Cringely On Microsoft Settlement

sandalwood writes: "Robert X Cringley has a new article about the proposed settlement in the Microsoft antitrust case. He includes information on where to write to make your views known (the 'proposed Final Judgement' accepts comments from the public for a period of 60 days after it's been published)."

Comments

Time to watch our backs

[dfeldman]

My Uncle Isaac used to work on the Passport team at Microsoft, but he eventually got seriously fed up with the company is now a NT/UNIX sysadmin elsewhere. He is very skeptical of the DoJ settlement and thinks that MS will be with us for a very long time to come unless the terms are changed substantially.

I spoke with Uncle Isaac on several occasions regarding his favorite stock pick, MSFT. He explained that from day one, he knew that Microsoft was one of the most nimble companies that ever existed. Pointing out their rapid turnaround in the browser wars and in internet integration, he said that with billg at the helm, Microsoft would always prosper.

"What about .Net," I asked. "Do you really expect that thing to succeed?"

".Net will put Microsoft in a position more powerful than any other company in the nation." When I pressed for details, he explained what Microsoft was planning to do:

.Net is not just about replacing web servers with web services. .Net is about promoting Passport. But what does Passport have to offer users? Maybe a little convenience, but most users won't think the tradeoff is worth it.

Passport, in fact, is going to be marketed to web site owners. Sure, personal information is sometimes fun to have, but that isn't the main attraction. Microsoft plans to offer Passport up as a system to facilitate micropayments. They are targeting the owners of the many unprofitable information sites that are being propped up by venture capital (and pathetically meager ad revenues) today. This will force users to use Passport and pay for the information they receive off the web, with Microsoft taking a cut every time. Microsoft will become the largest middleman in the world, and multinational banks will look on in envy.

As a technical matter, this isn't a very difficult thing to do, but it needs a strong, reliable company with a good name, like Microsoft, to hold it up and to fund it during tough times. Microsoft has shown itself to be willing to subsidize many unprofitable ventures (such as IE and Bob) in order to attain a stronger position in the market, so it should come as no surprise that Passport will work the same way.

And, after Passport has taken over, there will be no more need for Linux/Apache on commercial sites. Microsoft can't compete with us directly, so they will destroy our market share by making the economics favor their product. We can give them Free software but Microsoft can sell them a big profit.

We, as the open source community, need to come together to stop this plan dead in its tracks. We can't rely on our government to do it for us, so we need to innovate and find ways to stop Microsoft. Maybe a bunch of open source hackers can get together and start producing macro virii and IIS worms nonstop, so that users are more aware of the poor security afforded by Microsoft products and services. Perhaps frequent DDoS attacks on Passport-compliant web sites are in order. Or maybe something completely different. Either way, we need to do something, so that Microsoft does not use Passport to take the internet away from us.

df

Don't throw me in that Briar Patch remedy

[Camel Pilot]

Is this the "Briar Patch Remedy" which a punishment that is actually a page from Apple's long range marketing strategy!