Microsoft Du Jour - Talks, Upgrades, Salaries

Jeff writes: "CNN is reporting 'In a dramatic move, the new judge in the Microsoft case Friday ordered the government and the software maker into five weeks of intensive settlement talks, until Nov. 2.'" Other MS submissions coming in today: USAToday discovers the new upgrade scheme, designed to milk every last cent out of those who've locked themselves into Windows; tech-report.com goes a bit more in depth on the same subject; ZDNet hoists the black flag; MS discusses its plans to control how you compute (by the way, the license agreement for Windows Media Player now allows Microsoft to disable any software on your computer - you do read those license agreements, don't you?); Gates got $666,000 last year but won't have to apply for welfare just yet.

Comments

Let's help!

[cvd6262]

Analysts expect non-profits and small firms to be hardest hit. Habitat for Humanity, which builds houses for poor people, could have its technology budget wiped out by the increases, says Teresa Pudi, vice president of information services. [...] Habitat for Humanity is considering the free Linux operating system. But because Microsoft is so dominant, it will be difficult for firms to switch. Windows runs 92% of PCs. Its Office software has better than a 90% market share, Gartner says.

Anybody want to post contact info for those of us who whould like to help H4H migrate? (You know, it could count for my community service hours...)

Extracts from the media player license agreement

[target]

I just downloaded the media player to take a look at the license agreement. Here are a couple of interesting bits:

* Digital Rights Management (Security). You agree that in order to protect the integrity of content and software protected by digital rights management ("Secure Content"), Microsoft may provide security related updates to the OS Components that will be automatically downloaded onto your computer. These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other software on your computer. If we provide such a security update, we will use reasonable efforts to post notices on a web site explaining the update.

Wow. So they can automatically put stuff on your computer that will disable software they don't like, and potentially take away your ability to play "Secure Content."

This is pretty intrusive, as things go. I, for one, would prefer in general that nothing gets installed on my computer that I don't specifically authorize.

Note that there seems to be a corrolary effect here. If they are sending stuff to your computer, your computer is really reaching out to their systems, and potentially is providing identifying or other information to them. Scary.

But of course the scariest bit is the "use other software" clause. It's not even qualified! By this reading, they can disable any other piece of software on your computer! Fear.

Of course, it is in the digital rights section of the agreement, but I'm not sure if that forces the "any other software" clause to be software relating in some way to digital rights.

- target

Re:The don't buy it for chrissakes!

[Flower]

Although you may have trouble convincing your friends and family not to buy it.

dingdingdingdingding!!!! We have a winner!

It's of no use to switch to an alternative that can't interoperate with the De Facto standard everybody and your mother is using. There is no and cannot be a positive feedback loop like the one MS currently holds with its offerings of products and OS for the likes of linux, BeOS, *BSD, MacOS, etc., etc..

There will be no killer app for linux, no developer focus on the Mac and no interest in niche OSes simply because MS is too entrenched and ubiquitous to make an alternative attractive. For an alternative to become viable MS would have to practically fall on its own sword and even with its current licensing trend it is obvious that is not happening. I mean honestly how much money is MS losing because Habitat for Humanity may ditch for linux?

So no, all those "whiners" don't have a choice unless they want to live in a vacuum. This is why monopolies are bad. This is why we have anti-trust laws.

Its not anti-trust anymore. It is anti-control.

[javabandit]

I have to say, I have never seen anything like this, ever.

I honestly think that over the next 20 years, we will see Microsoft's control rise to such a level that not even the US government can oppose them on any level. I mean, they are able to manipulate entire markets. With the flick of a switch, they alone can bring things to a complete halt. With the deprecation or removal of an API, they can put people out of business, or send companies into bankruptcy.

The introduction of .NET makes it even more evident.

Microsoft... this company... in 20 years will control everything important. They already control 95% of the desktops. They will control almost all messaging. They will control almost all authentication. They will control almost all digital rights management.

Taking down Microsoft after they have such a level of control and we have such a level of dependence would be like us dropping our cars and going back to horses and wagons -- not going to happen.

Honestly, its time for people to wake up before its too late. Do not support this behemoth anymore. Its not about a simple anti-trust case.

This is about one company controlling the most fundamental mechanisms upon which the entire world depends.

And THAT is extremely dangerous.

Is an Optional Copyright Term Limit A Solution?

[ClarkEvans]

While open source is laudable, the problem is that it confuses "free beer" with "freedom", i.e., "gratis" with "free". This is unfortunate. IMHO, we need to think hard about a system that provides "freedom", but does not restrict a programmer from earning a fair wage.

One possible solution, which I've encountered resistance talking to Congress people on the hill is to add an "optional" expiration date on a copyright, and allow the source code to be submitted via electronic media.. Thus, when you submit your copyright you can optionally choose to limit your copyright to N years. Further, the copyright office could "hold" the source code and make it public on the date that the copyright expires.

Americans *love* stats. What would happen if "copyright term" ended up as one of those columns? And "open source at end of copyright term" was another column? In this way we could compete not only on features and price, but also *when* our software becomes public domain. This is a simple solution, backward compatible, and can be implemented by the copyright office without legislation. It just requires the media to notice that copyright doesn't have to last forever and that making one's code open source can be part of the license agreement.

Maybe we can turn the tables on the "capitalists" by creating a new form of competition... competition for the change in software, competition for when software becomes public property.

Best Wishes! Clark

P.S. For an alternative idea, which is much larger in scale (but may not work as well), you may want to read Distributed Copyright and my letter to Judge Jackson on May 23, 2000. It may not be perfect, but it has some ideas that you and others may want to build upon.

What did you expect MS to do, exactly?

[fahrvergnugen]

I work for a software company. Now, my employer (and many other companies such as Veritas, 3COM, and others) has two different revenue streams. The first is from license sales. The second (bigger, dependable, easily forecasted) chunk of our revenue comes from yearly renewable support contracts, which happen to include access to the latest version of our software. This is fairly common practice.

Microsoft has found itself in a position enviable to most software companies. The biggest competition it faces is from older versions of its own software. So they're doing the obvious thing and removing themselves from the competition.

The advantages to Microsoft are obvious. Immediate cash gain, better sustainable revenue, faster phase-out of old product.

Do I like it? In the short term, no. It's expensive as hell and my budget as a partially microsoft shop has taken a huge hit. But in the long term, it removes one of my great annoyances.

It's a complete pain in the ass to have to check the license trail on a typical windows system. Say a computer shipped with Windows '95. I took that '95 license, applied it against another computer when I replaced the windows '95 box (assume non-OEM license), then appied an NT4 upgrade license, followed by a Win2k upgrade license.

That leaves me with 3 different pieces of paper to be accountable for on a moment's notice. Under the new system, I simply need to have the original operating system license, and a software assurance certificate. The advantage to me from a clerical standpoint is obvious.

This doesn't make it all better in the short term, but as a shop that frequently upgrades to the latest and greatest, it will save me lots of time in the long haul.

Regarding the new version of Reader...

[Squirrel Killer]

"This will open a Pandora's box," he said, promoting the idea of "elaborate rights." These, he said, could move the concept of buy-once rights to time-based rights -- "you can make it so the user can, say, only read this book on Tuesday" -- or location-based rights.

Is it just me or:

1. Isn't opening a Pandora's Box supposed to be a bad thing?
2. Who the hell would buy a book that they could only read on Tuesdays?

It seems they're thinking too much about what they can do, and not enough about what they should do.

-sk

A setup program

[The Cat]

(Adding to the discussion of how to make Linux better)

RPM is great (unless you're trying to compile version 4), but Linux really really really needs (in addition to Office compatibility, a great browser and a great desktop) a standard setup program that will work on most, if not all, versions.

I'm aware of Debian and apt-get, etc. (and those are great) But there should also be a "double-click setup.exe" process of installing programs on Linux, and a similarly easy way of uninstalling them, with NO ERROR MESSAGES ABOUT MISSING VERSIONS OF SOME OBSCURE 9k LIBRARY FILE OR HAVING VERSION 1.07 OF A PROGRAM WHEN THE NEW PROGRAM WANTS VERSION 1.08!!

ALL required libraries should be included with every setup archive. Period. Sending people (even developers) out on the Internet in search of some library is the fastest way to make using Linux very irritating.

Then, perhaps we could have Installshield for Linux, which would be awesome, especially if it worked with apt and apt-get. ^^

Just another $0.02