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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)."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A darned good idea (imho) would be to force Microsoft to publish their APIs, and restrict them from anti-competitive practices. IBM was doing this 20 years ago in the mainframe world and the European Union slapped them down hard for it.
It's mentioned in this article on gnu.org, but one of the links to the settlement details (the most important part) is broken, the new location for ibm1984ec.html is here.
o/~ Join us now and share the software
Posting AC due to paranoia 8S
/.'ers comment to the DoJ (read, take action and not just wish you could) about this it will crash and burn like a corrupt copy of Windows 95. Read the Article, it does have some instructions at on where to go from here for the commonfolk. Also, a non-partisan board is a Good Thing(tm) in this whole mess.
MSFT is lobbying HARD on this to get this settlement through cause they know they will come out smelling like roses in the end, but with the growing awareness of the language of the settlement, it seems highly unlikely that it will breeze through. If enough people like
Then again, I am just preaching to the choir on this, right?
Is this legal FUD practiced by both sides of this case?
My solution? Require Microsoft to develop its own technology without outside help for 5 years. They can't acquire technology, buy companies or lease patents. See how long they last...
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
The parent to this is NOT a troll, but his comments, though valid, are useless. I am thoughouly convinced that not only do none of the slashdot editors read any of the comments posted to the stories (otherwise they woluld have to take notice to the many duplicate story postings we point out), but they don't even frequent their own site. The story duplication is getting insanely ridiculous. For every duplicate story, a good one gets rejected. How can we get THROUGH to these guys? PAY ATTENTION TO THE SITE YOU WORK FOR! God, and people want me to pay for a subscription for this???
Thought some people might wanna see one of the many related links I have scattered around from rejected stories and junk:
Rep. Ed Markey's letter to John Ashcroft (pdf) in opposition to the settlement.
Up until the last paragraph, this was a very intelligent comment. Then all of a sudden you start promoting virii and DDOS attacks??? This makes you sound like an immature teenager.
How about instead of breaking the law, and making Open Source hackers look like thugs in the process, we design our own micropayment system, BSD license it, and offer it up as a vastly more secure and powerful solution that passport? Or would that me to "non-31337" for you?
First you have the guy saying he knows someone on the inside, and getting quotes so it sounds more authoritative and authentic.
Then you have a bunch of links that really add nothing but look good.
Next, you have a bunch of opinions stated as facts. IE as an unprofitable venture?? Microsoft was giving the damn thing away from day one!
Lastly, the coup de grace, advocating virii and worms to stop MS!
Please moderators, read thru the damn thing before you automatically mod something because it looks or sounds good.
read about it here.
I saw this today and it had a very interesting tidbit of information. In the settlement, Microsoft is valuing the software part at $840 million. Apple contends that actual cost of that software would be more like $1 million and only 5%-6% of the value of the settlement would be able to be used to buy non-Microsoft technology.
I bet that they do read the site, but they have some hidden agenda against PBS.
PBS IT Guy 1: Oh no! Slashdot linked to us again!
PBS IT Guy 2: Those bastards! The last Slashdot effect nearly killed us! What'll we do boss?
PBS IT Guy 1: We pray they realize it's a duplicate story son. We pray...
CmdrTaco: Good Evening Gentlemen etc etc etc
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
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To: microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov
Subject: Micosoft Settlement
The manner in which APIs would be revealed are limiting to Microsoft's main competitor: Free and Open Source Software ("Free" defined as "without restriction" not "free of cost").
This software is created largely by individuals in informal and generally noncommercial cooperation. This is a very significant movement, and provides great potential benefits for American consumers. I think that makes such Free and Open Source Software *the* essential beneficiary of the ruling against Microsoft. This case was not a question of whether businesses were harmed by the monopoly, but rather consumers. It is essential that this pro-consumer movement be helped by the settlement. Instead they speficially discriminated against by the settlement.
Under provisions to release the API of Microsoft products, Microsoft is given discretion as to who they will release information: namely, "viable businesses", with Microsoft being able to interpret that as they wish.
I am personally involved in many projects that have the potential to benefit consumers, but are not businesses of any sort, rather a conglomeration of individual developers. I would expect that these groups will be excluded under this settlement.
Instead of this model, APIs should be made fully public. Individuals, in some manner, should be able to ask questions of Microsoft regarding these APIs, and have them answered publically. If it seems too difficult to allow any individual to ask such a question, an electronic petition process could be used instead, as long as a group of individuals can have the same weight as a commercial organization.
It is essential that the API information be made public. If it is hindered by any sort of NDA it will be *absolutely useless* to Free/Open Source software projects. We have formed a legal and social structure where we do not have the ability to keep pieces of our code private. This process must be respected by the settlement, as it forms the most serious competition for Microsoft, and is of large benefit to consumers.
It is also essential that non-commercial groups of individuals be able to access API documentation, and have questions resolved by Microsoft. In general, it is dangerous to allow Microsoft to have discretion on any aspect of this manner, as they can use that to further punish their most stringent competitors as they have done so many times in the past.
It is also dangerous to allow them discretion on security issues. While it is acceptable that they be allowed a short, private period to resolve security issues before making them public, all aspects of their systems must be made public. It is all too easy to add security aspects to nearly any portion of a system. It is even potentially a good thing that they add security at many parts of their system. However, they should not need to be private about their security measures to ensure the effectiveness of that security. The Free/Open Source communities have created large amounts of software that is secure while being open. Microsoft should do the same. This process is completely possible, and has been demonstrated over and over for as long as computer security has existed.
Section III(J)(2) reads:
So, that does indeed seem to give MS the right to stonewall Free Software projects like Samba, but only on security APIs. However, section III (D) reads:
And "ISV" is defined in VI (I) as:
The 'or' doesn't seem to leave much room for MS to define who the section applies to.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
Wonderful idea there. (cough). How about we offer up something as good or better ? Private corporations dominating a space through de facto standards happen because nobody else has stepped up with a Free (as in speech) solution that's better. Some cases to take into consideration:
- 16-bit ISA took off because anyone could build to the IBM PC published spec (essentially free-as-in-beer).
- Then Microchannel flubbed it (must license from IBM).
(Unfortunate footnote -- for 32-bit slots, VESA came along, and was destroyed by Intel's PCI when they slaughtered their competition in the PC chipset market.)So instead of proposing that people DDoS Passport sites, maybe we need to make ubiquitous a better solution that's published and freely implementable. Microsoft did lose out on the browser encryption fight (shttp vs https) and SSLeay / OpenSSL provided free reference implementations that let people use encryption without having to play with the big monopolies (um, except for Verisign). We can come up with a system that delivers Passport / .NET's functionality too.
o/~ Join us now and share the software
MS had already got off with the damn anti-trust case, now those greedy bastards want to even push further.
What they are basically are doing is to kill off Apple and pay fine using their own software. it's like printing money to pay for your stuff.
This time, MS had gone way too far, they shall pay dearly for this.
kawai
My first reaction to this comment was pretty inflamed, but I had a hard time figuring out why.
Then I remembered reading Atlas Shrugged in college, and I understood.
I've looked at your posting history, dfeldman, and find you to be a pretty reasonable sort most of the time. But on this occasion, your post smacked of the worst kind of collectivist rhetoric.
(Sorry about the name-calling. I'm all grouchy now.)
This is, in my opinion, the exact sort of rhetoric that makes the open source community look, all too often, like a bunch of neo-hippie outsiders, forever isolated from the mainstream of society. Not that I'm saying the mainstream is so great, but as long as people assume that you subscribe to weirdo politics because open-source software is your hobby or passion or whatever, you're effectively prevented from making any kind of political comment whatsoever.
Please leave off with the talk of how the government must stop Microsoft. That's ridiculous. Does anybody here believe that Microsoft is actually evil, in the Hitler-Darth Vader-Satan sense? No, of course not. Is Microsoft (personified by Bill Gates) greedy? Of course! So am I, deep down inside, and so are most of you. If you say you're not, then you're either a saint, a liar, or a fool, and one of those is much less likely than the other two.
Does Microsoft make crappy software? A lot of the time, yes. Do I trust Microsoft, with their track record, to design a secure system for conducting business on the Internet? No, I don't.
But I don't think they should be prevented from doing so by the government, or a bunch of hackers as you suggest, or anybody else. What I'd like best is if somebody could come up with something better than what Microsoft is pushing this week.
The rules of the open market are not at fault here. The simple, unvarnished truth is that, for all Microsoft's faults, they do things right (in the business, not moral, sense) most of the time, and nobody-- not Apple, not IBM, not the Open Source Community-- has figured out a way to beat them in the open market yet.
And posts like yours aren't going to get us anywhere closer to that goal.
Are you joking, 'foobar'? How is it that at this point in time, you are still saying 'Please leave off with the talk of how the government must stop Microsoft. That's ridiculous.' when the real question is, can EVEN the government stop Microsoft?
I'm not sure how old you are, but when you argue Microsoft (collectively) is not 'evil' in the 'Hitler-Darth Vader-Satan' sense, you're talking like a high school kid who's just discovered Ayn Rand. Is Union Carbide evil, after Bhopal? What makes you class the leader of the Nazi Party with a fictional character and an archetype? It may have escaped your memory but one of those guys was REAL- and after power, just like Microsoft- and didn't think in terms of playing nice with others, just like Microsoft- where do you get off drawing a line in the sand and saying 'OK, this is evil and this is not'?
The rules of the open market ARE at fault here- at least in practice, because as practiced by Microsoft they are cancerous. In completely denying the concept of 'benefit of society' or 'commons' and operating only on the value of maximized local profit they are suboptimal to the point that, taken far enough, they can _ruin_ society, reduce it to a state that resembles totalitarian states. Instead of a government mandating only one overpriced, defective solution for everything, you get no government control- and the same pitiable failure of the market, but this time because any smaller entrant is so easily crushed that there is no sense in underwriting such an effort.
Don't believe me? Write a better word processor than Word, and get someone to underwrite your IPO.
You can't beat a cheater. This would seem obvious, but clearly it's not obvious to you. Your definition of 'business right' strongly resembles racketeering and organized crime- using ALL the possible 'incentives' to seize total control. You seem to be supporting this because it clearly returns the most profit of any business method. However, it's a scorched-earth policy: it destroys the very market you claim to revere! And THAT is why we need government to set rules: in this context rules are like bricks, used to make buildings instead of tents. You can say they're in the way, inflexible, limiting- but you can't build up multiple stories, keep out the cold, resist hurricanes etc. without 'em.
I guess I am just wondering- WHY do you hate rules so? You are over two years old, I trust? Is your sense of morals and ethics also over two?
Micropayments? Getting a cut of internet sales? Sites being propped up by venture capital? Money being made from "internet wallets"?
It all sounds soooo "late 1999", doesn't it? Which is approximately when the business plan for Passport was turning this dumb wallet into a replacement for the operating system as a means to survive.
Forward to today. The hot model is site subscription with premiums. The internet is facing skepticism as only 3% believe it is an important information source. There IS no venture capital money - forget about propping anything up. The only sites that are seen as viable are those with a strong business model oriented around actually making money - not giving bits of money up to other vendors, when your competition is busy leaving the net altogether.
Remember the Amazon vs B&N vs Borders war? Try borders.com now. Amazon doesn't want Passport if it's the only Internet vendor that anyone uses -- Passort can only do them harm. Neither will any of the Yahoo Stores. If the size of the whole pie is smaller, the worth of a slice of that pie is diminished as well, y'know?
Getting in bed with MS is not like getting a Visa merchant account to handle payments. Along with your customers' financial data, MS could have access to their personal information, buying habits, etc. This means that the competitors of any MS partner will avoid signing up, no matter what. I'm not talking about Borland, here; I'm talking about AOL Time Warner, Sony, Sears, Visa/MC themselves, and many others that aren't rolling off the tip of my tongue.
Dominating the software world is one thing; dominating the rest of the world is entirely another.
Most companies have barged cluelessly into the net and it has hurt them. I don't see why MS's hard right turn into the net should not give them a few fits as well. And they're hardly omnipotent - as your "Bob" example should point out.
Perhaps the DOJ needs to borrow Microsoft's PR spin doctor folks.
< /cynic >
ChicagoFan
Cringely's new article comes out every Thursday at the I, Cringely website.
::Colz Grigor
You can add an automatic link to the newest article from your Slashdot Homepage Preferences. Scroll down to the Customize Slashboxes tab and add I, Cringely.
My proposal is this: rather than having to submit a story about Cringely's latest article (as is done every week) in order for the article to receive acceptance by a Slashdot editor in order for it to become a story and receive a Slashdot forum, why not just have an automatic forum placed at the bottom of the I, Cringely slashbox? Every Thursday, a new forum is created for the new article, and there's no need to submit the story to the editors and wait until Sunday to post our comments. Kind of like the way the Slashdot Poll is handled.
--
The thing about the latest generation of intellectual property laws is that they could still prevent people from using that information.
Prime example: CSS and the ways to break it. According to some interpretations of the law, if you can write the code yourself you can use it, but you can't provide a library for others to use or use a library written by others.
This is completely contrary to the reason why IP laws were created in the first place, of course, but IP laws haven't served the public interest for some time now.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
As part of the enforcement/settlement a trust, funded by MS, should be created that's overseen by an independent board.
MS must then release all its OS source to this board. Then the board should finance Win32 API (including Active X & Direct X) ports to the other X86 OSes, such as BeOS, Linux, Sco/Caldera Unix, BSD, OS/2, Solaris, QNX, etc. So those OSes could be compatible with W32 apps without emulation (a la WINE 'n Odin)
Also MS must not be allowed to release any of its application software (Office, Works, Encarta, 'Empires', etc) untill they bring out native BeOS, OS/2, Mac & Linux ports of those apps (the Linux port must be designed for transparent recompiling to other nixes, such as Caldera Unix, Solaris 'n QNX). They must be tested by the previously mentioned trustee before release.
To avoid claims that this would make thing too complicated for stockists & retailers, make MS retail all ports of each application together in the same box - like BeOS 'retail' has both the X86 & PPC ports bundled together, or like the way Claris works had both the Mac Classic & W16 ports bundled together (with 'Mac & Windows compatible' printed on the box) or like the way the new Gobe office suite has both the BeOS, W32 & Linux ports bundled together complete with a cross port license. MS could then have 'compatible with Windows, Macintosh, OS/2, BeOS & Linux' stickers on their boxed applications, so its spelled out to the customers that they can be used with all 4 of those OSes.
I bet within a year MS would have developed a development API for itself for developing applications that transparently port them across to X86 W32, X86 OS/2, X86 BeOS, X86 Linux & the PPC Mac.
God can you imagine how Gates 'n co would react if the court came out with a judgement like this.....LOL
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
Recently, I was told to seek out and find a decent computer for my cousin for a Christmas present. After searching around, I found that Dell had the best systems.
:) When it comes to laptops, your SOL. Windows or no computer.
To make a long story short, I was told by the person taking my order that I am required to purchase a copy of Windows XP with the new system. I told him that I wasn't going to put Windows on that machine, it would be a Linux only system. The guy didn't really care. If I wanted them to pre-install a copy of Red Hat, they would charge me quite a bit. Mainly, becuase I would need to buy a higher up machine. Either way, I already own (Haven't used in years) a copy of Windows 98. Why should I buy required to buy another copy when I already own a copy (older yes, but it would work if I had to) of Windows. I am being charged $200 for a OEM version of XP. If I removed Windows XP, and install another OS, then decied to go back to XP. (Not like I would) I would have to call Dell for an authorization number. I am not sure how true it is, but it pisses me off to say the least.
I think this should be apart of the settlement as well. If I don't want an OS installed, or there custom software. I shouldn't have to pay for it. The computer comes with a few other applications that I have no choice but to pay for. Most of which, is MS products. Why do I have to pay for a copy of MS Office, when I would use Star Office if anything at all.
Thats like buying a TV (just a normal TV) and having the salesmen tell me I am required to purchase a cable hookup on the spot. I have no choice, other then not buying the TV.
Once I got the computer, its littered with stickers giving disclamiers and license numbers for all the MS products I didn't even want. On the side of the computer is a lable with the XP license number AND a warenty number. Which, I can't remove or I loose the warenty. Which, IMO, is complete BS. Don't mind me, I am just sick and tired of dealing with MS these days. I want to run something else, and keep getting backed into the wall. Yes, I could have build the computer for her. But, my family just wanted to buy it right off the bat, and not worry about fixing it them selfs. (More like me fixing it
Something seriously needs to be done.
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The judge should show concern over the effect of the settlement on Free Software, as it seems that Free Software, too, has become a viable competitor. No more is the software market made up largely of producers such as Microsoft and consumers, who were the users of shrink-wrapped software. The market is now more complicated than that, because much of the software that now runs the Internet and which most of us /. readers use all the time is created and used by prosumers, to borrow a neologism from Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave , and this software created by and for the users, is rapidly becoming a major part of the software marketplace. GNU/Linux, Apache, and their ilk are testimony to that. To ignore it as the DOJ has, or to not think of it as part of the marketplace, as you have, is to ignore this fact about today's software industry.
Yes, Microsoft is right, the software industry is radically different from the more traditional industries that antitrust law was originally created to address, but not in the way Microsoft presented to the DOJ. In the software industry, anyone and everyone can potentially be a viable part of the marketplace, so the only choice really will be to totally open up the protocols and API's to anyone and everyone who wants to see them, if the DOJ's settlement is to have any real effectivity in fulfilling the spirit of antitrust law.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
And you know this is true because .... ???
History and law. The worst a company can do -- the worst any company has ever (legally) done -- is to produce a bad product, sell it at a high price and try to prevent any competition from coming in and giving the consumers a fair deal. The only companies which have ever done anything worse than this have been able to do it only because of having government support. The most abusive monopolies, from The East India Company to Pacific Gas & Electric, always exist because of government support. (You think this is false? Counterexamples welcome!)
Even if you can find worse abuses, none of them compare to those committed by governments against the people they supposedly represent. Did Nazi Germany represent the Jews? Does the "People's Republic" of China really acting in the best interests of the people? The Soview Union? The worst massacres, the worst slaughters, are always done by the hand of government.
Yes, I prefer authoritarian decision making, made by a few rich people, with effects which are limited to producing bad product and selling at a high price (corporations) to authoritarian decision making, made by a few rich people, with effects that result in wars, jail sentences and unjust laws (government). The United States Government does not represent me, and it represents you no more. The best it can do, therefore, is get out of the way.
Corporate power is inherently limited; when I give money (power) to a corporation, it is because I have freely entered into a contract with that corporation because I thought it in my best interests to do so. When I give money to the government, I do so at the barrel of a gun. You tell me which is better.
Yes, Microsoft did some nasty things in the recent past. Yup, you betcha.
Some of those things were against the law; a court said so. These things should be rectified in some way. If Microsoft and the government can't come up with a compromise that they can both accept, it'll be up to a judge to say how Microsoft should be penalized.
But the rest of the things Microsoft did, mean and nasty and downright unfriendly they might have been, were not against the law. At least, they weren't until a judge says that they were.
My thesis, since apparently I haven't gotten the idea across so far, is that Microsoft was not morally wrong to do the mean, nasty, unfriendly but legal things that it has done. That is how a competitive market works. The executives of Microsoft Corp. have a responsibility to their shareholders to make them lots of money, doing everything necessary to achieve that goal as long as they stay within the limits of the law.
They didn't. As I said, fine. Punish them for that.
But you can't-- we, as a society, cannot-- punish Microsoft for being nasty. Being nasty isn't against the law. Bundling PowerPoint with Word and Excel and whatever else and calling it Office and not allowing me to buy just PowerPoint is nasty. But it's not illegal. And it's not immoral, and it's not unethical, and it's not wrong.
Look, think of it like basketball. Ever play basketball, or even watch it on TV? The players on each team know that they have to do whatever they can to win, but without breaking the rules. So you get in there and you push a little bit, and you shove a little, and you get a little rough, and as long as you don't foul your opponent, it's okay. Better than okay, it's good basketball.
If the other team can't take a little push now and then, a little elbow at the net, then they shouldn't play basketball. They should play tennis instead, or some other game where you don't have to worry about being jostled.
Microsoft is like a really good basketball team. A nasty one with a bad attitude that nobody, not even their fans, like very much, but a really good one. They get out there with their game faces on and they rough it up a little. And when they foul, they get caught and they lose the ball and that's the end of it.
When the Bulls were winning championship after championship in a row and nobody could touch them, did you hear other teams whining that the Bulls were playing too rough? Did anybody complain that they were cheating? No, of course not. Because they weren't. They just happened to be playing the game better than anybody else.
That's Microsoft. They play the game, and when they get a little too rough, they get penalized, but that doesn't make them stop playing the game. They're rough, and they're serious, and they don't have any fans, but if you understand the game, you've gotta respect the fact that they know how to play.
Why do you THINK you cannot buy a computer with Windows and another operating system? [and so on]
I know precisely why this is. As much as you'd like to think that Microsoft is breaking the law left and right, and that everything they do is immoral and wrong, the fact is that their infractions have been fairly limited. If you consider how much business Microsoft does in a single year, you'll see that they're within the law the vast majority of the time.
The reason why the market is the way it is right now is simple: Microsoft is kicking their competitor's asses.
I don't happen to like this, but at least I'm sufficiently realistic to acknowledge that it's true, and to understand that it's not up to the government to step in and sort this all out. If we (the community) want to change this, then it's up to us to do it. But we should do it by improving ourselves and our products to beat Microsoft at their own game, or by cooperating with Microsoft where we can't beat them. If we tried to change the market by hindering Microsoft's legal business practices (as opposed to their illegal ones, which I've said before are bad, bad, bad), then we're doing ourselves, our industry, and our economy a disservice.
On the whole, Microsoft has been more of a good thing for the industry in particular and the economy as a whole than a bad thing. They're ruthless and nasty and I wouldn't want them to house-sit for me while I'm out of town, but they're excellent at what they do, and (I'm repeating myself here) you have to respect that.
>So, through all this rhetoric, will somebody please >convince me I'm wrong? Will somebody give me just >one example of Microsoft's doing something that >could be considered bad for society as a whole?
:) (by all the means provided by the market)
Microsoft employees gave misleading testimony during the trial including faking a demo comparing a computer with Internet Explorer to one with it removed and several times denying that they had made statements which the prosecutors then showed they had made (via email). So perjury is the one glaring wrong that I see MS guilty of. And I am not one bit reluctant to hit each liar with jail time or a major fine.
As for the rest, I agree, I don't think taking MS down in court is the right way to go about things. I wouldn't call them evil but definitely bad. I would prefer a world without MS's dirty tactics to one with and as such, I try to refrain from buying and using their products as well as discouraging others. Just because they have a right to do business doesn't mean people shouldn't try and force _them_ out of business