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Proposed Legal Test For Combining Programs
MrKhuel writes: "Professor Lee Hollaar of the University of Utah School of Computing has filed a neutral friend of the court brief, which has been posted with other electronically submitted documents in the Microsoft anti-trust appeal, discussing problems with some arguments for combining programs and how to test for the legality of program combination in anti-trust cases." Beyond the Microsoft case, this has some interesting applications.
I agree. But our web browser would have nothing at all to do with my comment about software distribution in the Windows world. The software installation application that enables more modular software distribution need not even be written by Micro(Richman)soft; none of the major installers used today are.
.ZIP file support in Windows ME seems a little odd to me... Unlike the installer situation, this pretty much puts WinZip out of business. But at least Windows is catching up to Linux feature-wise... *grin*
Actually, With Win2K/WinME Microsoft has introduced a centralized "installer" service, using a special package format (MSI) which does library and version tracking, etc etc. You can download the service for Win98 as well..
You'll note that ActiveState uses MSI exclusively for distributing Windows stuff.
It actually makes a lot of sense... Rather than have InstallShield, Wise, and half a dozen other installer services tracking which DLLs are/aren't being used, and clobbering each other (say, InstallShield deleting foo.dll because IS thought it wasn't being used, but a Wise-installed app was using it...) a central manager for this stuff makes sense.
And actually, this doesn't have to put Wise/InstallShield/etc out of business -- it just means they have to make MSI-compatible installer-generators...
Now, the decision to include
-JF
MrJoy.com -- Because coding is FUN!
The M$ problem exists ONLY on the x86 platform. Buy something else.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
No-one's suggesting that MS has to fill in forms to issue products, but that the base Windows product is made available after it meets standards.
Linux runs a stable base and development code with their even and odd kernel releases. Features of the odd kernel are integrated into the even kernel only on some sort of committee say so. [This is what inspired the solution, if you must know] The main difference here is that we're dealing with a company with a past history of disrupting the market.
The thing does not even ban MS from improving the kernel or any other feature. But this improvement is to be made as an add-on, just as they have in the past, and they have to make the system without the addon available. What it does prevent is MS fostering IE onto everyone as a requirement to have the OS. I mean, MS has the installation down to two clicks, if they are to be believed.
The idea that some feature of the driver might be made available to all operating systems is inspired by Microsoft's microdriver model.
The idea of a bios-level install is inspired by products like OS/2's Boot Manager, Compaq's and IBM disk based BIOS utilities, partition magic and others. The idea is that one could use a generic install for OS systems, and then have the OS compile its own drivers from the stored microdrivers. The thing can be run out of its own partition, like boot manager and Compaq's bios utility are.
There is nothing in the `BIOS level' system install and maintanence that prevents an OS from having a different file system, loading additional drivers, including those on demand or whatever. All that is required is basic installation and a reasonable support for the principle features of the computer.
The idea of being able to roll back the system is to prevent some sort of `not available' noise. I mean, you can have Windows and a number of service packs on the same cdrom, and the installation could pick files from the base product or the base product and service packs, based on selecting a different install file.
The idea of retrofitting older OS installs into the picture is to help undo the damage done by MS anti-competitive actions, much as AT&T had to undo their wall-plugs.
Maybe some of the presentation was a little too extreme for some to follow, but the heart was there. :)
When you come to grips with the concept that the home grown data and programs are more valuable to the users than the manufactured software, then you will come to understand why retro support is so essential. We had some weird GWBASIC program running right up to 1999, because the data it processed was more valuable than replacing it with something easier to program.
The sort of solution protects Microsoft's IP rights and their right to innovate, etc, but it also protects the consumer from these very things. We don't stop MS from making Outlook, but we prevent them from forcing it onto everyone as a condition of Windows.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
The Linux kernel is the heart of the system, but you can't run on the kernel alone. There is a subset of software which is considered required for a Linux system to work correctly, and which could therefore be considered part of the operating system.
/sbin/init with my own application, I can run a "Linux OS" without bash or X or vi or any of the utilities that come with a typical Linux distribution.
Linux is becoming widely used as an OS in embedded applications. If I replace
I'm not experienced enough with Linux to be able to say specifically which pieces of software are necessary, and how much software is included depends on the definition of "work." Does "work" mean "a user can log in and manipulate files"? If so, that means everything up to, and including, a shell and a text editor. If you simply define "work" as "can boot, but errors are acceptable" then the subset becomes a great deal smaller.
"Work" neans that the device loads the OS and provides the functions that the system integrator designed into it. A dedicated purpose, Linux-based device may have little of the functionality that you associate with a typical distribution. It may be a point of sale terminal which communicates with local devices (a barcode scanner, a receipt printer, a credit card reader, a cash drawer) and servers (a price database and modem pool for credit card approval) without a shell, keyboard or mouse.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Did anyone else look at some of the other amicus curae briefs?
Theres this one by the "Center for Moral Defense of Capitalism" And this one by "The Association for Objective Law".
Ironically, these two entities were supposed to file a combined brief, but they couldn't agree on what it should say, so they filed briefs even though the court denied their motion to do so. It looks like TAFOL's brief will be considered as it's within the length limit, but
the CMDC has until today to file one about half as long as the one they've alread submitted.
With friends like these, MS dosn't need enemies.
There's mor interesting stuff. The parties have until Jan 5 to decide who will be seated at the table. It looks like the Clinton Administration will be determining who argues this appeal and not he Bush Administration.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
> What exactly would the U.S. do if gates decided
> to use the majority vote of his and his buddies
> and move the headquarters of M$ overseas?
Are you kidding? If a foreign company had tried to do what Microsoft has done to its US competitors, the US government would been all over them for dumping, restraint of trade, unfair competition, etc etc. MS products would certainly have been slapped with massive punitive tariffs, and the host country would have been put under huge diplomatic pressure and probably dragged into the WTO. Not to mention all the rhetoric you'd be hearing about the threat to US nationalism, how other countries don't respect free trade, the need to recapture technology leadership, etc.
It happens all the time in other industries --- lamb, steel, sugar --- even when the foreign companies are honestly outperforming their US counterparts. A company as dirty as Microsoft would trigger a firestorm.
I'm not so sure about this point. Suppose Micro$oft was selling Windoze 2010 for $1000, and they sell Outlook Express for $1000 as well. If I understand the argument correctly, it would be OK for them to combine them into a single package as long as they went on selling the two seperately.
So what do they do? They bolt the two together, call the package Windoze 2010 Professional, and sell it for $1000. Or hey, maybe they're feeling deperate to dominate the mailer market and they sell the combined version for less than either of the components! Either way, no one will buy the components seperately anymore.
It seems that making this exception in the consideration of software combinations creates a big, fat loophole.
But for the most part, it's one of the most lucid documents in the whole case that I've read...
-Alec
The truth is that when a certian share of the market is had, then some sort of regulation should kick in. The situation in changing the Windows UI should be no different to changing the position of controls on a motor car.
I suggest that Windows be frozen at certian levels, and upgraded by add-on patches. Periodically, these patches will be examined by some external committee, and those deemed essential will be made into a standard patch, to be distributed with all copies of Windows.
Users would then be able to apply the OS or the OS with the standard patch level. The level of patching will be such that any of the last x versions, or the last x years, might be restored from a given copy. That is, if I buy Win2002, I should be able to roll out the standard Win95, Win98, WinME, &c.
New features would be distributed under separate cover. These will be greatly restricted, because they may only be added under the result of an external committee.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
indeed I did and if I recall correctly this is what caused the uproar. I honestly dont think people were upset because Bill is an ugly bastard. If I find the article (wired has removed all their early trial articles for some reason) I'll post that link too.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Another example is on page 22, where the author writes that increasing the maintainability of applications written for Windows because a lot of functionality used by them is already built in the OS has no direct benefit to consumers. Again I disagree: for instance, if all applications use the same built-in serializer for a certain fileformat, changes to that format would only require a single componentupdate to the operating system. This means the consumer won't have to update all the applications seperately - not to even mention all the possible bugs that could result from the various implementations.
As you point out yourself, "standard" DLLs pretty much destroy this point of your argument. For instance, lots of programs share the Microsoft Visual C++ runtime libraries on my computer. If Microsoft discovered a catastrophic bug in msvcrt40.dll or mfc40.dll or any other DLL, I would only have to replace one file. Have you ever installed a program and seen an alert that asks you to confirm the replacement of a DLL with a more recent version?
Ofcourse, using a standard DLL in Windows to perform certain tasks doesn't require it to be part of the Operating System, but in what other way can you be certain that all your potential customers have it installed?
Ah, now this point provides ripe fodder for a rant. The quick answer is, they don't know if their customers have it installed. So they bundle all necessary DLLs with their installer. This is a pretty fucked up part of the Windows software distribution world, that people are constantly and unknowingly downloading msvcrt DLLs and other DLLs that they already have on their computers.
If I'm installing Enlightenment on my Linux box, I need imlib (amongst other things). How do the Enlightenment folks know that I have the proper version of imlib on my computer? They don't. They don't care. Having imlib is a precondition to being able to run Enlightenment, and the onus is on me to install it. In fact, if you go to Rpmfind.net, you'll find that pretty much every RPM they have requires that you have some other stuff installed.
Does it suck that I have to install these libraries and ancillary programs? Is it inconvenient? No. The reason is that there are nice graphical applications that install my Linux software for me (some better than others), and they can automatically check dependencies for me and download and install the required shared libraries. Even in the absence of such a handy application, I'm a big boy and can cope with following links to download required libraries if I don't already have them.
Now, many Windows users aren't big boys. I remember downloading a few programs over the years from sites that offered different versions of their installer depending on which libraries you already had installed. I liked this a lot, but many Windows users wouldn't know what the hell they were talking about. I'm sure most people could learn to download libraries on their own if they had to (although these libraries would probably get left behind when they uninstalled), but they shouldn't have to. There should be a nice installer mechanism that downloads, installs, and keeps track of all required libraries for you. If Microsoft wanted to bundle a useful program with their operating systems that scored mad points in the battle of modularity and code reuse, this strikes me as a nicer choice than foisting IE on people.
It would be nice if the system were such that if a company decided that Mozilla's HTML rendering engine was superior to Microsoft's and chose to use it in their product, they could do so without having to worry too much about the bloat it would introduce in their installer download.
Yes, during the trial I really wished there was someone with half a brain in that court room. When the judge essentially said "take IE out of Windows until we determine if it is legal" and Microsoft's response was "If we do that Windows wont work!" the obvious and most sane response would have been "Well Windows 95 works just fine without have IE built in, you didn't have it before, why do you need it now?" but the judge couldn't say that because he isn't a computer programmer. Microsoft openly lied to this court on numerous occasions but no-one gets held in comtempt, no-one gets hit with perjury charges.
How we know is more important than what we know.
This is imperative to the future of both the electronic economy, and business practices. With MS mixing this and that, it's hard to draw any definitive line between segments, delineating separate programs that are bundled in as opposed to integral components (or ones that would be worthless separately). Consider it a modern definition of an OS as well. Would we really want to separate the network functions from the basic OS these days? Should copy/paste functions be considered integral? How about Internet apps, or connectivity programs, calculators and simple text editors? Where is the line drawn? This type of effort will also halp Linux/NonMS OSes in the long run anyway because it will help put everyone on a level playing field, as far as what type of product exactly it is that's being offered.
--
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
To sum it up: According to the author, Microsoft should prove that (for instance) combining IE and Windows has a real benefit to consumers that can not be achieved in another way. Since bundling IE and Windows has a bad effect on the possibility for competitors to market their products, this effectively destroys their market and the innovations they could bring to it.
This is a bit of a reversed way of thinking to me, because you can't seriously expect Microsoft to think about what is fair, honest and chivalrous to their competitors every step along the way of developing their system. For instance, on page 20 the author writes that marking up the helpfiles of Windows in HTML is basically a way of forcing the browser and HTML-parsing functionality into the Operating System without a legitimate reason. That's simply not true - as we all know HTML is actually a standard for marking up stuff like that, and Microsoft uses it to publish their help online aswell as in the Windows helpsystem.
Another example is on page 22, where the author writes that increasing the maintainability of applications written for Windows because a lot of functionality used by them is already built in the OS has no direct benefit to consumers. Again I disagree: for instance, if all applications use the same built-in serializer for a certain fileformat, changes to that format would only require a single componentupdate to the operating system. This means the consumer won't have to update all the applications seperately - not to even mention all the possible bugs that could result from the various implementations. Ofcourse, using a standard DLL in Windows to perform certain tasks doesn't require it to be part of the Operating System, but in what other way can you be certain that all your potential customers have it installed?
Wait just a sec here...
you can't seriously expect Microsoft to think about what is fair, honest and chivalrous to their competitors
I beg to differ. This anti-trust case has been about precisely that! Microsoft has always run their business with the specific intent of destroying their competitors. Look at their constant incompatible Word upgrades, the way they reported fake errors for DR-DOS, and on and on. I will admit the author is proposing the opposite action from what Microsoft has done historically, but the observations which cause those actions have always been there.
Whether or not the anti-trust case is useful / needed / evil is a different matter altogether.
--
Infuriate left and right
Market competition is in general a good thing.
But I think you need to draw a distinction between:
-Hurting a competitor through better/cheaper products
-Hurting a competitor through market power
A little knowledge of economics would be enough to tell you why there is a difference. Suffice it to say, in the first case you're providing a benefit by offering a better deal to consumers and signalling to less efficient competitors that their resources would be best employed elsewhere in the economy.
In the second case, your market power may actually be driving out more efficient competitors, you are building barriers to entry and extracting monopoly rents that may be fine for your shareholders in the short term but are pretty bad news for consumers/the economy as a whole.
My personal take is that antitrust law should never concern itself with the former, but should be reasonably vigilant in the latter case of competitor harm. The success of capitalism is based on competitive markets, not anti-competitive ones.
I haven't done the maths, so any other economists out there should correct me if I'm wrong. But here's the grossly simplified bit of economic theory that I hope can demonstrate this:
Assume:
Two markets (OS and APP)
Company X has a monoply in OS, but competes with many competitors in APP
The OS product is a necessity for all APPs
Now if X combines OS and APP but leaves the individual OS and APP products on the market, it can't get away with charging more that the price of OS plus the competitive price of APP.
However, if X removes the original (non-combined) OS product, it can now charge the monopoly price of OS+APP. Customers will have to buy this, because they can't do anything without OS. All the competitors in APP will be unable to sell at positive price, so will be forced out of the market.
In the repeated case, X will enter new markets, bringing more and more functionality to OS and wiping out competition in each field. You will see the price of OS rising relative to what it would have been without any additions. Net result is that X builds a monopoly in *every* related market by tying *without* any intrinsic advantage (innovation, lower cost) in any of them.
Anyone spot a similarity with the Microsoft case?
Note that all of this doesn't work unless X has monopoly power in the OS market. Without that power, either competitors or consumers can create an alternative (OS+APP) that will prevent monopolisation.
Now for my reccomendation....
If company X wants to combine two products and posesses monopoly power in at least one of them, it may be forced to produce either of the separate products at a discount equal to the economic cost of the non-included product. This should be done on the request of any competitor. Furthermore, it must take all reasonable steps to ensure that competitors have a legal and technological opportunity to create a rival combined product using company X's monopoly product as one component.
This sounds fair to me.... it would remove most of the economic objections to market monopolisation. Sophisticated customers/OEMs would continue to be able to buy and combine products themselves. Less sophisticated customers could gain the convenience of a combined install, but retain choice over competing products. Competitors would be fairly rewarded for the value of the components they had created - if they had a truly better APP, they would be able to market their combination for a higher price than the (OS+APP) combination of company X.
I guess my conclusion is that to retain competition in highy interlinked product markets such as software, it may be optimal to enforce componentisation of products with standard interfaces and then create a separate market in the bundling and distriubution of these core components. This could be done either by the component makers themselves or independant distro companies, but the key point is the *right* to use someone else's components at a fair price in your product. This allows small, specialised companies to compete. It also forces big companies to play fair and adhere to standards.
My prediction is that economic problems such as these will become an increasingly big deal. How we choose to solve them will be an important factor in the levvel of economic development we are able to attain in the 21st century.
This brief demonstrates some of the worst flaws in the so-called "anti-trust" laws and this entire stupid case.
First, it completely dismisses any "tautological benefits" of combining two existing programs, when those "tautological benefits" are in fact the only benefits most consumers are ever likely to notice or care about. End users don't know and don't give a damn about the technical inner workings of their operating system, shared libraries, and applications. Yet these benefits are the first to be tossed out of consideration.
The brief says:
and I don't know whether to laugh or cry. If we aren't judging whether or not it benefits the users, what the HELL are we doing? Judging if it provides some obscure technical improvement that won't be noticed by 99% of the users?Second, the market for a compatible DOS was effectively eliminated when Windows finally picked up steam, not when Microsoft started including DOS in the same cardboard box as Windows 95. I'm sure MS would have preferred to simply retire DOS completely and make Windows 95 a free-standing OS, but couldn't do so because it would have orphaned all those old DOS apps (not to mention the fact that Windows still relied (relies?) on much of the basic services of DOS - but that's another story). So it put DOS in semi-retirement by hiding it behind the Windows shell. In fact, one could argue that by effectively abandoning the DOS-without-Windows market, Microsoft handed that market to DR DOS on a silver platter. But there were precious few customers for that market anymore. People wanted a GUI operating system, not a new version of DOS.
The discussion of the Melissa virus is another red herring. The fact that Outlook has dim-witted security has nothing to do with the legality of a vendor combining two products into a single offering. Eudora, Notes, or any other application that offers email services could just as easily blindly execute any script or binary sent to it. The fact that they don't only proves the people who wrote those applications were more security-minded than Microsoft's crew. Besides, if the combining a program into the Windows OS made the OS weaker that would actually be a benefit to Microsoft's competitors! Linux vendors around the world should be encouraging Microsoft to start adding as many buggy, insecure programs to Windows as possible. And this whole discussion ignores the fact that Microsoft does include Outlook Express with Windows now, and if you got your PC with Windows pre-installed you also got Outlook Express pre-installed. But as Hollarr himself demonstrates, you can still use other email clients and not expose yourself to the security risks of Outlook. This would be true whether you have Outlook installed or not.
I also find it laughable to hear so many people bitching about Microsoft bundling non-operating system programs with Windows when most Linux distributions come with every piece of Linux freeware under the sun "bundled" on the same CD and nobody complains about that or whines that it's "unfair" to Microsoft.
This brief, and most discussion of the case completely ignores the facts that 1) Microsoft owns Windows and IE and ought to be able to combine them if it damn well wants to regardless of technical or any other kind of benefits 2) Neither OEMs, nor consumers, or anybody else is forced by law to use Windows or any other Microsoft product and 3) If anybody offered consumers a viable replacement for Windows most will tell Microsoft to go screw themselves. PC history over the last 20 years is littered with examples of operating systems and applications that were either worse than Microsoft's offerings (Lotus SmartSuite), were pathetically marketed (OS/2) or were ignored by the rest of the industry (BeOS). Microsoft has practically won by default.
I also find it ridiculous that the "problem" seems to be that Microsoft previously offered Windows and IE as separate products, and now only offers them as a single product. Does that mean that if Microsoft had never released IE as a separate product but simply kept it under wraps and then included it in the next version of Windows none of this would be happening?
My uncle Freddie invented the Ice cube tray, and he did not patent it. He also died over the holidays.
He invented the tray when he was 17, and it got him his job at Frigidaire.
Just thought you'd like to know.
Hammy
www.freakingeeks.com
Mr. Hollaar--who has made something of a career of testifying against Microsoft--claims to have "unique insight" (Hollaar Mot. at 2) into the design of Microsoft's operating systems by virtue of having examined their source code. First, the record is not open to supplementation with Mr. Hollaar's personal views about the design of Windows 95 and Windows 98. Second, Mr. Hollaar's claimed insight is not unique because Edward Felten, one of appellees' three technical experts, studied the source code for Windows 98 and testified at trial based on the results of that study. One of Microsoft's witnesses, Dr. James Allchin, also testified about Windows 95 and 98 based on his knowledge of their source code. Third, Mr. Hollaar has apparently forgotten that he became acquainted with the source code of Microsoft's operating systems in the Caldera and Bristol cases pursuant to protective orders that strictly prohibit him from using that knowledge for any purpose other than preparing his testimony in those cases. The source code for Microsoft's operating systems is extremely valuable intellectual property, and Mr. Hollaar's willingness to breach obligations imposed on him by other federal courts to preserve its confidentiality should not be countenanced.
It seems to be the same old story all over again:
Frinds of the court are either on M$ payroll or they are violently opposed to M$, with the third party being maybe turned on by the legal challenges and law interpretations.
So far I can't recall any Friend's Briefs that are not biased one way or the other [or offtopic in case of the legal beagles].
While the lengthy brief certainly digs deeper into technologies involved, it does so mainly to support a claim and to proof the Friend's point.
How on earth is a non-tech-saavy judge supposed to reach 'neutral' conclusion and pass judgement?
Given the way the whole case was built, any decission is likely to be unfair to the majority as it is likely to be some sort of compromise that nobody will be happy with.
So, what should be on trial is the legal system, prior to trialling M$. Either the judge would need to pass a CS exam, obtain an MBA and phd in Law - without being in touch with any living being or reading any newspapers or opinions while 'studying' the case, or the outcome is unfair, if not unlawfull.
Why do you think Juries are kept away from the public and newspapers during a trial?
Now the court faces popular opinion, contradicting Friends filings and not a single expert brief that has been written without the writer favouring one opinion or the other.
I think that the powers-to-be certainly know all that. If that is the case, then the question arises if this whole think is just a feel-good showpiece. Something to confirm to the stupid masses that the system is fair and equitable and that nobody is above the law.
In fact, when it comes to the crunch, M$ has to be conviceted of 'something' in order to please the dozing public - as has already happened in the original case.
Has anyone ever thought about what would happen if M$ really played hard-ball in this? What exactly would the U.S. do if gates decided to use the majority vote of his and his buddies and move the headquarters of M$ overseas? Think about the job losses and worse the loss in tax revenue and the impact on supporting industries.
Legally, if M$ moved the main development center to another country and Redmond would officially only do component and module work, then M$ would be save for now and the future.
Worse yet, M$ could actually go to the extent of quite literally buying a country or two.
Heck, they could challenge whatever decission or restrictions courts might impose on the platform of the WTO and the United Nations.
Sure M$ would get plenty bad press and calls to boycott their products. But when it comes to the crunch, the vast majority of office bees prefers to use something they already know [win/office].
Political correctness only goes so far...
If it created a seperate copy, one of the primary purposes of shared libraries, having the library in memory only *once* instead of once for each program, would be defeated.
Do you have documentation?