codebase and create better applications.
The alternative "Joe Shmoe" MS-OS would certainly be a possibility, and -- to be honest -- it would certainly provide some pretty interesting business possibilities for those wishing to throw some serious VC -- millions and millions of dollars, that is -- toward developing alternate flavors of Windows.
And no, this would be Joe Shmoe Windows -- it would be Corel Windows or RedHat Windows or whatever company has the VC to embark on the project. In this way (as I understand it) the open sourced Windows would actually assist in exploiting the very competition that Microsoft years ago sought to quash and annhilate.
Of course no one would buy Joe Shmoe Windows -- and why would they? -- but if an open-sourced Windows was backed by serious money, serious expertise, and serious customer support -- that would be an interesting concept.
Microsoft would of course have the home-court advantage, but -- and I know this well -- money buys time and talent. Serious money might not displace Microsoft's advantage for some time, but it would certainly force them to, er, innovate to keep that advantage until good (better?) talent catches up.
> ..and MSN makes money.
Ummm... maybe you should rephrase that as "MSN has revenue."
1) Who's going to buy MyWindows from Joe Schmoe down the street instead of getting it from Microsoft?
Good question. And history already provides the answer.
DR-DOS/Novell DOS was just as good as MS-DOS, but it never won more than a few points of market share. Future Windows clones would suffer the same fate, unless MICROS~1 were subject to the conduct restrictions that everyone is trying to avoid.
maybe it's just me, but I don't think this judge believes Bill when he says that IE and Windows are unseperable. I wonder if that Windows 2001 beta will be rewritten?
Hmm... then again, there could be years of appeals before Microsoft is even close to being broken up. It could be 2005 before Microsoft is forced to take any action, and by that time I don't think it will really matter what OS your run.
[ maur_at_technologist.com ] "For a sufficiently powerful message,
[ http://maur.litestep.com ] the medium is irrelevant."
When I get in a programming mode
Compile and run
It is so much fun
"If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, what would you like it to be about?"
Well, the artical stated that linux came up over 10,000,000 times in altavista. I don't see how comming up with less pages could be more acurite for a simple word search...
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I wonder if this would make Microsoft to even faster write Office for Linux and IE for Linux, as well as IIS for Linux... the last one of course is not a big deal of competition but the two first ones are dangerous things - how would they affect Linux on the server? And perhaps Microsoft could come out with something like mNome or msKDE as well....-out of IE/E combination .... any opinions on that ?
i agree that a horizontal split is the way to go. however, to assure that the baby bills actually do compete with each other, they would not be able to interact on particular levels. this would lead to windows (and other stuff, too) forking (imagine that!). then you'd have customers locked into a version on windows that wasn't compatible with the other 2 versions and there again the customer wouldn't really be able to switch from one to the other and again there would be no real competition.
'Cliche, cliche' SeBaDoh
illenium.net - ultimate sk8 shop online
Okay then, what would you suggest instead?
Seems to me that they're doing the best they can. If Microsoft's pieces collude, they'll get smacked. There isn't much else you can do...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Hey, I may be crazy, but I don't like the breakup. Sure M$ might be holding back innovation, but what right does the government have to tell them how they can do business. I know traditionaly monopolies are frowned upon, but I for one think the government should keep it's nose out of business. Microsoft in being successful earned the right to become a giant profitable corportation. If you don't like the way it does business, don't buy its products. I don't.
if they do break MS up into three companies, who is going to get EDLIN?
In 1994, after an investigation to determine whether Microsoft used anti-competitive business practices, the two sides agreed that Microsoft would make some changes in the way it did business. But a federal judge rejected their proposed agreement, saying it was too easy on Microsoft. Microsoft and the government together appealed to a higher court, which permitted their consent decree to take effect in 1995.
Two years later, the Justice Department alleged that Microsoft had violated the deal. The Justice Department won some aspects of its argument in court, but lost them on appeal. By that time, however, the government had decided that Microsoft had committed new violations of the law. In May, 1998, it brought the current case against Microsoft.
And now, this time with threatening a new round of punishment, which will get appealed time and again. Will anything actually happen? Or is this just posturing for the justice department buckling under the pressure of the lobbyists and special interest. Is it just tradewares exersising the press for free air time, or is it fun just to pick on the biggest kid on the block. Sooner or later someone's going to take a shot. This seems like it, but I really don't think any of this will have any measurable outcome in the long run one way or another.
I am still not sure why this is even being done. You can break M$ up as much as you like, but if the resulting smaller companies still work together then nothing was accomplished. The JD would have to make it illegal for the new baby Bills to communicate with each other or work together. How do you enforce that? After all, MicroSloth was ordered to stop certain practices years ago, and they did it anyway.
~ Just doing my part to piss off the religious right.
"1) Everyone will. Because you won't be buying it from Joe Schmoe, but from companies like Dell or Gateway, or from places like Red Hat (when the PC maker outsources it's OS development)"
I beg to differ. Compaq is not going to hire a mess of coders to re-write Windows in some herculean Mozilla-esque rewrite to produce a better product. It'll simply make it easier to change refrences to MS into Compaq and release the same buggy, crappy code over and over.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
Personally, I am more in favor of having microsoft broken into 3 divisions. OS, Desktop Apps, Server Apps. There is a lot of grey area in almost every proposal out there but the main problem won't be how they do it, but when.
Our court system is great if you want to have something delayed in an appeal process that can take several years. That means, microsoft will probably be realeasing Windows 2005 by the time the breakup actually takes place. Microsoft in the end, will still be the evil big brother, we will just feel better about ourselves for finally handing it to them, whenever that may be.
I think that the ultimate goal that needs to come out of this is better software. Why do I use Linux, because it does what I need for it to do and does it very well. Some people prefer *BSD, others windows. I'm not saying that I would ever go back to windows, but I am hoping that they will start making a better product so I can stop supporting thier bugs....ooops, I meant to say "features"
How does MS make money off of Notepad? Off of "dir"? Maybe they exist only to dominate the industry and text-editing and "dir" is part of that.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Correct me if I'm wrong but exactly what would the Internet Explorer company sell? All Microsoft does now is give it away free. There is literally no revenue coming in from IE or anything related to it (right?). If this judge thinks MS is going to be able to sell a browser, when there are hundreds available for free, I think he's sadly mistaken.
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
A modified GPL focusing on freedom as in "freedom to innovate" instead of "freedom of cost" should be the goal. See my letter to the Judge in this regard.
I agree that there are other alternatives that could be better for the software industry as a whole. Unfortunately, the courts will be more concerned with what MS has done wrong and how they should be punished and prevented from doing so again. Their primary concern probably won't be the overall welfare of the industry.
Looking at Stallman's article, he quickly writes off exactly what the US courts will be most concerned with. "The latter (breaking up MS) would mainly help others proprietary application developers compete, which would only offer users alternative ways to let go of their freedom." Sure those are alternate ways for users to buy into secrecy - but that's exactly what this trial is about, competition in a capitalist market. He then goes on to give alternative measures which would benefit FREE SOFTWARE - not what a court in the capitalistic USofA is likely to care much about.
This court case isn't about freedom to the US gov, even if advocates of free software wish it were.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
You know what to do with the HELLO. ...
Help create an open-source world
This seems to be the judge's way of saying anything he rules is a) going to be litigated for years and b) more than likely overturned by appeals courts anyway, so c) why not do something completely outrageous like put IE in a separate company even though it generates very little revenue on its own.
Richard Stallman has his own views on what should happen to Microsoft
Of course he does. Of course they extend to his vision of what software should be far more than any legal court in the US could ever consider. There is no legitimate way a court could direct a company to only use its patents in defense, for example.
The issue is quite simple. What do we do to M$ to prevent them from using their monopoly in ways that hurt consumers in order to hurt their competition more (and preserve their monopoly). Well, one thing they do is leverage their operating system monopoly to allow applications to become monopolies. Witness Office and IE. So, to prevent that, break them apart, and allow all application developers equal access to Windows, in whatever form that may be. Further, the OS company would not be allowed to develop consumer applications that have their own markets, like Office Suites, Database servers, Mail Servers. And, Internet Explorer, as it is the focus of the trial, would necessarily be split from Windows and belong to the application company.
A second tactic used by M$, demonstrated in this trial, is selective licensing to strengthen its monopoly (IBM paid more for Windows than anyone else because it didn't ship Windows on ALL its machines). In that case M$ is hurting the consumer in order to hurt IBM more. Therefore, no more selective licensing.
That ought to take care of it. It isn't rocket science. They need to stick closely to things demonstrated in the trial for this to be robust against appeal anyway.
Judge: "Microsoft will hereby be split into three parts, Mic, Ro and Soft."
Lawyers: "But Judge, that doesnt mean anything??"
Judge: "Silence are you will be in contempt of court!"
Everybody walks off confused, asking themselves what the heck just happened...
Slapping Microsoft for having a monopoly on the browser is about as relevant as punishing a company for having a monopoly on hood ornaments at a time when the state of the art is a Model A Ford.
The US is the laughing stock of the world. We took one of the most successful companies in the history of commerce to court, to punish them for being too successful.
The browser is irrelevant. By the time this case finishes the appeals process, and a final judgment is rendered, the irrelevance of this suit will be evident. Yet the damage will already have been done, and there will be no benefit to consumers, to the industry, to the economy, or to the US in general.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Each of those Baby Bills would certainly be able to compete WITH EACH OTHER. However, Corel Office would still not be able to compete with any office suite that was written by the same company that wrote the closed-source OS. This is the real problem, IMHO. If you split the company horizontally, then MS#1-office would still always be the best office suite for MS#1-windows, and so on with the other two (reasons below). You would have 3 companies each doing the same thing that one company is now.
I really don't think that this would solve the problem at all. If MS#3 decided to write their own antivirus software (which sends me into gales of laughter...), then eventually that would become the most widely-used antivirus software on MS#3-windows. Why? Because it would run faster (since they know all those secret APIs), know the OS inside+out from the start, and, most importantly, MS#3 could offer it bundled with MS#3-windows. If someone already has a product which is adequate, why go out and buy (or even download for free) another?
No, I am still firmly of the opinion that MS must be split into OS + Apps companies in order for true competition to begin.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
---
Is anyone else afraid that splitting MS up would results in three smaller, more nimble, more competitive, and more aggressive companies?
---
Isn't that the whole idea?
They'd have to work for their success, instead of having it handed to them on a platter...
---
Large corporations move more slowly than smaller ones, and the last thing we need is a faster, deadlier MS
---
If they actually make products deserving of success, they'll get it. This isn't about punishing the entire company, but rather making it where innovation (the real kind - not the Microsoft kind) is fostered. As much as I'd like to see MS spanked, forcing them to actually make decent products and letting others swallow them up if they don't is far more fulfilling in the long run...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
IE is available on non-M$ platforms. The Mac (ug) and Unix. Check out this M$ page: http://www.microsoft.com/unix/ie/defau lt.asp. Only Solaris and HP-UX, though. No linux yet.
Since when does a justified opinion in a Slashdot comment warrant a "Troll" classification.
Microsoft is a large organization. With lots of money that it has obtained illegally from its customers, namely a good portion of America. There are many ways to inflict a penalty, with fines being the simplest (but not the best). Have them pay back for the damages they have done. Just because they are not an "individual" doesn't mean that they cannot make amends for their wrongs of the past.
Damn, now I've just posted another "Troll" post.
Bob Cringely has on several occasions described the remedy that would satisfy Stallman's "#1" and perhaps be more damaging in the longer picture...to MS at least.
He believes the only group (the group most ignored by the prosecution and the judge so far) to be split off should be the languages and libraries group. Basically, if Windows (and therefore Internet Explorer) lost the "secretness" of its APIs (including file formats since they're all shared within ms applications), the market would quickly get more competitive.
Cringely actually thinks the COMPILERS should be split off.
But, as you point out, that was not covered in the trial. Thus, it will be regarded as irrelevant to all in the trial.
Besides, not having compiler control would severely limit their ability to make an operating system in the first place. Can you see it ?? The OS becomes nice and robust, and WHOOPS - the compiler company changes the compiler on them. The shakeout in bugs would be 10 times worse than it already is.
The judge needs to stick very close to things covered in the trial for this to actually happen. And he knows that.
there's the appeals, and THEN a possible sea change in DC politics to a more corp. friendly 'hands off business' environment next Jan. So don't hold your breath.
But then, as we used to say, "The bigger they are the harder they fall".
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
The apps monopoly will quickly find its monopoly power fading away unless they make their products better and more compatible.
Better than and more compatible with what? The popularity of Office did at least as much good for Windows market share as the other way around. Office will only be endangered when someone comes up with a good alternative, and so far I don't see one. People are reluctant to change document formats.
Besides, I think it's far from clear that there is superior technology out there just waiting to take down MS's apps. With the exception of some of their mediocre server products, (IIS comes to mind) most of their apps are relatively popular and relatively well made. Many of them are sold separately from Windoze and there isn't any clear "monopoly advantage" to them.
So the apps company will probably continue to do what MS has done all along: produce products their customers want. I fail to see how splitting them up will make them do that any faster or better.
So that everyone can get a piece of the PI.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I agree with you on this. There is no logical reason to make IE it's own company.
I do, however, side with MS on IE being part of the OS. Let's say you boot Win98 for the first time. You now want to go get the latest and greatest version of Netscape. How does the average user go about doing this? Granted you can ftp from a command line. But your average user won't know about that. You have to have a browser of some sort bundled within the OS. I'm not disputing that MS went after Netscape with both guns blazing, that was wrong of them and they should be punished in some way. The breakup into two companies would suffice. Three is a bit to much. IE is a good product, I just don't think it could make it on it's own.
Wouldn't it be odd to see IE for *NIX? I always said I'd pay to have IE 5.x on my Linux boxen, but I never thought it would happen.
> It doesn't. They're hoping to get bought out.
They sell download counts to radio, MTV and even record companies for marketing purposes.
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
Netscape decided to make Navigator free long ago so they could "push" people to their "Netcenter" or whatever its called portal, as well as trying to get people to use the "Shop" button on their browser.
I was under the impression that Netscape "decided" to make Navigator free because Microsoft had started including the cost of IE in Windows, thus pulling the market out from under Netscape.
So, the message to Microsoft would be, "You destroyed this market, now compete in it!"
Given that Netscape is about to release a product that could, once again, compete with Microsoft's, it would be nice to know that the market might be restored by forcing IE to be removed from (or licensed to?) Windows.
Unfortunately, IE isn't free. Unless you own a Mac (and 95% of us don't), you can't run IE unless you own Windows. The fact that you can download it separately doesn't change anything.
And that's not even counting the intangible costs associated with the scuttling of Netscape and the rest of the web-browser industry.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
That's still better than having one megamart controlling the majority.
No. Better to revoke their corporate charter so we can all sue Bill Gates directly every time Outlook-spawned viruses take down our mail servers.
-jpowers
-jpowers
Which might not be a bad thing; I very much dislike the idea of pay-per-use software.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Alternatively we could force them to sell off Visual Basic to someone else and require them to develop and market "Visual APL".
Imagine Microsoft Excel 2002, with an integrated APL compiler built in! It'll sell like hotcakes!
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Just leave them alone. Haven't they suffered enough already??? I mean poor ole BG is down to his last $50 billion...
No they won't. That's the whole point of breaking up a company -- breaking up assets and code and giving them to one of the new companies. The Baby Bills will be fighting over which company gets to keep what.
The government would never allow that to happen. They'd get dragged back into court the second the even thought about it.
Seriously though, what exactly will it do? Microsoft's employees, from what I understand of it, talk to each other -- the OS team, the IE team, and the Office team -- so that they can interweave their applications together. What's going to stop them from doing it after the breakup?
Does this
Let the MS Internet Company license (for fee) the browser to the MS OS company and the MS Apps company. The MSOS company can distribute it, and MSApps could integrate it, but they could decide to incorporate Mozilla instead...
Seriously, what if the judge splits them into three companies - OS, Apps, IE/Net - and the European Union decides to split them in four - 2 OS, Apps, IE/Net. The latter to give both OS splits a full set of the Win APIs and encourage real competition.
Nothing says the EU has to do what the US does.
[Note: yes, I've got MSFT shares, as well as RHAT - so I'm on both sides here]
Will in Seattle
An OS, IMHO, is the bare minimum set of programs you need for a human to interact with the hardware in a meaningful manner. Unfortunatly, it is a question very much like 'What is pornography?'. the only answer is 'I'll know it when I see it'.
.ini files.
In Unixy terms, this would be a bootloader, the kernel, perhaps init, and a shell. Of course, there may be req'd libraries included in the bunch as well.
In Windows =95(+NT), the OS basically consists of everything up to the 'logon prompt' when loaded in 'Safe Mode' (for 95/98) or a fresh install (for NT), with the exception of user applications that may have been preemptivly loaded in Startup, via a regestry run_once, or through the
.sig: Now legally binding!
Minor stake holders will just have their shares divided into shares for each company. Major stake holders like Gates will be forced out of all but one company. Of course the means of doing so without collapsing the price is questionable. The way I see it is that the minor holders will get a good return but Gates and company will lose quite a bit since the stock will likely be depressed in value when he has to sell.
How would it make any money? It would make sense to spin off there entire online-services companies, the whole of MSN along with IE. I could see that.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
How did Netscape make money? (I mean, before it was bought by AOL)
It sold its server products. The browser never made a majority of the money, even when they charged for it. So IIS and the rest would have to come over with part #3, and of course they'll have to start charging for IIS and MSIE.
Now there's a big win for the customer! A company that has to now charge for something that was free. I know it's a /. wet dream, but the point here is to punish/prevent, not to destroy the company.
How does/will Napster make money?
It doesn't. They're hoping to get bought out.
Eric
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
I agree wholeheartedly that they should split MS into at LEAST three companies, but does anyone else think that IE wouldn't make a valid company?
They'd probably split up all of Microsoft's Internet stuff into a seperate company. So Internet Explorer would get split off together with MSN and various MS shopping websites -- sort of like a mini-AO. Complete with its own Mozilla?
Does this
Netscape is/was also selling a Web- and a Mailserver for Windows NT
How Napster is making money is a good question. They have no Ads on their website and there is no advertising in Napster itself.
Either they sell some other software too or they make much money selling Metallica-Bootlegs.
But back on topic: I think the same Baby-MS that "sells" IE will also be selling IIS. This is just an educated guess.
OTOH, IE is only free for non-commercial use. AOL and other redistributors of IE still have to pay licensing fees.
--- If OS were buildings, then the first woodpecker to come around would erase 95 % of civilization.
OKay... It could get kind of tricky... How about having them set up a CVS server in the DOJ's office? Mandate all the 3 companies to have unfettered access to one anothers Windows source code? Or, they could DOCUMENT all thier API's so that developers could keep up with the changes. At the same time, the other Microsofts could presumably sign on as developers and find out about changes that were being made, so that they could stay compatible with the crowd!!!
I don't think that any of the companies would dare market a 90% compatible windows implentation. In the past the market has proven it only wants 100% compatible anything. 90% compatible IBM clones... remember those? They didn't last too long, did they? The answer to all of this is that they *should* document their OS for developers...
Okay... so maybe a little oversight is needed... but not as much as the DOJ wants to impose.
MSK
Since the whole point of the DOJ case revolved (originally, before it turned into a general purpose fishing expedition) around saving poor Netscape from big mean Microsoft, why don't we just give the whole internet (or, to limit things, just the entire WWW infrastructure) away to Netscape. After all, it's been fairly well established that Netscape produced the only Browser anybody takes seriously except IE.
If Microsoft hadn't come out with IE, Netscape would OWN the Web. That was what Marc Andreesen intended when he stole the Mosaic project, ran west with it and closed the source.
Just give Netscape the entire Worldwide Web, as is being demanded, and close the whole matter.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Bob Cringely has on several occasions described the remedy that would satisfy Stallman's "#1" and perhaps be more damaging in the longer picture...to MS at least.
He believes the only group (the group most ignored by the prosecution and the judge so far) to be split off should be the languages and libraries group. Basically, if Windows (and therefore Internet Explorer) lost the "secretness" of its APIs (including file formats since they're all shared within ms applications), the market would quickly get more competitive.
Not sure I believe him, but its raising a point that most have forgotten. MS is still a languages company. Languages aren't "applications" in the same way that Office products are.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
The proposal isn't to make two companies, one selling left shoes and the other right shoes, its to make two companies, one selling shoes, the other selling socks!
That would obviously raise the price of the socks (since it was earlier bundled with the shoes), and will allow other socks manufacturers in the game... that was the issue in the example right? Extending monopoly in one market into another?
In Microsoft's case, if these two/three companies need to stand on their own, they will realize the STUPIDITY of the EEE approach used MS.
In any case, where will the server products go? especially IIS and MSSQL?
BTW, I must say that the ONLY good product put out my MS EVER (except DOS when it came out) is MS SQL 7.0 - what simplicity & power for that price!
AOL is not a browser, and it uses IE too.
How did you manage? Did you BUY Netscpae in a store? That's what I used to have to do. ISPs couldn't LEGALLY give you a browser that you had to pay $50 for in the store. Now, with people downloading browsers for FREE makes spending $50 in a store very foolish. You need SOMETHING to go get the current version of whatever you want. Choice is the issue here, not if your OS comes with a browser. When MS forced vendors to bundle IE and then support it they crossed the line.
1) Operating System
2) Back Office/server applications
3) Office/buisness desktop applications
4) Development tools
5) Internet properties (MSN, Hotmail, etc.)
6) Internet Explorer, hardware, and home software (Works, Encarta, games, etc.)
Steven E. Ehrbar
Wow, amazingly this doesn't seem completely unreasonable. I think Stallman's plan would really help both the open source, and closed source communities.
Does anyone have an example of where Microsoft abused one of their software patents?
-------- "All I want in life's a little bit of love to take the pain away" --Spiritualized
make the split work in a way that's consistent with the way the rest of the computer industry works
OK. "Here's my arbitrary definition of an OS. Here's my arbitrary definition of an app. No companies in the industry which abuse monopolistic market share may sell an OS and an app.""
Do Corel, Sun, or Apple abuse monopolistic market share? No, so the above decision would not apply to them. There's your consistency.
If Linux gets more popular, nothing can stop the Office company from making Office for Linux.
Except that so far, the set of people who use Linux and the set of people who use Office are practically disjoint. Linux is simply not a consumer OS, and is not suitable for use by the types of people most likely to use Office.
The IE company would be more vulnerable to pressure to conform to W3C standards.
How do you figure? Netscape didn't.
Hopefully the better programmers will be in the Office Suite section, after all, once IE and Office start getting moved to other OSes, the DOS extender versions of Windows won't have much of a long term future, even that of what was planned for them by Microsoft themselves...
~ ~~~
Or am I just dreaming thinking that I could see Word and Excel on other OSes apart from Windows and MacOS? That is the reason so many people stick to Windows isn't it?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
They could make it a company that survives by selling it's product to Microsoft's OS division. Hell, they might just lease office space from and pay money to Microsoft's Application division for outsourcing services to have their programmers work on the product.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Why should we assign any merit to an idea promoted by a man who can't even apply his own analogy accurately? To properly represent the DOJ proposal, the government of Bedrock would order the shoe company divided into a shoe company and a sock company, not brown shoe and black shoe companies.
Oy Carumba! That's so obvious.
I still like Stallman's idea of forcing MS to open their file formats and interface protocols.
I can see the fnords!
Of course you realize that now is the time to buy stock in Microsoft. This will give you the opportunity to own stock in three future software companies. I truly believe that, separated, the various components won't be tied to the same "rules of engagement" and we'll start to see applications ported to other platforms and might even see an improvement in the quailty. In the short term they'll still carry the old loyalties. In the long term, each company will start to diverge from the old ideals and we'll see some pretty cool stuff come out of them *finally*.
--
Quantum Linux Laboratories - Accelerating Business with Linux
* Education
* Integration
* Support
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
Bummer tagged as a troll, I didn't read you comment that way. I also read the Stallman piece and didn't get the impression he was all full of hugs and good cheer. I think what he was trying to display was that there is a "middle ground" and to continue to eleveate technology for the common good, there really isn't room for a flame war just to allow people to beat up M$ just to vent frustration. Not just towards Microsoft in general but also flaming the government etc. I didn't think your post was a troll, hope meta fixes it.
You're right. Even if you don't like (or use) IE, it has kept Netscape/Mozilla fighting to maintain it's place in the browser market. Without IE, Netscape wouldn't have any serious competition and wouldn't have the motivation to innovate. How many features in the current version of Communicator are there because Microsoft had similiar things in it's browser? How many are there because they wanted to do them before MS did?
kwsNI
Bill and other major shareholders (steering) will be forced to place all their stock into one company (of each's individual choice) while regular shareholders will have their stock split equally between the companies.
-Adam
The paperless office will come right after the paperless toilet.
- clear message sent to microsoft, and a clear precedent set for future microsofts
- we all get to see whether or not it works, so we can decide if we want to use it next time
- america, indeed the world, laughs in unison as bill gate's face slowly reddens to a deep maroon.
- it might actually be a positive outcome.
the thing is, nobody expects IE to suddenly become incompatible with windows... but anything that gives other browsers a helping hand is welcome, i say.grizzo: totally insecure, but very convenient.
What would happen if TimeWarnerAOLMegaCorp were to buy out the Internet Explorer company?
They'd have to get approval from the government for a merger like that since it would give them a monopoly on the browser market. And they wouldn't get it. As it is, the government still hasn't OK'd the merger with Time Warner because they are worried about letting one company have that kind of power.
Does this
Just because the internet is so much popular don't mean that IE is NOT an application.
On the other hand, they haven't integrated the whole Office thing into the OS...
The whole criteria to put what product into what company seems ambiguous to me. Setting IE apart means Netscape 'win' their claim, while the splitting up should be done to create equal competition, and MS has more competitors than only Netscape.
Bizar technology?
Could this perhaps create a fork in Windows development? Yes. Who cares? Buy the one that works for you. Or don't buy either one.
from using its unique position to leverage its monopolies, not to sate
our vindictiveness. Separating the OS from the applications
accomplishes this goal.
Remember being a monopoly is not the harm that antitrust law sets
out to correct. It is using that monopoly power in restraint of
competition. I'm in favour of the original DOJ submission (split MS
in two). I think the more drastic remedies would hurt current MS
consumers.
My mistake. The first brief was in reference to the "Conclusions of Law." This PDF file documents the SIAA's poistion on splitting microsft into three companies. The Internet Explorer company would probably encompass Expedia, MSN, Carpoint, and number of other "Content" businesses.
For exactly the reasons you mentioned, I already bought up a few hundred shares of MSFT in a few of my accounts. Only have to hold them for a year, which means I get the lower capital gains rate anyway.
...
Now if I can just convince the judge to route a fast appeal to the US Supreme Court, I can cash out and use the money for some of my OpenSource investments
Will in Seattle
Shut up brain or I'll stab you with a Q-Tip. - Homer Simpson
I can't help but think that Stallman wants to use the MS trial as a means to further his own agenda: the elimination of all commercial software.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
"dir" is a basic system tool to browse a filesystem (in this case FAT and/or its derivatives) - Admittedly with Windows' emphasis on GUI rather than CLI, it's deprecated (MS would probably prefer you use Explorer to browse the filesystem), but it's still an essential tool for basic use of the OS under a CLI interface (DOS).
So no problem there...it's a part of the OS - since you've paid for the OS, it's only natural that you get enough tools to effectively use it.
Notepad is a simple, no-frills text editor. It allows basic access to ascii text files, which are the de-facto standard for cross-system text data transfer (although HTML is making some inroads in this area, it's not quite there yet - and there are some other formats like RTF, etc... but none as ubiquitous as plain ascii text)
Again, this is a basic tool. Would you believe it if a user-targeted linux/*bsd distro shipped WITHOUT a text editor (vi, emacs, hell, even pico or nedit!)?
So again, this is a basic tool for effective use of the OS. No problems here - they're making $ off the OS. (Or more likely breaking even on the OS and making the big bucks with licencing fees to manufacturers and development tools to developers)
They originally released IE for free. Two reasons: One - they wanted to dominate the market by forcing Netscape out of business (pay $40 for theirs, or try ours for free!), and Two - they planned all along to add it to the OS once the market was theirs.
Splitting IE off to a company of its own isn't a smart idea - a product that is free doesn't make much money on its own - people aren't going to pay for IE - they're used to getting it for free. So there's no money to be made there.
Selling support is tricky business, and MS's support doesn't exactly have the best of reputations. In addition to this, if your only method of income is selling support, there is a real urge to release a buggy product, simply because it means more people will need support.
Selling documentation isn't going to help MS in the web browser market - the web browser should be (and in most cases is) implicitly easy to use. Click on a link. Press back to go back. etc... An argument could be made that this would give MS a new urge to break compatibility with existing standards to FORCE developers to buy their documentation - but again, without a standards-compliant browser, people aren't going to use it - so there'll be little demand.
In the even that IE is split off into a seperate entity, MS will have effectively shot itself in the foot. Sort of a "They made the browser free, now they've got to deal with the consequences." thing.
I'd expect one of two things to happen - either the IE html rendering engine to be made public (open-source), or the company that is IE to fold under its own weight. The former is probably not possible (this being MS), and the latter most likely in this instance.
Another thought while I'm rambling here - Since the IE html renderer is a DLL that can be used by (really) any app - is there a chance that during such a breakup that the library itself might be allocated to MS, while the application that is IE (which calls on the renderer) would go to the IE company and there die a quick, rather painless death, leaving us in about the same situation as if the OS company were to still have control of IE?
Just MHO - and a little food for thought.
As always, I can be, and sometimes am wrong.
I had forgotten about the HP-UX and Solaris versions. But the reason MS has IE on the macs is because they own part of Apple or something like that.
The problem with this (or the best part of it, depending on your point of view) is that Microsoft has made the browser WORTHLESS. By releasing IE for free, they forced Netscape to do the same. Just desserts for MS if they DO do this? Possibly - but it's tough to imagine a company that has no product that makes $$$ having the $$$ to pay it's workers to improve a product that costs nothing.
Stallman actually comes off quite sane here. I dare say I could sign on to all of what he says here. This is nothing like the "lets make all MS software Free" rhetoric I expected.
OK... Stallman and me on the same page. The world can END now.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Opening the MS Windows source code would be a great thing for Linux acceptance. I believe that one of the things (if not the most important thing) keeping Linux off the desktop market is the high cost of switching over to a whole new set of applications. It seems to me that if the complete Windows source code were published, then Wine (or another analogous project) could provide a seamless runtime environment for windows executables. If Linux could run all of the legacy Windows apps, then people wouldn't have to learn a new host of apps--they could continue to run their old ones. Of course this presents the problem of future apps, if (when) MS were to retool their code... but 1/2 a glass of water is better than no water at all. While I can't see how releasing the code is inherrently bad for Micros~1, it would certainly be a boon for Linux companies who are trying to maximize sales.
But instead of IE, they should have Applications, Business Operating Systems, and Consumer Operating Systems. This would put pressure on the NT group to open up certain internals (ala Microsoft's Kerberos 5 extensions) to everyone. If Millenium, 2000 Pro, and 2000 Server can't talk together, then they will HAVE to open the code so that they can get them speaking. And in the process, maybe we can actually get some competition started by allowing Linux and the other Un*x variables to get in on the act.
- No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades really cramps his style.
When I was a Win95/IE support tech for M$, we called it Internet Exploder. Some of the customers caught on to that, but most are bleeding morons. That's why MS dominates, because people are stupid and want to be force-fed anything.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Wouldn't it just be great if they did what Netscape did and go open source? Then the team of people who were brave enought to look at that bloated code could decide to throw all of it away and start over!
I don't, however, know what they should call themselves, IElla? NewIE? Any other suggestions?
Devil Ducky
Devil Ducky
MY peers would get out of jury duty.
When I get in a programming mode
Compile and run
It is so much fun
"If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, what would you like it to be about?"
The third company would have all of microsofts internet properties as well (MSN, blah blah). Does anyone here read source content?
Letting Microsoft loose the right to its IP. No need to force them to do anything. It seems to me that this would be the most cost-efficient way to solve the problem.
It just seems appropiate that if they abuse intellectual property rights, they should just loose them.
Then there would be Microsoft, essentially the Microsoft we know today, minus Windows - not seriously hurt, but now with an incentive to support Sun, Apple, Linux, etc. Microsoft would be free to develop applications for alternative operating systems, and no longer have an incentive to cripple their non-Windows ports.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
is, what happens to Microsoft's Macintosh products? MS doesn't currently produce an OS that will run on the Mac, but they do produce both Internet software (IE/OE) and Offfice for the Mac, both of which make the current MS a lot of money. And that's not to mention games or other consumer products (e.g. Encarta).
Seems to me like it would make sense to split the Mac group off into its own company, which would still make beaucoup bux, rather than try to split it up along lines of functionality (Mac IE goes with the Internet group, Mac Office goes with the Apps group).
The same question could apply to apps for other platforms, although taken as a whole they're a pretty minimal piece of the company. Or <insert theme="X-Files"> at least the ones we know about . . . </insert>
--
Someone you trust is one of us.
Ok, let's see a show of hands...
Who owns stock?
Keep 'em up if you own tech stock
If you're unlucky enough to own M$ stock, why don't you stand up
Now, all of you who have your hands up, prepare to lose big money if M$ breaks up. If you're standing...good luck to you!
Hutring M$ will hurt the economy. Yes, M$ needs to be punnished and have its monopoly taken away, but do not take out all your anger on it. yes, i dislike M$ and in an ideal world, M$ would not exist. However, that is not the world that we live in. This punnishment that M$ gets should be enough to scare it, but not enough to make it lame. For the current hi-tech economy to do well, M$ must exist. So, indirectly, hurting M$ is shooting yourself in the foot.
If MS was split up, all that would happen is they would each have a monopoly in their prospective field; or if they competed with each other, all the other Software devolopers would be cought in the crossfire, & end up collateral damage. What they should do (if the DOJ were 'fair dinkum') is make MS open up the Win32 APIs & the DierectX3D APIs. Plus MS should bw made to finance a multi-million dollar (or maybe billion dollar) trust fund, which will use the Win32 APIs & DirctX3D APIs to make a fully developed (post Beta) Wine portability layer for MacOSX, BeOS, & Linux, so that they could be fully compatible with Windows programs without emulation. Like the way OS/2 worked with DOS & W16 programs. Also that trust fund could be used to make Win32 compatible drivers for all the windows only hardware, so that all the avaliable peripherals out there would work just as easily with MacOSX, Linux & BEOS. With the ported Win32 & DirectX3D API's then Windows games would work in MacOS, BeOS & Linux systems, complete with hardware axceleration. Also MS should be made to port all their aplications to MacOS, BeOS & Linus in fully developed post beta form. Plus all their new apllications & aplication revisions should be avaliable in independently tested (by the trust) BeOS, Linux & MacOS versions before they are allowed to release the windows port. This may encourage MS to make future versions of Windows POXIS complient, to aid portability, which would make it easier for other developers to cross port their apps. Also the MS apps should be boxed up with all their ports together on the same CD (like the way Claris Works have both the Mac & Windows version on the same CD, & BeOS has both the X86 & PPC ports on the same CD), so stocking & sales don't become a hassle. Also MS hardware should be made to be compatible to Linux, BeOS, & Mac (in independent tests) before they are allowed to be sold, complete with all the drivers for the various OSes on the install CD.
If they split up M$ in 2 or 3 or whatever, each one can still monopolize thier particular segment since they have so much leverage - a huge installed base. Each company can still embrace, extend and do all the other nasty anti-competitive things they do now. The Internet wasn't meant for Microsoft, it was meant for _everyone_. So, lets break out the saws and the shackles together, people. Force them to only implement pure internet standard protocols in any of thier products, and if they do extend anything the specs have to be released with an unrestrictive license. Then, ingenuity will take over where innovation left off, and we'll see some competition.
IETF standards as Law - the next crusade.
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
NT Times?
:)
Probably right. I actually caught myself writing NT Times in the body too, but didn't notice the subject.
who knows, IBM might even bring back OS/2 for the occasion.
OS/2 is dead (officially, again)
http://thebusiness.vnunet.com/print/1101410
Finkployd
To a large degree, what DOJ and the states are doing here is slamming the barn door shut with authority years after the horse disappeared over the horizon. Trying to fix the existing desktop OS/apps monopoly is a low return deal. Preventing MS from extending its monopoly into the server space is possible, but only if the correct remedy is employed, as MS is now using its desktop monopoly to achieve monopoly on the server side as well.
Don't believe me? Have a look at the number of attractive features in Windows 2000 that don't work unless you also have Windows 2000 servers. This matters! As much as the crowd here likes to bash MS, Win2K is a pretty damn good OS, and the things it offers when deployed on both servers and desktops are things like TCO that companies care about right now. (And, sadly, the things I see the Linux community ignoring...) As a practical matter, deploying W2K on the desktop demands its deployment on the servers as well, or there's no point in migrating. (As one industry pundit has noted, the ugly secret of W2K is that its great so long as you don't mind replacing all of your software and hardware.)
Microsoft is using its desktop monopoly to deadly effect to ensure that it controls the servers too - all the way up to the datacenter, through Active Directory, Intellimirror, Terminal Server, and the bundling of dozens of apps that are "just good enough" to prevent "competitors" from making a living selling them. (Go do the math - there is a very long list of products displaced by Win2K, many of which provide functions not commonly part of any OS distribution today.)
Until and unless Microsoft is prevented from using its desktop monopoly to drive a server monopoly, nothing the government does will have the slightest effect.
Note that splitting Microsoft in *either* of the ways proposed does not eliminate this problem. Since this is driven primarily by the OS monopoly, any split that allows the OS company to operate across desktop and server platforms is ineffective, as are the "baby Bill" scanarios like Ellison's in which Microsoft is split vertically (not horizontally as a poster says elsewhere) into three or so companies containing all of MS's assets. Any effective remedy must prevent MS from using is desktop monopoly to force customers into giving it a server monopoly as well.
This may be the only aspect of a structural remedy that matters, but it looks like it's not going to happen, and Microsoft will laugh all the way to the bank again...
(Note: these comments are mine and may or may not represent my employers' views.)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
No one *wants* their crappy code ... but there's gold in them there file formats!
I don't think it was addressed in this case but MS Office is very close to being a monopoly (if it isn't one already). The biggest barrier to entry for competitors is that MS proprietary file formats dominate both new and legacy documents. After all, no one want's to risk "loosing" all thier old docs to incompatability. And a lot of people end up using office cuz they get sick of getting mailed otherwise unreadable office files. If 3rd parties could have unlimited file format access, then they could compete on a much more even playingfield.
- bridgette
Screen draw is painful compared to Netscape (no speed demon itself). There are no plugins available.
I keep it around for certain Java heavy sites and for certain pages where Netscape (somehow) manages to crash the X server.
Let's just wait and see, and stop capitalizing on the fact that everyone is curious by posting supposedly blow-by-blow accounts of where the case is headed. At this point, nobody seems to know.
Got Rhinos?
The Internet Explorer company may have some trouble turning a profit, as the price of its product is rather low ($0).
:-)
Oh well, guess they'll just have to make it up in volume
1. Operating system 2. Internet Explorer 3. Misc. Applications 4. MSN and other assorted crap.
Got Rhinos?
Breaking up M$, especially under the Gov's current plan wouldn't accomplish anything other than slowing M$ down for 2 years. As much as it pains me to say it, I have to agree with R. Stalman's view that the breakup wouldn't accomplish anything beneficial to the consumer. It punishes M$, but no one gets anything out of it, and this is supposed to be about helping the consumer. M$'s counter proposal is actually closer to being a rational, somewhat productive remedy. Standard pricing for vendors, supporting older OS's after a new one is released... I say, impose those measures, and let's finance some school funding with a hefty fine...we know they've got the money. .
Karma: Non-existant. Due mostly to the fact that you smell funny and nobody likes you.
Actually, he will. The court will first order shares in the new company issued to all stockholders 1 for 1. Then the court will order Bill (and all the other officers of the companies, and their boards) to sell (or swap with Steve) all his stock in all but one of the resulting companies. People with less than some percent of the companies can keep their shares in both.
Probably the current officers will just split up amongst the companies and swap stocks, to prevent crashing their value, so Steve & co. (the board et al) gets Bill's share of MS#1, and Bill gets Steve & co's share of MS#2, then Bill offers to swap the public for the remainder of his shares...
Without Office/MSIE, the Mac would be a third rate platform today: there are no other high end office suites available, Netscape for the Mac truly blows, Mozilla is worse than a disgrace and iCab is nice but not at the level of MSIE yet.
IMHO, the Mac division of MS is being kept around mostly to placate Justice: it ranges from slightly profitable (Office) to a major loss (MSIE). Certainly the Mac version of MSIE wouldn't survive the split into 3. (It may even be dead now if you believe Macintouch rumors.) Office might well not: talented coders could be better used elsewhere in MS Apps writing more profitable Windows apps.
It would be truly ironic if the first impact of the suit would be to lower platform diversity. Eric
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Thats a funny question...
How did Netscape make money? (I mean, before it was bought by AOL)
How does/will Napster make money?
Maybe they'll be forced to sell IE. Maybe they just do a public offereing. More likely, they'll start selling web server software to support their IE product.
You have to ask yourself... does MS make money off of IE? If not, why does it exist? Why would they fight so fiercly with Netscape. Answer: because they want to dominate the industry. And web browsing is just one part of that.
Microsoft has more going for it that just internet explorer. They also have the MSN, which definately turns a profit. If they split MS into three companies, it would work out well. OS, Applications, and Internet. The internet partition would cover Exploer and MSN. That's my view, take it or leave it.
Excerpt from the CIIA brief:
). In the alternative, the Court should order that the applications company make the Internet Explorer product -- which provides no royalties now -- an "open source" product so that other software developers could use the source code. Either of these small additions would ensure that the monopoly over productivity applications that Microsoft holds does not supplant the operating system as the point of leverage for a monopoly over the software used in Internet computing.
If they want a 3-way split, it would be better to split it into OS, Servers&Devel tools, office&everything else companies. That way the companies would be more balanced, although ideally they'd cleanly split it into about a dozen smaller companies.
Microsoft would be divided into two companies:
MicrOpenSoft: A company for those employees who were willing to play nice. They could develop whatever they wanted so long as it was open source. They would have to negotiate for which parts of the code they could keep from the breakup with the "other side" of the company (details below), but they may wish to turn their skills to the Linux space, or anywhere else there is an established open codebase. In order to facilitate their entry into the community, other companies could invite them out to barbeques, sockhops, midnite bowling and other social activities. Soon they would "fit in" in the new world. We may even be proud of their newfound civic responsibility.
The "other side"
MiClosedSoft:Would be for those who prefer the secrecy of their founder. In order to allow them to fully explore the superiority of closed source software, they would be whisked away to an undisclosed underground facility, where they would be free from the prying eyes of the rest of the world, and where their experiments could proceed untainted by the outside world. They would of course be cut off from such open source bugaboos as the Internet, so that the purity of their Next Generation Web Servers would not be touched by "infidels". Gradually, Memories of the "surface dwellers would fade, as they create the virtual paradise envisioned by the glorious Founder, the Great Software Architect to whom their souls are bound. One day, when the "Open People" realised the folly of their ways, they would beg the great Bill to save them from their chaotic, wasted surface lives. But who would taint paradise with such non-believers. Deep in the bowels of the earth the chanting of HIS name was all that mattered..."Bilgates...Bilgates...Bilgates...."
Sounds like a win-win to me :>
Everything's been downhill since the TRS-80
Microsoft will do.
Yep, I've been waiting a long time for this one! tcd004
I agree that breaking up the company is not good, but your reasons, to put it frankly, suck.
Of course there would be an Office for Linux.
> it does not make commercial sense to pour development hours into making ports to other platforms
There is an Office for Mac. If they are willing to port Office over to an OS that has a diminishing number of (very loyal) users, why wouldn't they make a port over to an OS that is growing everyday once they get rid of the ties to Windows?
>with the WINE project... [they would wait] for people to run Office on Linu[x] under that
The Office team would not wait for Wine, because then they wouldn't be able to charge twice for it, but would still have to handle twice as many calls.
The only thing that would happen if there was a seperate Microsoft Apps Co. would be that they would monopolize all OSes instead of just two.
>a separate company for Internet Explorer..what a joke
Internet Explorer could survive on it's own. It would take some luck and a lot of string pulling, though. That company could grab all of the MSN stuff, the IIS stuff, and then it would have to keep it's operating costs low for awhile. Not very likely, but possible.
>There is NO money to be made from this product
Microsoft did NOT get where it is today by wasting money, if there was no money in Internet Explorer they wouldn't own it.
Microsoft OS Co. would survive the break-up but would not be quite as strong as it was before. It would suddenly get fresh competition from old foes. Solaris et al. would be taking off with it's new found support of the Microsoft Apps, who knows, IBM might even bring back OS/2 for the occasion. None of the new powerful competition will be enough to beat the namesake, though. The old Microsoft Spirit (Kill or Cheat) will come back in full. Eventually the downfall of the OS division would come not from lost customers but from reduced profits affecting the developers who would leave by the busload.
Once it's all over, a long time from now, all we will have is a defunct OS company, leaving millions with a product with no support. A dead browser. And a super-monopoly that has instilled itself on every Operating System.
I just don't see how splitting up this company is the best thing.
Devil Ducky
Devil Ducky
MY peers would get out of jury duty.
Since when has the United States decided to have such a naive, Pollyanna-ish view of the world? The Microsoft fragments can and probably will cooperate with each other beyond the extent allowed by law. They just won't do it above-board where everyone can see it. They'll do it in smoke-filled rooms and in dark alleys. What the DoJ has essentially asked us to do is to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
This breakup will not change Microsoft's practices. If anything, the mere threat of such action has encouraged the company in its scofflaw ways. By applying this weak, seemingly impressive but in actuality quite pitiful solution, the United States has given Microsoft carte blanche to conduct business as usual.
www.alarmist.org
Kinda like a Linux-based OS.
Me personally, as a developer of Windows applications (specifically in the gaming industry), I'd find the DirectX source code really valuable in understanding some of the "issues" I come across from time to time. Being able to step into windows API functions, especially when it comes to unusual crashes, would be beneficial as well.
What I'm trying to say is, with the Windows source code "out there", code monkeys like me would be able to assert a greater understanding of what's going on 'behind the scenes' then what was possible before on the Windows platform. Heck, some may take it upon themselves to make performance improvements... or perhaps make "scaled down" kernels and subsystems for their particular needs.
Kinda like a Linux-based OS.
- Daltorak
(if I had a nickel for every time I forgot my slashdot password....)
IIRC, AOL has a contract to deliver IE (and no other 3rd party browser) for a certain period of time (however long the contract is for). In the meantime, they're developing NS6/Mozilla/Gecko into a decent browser they can embed into AOL to replace the current one.
They wouldn't have bought Netscape without the intention of incorporating it into their amalgam.
Splitting the company up just seems like an appealing way of hurting them. It doesn't seem like it is doing anything constructive.
Microsoft's biggest sin was (and is) leveraging the success of one of their products in order to compel people to use another of their products. This of course has a cumulative effect. Breaking up the company into 3 or 4 smaller companies would help by greatly reducing their power to leverage. This is itself, while not explicitly hurting Microsoft, would be beneficial to the rest of the software community.
I would love to see Microsoft being split into several Baby Bills, since that would kill the company. Try to imagine yourself in a company with N * 10 millions lines of code (N is 3 or 6 depending on who you believe) and then suddenly 67% of all your co-workers quit to go to those other Baby Bills. How long do you think it would take them to get their act together? How long would it take to re-hire that many people to get the code under control again? Especially in Seattle... how many unemployed SW Engineers do you think are on the dole up there?
I'm against the split as much as anyone. However, this split doesn't change the browser outlook for the negative. After all, the 2 big browsers are already owned by giants: MSFT and AOL. Calling either one a "content" provider is a bit of a stretch (assuming AOL sans Time Warner).
Besides, an OS still needs to "browse" its files. They wouldn't take IE from windows, more likely, they just cripple it and have the installation carried out by the 3rd company.
Why dont they just move north to Canaha eh?
Tell the hosers at the DOJ to kiss off and move their silly little headquarters a few hundred miles north.
Then hire hockey players to defend the grounds.
To err is human, to blame it on computers is even more human.
All I can say is: horray. The first Judge to REALLY stand up to Micro$oft shares my name: Thomas Jackson.
Perhaps I've missed some comment to this effect - I'd like to think I'm not the only one to see this - but splitting Microsoft is a moral offense.
Does someone want to explain to me why ANYONE has the right to do with MS as they wish? People seem pleased that, perhaps, a split will provide benefits for the user.
Is it right that the owners of MS be forced to work for the benefit of the User? Is it right that their property and work be made subject to the user?
There's a word for the attitude that says yes.
Slavery.
Seriously though, what exactly will it do? Microsoft's employees, from what I understand of it, talk to each other -- the OS team, the IE team, and the Office team -- so that they can interweave their applications together. What's going to stop them from doing it after the breakup?
.- CitizenC (User Info)
all three reputable news sources just copied and pasted the same little blurb from some other original source..probably AP News..
...
That's because UPI got bought out by the Moonies, so now there's only AP left. This is why monopolies are bad
Luckily, I get newsfeed from Reuters and Agence France Presse (AFP), which usually covers anything that's really interesting.
Will in Seattle
I agree! .. RMS's idea does look very good.. From the date of his writing though (last year!) I would have thought it would have been brought to the attention of Judge Jackson by now.
:> .. something I can't wait for.
I wouldn't mind seeing them split AND having what RMS said imposed on them too. It would make for a MUCH more level playing field.
We might start seeing printer drivers for Linux etc. so we can do trivial things like print web pages from Netscape etc..
--
Delphis
IF STEVE WOSTON EVER MEETS YOU HES GONNA KICK YOUR ASS
yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, go home now troll
The IE people will hava an interesting time running a company having a free beer product competing against free beer products. Their only hope for job security would be if someone bought the company and open sourced it like mozilla.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Richard Stallman has his own views on what should happen to Microsoft, which seem a lot more reasonable than simply splitting up the company. I have no problem with what Stallman proposes, but I think that one more thing needs to happen in order to make it feasible: employees of MS who willingly participated in the offenses must be removed. There are certain decision makers within MS who seem to have no respect for the court and will continue to direct MS as usual. Granted, companies and the DOJ can take them to court, but we're in that boat now. No real progress will have been made. What needs to be done is to get beyond the "We must *hurt* Microsoft" mentality into the "How will doing this to Microsoft effect the industry in the long-term?" mentality. Splitting the company up just seems like an appealing way of hurting them. It doesn't seem like it is doing anything constructive. I don't think that the DOJ is proposing a split up to punish. I think it's because the conduct remedy was ignored and, judging from MS's actions, would continue to be ignored. The split up doesn't solve the whole problem, but it does help to provide some relief. Splitting seems like changing one successful company with popular products into three. It does keep MS from using their monopolies in concert. It also takes away incentive for back scratching among their products (using Windows contracts as leverage for promoting, IE for example). -Jennifer
However simply "requiring" Microsoft to do those things isn't going to work: Microsoft would always be able to weasel out of things by saying "but of course we published everything", and before that is sorted out in court, the point would be moot.
Splitting the company up accomplishes the same effect through market mechanisms: if Microsoft-OS and Microsoft-Apps are different companies, Microsoft-OS doesn't benefit from creating "internal" APIs.
If not all of RMS's concerns are addressed by the split-up, he should come up with more market-based mechanisms for achieving his goals, because there is a general feeling that regulatory mechanisms would simply be ineffective.
They can do what IBM did with OS/2 Warp 4 and put an icon on the desktop to download the browser. Of course ibm used webexplorer to download netscape for OS/2 since it wasn't released in time to put it on the cd. M$ can do the same.
Stopping Microsoft from abusing its monopolist position by prohibiting the abusive actions which damage Microsoft competitors is one thing. But breaking up the company may well result in a drastic devaluation of the company, as evidenced by the recent fall of the price company's stock in anticipation of the breakup ruling. The Constitution forbids the government from taking property (even if such taking is for the public good) without compensation. No matter how you cut it, the type of breakup being proposed for a tech company like Microsoft amounts to taking of private property for the purpose of public good. Is the government prepared to compensate Microsoft's shareholders for the devaluation?
What do you think? Would an open sourced Microsoft lead to real competition in the Microsoft market (which must exist if it is truly a monopoly)?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
fun for the whole family
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
The US is the laughing stock of the world. We took one of the most successful companies in the history of commerce to court, to punish them for being too successful.
No, actually, the European Union is also investigating MSFT for anti-trust, and if we don't break them up, they will. They're not laughing at us, they're sneering at our wimpiness in following our own laws.
The browser is irrelevant
Yeah, we'll all be using Opera anyway. Either that or Mozilla.
Will in Seattle
It took a whole company to make Netscape the great browser it once was, and I think that the same thing would benefit Internet Explorer.
...as long as they can escape MegaCorp (tm), that is. I'd hate to see the Pepsi of browsers get dragged down like the Coke did.
Got Rhinos?
Actually, I was hoping for 4 OS companies, 15 companies to write API's, 11 protocol companies, 3 NOS companies, 3 Office Products companies, MSN, Exploder Inc., 2 games companies, an audio/video company, 8 business software companies, 12 home software companies, and 101 standalone M$ hotdog stands (two for each state and one for the District of Columbia). ;-)
I still think that Larry Ellison had the best idea, which was to split Microsoft horizontally, in effect creating 3 mini-microsofts, each selling windows, office, developers tools, etc... That way there'd be real competition in the Windows arena, and with multiple suppliers, no one could strong arm the customers around because they could just take their business elsewhere. It'd also require a minimal amount of oversight, as opposed to now where it seems that once Microsoft is split up, all the decisions made by the individual companies are likely to face governmental scrutiny ("hmmm... should this program be allowed to be distributed with the operating system?").
Not only that, but it seems (in my eyes) that the DOJ is making unreasonable demands on the conduct of Microsoft once it is broken up... Just for starters, requiring them to notify all affected developers if they intend to change the OS in such a way that their programs will break... It just seems unworkable, because there are slews of compilers and programing languages, each with their own nuances, so that Microsoft will have to test too many 3rd party apps to be assured of compatiability. I know what the DOJ is trying to accomplish with that demand, but again, I think it would be better solved with a horizontal split, because then the companies would be forced to compete and gain customers and therefore wouldn't make any wholesale changes to the OS just to break a competitors product, because all the users of that product could switch to Microsoft #2's Windows operating system.
No, seriously, I don't personally care for a split at all. I'd be content with binding MS with so many government lawyers (who they would pay for as a part of the measure) that they couldn't look cross-eyed at someone without having to carefully prove that it wasn't going to give them access to that market.
You'll remember that this is about what happened to IBM, which managed to come to terms with the government before getting to the breakup part. And what happened when IBM could no longer ruthlessly dominate computing? The age of microcomputers began, and Microsoft got a chance to go to the top (along with Apple, Intel, Compaq, Dell, etc.)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The best thing the DOJ could do would be to require Microsoft to openly publish each and every interal and external API, and each and every file format in all of their software.
I could care a rats ass about splitting up the company -- That won't help anyone, but forcing them to openly document all of their APIs would stop the practices of deliberately breaking other companies' software, and of using "secret" APIs so that their software integrates better then other companies'.
His comments to David Boies were _so_ hip they were like another level of the findings of fact- startled me even though I already expected him to be clued.
Boies: "We want to break them in two, that might be the easier path since they'll fight having IE broken off"
Jackson: "Are you kidding? Forget their response just for a second and think about what will provide maximum relief in a structural way (without lots of little regulations and overseeing). Nothing about this is going to be simple- hell, you could try to fine them 2$ and they'd take it to the Supreme Court. Quit pandering to what you think their lawyers would like and go for a real solution. There _is_ no softer path that they will consent to honorably cooperate with. Haven't you been listening all this time?"
*g*
I _love_ hearing this stuff. This judge is a smart cookie and understands Microsoft all too well. It's absolutely great to see how clearly he understands the situation in spite of the massive confusion, FUD and propaganda everywhere (even on Slashdot o_O )
Short form: Microsoft is guilty, they are unrepentant, they are pissed off and actively trying to do as much damage as possible, and they have the economy _hostage_. In no sense is that a worthy justifiable position deserving of being protected- so Jackson is not going to try and coddle them. But at the same time there has rarely been such a totally amoral, remorseless, psychotic and sociopathic corporate criminal- so Jackson is not going to try to negotiate with them in good faith.
GOOD. Negotiating in good faith doesn't work with Microsoft. Three cheers for Jackson and hopefully the heavy hints he dropped will be enough.
Having a browser bundled with all of the other software that comes with a computer has NOTHING to do with a browser being part of the OS, unless you like the "feature" of having your browser crash your entire system.
This is nuts! I want Microsoft split as much as the next guy - for The Great Interoperability Age in the computer industry. But one cannot create a company limited to one free product!
It should be:
1) Office (aka Productivity Apps)
2) All other OS (Windows XXX included)
3) Venture Capital/Investments
out of curiousity, will all three microsoft's go after slashdot?
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
Bleak software winter
Cleave Microsoft into three!
Spring will soon return
It was my understanding that Netscape sold out to AOHELL to save themselves from Microsoft.
How can Internet Explorer function as a thoroughly autonomous company if they want to keep their browser free? I mean, I'm all for competition, but that would put IE under the water and Netscape would once again rule the browser world. It's almost unanimous that IE5 for the Mac is the best browser out there for proper rendering of pages and full support for HTML 4.0 and CSS. Sure, sure, Mozilla is "coming" but considering how late it is already, who knows when they'll finish it.. And Netscape 6.0.. was either interminably slow or it crashed... (not to mention the lack of a way to UNINSTALL the beast from Win9x)
How about instead of splitting M$ into IE, Applications, and Operating Systems, we split it into Applications, Win9x, and WinNT. By splitting the server and desktop operating systems into separate companies, I think this would best break up the M$ Monopoly..
Let me know what you think.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alexander Reid zander@wpi.edu
WPI ACM Sin Lab Facilities Chair
"Working hard to drag you down with us"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hey. I am more than willing to dish out $$$, and alot of it, for a GOOD TOOL. I would rather pay $100 for a great browser than settle for free garbage. Maybe its just me?
Tom
Reality does not happen until you analyze the dots. -Don DeLillo (Underworld)
WASHINGTON (Routers) - The judge in the Microsoft antitrust trial on Wednesday questioned a government plan to split Mr. Gates in two, and praised an outside proposal to break off his 3.5" floppy.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Splitting Microsoft into two, three or N separate companies, each with control over a particular area, is not the answer. It would just create a number of smaller monopolies in particular areas.
For example, the OS group would still be able to lock out competitors by fiddling with Kerberos. The applications group would still keep Word's overwhelming market share and its proprietary file formats, and keep changing them to keep out competitors. The 'Internet' group could still break standards for HTML, messaging and so on.
In many cases the individual products such as Office have just as much a monopoly as Windows itself. And even when the market share is smaller, the users are often locked in and unable to switch. The key issue here is *competition* - the three parts of Microsoft would not compete with each other, so nothing would improve. They might not be able to tie applications to the OS quite as much, but still the OS group will be able to control application development by deciding which standards not to support (eg, dropping or breaking Java). And so on.
I'm not sure what the best answer is, but how about splitting Microsoft into several companies, each of which has rights to _all_ Microsoft programs. Then we'd start to see some real competition among Windows vendors (rather than the single vendor as at present), and probably some big price drops for consumers too.
You might worry that this would let to fragmentation and incompatible solutions, but let the market take care of that. People won't buy and use an OS if it doesn't behave well towards competing products. It's only where you have monopolies that this mechanism cannot work.
An alternative would be to systematically auction off rights to one program after another, with the rule that a minimum of three independent bidders get the rights to each item. After that, you keep handing out rights to the highest bidder remaining until the highest bid is 'stop' (which would be the winners so far bidding money to try to stop others from climbing on board). This hopefully would get a reasonable balance between ensuring competition, and raking in lots of money. The money raised would compensate Microsoft shareholders.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
The third company should have more then just internet explorer. How is that one going to survive with just IE? After all shipping IE for free is what started this, if they up the price and netscape is still free, who's going to get all the market share? With just IE in this company then this one will fail faster then a Art's major taking a quantum physic exam.
/NEED/ a product they can sell, and they can't sell IE.
The third company should have IE, and all the Internet products. Like IS, Exchange, and anything else they have dealing with the internet. The other two companies should probably stay the same, one OS, and the other Applications and the rest. For the third company to survive they
I can actually see a forth company coming out of this, one dealing with hardware. They keyboards and mice are actually quite good. That way you'll have four baby bills: OS, Internet software, General Software, and Hardware. Each of them have products that they can use to make money on.
Just my 2 cents.
Software Engineer & Writer of Military Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog: petermwright.com Twitter: WrightPeterM
And I'm gonna keep saying it. The ONLY meaningful way to split Microsoft is right down the middle: engineering in one company, marketing in another.
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
Before splitting MS up, I hope the judge thinks really hard about what the breakup is supposed to accomplish. No, it's not about punishing MS. It's about ensuring that MS can't leverage the Desktop OS to sell Apps and Server software.
So, without further ado...
Desktop OS - Windows 3.1, 95, 98, NT, 2000, ME - Just the core of the OS. If they need to package drivers, fonts, text editors, and the like with the OS, they can license them from other baby-MSs.
Applications - Office, the "accessories".
Hardware - MS Mouse, gamepads, etc. The entire MS driver base.
Languages - All the development tools. (Yes, break off dev tools. J++ was invented to E,E,&E Java in defense of Windows.)
Server OS - NT Server, 2000 Server. As above, just the core of the OS. If they want drivers and such they will have to license them.
Server Software - Exchange, IIS, etc.
Media and Internet - MSN, Hotmail, IE, Media Player, and any Codecs that MS may own. Also, fonts, images, videos, and sounds MS currently owns.
Consumer Electronics OS - WinCE, as above just the core. Also, DirectX (can't put DX in with the hardware group or they'd exploit it).
....
The above will force them to price things at what they're worth, compete with other companies without tie-ins, sell pieces of the pie to non-MS companies, and comply with standards - all things that any other company would HAVE to do, or die.
My favorite example of how this would work to help the industry: The hardware company would be under pressure to make a profit, and that would provide the motivation to not only make better quality drivers, but also to license the driver-base to any and all comers - and likely in more than just one format. That eliminates one of the greatest barriers to entry in the OS game.
--Threed
The Slashdot Sig Virus was foiled before it could spread.
Let's see...we split up into three companies...how does this recitfy the situation: 1) Applications company still has monopoly on office-suite software 2) OS company still has monopoly on desktop OS's 3) IE company...well, that one just dies. Solution 2: Open up the document formats and form an industry-wide document format standards committee that decides the file type formats for word processing, spreadsheet, etc... that will level the playing field when it comes to applications producing files w/compatible format. Rather than using word because everyone uses it, consumers now use the product that best suits their needs...and saves in a common format. Now, about the OS monopoly...well, I have absolutely no idea what a good solution is there. Sure, you can open the source, but I don't think that would do any good...nor would just splitting the company up.
What would that gain anyone? M$ is not an entity that feels pain. Only it's employees, it's shareholders, it's owners, can feel pain. Only the people.
If that case, why not just get Bill Gates and have him flogged? Or go to the stock holder's houses, and skin a live cat in their yard? Or go to the employee parking lots and paint a Linux penguin on all the windshields?
I mean, effectively, that's all you could accomplish: hurt the people and the families caught up in the M$ world...
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Yeeeaah!! Split, split, split, whack, whack,
whack, cut, cut, cut, errr.. whatta hell?!?
Ohmygod!! It's HYDRA disguised as a software
company!! Run for your lives!! RUUUNNN! NOOOO!!!
Everybody but Mac is moving toward integrating the file browser with the Internet browser; just look at KDE and Be and their directions as examples. KDE is basically ripping off Win98's concept of browser integration, because it's a good concept, without all the bloat that is IE. And Be is steadily working towards unifying just about everything to do with file/net browsing. So, if IE is made a new company then MS will have 2 choices: re-code a new browser from scratch, or license IE from the new company. They're definitely not going to go back to the Win95 style shell because they're all about integrating the whole user experience from local files to Internet connectivity into something seamless. They're even migrating their whole Help system to an HTML base. So, they need a browser, and will pay the new company to license IE.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
Then we'd have Lynx, Mosaic, and maybe Amaya left....
Oh happy day! :o)
Got Rhinos?
don't they understand
.oO0Oo.
IE is just a shell to dish out hWnds.
I supposed they'll make and sell COM objects
just like MS said the whole world would when they launched OLE
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Microsoft also has hinted that the strategy of its "Next Generation Windows Services" is to insert "technological shackles" (Conclusions, p.10) in its monopoly desktop software to compel the use of Microsoft software throughout the Internet, so that the ocean of innovation on the Internet becomes a stagnant Microsoft-proprietary pond.
Yes. Jackson wanted to split Microsoft into two companies. OS+software. I've advised Jackson not to do that, but to split Microsoft into three companies.
One company to produce OS'es (DOS/W2k/NT)
One company to produce GUI's (W9x/W3.x)
One company to produce additional software (Office, Internet Explorer, etc.)
Just a little detail...
Hey, I wouldn't mind if Microsoft bought out the state of New York - it couldn't possibly make the government any *more* corrupt.
--
No more e-mail address game - see my user info. Time for revenge.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
I'm missing something obvious here:
What would a separate Micrsoft IE company lack that would make the verdict action a punishment? With the exception of being in a physically different location, and having all new legal/corporate paperwork, what exactly is the difference?
Information is still going to flow freely from MS to MS-IE Corp. Isn't it? I would assume all of the IE programmers just move to a different building and keep on doing the same work.
Can someone explain why this would be a punishment.
Thanks
---
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
If Microsoft made products that utterly reeked, people wouldn't use them. The market would force an alternative. Microsoft cannot force anyone to use BAD products. Adequate ones, maybe. But not truly BAD products.
The difference here is that Microsoft actaully does research into usability and ergonomics. Their products are the results of billions of dollars of said research. And there are several companies out there who make a living creating third-rate knock-off's of those products with no ergonomics whatsoever. (Just because your keyboard has a "split" design doesn't make it easier to use!)
Also, regardless of what is shipped with a new computer due to OEM relationships with ANY company, the user is empowered to change anything they want. No one is forcing them to use what they are given. If that were true, Linux wouldn't exist. That said, why does Microsoft need to be broken up? They don't have a monopoly in the sense that there is zero competition. It just seems like it to someone who hasn't educated themselves in how to use their computer.
I just love that the government can mandate which companies make which products. Hooray for Communism!
Ye-Haw... all you Techno-pundits who want to split MS in pieces must have money to burn... Yes, MS is world wide, yes they can still co-operate if they wanted to ... but the chance are, they don't care what the actual remedy is... they will still do a lot of business... however, as a taxpayer , guess who is going to foot the bill for this little re-organization ? Soo... hope your next job pays well... your taxes are going to launch MS into the next phase..... Believe it....and don't start crying when you just start to approximate how much it costs to re-organize that company.
The problem is not that MS did a single evil action, or that it sells more than one product.
The legal with monopolies is that they are able to take advantage of their position to unfairly compete against others. (IE in such a way that the other companies have no chance of getting into that market.)
Therefore, there's nothing wrong with Apple selling a single computer system, and not licensing the OS or the hardware. But if they were to have nearly the entire market, and play with compatibility to prevent others from competing, then that would be a different story.
The government is simply saying that MS is in a position to keep others out of the market, and is doing unfair things to keep it that way.
Solution to blink tags: wrap them in another blink tag, with a javascript delay loop, so they cancel each other out
The key point to realize is that the interim conduct restrictions DOJ proposes (which, note, Judge Jackson did not ask DOJ to remove) kick in while appeals are pending. The rationale here is that Microsoft is engaging in ongoing illegal conduct, and it's appropriate to stop that while appeals are pending. If Microsoft wins on appeal, maybe they get to resume their monopolistic practices at some future date. Meanwhile, Microsoft is going to have to start disclosing those hidden interfaces. Probably by fall, the way things are going.
This is great for the Open Source community. Among other things, the WINE people will finally get the info needed to make it work right. One of the big Linux players may pick up on WINE and do the grunt work to make it run Microsoft Office. At that point, Linux on the desktop looks a lot more attractive.
As for the breakup, the financial community seems to agree on what the applications part is worth, but estimates of the value of the OS part are all over the place. This reflects reality - Microsoft Office is a good, useful product that sells on its own merits, and Microsoft's operating systems require coercive, monopolistic sales practices to sell them.
Of course, in reality, the only thing that can realistically change their monopolistic practices is a market driven approach, and that means putting Microsoft's application division on equal footing with others--i.e., a breakup. Their regulatory proposal isn't just less severe, it's ineffectual and useless--it's just business as usual.
But I wouldn't put IE in it's own company. I'd give IE to the Office group--equal with Word and Excel.
My choice for 3 companies would be: Office (with IE), Server and Consumer.
This gives the added benefit of encouraging standards compliance on the desktop AND in the server room.
--
Have Exchange users? Want to run Linux? Can't afford OpenMail?
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
FYI about Microsoft hardware from personal experience in the industry: MS established themselves in the PC hardware business by again leveraging their OS and apps monopolies, and not on the merits of their product.
Put yourself in the place of a PC manufacturer for a moment: Guess what happens to the cost of your OS and apps licenses if you decide you *don't* want to ship MS keyboards and mice? The simple fact is that if you want "most favored nation" pricing from MS, you *will* ship a significant portion of your orders with MS hardware. You'll also build your hardware to conform to Microsoft's hardware specifications and do whatever else they tell you to to, simply because you can't afford not to. It's precisely this sort of abuse of monopoly power that's illegal, and for good reason.
Back in your role again: You don't have to sell MS hardware of course, but remember that the OEM PC business has become one of thin margins and volume, so if you pay another $30/unit for your OS and apps license simply because you'd like to specify your own keyboard, you are now at a significant disadvantage to your competitors in a world of $150-$300 margins for desktop PCs.
It would be interesting indeed to see how many OEMs would continue to buy Microsoft's hardware if they didn't have to.
Don't ever forget that the computer makers don't even get to decide what the hardware standards are for your next PC: that's Microsoft's turf (PC9x, et al), and again, if you don't play, you pay - big. This control will bite Linux and other alternative OSes big-time in the near future, as it already is to some degree with the new "legacy-free" PCs required by the newest versions of the specs.
(Opinions here are mine.)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Why not split M$ into two different OS companies, and two different application developers? Otherwise the three MS splits will just be the same company: collaborating on propietary code and keeping Windoze and MS Office in market dominance.
[pink beam of light]
Interesting comment in the New York Times article:
"Microsoft has made it clear it will appeal whatever remedy the judge decides upon, unless Judge Jackson opts for the relatively modest changes in business procedures that Microsoft has already proposed to impose upon itself."
So, it's BiilG's way of saying "If we don't play my way, I'm taking my toys and going home!". I think Microsoft knows that if they play the waiting game, they win. The sad thing is, it seems like they have the legal means to play this game for a long time. I'm not sure how striking down an appeal could be expedited (or how it can be denied them). How long did AT&T manage to delay things (or did they? I was a youngun when the Baby Bells were born).
Hmm... Baby Bells. What will the new Microsoft BBU's (Battlin' Business Units) be called? MicroMicrosofts? Baby Bills?
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
See What might happen if they split them into 2 companies ...
The ironic thing about what you've said is that after CyberDog (unfortunate name) was cancelled, it's die-hard loyal fans wrote an extension to it that replaced the html rendering engine with IE so it would support more modern standards, because CyberDog was left so far in the dust.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
uh, wait... nope, still LOL
2 flaws:
1) The OS becomes nice and robust
Well, we know that's never gonna happen. This is STILL Microsoft we're talking about.
2) the compiler company changes the compiler on them
How often (not counting the instability of the moving standard that's been C++ and Java over the last 5-10 years) has changing a compiler really changed your work environment for the worse?
Stick to the ANSI C and ISO C++, and libraries that are either in-house or certified compliant to some acceptable standard (say, POSIX, or the C++ Standard Library), and the compiler is almost a non-issue, save speed and efficiency of optimization and debugging/profiling code, and compilation environment (e.g., IDEs).
BUGS in the compiler, that's different. (e.g., when a bug in EGCS stopped the linux kernel from compiling for a while).
Yes, I know the days when a ton of C++ code suddenly stopped compiling 'cause the complier vendor decided to switch to following the standard and BOOM all of my template based code was _loudly_ broken. but they were things i could fix. they didn't affect my executable once i finished it. they were MY problem, not my customers (save the time delays).
But i've never had a compiler introduce bugs into my final binary code that weren't mine to start with. (If a compiler is THAT broken, it would be out of business REAL fast if the vendor didn't fix it even faster, and its should be easy to go back to the older compiler that worked).
I know its possible, and probably has happened, but not to me.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Who will ensure the interoperability of viruses if MS were to be broken up into multiple companies? And what about innovation? Geez, I mean who invented the mouse and GUI anyways.. Oh wait..
-
air and light and time and space
You know, listening to all of these breakup plans until this very moment, I hadn't been swayed. The idea of the government interfering in the computer industry, particularly in the workings of a single company, repulsed me. The idea of tearing apart the wealth people had built up from a little piss-ant company that started back in the seventies appalled me (and don't give me the "stock boost" stuff - at least some of the proposals specifically ban Gates and others from owning stock in both or more companies, so all concerned WILL lose money). The idea of a bunch of someone's competitors using the DOJ to attack one's company when they couldn't out-compete disgusted me.
But now I've seen the light!
It's silly, at best, for a company to produce more than one product, and at worst, it's an attempt at evil corporate dominance! Some companies use their multiple product lines to reinforce the profits of all their products. This is clearly a manipulation of consumers.
Let's look at our own beloved computer industry.
Further, these companies also make a crucial, horrible mockery of the open software market - they don't release the source code of their products so that any chump with GCC and a CD-R can compile and sell "his" or "her" own competing versions of those programs. That's just wrong.
I think I see a glorious future for our industry, and maybe many others. There are a lot of companies that just need to be broken up into smaller, more intelligent businesses. The people running the companies and the shareholders can't be trusted to judge this for themselves. Who is better-prepared than the lawyers of the DOJ to perform this sort of micro-management of the market? Certainly, this will cause a temporary period of adjustment, and the legal profession's ranks will swell, but in just a few decades the computer industry would be unstrung enough from the courts to come back to life and start work on the long-awaited next versions of all those products...
And then, all those out-of-work lawyers can start taking a look at the "GNU/Linux" racket. I mean, come on! They give all these things away, then start leaning on any companies that makes use of the software to release versions of the companies' products that are compatible through astroturfing by users who barely use any of the software to begin with...
Yeah, my karma was getting too high, anyway. ;)
- Internal pressure:Let's face it - DOJ officials like Joel Klein serve at the pleasure of the attorney general, who in turn serves at the pleasure of the president. Think of the types George Dubya would appoint; neoconservative corporate-welfare lovers with contempt for antitrust law and consumer rights & market efficiency (imagine Ed Meese getting another shot as AG...ugh!). I can just see George Dubya's DOJ settling for a piddling little remedy that doesn't hinder Micro$oft's monopoly power one bit.
- Appeals:Of course, Micro$oft will appeal any unfavorable remedy all the way to the supreme court. It's already an extremely conservative body with contempt for antitrust law, and the next president will get 3 or more appointments.
As much as I shudder at the thought of Tipper Gore running another PMRC witch hunt as first lady, one has to admit that at least the Micro$oft issue would be pursued with some concern for fairness & competition in mind."You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
I'm getting an image in my head of a wall being erected in Redmond in the style of the Berlin Wall, separating the Office/Apps company (profitable West Germany) from the OS company (economically depressed East Germany). Of course the OS company would have to post snipers and watch towers to keep their employees from trying to jump the wall to the other side -- sure they'll be able to stay afloat for a little while, but there's little opportunity for growth with OSes like Linux penning them in.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
I mean poor ole BG is down to his last $50 billion...
...
Next thing you know, we'll see him in his yacht, floating next to I-520 (the floating bridge near his place) and panhandling from the motorists stuck in the traffic jams
Will in Seattle
Sex, Statistics and Linux
Here is an article in the register that proves that linux is more popular than sex
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
the internet explorer company would still have to closely integrate its functionality with the OS company (unless of course it decides to focus on the mac market) and what are the chances of the OS company integrating its OS with other browsers (i.e. netscape) short of a buyout ?
thus unless the heads of all three nodes on the unholy trinity really hate each other, i don't see how this is going to affect their monopoly.
I dont know how viable internet explorer is going to be on it's own. I think that it'd be better to put all of the internet related software/service into one company - frontpage, IIS, IE, etc etc. It sounds a lot better to me :)
Or would they be able to simply repackage it, maybe with a few new apps....
Could work.
Got Rhinos?
Who has a link to the Computer and Communications Industry Association and Software and Information Industry Association's "excellent brief?"
every argument i've read about splitting up microsoft uses the logic that the split will somehow help the economy and spur competition. for example, one argument claims that the office company would port MS office to linux and thus make linux a more attractive OS. i think this is a bogus argument. MS office is built on MS infrastructure like COM that is not readily available on other OSs. the sheer amount of effort necessary to get MS office working on a non-MS operating system could not be justified, especially given the very low penetration rate for linux on the desktop. the MS office company would not be a charity and would not port office to other platforms unless it made economic sense. why doesn't the DOJ just admit that the only real reason for splitting up MS is to punish bill gates for his behavior over the last 20-odd years? at least this would be the honest truth. all the rest of the crap about spurring innovation is just a smoke screen for the real truth and motivation behind the split.
The Janet Reno Dance Club is asking for YOUR help. The Dept. of Justice must select new company names for the Baby Bills. Do your part and cast a vote! Carefully read each item and select from the following choices:
Office Baby Bill
a. BorgHive.
b. BorgHive.
c. BorgHive.
d. Other: BorgHive.
Windows Baby Bill
a. BorgHive.
b. BorgHive.
c. BorgHive.
d. Other: BorgHive.
Internet Baby Bill
a. BorgHive.
b. BorgHive.
c. BorgHive.
d. Other: BorgHive.
Cast your vote now and you qualify for a SPECIAL offer! Receive an autographed copy of Janet's Elian Does Merengue with a Gun in His Face Dance CD! Sowhattayawaitinfor!!! VOTE!!!
I think this idea, that M$ is out there competing (and winning) to improve the quality of software for everyone, is one of the most commonly held fallacies about M$. Fortunately for all of us (M$ shareholders included), the DoJ, and Judge Jackson in particular, seem to have made it a point to make themselves better informed than the average joe-user.
The idea of a break up of M$ is a win-win scenario. If M$ chooses to continue to refuse to compete, it'll be no big loss, as long as they're out of the marketplace, and are no longer stifling competition, as they have been for the last decade or so.
The other thing, one that I haven't seen anyone ask, is what if M$ dumps their software business and chooses to focus soley on their ongoing takeover of the telecomm industry?
They have been steadily buying up the wire and wireless companies that the communications depend on since shortly before the anti-trust action began. I can envision them trying to use that position as a choke point on the industry in much the same manner they have used their position in the PC OS market. In fact, given their history, I can't envision them doing much else.
They will continue to run protection rackets of one sort or another until they are either dead or in prison, since they are not really capable of doing anything else.
"The Internet is made of cats."
Is the DOJ a bunch of morons?
Try this:
OS
User Software
Server Software
Services (hotmail, MSN, etc.)
Hardware
Consulting Services
Developer Tools is sort of a grey space... should probably go w/ the OS group.
Anyone think we might actually get a good product if they make a separate company just for IE??
It's possible, isnt it? =P
--- Tulsa T. Nawi, On Display @ Shattered.com
Have you ever found a terribly invasive plant or weed in your yard, and pulled the top off? The top shrivels and dies, but the roots can survive and next year, you'll just have a more robust plant/weed to deal with.
The only way to break up this monopoly which has soaked the business world so deeply is to split horizontally - kill the weeds!
- passion
Is anyone else afraid that splitting MS up would results in three smaller, more nimble, more competitive, and more aggressive companies? Large corporations move more slowly than smaller ones, and the last thing we need is a faster, deadlier MS
Has Microsoft bought them out too?
Got Rhinos?
Hardware: Microsoft's highest quality product line. Does it go with the apps, the OS?
MSN: No matter which part it belongs to, it becomes another antitrust concern. An antitrust settlement that pairs the most popular browser up with one of the largest ISPs is just stupid.
I'm sure there are a bunch of other MS departments that couldn't exist without 2 or more of the proposed companies. I'd think OS, apps and media would be the more likely 3 divisions. Or just OS and everything else still makes the most sense to me.
c.r.
Microsoft should be divided into 3 companies, but not the 3 listed in the articles. there should be
:)
1. OS
2. Apps
and the one I have the differs...
3. Media/Publishing
this third one would include things like MSN, MSNBC... maybe then my hotmail account would stop being so gosh darn IE-centric
---
I post links to stuff here
One company to do the Windozes with numbers (ie 96,98
One company to do the Windozes with letters (ie NT)
One company to do Internet Explorer
One company to do Excel
One company to do Word
One company to do Access and SQL Server, no make that two companies
One company to do Power Point
One company to buy the above products as wholesale and resell them as "Office"
One company to do mice and keyboards
One company for MSN
One company for Teletubbies. wait. get rid of that one.
One company for games
One company for development tools
One company to do acquisitions, and then spin them off into other little companies
One company for Microsoft Greeting Card
Bill Gates should be put in charge of that last one.
#2 Applications and compilers (VBS, Office, MS Money, AOE, etc.)
Well I'd split that one in half - application on one side and compilers/dev. IDE on the other side. Remember how MS used its power to crush Borland, Wacom and other dev. tools ? Borland sued about that but it took so long that in the end Borland went under and MS settled by buying shares of it.
In other words: force them to extend their monopoly. That's a great help!
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Also, I don't think the new apps group will develop for Linux, Solaris, or any other OS, just stick with the huge Windows market. The three Baby Bills will just cooperate with eachother and act just like Microsoft, just from three separate buildings.
Microsft's patents also should be cancelled, and all file formats should be opened.
-- javaDragon is an instance of JavaDragon.
The judge should better consider creating three companies and give all the source code (OS, applications, explorer) to all of them. Then we'd see real competition!!!
A milder measure would be to keep MS as is, and make the code open source.
Splitting the company as proposed will create two monopolies and a half. There are theoretical reasons to believe that two monopolies are worse (from a welfare standpoint) than a vertically integrated monopoly.
Looks like the split needs to be at least 4-way.
Each division will have to purchase what it wants to use from any other division, in much the same way ATT had to work with the Baby Bells to terminate calls. E.g. M$IS could license M$ Office from M$Apps, since NGWS is really just a distribution mechanism, not a new set of applications. Additionally, other companies could compete against M$IS for the right to distribute M$Apps in the same manner, and M$IS could competitively try for other software to distribute e.g. Star Office. X-box builders will have to buy any WinOS they want, if they still want one by then, etc.
The hard part will be preventing backdoor deals between the baby bills.
"The Internet is made of cats."
The problem is, The case against microsoft isn't about their general monopoly. It's about how they USED their monopoly power to boost IE and kill NetScape. Opening up these API's would not remedy what the suit is for.
get 0wned. irc.w30wnzj00.com
[...]and THEN a possible sea change in DC politics to a more corp. friendly 'hands off business' environment next Jan. So don't hold your breath.
The last big anti-trust break-up was AT&T, which took place IIRC in 1984. Ronald Reagan, conservative, fan of "trickle down" economics, and friend to Big Business was in office at the time. The other great "trust buster" was Theodore Roosevelt. Under his Republican administration, the railroad monopolies were broken, and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was enacted.
Based on a reading of history, I'd say that Microsoft has more to fear from the Republicans than it does from the Democrats. Since this lawsuit was pursued by a Democratic administration, Microsoft doesn't have a political prayer. Keep in mind, also, that the Judicial branch is at least nominally separate from the Executive branch. Once the case has been set in motion, a new president can't "call a halt" to the case, especially if it is an appeal.
To email me,subtract my nick from my email address, starting with the second character. (hint: adto.uiuc.edu is wrong)
I find splitting Bill Gates three ways is much more attractive. Actually, splitting him four ways would be easier because we could do the old draw and quarter move by tying each of his limbs to a horse and smacking their asses.
What do you guys think?
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
One of the best ways to level the OS playing field would be to take the $40-80 price of the O/S and make it an add-on. That $600 pc would now be $560 before the Microsoft 'tax'. People would be able to chose to purchase a system without an O/S, or with Linux, BSD, Solaris or MS Windows on it.
---
Interested in the Colorado Lottery?
check out colotto.com
---
Interested in the Colorado Lottery?
Interested in the Colorado Lottery or Powerball games?
check out http://colotto.com
As a software developer who has studied intellectual property law, I would like to present an alternative remedy for the Microsoft anti-trust case. I strongly feel that the root cause of our difficulty is an imbalanced copyright law, which is being used by Microsoft and many other software companies in a manner which undermines its constitutional justification and causes adverse economic effects. While remedies on the table will correct symptoms, the following proposal may additionally restore balance and could be applied industry wide.
In an emerging market, where prior investment is negligible, consumers desire highly differentiated software offerings; our legal environment supports this need exquisitely. However, in established markets, where consumers have invested in and have become dependent upon a particular software, these same consumers no longer desire competition for new and different software offerings. Instead, if given a choice, they would prefer competition for the change in the software they currently use. Unfortunately, our current legal practices, focused on emerging markets and justified with natural-right copyright thinking, deny the marketplace this alternative style of competition.
I do think that a contractual remedy for Microsoft, designed to establish such a competitive market for software upgrades, could prove more effective than a breakup. This proposal necessitates the creation of a non-profit registry-of-deeds tasked with maintaining records of software produced by revisions from competing authors. Specifically, the registry would administer access to source code and would calculate royalties from the licensing of administered software. The proposal rests on the following principles:
1. Before offering software to the marketplace, a developer would deposit into the registry all source code, description of patents, and design materials necessary to understand and build the program offered.
2. As part of each deposit, the developer would also specify a per-end-user licensing fee for programs derived from the material deposited.
3. Anyone can then retrieve these deposits and build from the material contained provided that any derived or competing work which the reader is thereafter involved is registered according to this same method.
4. When a derivative program is licensed, the sale price is calculated with the licensing fees for the materials upon which the program is derived. A technique involving anonymous serial numbers can be employed so that a given deposit is only licensed and charged once per user.
5. The developer may at any time reduce the posted price for their deposits; but may not license use of the material separately for amounts less than the posted price.
6. When fees are collected, royalties are distributed to each developer according to the number of licenses issued for each of their deposits.
7. The license for each deposit does not extend to trademarks, intellectual property of other parties, or material that was deposited separately. Deposits which would overlap in material must be decomposed into smaller units; the original treated as a derived work.
While the above may seem complicated, it will administer software that is a composite of revisions from competing authors. I am positive that most of this process can be automated so that developers, customers, and distributors are shielded from the administrative burden.
I believe that this mechanism could bring about more professionalism within the industry. It would eliminate bait-and-upgrade schemes. It would also improve software reliability. Lacking serious competition for upgrades, established software vendors have little incentive to work on quality control issues. Furthermore, with source code and design documents publicly available, retired programmers could be independently contracted for the evaluation of commercial applications. I can even imagine professional review organizations emerging, helping the consumer sort through the hype to identify those products with good, solid engineering.
I feel that the consumer benefits to this proposal are more clear than those benefits resulting from a breakup. Further, this proposal is not necessarily a penalty for Microsoft, but a more industry focused solution which other software organizations could voluntarily adopt. This proposal also does exactly what is needed for Microsoft, it forces a decreasing price non-discriminatory license. And the proposal opens up the operating system market for competition, albeit a different style of competition. With a bootstrap, such as the Microsoft Windows Operating System, this type of competition could gain much credibility as consumers realize the benefits and demand registration for other commercial software.
In short, this proposal provides the community of users with some say in the destiny of the software they have invested in and have become dependent upon.
Is it just me, or do other people think that putting VC and the other developer tools in a companay separate from the OS company a bit strange? Who ever heard of a company that didn't own/sell the development tools for its own OS?
Richard Stallman has his own views on what should happen to Microsoft, which seem a lot more reasonable than simply splitting up the company.
What needs to be done is to get beyond the "We must *hurt* Microsoft" mentality into the "How will doing this to Microsoft effect the industry in the long-term?" mentality. Splitting the company up just seems like an appealing way of hurting them. It doesn't seem like it is doing anything constructive.
Splitting seems like changing one successful company with popular products into three.
I don't see any problem with Microsoft giving away its browser. You get netscape and lynx with Red Hat, and konquerer with KDE, and nobody is complaining. It isn't the giving away for free that's the issue, its unnecessarily tying the software into the system in a way that makes it non-trivial to replace, and bullying its OEMs into installing their browser exclusively. I use Notetab for editing text on the PC; I'd hate to see notepad tied deeply into the guts of the operating system. It just doesn't make technical sense and doesn't benefit the user.
IE's tight integration with windows is because the browser is the linchpin in Microsoft's strategy to leverage Desktop dominance into dominance in the server market, on to content creation and ultimately to content itself. It is critically important to thwart the use of monopoly power to implement this strategy. If MS sucessfully ties even two of these areas together it would severely restrict customer choice.
If I were to go to more than two companies, I would split off these areas:
In other words, force each of these strategic areas to cooperate via public standards.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If MS does get split up, would parts of the company have to move off-campus?
Could other companies take up residence in the abandoned buildings?
Just make a list of all Microsoft employees and assets, create three different companies, and start selecting resources at random to distribute amongst the companies. Then let them decide on their own what they want to make. With any luck, all the lawyers and marketers will end up in one company by themselves :P
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
The truth is out there
Question Authority
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
Well, Netscape isn't really doing okay. They were bought by AOL weren't they? How much money do you think they are making off the netscape browser right now?
They couldn't survive on their server because they had very little of the server market. And that was because they didn't have the advantage of having a monopoly on the desktop OS market, and thus couldn't mussle their way into a domenant position in the web server/high-end OS market.
http://overwhelmed.org
While splitting Microsoft into smaller pieces may seem like a convenient way to reduce the influence of the company, the fact is that it is only a temporary solution. Microsoft's management structure would not really be altered by a breakup, as only the very top managers bridge the gap between the applications, Internet, and OS divisions now. In addition, a breakup could ultimately make the company stronger.
3Com's profitably spun-off its palm-computing unit, ATT's spun-off wireless division is now worth more than the rest of ATT combined (!), and other companies are planning similar offerings. Most of the time, these breakups (as with Bell) make the new, independent divisions more powerful than before. For example, the applications division is currently prevented from porting Office to UNIX because of the OS's divisions' desire to maintain Windows as a platform. Left free to port Office, a division of Microsoft could easily become the dominant Linux application provider in addition to maintaining a virtual monopoly on Windows productivity apps.
Instead of simply breaking the company up, DOJ needs to more closely regulate MS's internal policy. MS should be suspended from pursuing mergers and acquisitions for a period of a year or more and their licensing agreements should come under greater scrutiny. We, as tax payers, have funded DOJ's investigation up to this point, let's ensure that they do the job right.
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
Why not do it both, to ensure success either way:
Split in 3 x 3, thus 9 pieces. Three of them may only do the OS, three only apps, three only Internet.
I mean, everyone (me included) really hates getting that IE think for free! Thank God the Government got involved!
---
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
IE is currently free. And it is also, IMHO, the best browser for the Windows platform. I'm not trying to start a war, I just like it better than Netscape and all the others. But the question remains: If IE becomes it's own company, will it still be free??? Here are the options I see:
Well this is just something to ponder. I still say MS should stay as it is. It's a monopoly because until very recently no other OS has been nearly as good. But now we have a new hero: Tux!
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I haven't waded through all the posts here, but breaking-out M$ development tools (languages, etc etc..) seems mandatory -- and it doesn't seem to get much discussion.
This is the core of the real problem with M$ that hasn't been addressed at all AFAIK in the court case: the incestuous relationship between M$ operating system and applications developers is aided and abetted by the fact that M$ also has a massive development tools division.
Any discussion of splitting up M$ *must* include breaking out the development tools and keeping them at arm's length from both the operating systems people, and the applications people.
t_t_b
--
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Add NFS, add a hack so drive letters are not needed (ie /A/ means A:/), make stdin/out work all the time, add a method to get a real shell when you telnet. Probably fixes to the libraries to remove \r characters from text files and things like that. I'm sure there are many others.
Most of these seem more like hacks than real engineering and they can be stuck in there without complete understanding of the code. This would suddenly allow the MicroSoft OS's to cooperate better with the rest of the world, vastly increasing the value of all systems.
Real modifications of Windows, or merging of Windows ideas into Unix, or vice-versa, are going to be later, and may be much less important than these simple changes.
There's a lot I don't understand about the DOJ's pursuit of Microsoft .
It is more as if Judge Jackson is looking for a place in the sun by pulling down the glorious. This is popular activity of Government minions everywhere. And I am surprised to find the disease even in the US.
I like Microsoft about as much as anybody else . And I have always respected US fairness and justice more than that of other Countries.
Yet the DOJ seems to be defining the Software Industry as an area where , trade secrets are illegal . Until the advent of the microcomputer , software made by any company was such a hush hush affair , that even employees within the company could not get all the information . The entire computing field was of a proprietory nature . When was that description legally changed to such an extent that even keeping competitors out of a narrow area is considered illegal.
Nowhere can I see any Action of Microsoft where it has prevented a new OS to be introduced in the market . Microsoft cannot be penalised for the failure of the competition to bring out an acceptable product . Companies far larger have distributed free OSes and not been very successful (OS2). A very good OS is available free (LINUX). Isn't Microsoft doing something write ? Shouldn't they be lauded instead of being hounded .
If it is a monoply , it is one because of actions well within normal business ethics ( as understood by common sense and not reactionary and outdated laws ) . It is just that their knowledge of the Desk top Environment far exceeds that of any other company . Perhaps because they created the market.
For a long time now the US has been seen as a nation which has been expanding the human frontier. Today Microsoft bears that flag and it would be a sad day if even 1% of the DOJs suggestions are implemented.
Laws regarding monopolies , should restrict and limit unfair use of finanical muscle . I did not know that there were laws to restrict intellectual muscle too.
Anil Bhattacharji , anilbhx@sancharnet.in, Meerut Cantt. INDIA 91-121-642166
Well, that's harder than you might think. One solution might be to dedicate time to monitor closely Microsoft's actions and make sure they behave themselves. The problem with that? How far do we go in monitoring Microsoft? Is bundling their software with their OS wrong? Not necessarily. For all its good, an OS is useless without software. However, things like extending Kerberos and making it proprietary at the exclusion of other OSes, well that probably goes past the line of dubious actions.
I think the best plan (without causing too much harm to the consumer, because after all, this is supposed to help the consumer) would be to sever Microsoft's deathgrip on companies such as Apple. Unlike many other industries, I believe that having global standards for the personal computers can only benefit consumers.
When Microsoft's actions are such that it makes it impossible for 3 party developers is when the problem comes into play. We should probably make Microsoft show its source (when needed), while retaining rights to the source, so that other companies may develop competing software. At this point, it'd be very inconvenient for the industry as a whole to have to adapt to any totally new OS.
Of course, anyone else's thoughts are welcome. It's hard to be perfect. But I think the solution in this case doesn't involve splitting Microsoft up.
Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
If Microsoft is to be split up, there are two ways of doing it. The first is horizontally, which has alrady been discussed. The second is veritcally, but that poses problems. The DOJ complains that MS has a monopoly or uses monopolistic powers when pushing its browser or OS. Breaking up the company into three separate companies wouldn't help: rather than have one company pushing two products that more or less dominate the market, you have two companies, each pushing a product that dominates their respective markets.
In addition, with IE made by a separate company and sold for free...well, that company is not going to take in a lot of income without a lot of ads and such, which would make IE a lot less attractive. I believe that if IE were split into a separate company, it would eventually be taken over, just as Netscape was. Splitting up Microsoft does not seem to be the way to go. Much as I dislike Microsoft, I have to say that breaking them up would more than likely do more harm than good.
Perhaps the DOJ should target another organization that wields its monopolistic powers more than Microsoft ever could, that dominates America, and indeed the world, more than Microsoft could ever dream of. I am, of course, referring to the government of the United States of America. Perhaps it's time to return to that idea of "Of the people, by the people, for the people."
Je pense, donc je lis Slashdot.
After all, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that punishing the most successful competitor is a sure-fire way to ensure and increase competition!
Er...
Wait, no, that's kinda dumb. Damn.
1. The regulations exist
2. The market works pretty well
Is (2) true because of (1)? Is (2) true in spite of (1)?
If regulations are good, are more regulations better? Are regulations good up to a point, then bad beyond it? Did the congressmen receiving campaign contributions from microsoft's competitors happen to stumble on the perfect level of regulation?
Do you have any support beyond "obviously"?
Assuming that consumers would, in fact, benefit from a break up of microsoft, would this breakup still be desirable once the effect on aspiring entrepreneurs' incentives in the future is considered?
Believe this or not, apple originally intended to have integrated their file browser with a web browser by now, but consumers rejected the technology behind it.
The technology behind it was OpenDoc, a wierd but really interesting technology that shattered the traditional view of applications by making the document, not the application, the focus. The idea was you'd launch the document, not an application, and you would kind of pull in different parts of different applications as they were needed. It was the complete triumph of modularity-- if you didn't like, say, the spell checker, you could rip it out and replace it with another one, and any type of information could be edited the way it was intended no matter where it was-- if you were, say, writing an e-mail, since that was really a text document you could pull in that spell checker from the word processor. At least in theory.
One of the few apps ever written to take advantage of OpenDoc was apple's web browser, CyberDog. Originally apple planned to eventually [in the second or third revision of Copland.. Copland!! ha ha!!] make the Finder an opendoc container and have cyberdog integrated into it by default.
Unfortunately OpenDoc was released and hyped before it was truly finished (some very wierd things happened to your RAM in the early versions whenever an opendoc part launched), apple never made it exactly clear to the end user what opendoc meant to them or how to use it, nobody [least of all apple] supported it, and it came out at a VERY inconvenient time (around the time of businessweeks' "fall of an american icon" article that put apple firmly in the graveyard in the public mind) and as thus just as it finally became a polished, usable, mature technology, it was killed.
The interesting difference though between Windows 98 and Finder w/cyberdog is that apple's version of web-browser-as-file-browser would have been flexible-- i.e. respectful of the needs and wants of the actual user rather than the needs and wants of Microsoft's PR department. The user would be able to swap out cyberdog, or just parts of cyberdog-- i.e. just the HTML engine, or just the toolbar interface, or just the mailer-- completely at the user's discretion, and even [windows 98 users will be amazed by this feature] turn the web browser off if they decided they did not need it!. Unfortunately the alternate browser parts never actually surfaced-- netscape never released the Navigator part. Eventually someone managed to hack the Outlook Express libraries in such a way that they actually managed to make a browser part called Blake that let cyberdog use the IE html engine, but by then it was much, much too late. Nevertheless if netscape had ever come through cyberdog might have lived and apple might have had an integrated web browser first..
BTW, the current "network browser" thingy in the mac os looks like a very prototypical setup which [if it matures the way it looks like it will] will eventually allow FTP servers to be treated as if they were simply drives being shared over a network, accessible in the FInder and everything, something which to me makes a hell of a lot more sense than making a program to view web pages an omnipresent part of the file browser.
But still, if microsoft really cares about being "innovative" and not just about taking any means to destroy a competitor, once the breakup comes they will do what apple originally planned to do-- make not a web browser welded inside the file browser, but a built-in place for a user-chosen web browser to plug into and integrate into the file browser such that yes, IE would be integrated into the OS, but so would Mozilla and Opera and Lynx, and thus competition would be fostered and the DOJ's breakup terms will not be violated.
-mcc-baka
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IS THEFT
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
This has been hashed and rehashed so many times it makes me physically ill.
1) Who's going to buy MyWindows from Joe Schmoe down the street instead of getting it from Microsoft?
2) Who's going to want to go through all the code in Windows and make it work right?
3) Remember that an OS can't succeed on it's own--it needs apps. So all these new Windows companies have provide backwards compat--so the company with the biggest piece of the pie STILL controls the direction Windows takes. Guess who that would be?
4) Linux is not "in the public domain". Various pieces are copyrighted by various people and they all released those pieces under the GPL license.
--
Have Exchange users? Want to run Linux? Can't afford OpenMail?
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Also, the ownership stakes would be looked at - by seperating the ownership interests, corporate interests will be seperated as well. The Office group, for example, would be spun off, netting zillions for the current Microsoft ownership, but at least pushing the Office group off in their own direction.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
So of you are recommending that windows be opensourced. To you, I ask. How many of you think you can make sense out of a tens of millions of lines of code not written by you? Remember netscape? It wasn't even large, but what a mess it was.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
What if MS just told the government that their licenses have been revoked.
Which they could do, and if I was Bill, I would do.
Everybody seems to love the government for wanting to break-up Microsoft. Well what if it was your company that was beening told to break-up, and you had the worldwide power that Microsoft has. Would you listen to the Gov?
Besides if Microsoft didn't exist, most of you would have never known about Linux.
There is no solution, and a break-up is nothing, Bill will still be the richest person in the world, and people will still buy Microsoft.
Without computer security, there would be no hackers.
The Yahoo article dosen't have a whole lot of detail on this, but I think that my splitting it off into a Internet type company, it includes the Microsoft web server, and other web type things (mabye even SQL). This is the sort of business model that Netscape followed/follows (followed being before the AOL merger, I'm not exactally sure on this point).
I think, that if done correctly, this could be a very good move from the perspective of the opensource/alternative operating system community. Who knows, since Bill can't lead all 3 companys at once, they may consider opensource/porting! I don't really know if a judge can enforce something along these lines though...
I think it's kind of funny in a sad way, the three way split of Microsoft I mean. Even two way. The gov wants to split the company and tell each new company what they can and cannot produce, all because the original company was too successful at capitalism. This is straight-up communism folks, pretty much on a fundamental level. The government is telling a company what products to produce, period. After the cold war, vietnam, and all that ridiculous garbage, our own government shows what is has feared the most.
It's sad.
They'll just reform into a BEOWOLF CLUSTER and once again blow away the competition...
trollin' for science
You know, if I were Microsoft, I think I'd do something completely different.
OK. You're in a normal business office, one of millions across the globe. What's on the PCs?
Office + Windows.
Knowing this, I think I'd just integrate the two and eliminate the Windows product altogether.
I know this is shocking - but keep with me here. Microsoft is in this situation because it's possible to compete with only half of Microsoft: you can compete with the the Internet Explorer half, or you can compete with the Office half, or any other "half" you can care to mention.
Microsoft runs into problems because it controls the other half, the Windows "half" that their competitor needs to compete with the first half. So of course they produce a better browser: they own and operate the operating system!
So - still with me? - if I were Microsoft I'd just say, 'Screw this. If it's a problem that I own both pieces, and this opens me up to anticompetitive concerns, I'll just stop producing Windows altogether.'
I read somewhere that sales of Windows in the retail market has pretty much died down because everybody who was likely to upgrade has already done so, so Microsoft is already not selling many copies to end users. They're mostly selling Windows to OEMs. Well - sell them Windows Office instead. It's what most people are looking for, anyway; Office is a pretty nice, integrated bundle. It serves most people's needs.
Could the Justice Department really shoot this down? It seems to me that Microsoft should be free to develop any old product they wish. They also have the freedom to stop selling a product. Could the Justice Department really force Microsoft to continue selling Windows?
Think this over - I'm eager to see some more ideas.
Nebulo!
Microsoft started out like mild mannered Dr. Banner, but then an over dose of money affected it like gamma rays! Now it's a poor confused radioactive hulk lumbering around, crushing competitors and open protocols as if they were nothing more than buildings in the hulk's path. Trying to point this out to microsoft is like laughing at the hulk! It becomes enraged, but instead of throwing trains, it throws lawyers. I can only hope someone will calm the hulk down before it's too late! Where are you, Rick Jones??
According to this image Mr. William Gates III is not anymore with us. Let us all show our piety and meditate on the big questions of life: "Where do you want to go today?"
Sigged!
1) Mouse
2) Edit.com
3) Internet Explorer
That's it... and the last one is pretty debatable.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
It's not what it is, it's something else.
If you've experienced the pain of programming in any of these you will know what I mean. No matter how you look at them they are terrible API's. I would rather there were completely new/different cross-platform API's for GUI and for games development. Something well-designed.
Not wishing to throw water on this idea - but given that this isn't socialist Europe - Bill is not going to lose ownership of shares in all three companies is he - nor are all the other stockeholders. So how does this work ? Microsoft won't be nationalised...
I like the comment about Microsoft losing the thing that gives them the monopoloy power - IP protection... (copyright, trademarks, patents, trade secrets).
Winton
Can't Andover send a friend-of-court suggestion?
I'd say:
-Win9x, WinCE, X box....
-Win NT, 2000
-Apps + IE
Kill Microsoft? No! Just hire their GUI guys!
Okay, I can see breaking M$ into Windows, and Applications, but IE is going to far. If you want to break off IE put it in a company with MSN and their online garbage. IE would die if it was its own company.
"Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must first set yourself on fire." -- Fred Shero
Read the recommendation first, post later. The internet company would get IIS (nothing to sniff at), as well as MSN (direct competitor of AOL). These two cash cows, alone would allow the company to be very profitable.
I'm a gnu world man.
...Borland
It is not inconceviable that the internet services sections could go with IE. Think about it, there are lots of companies that have specific, special versions of IE for their ISP services (like RoadRunner). The custom programming is very likely not for free. Additionally, it is not unreasonable to throw up a case explaining why Hotmail and other MSN (all of MSN?) resources could go to the IE section. IE and MSN were built to be one (out of IE's non-conforming HTML implemented parts), just like everything else MS made. However some things are closer together than others...like IE specific HTML content in MSN, Exchange and MSOffice, Visual Studio(s), SQL SErver 7 and the OSes.
I would expect to see the companies shaped up like this, based on this principal:
#1 OS and hardware (kbds, mice, X-box, etc.)
#2 Applications and compilers (VBS, Office, MS Money, AOE, etc.)
#3 Internet services, (IE, MSN, WebTV, etc.)
this gives them all good product lines with reasonable revenue without giveing one something that it can truly make it a monopoly from day one (exept maybe slice #1--Xbox and OS, but Apple already does this...). Time will tell if this will hold, however.
- Sig
Show me a history of real-world abuse that has driven competition out through *illegal* means for each of these companies and I might agree with you.
Whatever. It's the one that'll sink next.
..."
Hey, got an idea! Why not put up a billboard next to 520 that says "Will the last person leaving Redmond please down the servers
Will in Seattle
This is likely to be the most damning evidence yet, since the message was written by Bill Himself merely days after the "fact" hearings closed in the DoJ suit.
Here's an excerpt as provided by the Post:
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
MS's real problem isn't the DOJ or JudgeJackson(JJ), but windows itself. Windows increasingly is turning out to be a malignant cancer infecting MS's image and long term income potential. For instance, I'm convinced MS would have jumped on the Linux bandwagon eons ago if it weren't for windows... ...rite...
What are the options for treatment? 1)'fix' the problem; 2)kill/paralyze it; 3)cut it away.
2) is excluded for obvious reasons; 1) is economically and technically unviable, so only 3) is left: cut it away... but how?
3a) Spin it off into a daughter company (vertical split)? And have the parent start working on Linux applications? How do you explain all of that to your shareholders(doh)? to your market? What would be the effects on the parent company? Could have worked (but would have been unnecessary and suspicious) before Linux (really) entered the arena, but isn't a viable option any longer.
3b) 'Split it off'? (Horizontal split, Microsoft doesn't own stock of the new company) = the unthinkable, unless...
Unless someone else does it FOR YOU. (After a 'brave' fight, of course...)
Someone like JJ 'n' da DOJ, for instance.
So Ballmer shouts:'Do NOT... S P L I T U S U P !'
Of course MS will have to appeal/settle, so JJ comes up with a cool appendix: the IE corporation(???); to be appealed/settled away...
And so MS gets its 2-way split into the Windows Corporation (WC, Flemish abbrev. for toilet) and Microsoft'sNotWindows Corporation (MSNWC). WC obviously develops and markets (and whatevers) the windows OS, while MSNWC focuses on all the other ex-MS products. Although some initial cooperation might occur, MSNWC quickly goes on to develop Linux (and *BSD,...?) versions of MS office, IE, games, etc. and even creates their own Microsoft'sNotWindowsLinux (what's in a name), effectively 'forcing' WC to open up the secret api's, to develop versions of windows for other platforms, or even go open source in a desperate attempt to stay ahead of the competition. Needless to say, windows will no longer be a threat to the long-term survival of the new MS, MSNWC.
MSNWC (...to be continued)
(Wonder if MSNWC's gonna be barred from OS development...)
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
http://www.siia.net/shar edcontent/press/2000/amicusbr2.pdf
It suggests how Microsoft #3 (IE, Inc.) might turn a profit (hosting a web portal on the new default home page, ala www.netscape.com; selling engineering services, to customers including Microsoft #1 and Microsoft #2; pp. 59-60), and even mentions the Microsoft vs. Slashdot battle over the Kerebos extension specs (p. 53).
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Could this maybe mean that IE could be ported over to the various Unixes, specifically Linux? It seems the only reason IE is a Windows/Mac only browser is because MS is trying to protect it's market. But if IE is it's own seperate company, they they'd want to expand to new markets, like Netscape has, and release a Unix Internet Explorer. I for one would absolutly love it if I could get IE on Linux. Mozilla is nice, but IE is just plain better. That's what encourages me about splitting up MS, the possiblity of getting Office and IE on non-MS owned platforms.
Surprisingly MSNBC has the best coverage on all this stuff thats going on. Of course there's some bias, but it only makes the poor writer look like he's trying to give a fair estimate, while towing the company line. hehe, oh yeah, there's a poll there that i think you slashdotters will like. :-D
Lemure, wtf! Don't you mean Lemur?
Marketing, Legal and Bill.
- If they settle, his opinion doesn't really matter.
- If they don't settle and he takes the DOJ recommendations, an appeals court may ship it back for consideration of other options.
- If they don't settle and he breaks MS into three companies, an appeals court may ship it back for consideration of other options - things like breaking it into only two companies.
- If they don't settle and he doesn't break MS up at all, maybe MS doesn't appeal.
Whatever happens, we'll all get to hear about it eventually....fencepost
just a little off
Many people here are assuming that the appeals process will last years and years. But the appeals don't have to last long at all, perhaps not more than another year -- it might even be all over by Christmas. Certainly, the government should do everything in its power to make that happen.
Remember that in a Sherman case, the government can ask to bypass the Court of Appeals and go straight to the Supreme Court. The idea is that breaking up a monopoly requires fast action without all of the delays of appeals, because the economy changes so quickly. Neither Microsoft nor the Court of Appeals can prevent the government from asking for this -- if the DOJ wants it, then it's up to the Supremes to decide whether to accept the task. They could say no and send the case back to the Court of Appeals, but in that case the government loses nothing for having asked.
Now IANAL, but here's how I figure it. The DOJ has a good case for asking for the fast track to the Supremes, because the software industry does indeed move very quickly, and the Feds can whip out dozens, maybe hundreds of M$ quotations in the court record saying exactly that. They've been emphasizing the fast-changing industry as a part of their defense, and now the DOJ can use their own words to get the fast track. So if they do ask, I'd be very surprised if the Supremes refuse.
The Court of Appeals has already indicated in earlier rulings that it may be more sympathetic to M$ than Judge Jackson, having overruled him on some key issues. Certainly M$ wants to head there; but the DOJ doesn't have to go there at all if it doesn't want to.
The current Supreme Court is relatively conservative and hence maybe sympathetic to big business, so the Feds may worry that they won't prevail there. But on the other hand, if the case is destined to end up in the Supreme Court some day anyway, then they might as well face that music now rather than later. Perhaps some justices will die or something if the case doesn't get there for a few years, but who knows if the replacements will be any more or less on M$'s side than the current justices are? No point in betting on that now; might as well just take your chances.
And after all, the current Court, despite its conservatism, does not appear especially beholden to industry in anti-trust cases. This Court is most passionate about matters of federalism and respecting the decisions of lower courts. They certainly won't overrule any of Judge Jackson's findings of fact, and these are particularly harsh for M$ (which is precisely why the Judge made his findings of fact so emphatic). Moreover, they are not likely IMO to overrule any of his findings of law unless there is a major, controversial and unclarified matter of the constitution or judicial procedure at stake. I don't know of any such issue in this case. For these reasons, I believe that the DOJ can win in the present Supreme Court.
M$ wants to delay and postpone as much as they can, since they'd rather have the Court of Appeals, who may be on their side, and they want to fight off a breakup for as long as they possibly can. But most of all, they want to wait out this November's elections. If George W. is elected, then they might get a sympathetic Attorney General who will stop the suit, or at least scale it back, for example by accepting M$'s proposed remedies rather than a breakup.
All the more reason for the DOJ to push ahead to the Supreme Court right away, before the election. The Court takes a break in the summer and begins its term in October. The DOJ should see to it that they have the M$ case on their docket when the term begins. If they do that and the Supremes accept the case, then the case cannot be stopped no matter who wins the presidential election. George W. Bush himself may end up with the job of presiding over M$'s breakup on orders from the Supreme Court, whether he likes it or not.
In fact, I can imagine that one of the reasons for Judge Jackson to press ahead with his decision so quickly is so that the DOJ has the time to do all of this. I can't imagine why the DOJ wouldn't try it. No wonder the M$ lawyers are pissed off.
So rather than years, we may very well have the final appeal before the Supreme Court in about three months; and after that, the Supremes can reach their decision any time they want to. They could rule in favor of the government within weeks, if they so desire. The Micro$oft monopoly may not survive to see the year 2001.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
Once anyone reads about how Microsoft was willing to lose all the potential income, and the development money they had already invested in macintosh office just to force internet explorer on apple, it's hard to imagine any other alternative.
Microsoft does make some very nice programs, but there is no good reason they shouldn't have to compete equally with every other software developer out there without the tool of using monopoly power in other areas to force inferior products by witholding products which consumers want.
the last split up was the phone company. now days you have excellent prices on phone service. you have competition. you have choice. Everybody won that time. Everybody will win here.
just my opinion, and I don't pretend to be unbiased.
________
1995: Microsoft - "Resistance is futile"
Are we sure Judge Jackson has seen the part of Fantasia with the brooms?
From what I remember reading, M|S's IE4 and above were designed with a very modular architecture. Could these modules be easily wrapped up and inserted inside Mozilla? Could somebody working on Mozilla comment on this?
Or would it be better to just port IE5 straight over to Linux? The hard parts must already be done as they have it running on Solaris and HP-UX.
And what about the license to get access to the source code. Although free, would it only be licensable to corporate entities? If so, wouldn't that exclude all the Mozilla contributors? (Unless a Mozilla.com hired all the contributors on as employees - on salaray at say 1 cent a year?)
It will be interesting to see how these issues will play out.
Mozill has been rendering pages since before m9. Don't tell me what I've seen with my own eyes isn't true.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Is at the end:
"This is the Microsoft Seal of Authenticity.
If you suspect that this memo is not an authentic copy, call 1-800-PIRATER and we'll arrest you."
Has anyone else found them notices in Microsoft Products kind of funny? Here's an excerpt from the Windows 95 Help File:
"What should I do if I suspect I have unknowingly purchased illegal Microsoft software product(s)?
...
Any consumers or resellers having questions about the legitimacy of Microsoft products should contact the Microsoft Piracy Hotline at 1-800-RU-LEGIT, accessible in the U.S. or Canada, or write to the nearest Microsoft legal department to tell us of your concerns:"
And THAT is no parody. It's real.
Now, would somebody puleeze build a decent web browser?
can have bad consequences. Remember the Sorcerer's Apprentice?
I think the decree should order that all of MS' top management go back to school and earn MBA's, even if some of them already have them.
They apparently only know one way to do business and it's illegal.
I really don't care if they break Microsoft into 500 companies. I just would like to see Exchange server released for various UNIX (Solaris, et al) platforms. Heck, I'd even like to see it run on Linux.
I really can't understand what the DOJ or the court think this is going to achieve.
Splitting MS up seems to me, to be a good idea, but splitting them into two/three companies that deal in different areas seems pointless.
Wont this simply create three companies with monopolies in those areas (OS, Applications, and Web Browser for example)?
Weren't the Baby Bells all different companies trying to service the same areas?
Isn't the whole point of splitting a company, intended to create several different companies which compete against each other, hence giving the consumer better value and more choice?
It seems to me like a punishment rather than an effort to give consumers a better deal.
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
We'll forget the question of where you got the source code to opera and internet explorer for a moment.
:P.
MSIE v.X makes cross-linked API calls than hardly be called "application level."
What exactly do you mena by cross-linked API calls? I mean I know IE unfairly uses the ODN network to relay subspace field emissions from the warp core to the position emitters...but come on.
For example, when a FAT look-up occurs through an HTML wrapped local stac, IE will reference the FAT FROM THE INTERNAL REGESTIRES, namely those in memory (or virtual memory). Does netscape do this? No. Opera? No. NO other broser does it!
Consider this: Taking a print job and spooling it to an EMF-format file without IE simply doesn't work without enough crap conversion and reforms that the end job is entirely unusable. Yeah, you'll get something to print, but it is more of a duct-tape solution in the end. And quite often the job is mis-formatted or garbled.
Um, see above except replace positron emitter with waffle maker.
Level-3 interlaced GIFs, in order to be displayed PROPERLY (NOT the way Netscape does it) will make a ring 0 call to the initial color flag of the file - calling an API that only the KERNEL is allowed to call. IE can do this, nothing else can.
I realise you're trying to be funny but just in case Linux weenies decide to take this on...interlaces GIFs have nothing to do with kernel level calls. You draw them yourself. Hell, the only thing you'd really need from windows is SetPixel
And is very very buggy. Despite all this I prefer
it to winblows. Those who think that you can't
crash Linux are having wet dreams. Those who
don't use KDE are not having those dreams but
are quite realists.
Three cases in point that you could try and you
will have to agree with me. I'm not sure if it's
a feature (bug) in the kernel or KDE but here :
1-With gcombust you burn fake burning a CD
You then close the application and try ejecting
the CD out of the drive. You will soon find
out that a reboot (which takes a long time) is
you only way out of using all of the swears you
can remember.
Platform used is a PC with a K6-2 555Mhz with
128M of RAM and 132MB of Swap.
2-Hook up your LP player to a preamplifier which
is connected to the sound card line input.
Record 3-6 songs using the memory. You can
save songs each time after a recording, results
won't vary much. Now it feels like your swap
drive is a floppy or some remote location
running at 110 baud or less. The PC is technically
frozen with a reset as your only option. On reboot
you may have to run fsck depending how lucky you
got.
Platform used : Cyrix 200Mhz with 40M of ram
and 132MB of swap.
3-You start in KDE (works just as good in GNOME)
Swith to another console with ctrl-F2. You then
go back to KDE with ctrl-F7 while making sure
that you quickly move your fingers to the mouse
and move the mouse before the KDE desktop is
fully rebuilt.
Mouse support is gone and there seems to be
a deadly crash. But no, the ctrl backspace
still works and seems to be the only way
back to sanity aside from switching back to
the console and giving bunch of kills.
It seems platform independant and works well on
most of those I've tried.
The bottom line is that GUI is bloated no matter
where you go. I sure can find many more cases to
get winblows to crash but no one can say with
a straight face that KDE is not bloated or not
buggy. As to why it brings the system down with
it is baffling considering that I've yet to
get it to crash when I don't use the GUI.
Is (2) true because of (1)? Is (2) true in spite of (1)?
These regulations didn't just spring magically into being. They are the result of our experiences trying to keep the market working. When it goes out of whack somehow, we usually try to figure out what went wrong and then make some regulation that will keep it from happening again. Kind of like fixing bugs in code.
If regulations are good, are more regulations better? Are regulations good up to a point, then bad beyond it?
There is no ideal amount of regulation. It is created as we deem necessary. When something happens to screw things up, we try to fix it. Granted, some regulations are created for political reasons, and are probably bad, but most, and I include anti-trust laws in this, are generally good and helpful in keeping the market free and open and running properly.
Did the congressmen receiving campaign contributions from microsoft's competitors happen to stumble on the perfect level of regulation?
First of all, Microsoft can easily outspend any of its competitors when it comes to political contributions. So, if you have actual numbers, it would be very helpful. It might be interesting to see who spent how much in contributions. I think it would say more about the quality of our congresscritters and our election system than that of the contributors though.
Second, whether the current trial occured because of Microsoft's competitors' complaints or not is irrelevant if they actually broke the law, and it seems abundantly clear that they did. As I've said before, selective enforcement is a bad thing, but that doesn't mean we should just let any offenders go, it means we should work to make sure that all offenders are prosecuted. If you think other companies are guilty of anti-trust offenses, then please, point them out and explain it to us.
Do you have any support beyond "obviously"?
Don't think I even used that word, although it does seem obvious to me that regulation is needed if we are to maintain an open, free market. Simply because the natural instincts of a corporation are to try to get rid of anything that hurts profits, which competition can certainly do.
Assuming that consumers would, in fact, benefit from a break up of microsoft, would this breakup still be desirable once the effect on aspiring entrepreneurs' incentives in the future is considered?
Even ignoring the fact that nobody made Microsoft break the law, and that they had abundant warning that this was coming, I still find that statement to be utterly ridiculous. Does someone need to think that they'll be able to make billions upon billions of dollars before they start a business of their own? Most people are happy to make a good living. The fact that some corporations get huge is a nice dream for some people, but it's not what makes most people start a business. Entrepreneur's everywhere will still come up with new ideas and still create new companies and new markets. A break-up of Microsoft won't change that one bit, just as previous break-ups didn't cause entrepreneurs to throw up their hands and go apply at McDonald's.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Will Microsoft have visitation rights?
This may encourage MS to make future versions of Windows POXIS complient, to aid portability, which would make it easier for other developers to cross port their apps.
POXIS? That's a good description of it
I presume you mean POSIX? Windows 2000 is fully POSIX compliant, and Windows NT 4 is POSIX-compliant and Unix-compatible if you install Interix.
(Note that "Unix-compatible" is a very vague term here)
If MS gave Interix away for free with win2k, we might see a large decline in *nix market share. Perhaps the reason they aren't doing this is because it would break anti-competitive agreements they have with the US Govt.