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Microsoft Antitrust Update
You can't help but know that Microsoft and the Department of Justice (plus several of the states that joined in the suit) are attempting to settle their antitrust dispute. The rest of the states are holding out for a settlement with more teeth, or a continuation of the case. A few links from the past few days: The LA Times looks at the states still opposing Microsoft. Microsoft defended the settlement before a Senate committee, which was crippled by political maneuvering (see also the NYT story). The speech given by the CEO of Red Hat is online. Microsoft filed a brief with the court, unsurprisingly urging the court to accept the settlement. The Register has a story on the proposed settlement, which is available at the DOJ Antitrust website. Linuxplanet has some advice for people who want to comment on the settlement - you've got 60 days from November 28. Finally, Microsoft has named two people to help it comply with the proposed settlement.
I don't understand. Microsoft is going to pay some people to tell them when they're not in compliance?
Does this sound like it's really going to work?
Shouldn't a "Compliance Officer" be appointed by the DOJ or some other agency?
i am getting sick of all this anti-trust talk. i am as anti-microsoft as anyone else, but it has recently become clear to me that microsoft will inevitably lose it's market dominance in it's own due time(a matter of years not decades).
all this trouble going into knocking down the giant could be avoided if people just waited until after it had cut it's ownlegs off.
lysergically yours
There's a great stress relief tool relating to the settlement now available from Nitrozac and Snaggy at The Joy of Tech!
Enjoy!
Bitchslapped. Neat.
The government isn't turning off Microsoft. Microsoft isn't turning off linux, and AOL owns everything else. There is your new reality. Lets move on.
IANAL, but I wonder to what extent the presiding judge pays attention to the media and how this will affect her decision. On the one hand, judges are not supposed to be swayed by media reporting, yet the judge is supposed to consider public comments about the proposed settlement. To the extent that Senators represent their constituents' beliefs and needs, the judge may give some weight to these types of Congressional hearings.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
O.J. Simpson and former Lt. Col. Oliver North
I would expect something similar in this case. A backroom deal has been cut (probably brokered by Cheney and Rove, now that they aren't so busy taking care of their Enron friends), and it will go through regardless of any concerns mere citizens might have.
Now, if Slashdotters were to send a couple of million $ in campaign contributions to some key senators, a little more backbone might appears.
sPh
Dear Judge,
I understand that you have found me guilty of this crime and I am willing to make a mends. I promise not to do the same crime again, or at least in the same way, and I'll also stop doing other bad things, well at least the ones you've caught me doing. I even agree to make sure that I don't do exactly the same crime by hiring a couple of people who will be very strict with me and spank me most serverly if I do it again.
Regards...
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
(from the settlement)
This is the most important provision of the entire settlement.
This eliminates Microsoft's ability to use strong-arm tactics in the ways it has been doing -- not giving special pricing to vendors who don't stay in line with what Microsoft and friends wants to do. It says that if you buy (OEM) licenses from Microsoft that (almost) no matter what you do as long as you buy the same number of licenses as someone else you'll get the same price.
The only thing that I would like better is for the Microsoft License Schedule to be applied uniformly to all customers, regardless of OEM status. Without that, Microsoft may find loopholes to force companies out of OEM status and buy retail licenses (or whatever) but this is still a huge step.
There is lots of talk about MS Word for Linux and such, but I think that would only further the monopoly, and I just don't think it's right for the government to mandate a product line. I think that fair pricing, however, is something totally reasonable and that will, in the end, hurt Microsoft more than most unfair measures we could add.
Having uniform licensing to all (not just OEMs) would be the one change I would make if I got one choice, but if I got two changes I would make Microsoft release all the API specs in a public forum and make them freely available, instead of just on MSDN. Say, on their web site and with the clause that they must be freely distributable in an unmodified form.
I think that those two things would make this settlement even better, but as it stands I think that the settlement is a fair solution.
At least for the abuse of monopoly in the OS realm, which is what this is all about.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Look at this the other way - pretty much the only successful competitor to Microsoft is giving away their product for free. The big reason that Linux is such a competitor is because the normal Microsoft tactic has failed: undercutting the competition by subsidizing their new market-breaker with money from the other parts of their empire. Also, there's no way for Microsoft to completely buy up Linux and Open Source, so they can't remove a competitor that way. You can't undercut or buy out "free", and so Microsoft is temporarily stymied, but they still have vast marketing and lobbying muscle.
Does it strike you as a particularly healthy industry if you can only gain marketshare by giving your product away? Is it reasonable that the only way to protect your product is to create it via a group of people who aren't even a company, just to avoid being swallowed by Microsoft?
Now, of course I know that RedHat charges money for some things, and they may even make a profit pretty soon, and Red Hat is in fact a company that Microsoft could buy. But Microsoft's competition isn't so much Red Hat as it is the Linux and Open Source movement. And taken overall, Linux and Open Source are largely free, and are largely producted by individuals and representatives of many companies who collectively could not be bought out. Those are the only reasons that Microsoft has any competition, and those reasons still do not add up to a healthy software industry.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Does anyone else remember how wonderful it felt that the DoJ was doing something about Microsoft's bullying tactics several years ago? We all hoped it would finally be the end of the abuse.
Then, the ruling came down... They are a monopoly and they will be stricken down. People-in-the-know were amazed... The DoJ proved it could compete with new-age, tech-savvy companies.
Now, it seems the DoJ has proven just the opposite. They got the affirmation that it was a monopoly and then decided that was "good enough"... we don't need to punish them.
Almost as if they just wanted to prove they were a monopoly but didn't really want to do anything about it.
If the DoJ has there way now, Microsoft is virtually given a carte blanche to (attempt to) dominate our lives in the living room (XBox), on the internet (.NET), in the news (MSNBC), etc.
Truly a sad moment in the history of the US (if not the world).
Nosce te Ipsum
The Red Hat speech is awesome. Szulik on the OSS Development Model:
This open communication strikes me as so perfectly American. I envision the early leaders of this country drawing up the tenets of our constitution in much the same way--in the open, in pursuit of a solution that is fair and of benefit to all.
This is the best counterstatement to MSs 'Linux is anti-American' garbage I've read so far.
CA's attourney statement that "It's a little like Big Tobacco being found guilty of selling cigarettes to minors, and the remedy is for them to agree to give them free cigarettes."
If RedHat (or any other linux company) really does suceed in getting that big it would be different from the MS for a number of reasons but the main is that the source code would still be available, allowing people to pick a different distro, modify it, etc if they really wanted to - and I believe having the Source code out would make it near impossible for any one company to grab a monopoly. .NET). Not only that but a number of recent gaffes (locking Non-IE browsers out of Hotmail,MSN,MSNBC, etc)don't do much to inspire people's confidence that they aren't a monopoly.
Sun-AOL etc are NOT monopoly's. That is why people aren't crying out about them. Not only are they not monopoly's but they don't do anything to make us believe that they are. In the past few years microsoft has only gotten worse, not better. They have totally ignored the DOJ case and continue to try and grab every bit of market share out there (X-box,
Microsoft is not only company in any market segment they are in, thus they are not an absolute monopoly like the power companies are (and how the phone and cable companies used to be). However, because of their dominant share of the desktop PC and office suite market they have a fairly high degree of monopoly power. The barriers to entry in the industry are the entrenched applications using the the Win32 API, and the implementation of the MSOffice file formats. That being said, there are many factors that limit their monopoly power.
The bottom line? Yes, Microsoft has a high degree of monopoly power, but it's not cut-and-dry about how much power they have. And it's certainly not cut-and-dry what to do about them either. Certainly it is important to limit the impact of their potential leverage (For example that Passport, Messenger, Hotmail, and MSN Photos are bundled with XP) from their existing markets, but don't think for a minute that it is simple. It's not.
501 Not Implemented
How can anyone keep up with Micro$oft? Seriously, while we're all focusing on this antitrust suit, they've got like 50 other projects in the works, from M$ TV, the XBox, .NET, Passport, Windows XP, Explorer, and a whole lot more. By the time we hear about an M$ development, it's already too late, 'cause they've got something else in the works. You can't even stop and say, "Hey, Windows XP has some seriously troubled activation issues" because they've got some other product out before you can finish your sentence. They're pushing stuff out so fast that it's not even possible to discuss your misgivings because it's old news in a day. Kind of like a new tendrils poping up that reach into everything we do. M$ encompasses almost everything in the average person's life, from computers to news to the military. And with the xbox, they're trying to get their products into our living rooms. M$ wants to have your entire house running on their software.
Now, I realise that there is always the option of simply not using M$ products, but what about all those other people out there who aren't as "enlightened"? To them, Windows is the computer, not simply an OS. While some might not care what John Q Public is running on his home computer, I do, because with more market dominance, M$ gets more power. And with more power, they can start affecting the lives of everyone, even those people who don't touch M$ products. What if Micro$oft really did manage to pass litigation through that banned OSs without DRM?
Something needs to be done about M$, and not using WinXP isn't going to cut it. If the antitrust suit fails, perhaps we, the people, need to put something into action.
No sig for you.
It doesn't matter who violates a monopoly position, only that it is violated. This argument of "company X would do the same thing" is a poor rhetorical argument often sprouted by MS apologists.
If George II violates a law he should be tried, not let off the hook because some polls place his popularity/approval rating at 90%.
It's all about the leverage...
Microsoft has a monopoly... none of those other companies have a monopoly.
A Monopoly in, and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. If I make a successful product that is so successful to gain 100% of the marketshare, well, good for me. (this isn't what Microsoft did though but that's a different story)
However, when you ABUSE a monopoly, such as leveraging your power into another market, that is ILLEGAL.
e.g. Your Oracle thing... if Oracle gets the deal with the National ID card, good for Oracle. However, if Ellison then tells you that you have to watch Oracle TV through your Oracle GameBox if you want to use your ID, *that* is illegal.
substitute National ID for Passport, Oracle TV for MSNBC, and Oracle Box for XBox...
Nosce te Ipsum
If M$ is going to get any fair competition, they need to open their formats on Word and Excel so people are not forced to use MS Office if they have to work with those formats. That would be a big boost for the developers of Abiword, WordPerfect for *nix, Gnumeric, Star Office, etc. They wouldn't have to spend so much time on converters. They could spend their time making great office programs that work with anything someone sends you, and make the office application software battle a fair fight.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
You can read the proposed Civil Settlement (pdf) and the responses as well. They also are pdf files being just scanned images of the letters recieved.
The responses are interesting, most of the ones I have read from School Districts indicate that they are afraid that they get very little value out of the settlement, since the software will be donated, and the hardware will be largely used requiring more maintenance than the benefit it provides. In efffect the schools are saying that they will be saddled with a much greater percentage of the total cost of ownership than Microsoft. So if the intention is to punish Microsoft and reward the schools this is the wrong way to go about it.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Filling our kids' classrooms with visible reminders of a company is no way to correct a monopoly any more than it's a way to keep kids from smoking.
Imagine if the tobacco companies had been allowed to settle by saying "we'll put a bunch of stuff we know you can't afford and desperately need into your schools, with our logos highly visible to impressionable young children who will grow up highly inclined to become our next generation of customers
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Senator Leahy had invited Jim Barksdale (co-founder of Netscape) to testify on the effects the RPFJ would have had if it was in place when Netscape was starting up. Microsoft balked at having him testify and said they would have refused to appear if Barksdale was there. So Barksdale was dis-invited, but sent a letter giving his answer. That letter was partially read by Sen. Hatch and said that Netscape would have never received VC funding. Pretty damning stuff.
Leahy asked Charles James (head of Antitrust for DoJ) to respond. He dodged saying that he had not read the letter yet and it seemed like typical hyperbole that was being spouted off (but also said he could not characterize it as such given he has not read the letter). Leahy asked him to formally respond for the record, which will be done in writing (I assume).
It was a little suprising to see such a little used procedural movement to kill the hearing. Leahy was visablly upset, but admitted its a Senator's perogative. Ironically, it was Sen Byrd (who knows every minutia of procedure) who was upset over TPA (fast track trade negotiation authorization for the President on trade treaties) and called that mark-up to a halt--however, it had already been succesfully reported out of committee at that point.
So what was left was 4 Senators upbraiding MS and calling the settlement for the sham it is. The only one defending the settlement was Sen. McConnell who clearly wanted to get his 1 minute in before the first recess (for votes, asked to be heard when Leahy tried to do a 20 minute break so he would not have to come back). All McConnell said was that 70% of the public favor a settlement, so any settlement is good. Leahy responded by saying that he too favored a settlement, but not a meaningless one riddled with loopholes.
FYI, the 4 senators attacking MS were Leahy (D-VT), Kohl (D-WI), Hatch (R-UT), and DeWine (R-OH), a bi-partisan group to say the least.
Easy - Microsoft has been found guilty of doing serious damage to the computer industry, and therefore they deserve to be punished appropriately. The same rules apply to everyone else; this isn't a case of a company being "too big" or too successful, it is a case of a company utilizing a dominant position in one market to force its way into other markets. This has the effect of less competition, lower quality products, higher prices, and other fun things. If any other company were to do the same thing, the results should be the same - severe punishment.
Why is there so much less out-cry against, Sun-AOL-TW-etc.?
Why should there be? Please explain what anticompetitive business practices were used by these companies. If you have a case, the outrage will come.
Given the chance to go back in time, any of the CEOs of any of the big software companies would do the exact same things as Gates and MS has done in the past.
Which is exactly why the punishment should be significant - to keep those ideas from being taken seriously. Just because other people will do something if given the opportunity, that doesn't make it right. "Well gee your honor, lots of people would steal things if given the opportunity, why should I be punished?"
substitute National ID for Passport, Oracle TV for MSNBC, and Oracle Box for XBox...
.NET running my XP machine, and it all seems to work just fine. XBox works fine with non-MS games, MSNBC works fine on non MS TVs even AOL-TW cable, and I can still install any browser I want on the new and fancy Windows. The only reason that MS has so much weight, is that there is so much consumer demand for their products. Why do you think that the OEMs were so scared if they threatened to revoke the OEM agreement, they would lose all of those potential customers. Anti-Monopoloy law was designed to help the consumer, not other companies, and I'm still not convinced that MS has done as much consumer harm what people are being let to believe by the AOL-TW-Sun lobby.
I'm currently using Opera and just for fun opened a Netscape window to look at the MSNBC cover page, I played NFL2k2 by Sega on a friends XBox last night, don't have messenger or
Bitching about how letting MS put it's products into our children's classrooms will only increase their foothold isn't going to help when you only do it on slashdot! Here's the contact info for making your argument known! For those extra lazy people (myself included), they are also accepting emails!
US Postal Services:
Renata Hesse,Trial Attorney
Suite 1200, Antitrust Division, Department of Justice
601 D Street NW
Washington, DC 20530
Email:
microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov
Fax:
202-616-9937 or 202-307-1545
Try not to be too rude. Remember, someone has to actually read these, and you'll only make them ignore your arguments if you are snide. Also, try to get records of reciept where possible. (Send by certified mail, use email reciepts, get fax reciepts) Supposedly ALL recieved comments will be published in the Federal Register. So if you don't see your comment in it with all the others, then you will have your reciept to back up your claim that not all comments were considered and included!
Do any of these issues change the testimony in the anti-trust trial that:
- MS threatened Compaq with withheld licenses if they didn't remove Netscape from their computers going out the door.
- MS threatened Intel management over Intel's work on multimedia software.
These are but two examples of the way MS abused their monopoly power. The fact that there might be competition on the horizon (a speculative, not certain, assertion) does not change what has occured one bit. If I robbed a bank, should I be spared a penalty because I myself might be robbed sometime in the future? I don't think so!!!
I don't recall the name of the metric off the top of my head, but one that is commonly used is the summation of the squares of the market shares of the various companies, or:
.9^2, or .81, which is very high indeed. Traditional industries usually break down into something like .4,.2,.1,.1 + niche players, and I think the legal bound on the overall metric is usually something like .4 for monopoly.
[sigma from 1 to n] (% mkt share) ^ 2
So, if we assume that MSoft has 90% mkt share of business desktops, then their (whatever the name of the metric is) would be upwards of
Of course, the lawyers get involved with the definition of "market," as it's in Microsoft's interest to define market as broadly as possible, and it's in the DOJ's interest to be as finite as possible, since the DOJ can then "prove" that MS has a monopoly over the "secretary level OS sales among Fortune 30 companies involved in airplane wheel manufacture." Meanwhile, MS would claim that they only hold 10% of the "business machine requiring an electrical circuit" market.
Not an answer, but it might help on the question of monopoly scale.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
The only reason that MS has so much weight, is that there is so much consumer demand for their products.
Oh, bull. Get a clue. What alternatives do consumers have? Try buying a PC that doesn't have Windows installed; it's almost impossible. Go into CompUSA and show me a word processor other than MS Word, or better yet, a spreadsheet other than Excel.
That's like saying there's a consumer demand for milk. As opposed to what other white liquid food product?
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
On a slightly-related note, the UK Government has just discovered that Microsoft is raising its licencing fees by about a hundred million or so dollars, as of next year. Apparently, they're not happy about this and have told Microsoft to either think again, or take a long walk off a short plank. The UK Government is also starting to take a serious look at alternatives.
This is just a thought, but this COULD spell the end of Microsoft as a mega-corp, =IF= the Linux distros can get their acts together. Think about it for a moment. Let's say only a few EU Governments switch to Linux. Well, the Governments are amongst the big spenders for Universities, so Universities will likely follow suit. This'll trickle down into the earlier schools, and from there into the homes.
If Microsoft lose enough European Governments, they lose the European educational (and by extension the home) markets. In consequence, since people generally stick to what they know, there's a decent chance they'll lose the European technical markets, too.
BUT this requires that Linux distributions exploit this potential opening. To do that, they need to include more ease-of-use software. Linuxconf and/or Webmin are getting to the point of being useful to Joe Average, but they generally aren't included. Ximian is nice, but again, it's usually missing. Since home users'll likely be using multimedia stuff, the kernels used need (at least) the low latency patches. For games, where's FlightGear? The Doom-alikes? Speech goes over well, so where's Festival? Office users are likely to need to connect to Windows systems, but Samba rarely gets a mention (never mind configuration) at install time, and Samba-tng seems to have vanished, as far as distros are concerned.
My point? My point is that Linux has everything it needs to take over, and an opportunity is presenting itself over one of the most important continents on the Earth today...
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Microsoft is where it is primarily because of the usefulness of OS software coupled with an operating system's unparalleled potential to restrict and channel competition. Plain and simple. Making software is different from making coffee mugs; you can't program the mugs to pour milk slower than they pour coffee, or to be slightly incompatible with orange juice.
Tzu's Art of War is required reading at business schools because of the dramatic ego inflation it confers on its readers. Some personality types enjoy (and are motivated by) the thought that their gain is necessarily someone else's loss.
There was a slashdot exchange on this topic that I resonated with. It was a followup to an interview with Linus wherein he was asked what his strategies are for competing with other operating systems, and he answered "I don't actually follow other operating systems much. I don't compete - I just worry about making Linux better than itself, not others." One of the slashdot exchanges that consequently took place was the following:
first post:
response:- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
It's the Herfindahl index. The DOJ, at this site, uses the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, which is the same thing, only without the decimals. So, while the Herfindahl index goes from 1 (total domination of market) to 0 (atomistic competition), the HHI goes from 10000 to 0. According to the site, anything above 1800 (or, by the other scale, .18) is considered highly concentrated.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
Microsoft has been found guilty of doing serious damage to the computer industry
What is the real, concrete damage?
The contrast of how the US judicial system can work is interesting: Dimitri circumvents the protection on some minor piece of software and gets thrown into jail. MSFT leaves behind a trail of dead competitors and obvious monopolistic abuses, their executives basically deceive the court with false or doctored testimonies and they're looking at another slap on the wrist.
Isn't it great what (lots of) money can buy you??
While I agree with the sentiment that Open Source often seems All-American, and generally jives with the ideals of a young Thomas Jefferson - the Constitution was written by a group of elite individuals (perhaps unique in the world at the time because their elite status was not solely based on their parentage), in a closed and sealed up building, where no one was allowed to report the proceedings to the populous at large. After they had created their new document for government they set about to use the tools of mass media (The Federalist Papers, and other forums) to convince everyone else that their Constitution was The Best Thing for America. (Even though most of them thought of themselves as Virginians, or New Yorkers rather than as Americans - Hamilton being the only obvious exception that springs to mind) And it worked, they convinced us to adopt their method of governing. Sure they had to add a patch that some of the end users demanded (Bill of Rights), but their creation was otherwise untouched.... wait a second, this isn't alt.history.colonial, is it? In brief, Szulik's speech was a nice sentiment, but his vision of how the Constitution was drawn up is imaginary.
There is nothing wrong with having market share or perhaps even being a monopoly. But when you abuse your position to foreclose competition, not only does that hurt competition (which hurts consumers) but is illegal.
That is great that you had that option to choose your OS. However, most people buy their computers through major OEMs and don't have the luxery of building a system and compiling their own OS on the system. They have a system with Windows pre-installed, whether they know they have another option or not. An average user is not going to dl an iso and re-partition their drive to put another OS on it. They are not going to purchase another OS (even for super cheap) at CompUSA when their is an OS right there. And OEMs are not going to offer another OS pre-installed because of MS retalitory conduct (and that part is illegal).
So, the user brings their computer home and it has windows preinstalled. Included is a web browser so the user is not going to dl netscape/opera or whatever else. Also included is a media player (hard bolted into the browser) so they are not neccesarily going to dl another player. Not included is Java, so develepers will stop java development (don't believe me, why do so many web builders, aside from laziness, code pages for IE that look wierd on different browsers).
Another key consideration is office. In a business, files are transferred in MS formats. Why would a company put on an OS that can't handle applications that they need? MS will not port office to linux for this specific reason (and as good as Star Office is, it can't handle conversions flawlessly).
I would suggest that anyone who questions what MS did is illegal read Judge Penfield's findings of facts. Or read this article for a basic summary This details all the ways that MS broke the law. Contrary to what MS says, a conservative 7 Judge Court of Appeals upheld the majority of this decision and found MS behaved illegaly.
What MS does is limit users choice. They do this by taking one monopoly and leaveraging that into another monopoly. I could care less what OS people use, what browser people use, and what software people use. But I do like to have a choice as to what to use, and I like venture capitalists to not fear investing in technologies that MS already is competing in , intends to compete in, or may just so happen to decide later to compete in. As Barksdale, now a VC, said in his letter, a VC will not invest in a technology if MS ever has an intention to use their monopoly to "compete" (read destroy) that technology. And while the open source community is great, VC is also neccesary otherwise these technologies will wither on the vine.
This can be translated to:
Hope this helps.
"200 Quatloos on the newcomer!" "300 Quatloos against!"
And ya wanna know why WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 are inferior products to Word and Excel?
Because back when IBM and Microsoft where developing OS/2, Microsoft told WordPerfect and Lotus that OS/2 was the platform of the future.
Both companies spent loads developing brand-new versions for OS/2, and they were great. Then Microsoft shipped Windows 3.0 for $99, and they had Word and Excel ready for Windows. They never developed versions for OS/2. WordPerfect and Lotus could never regain the ground they lost, or the effort they wasted developing for OS/2.
Just to put the nail in the coffin, Microsoft shipped the first version of Access for $99, to kill dBase and Paradox. This is usually known as 'dumping' but for some reason Microsoft can get away with it.
This is how you extend your monopoly in operating systems to applications; lie to your competition.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
How can a vocal few (not making broad generalizations here) be fine with more government regulation against MS, but want them to keep their hands out of everything else?
Because Microsoft has broken the law. AS IN CONVICTED. They have corparate culture of using dirty tricks. Certain aspects of their products deliberatly harm their customers (for example changing their file formats to create incompatabilities and other tactics to force people to upgrade).
As far as wanting the government "to keep their hands out of everything else", it because we don't want (A) Net-clueless legislators, (B) self-serving bussinesses, (C) Self rightous moralizers (D) whatever other idiots I forgot, all pushing for bad internet laws and tech laws.
There very little need to ever mention the internet in a law. If something internet related "should" be illegal, it's almost always illegal by non-net laws.
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
...all you want, but the ONLY way that things are going to change is through:
1. Voicing your displeasure in Microsoft by:
a) Boycotting Microsoft Products
b) Sending Microsoft and your elected representatives messages about your personal boycott.
c) Encourage others to do the same.
2. Alternative Advocacy:
a) Put Linux on every computer you can.
b) Educate, amuse, and entertain the people you come into contact with about the alternatives. Make it fun, not a chore.
3. Quit talking out of your ass and spewing anti-MS propaganda. It's hard to make friends when you're vilifying someone else out of the other side of your mouth.
The power of the American citizen lies within his and her wallet. When we buy a product, we are sending a message to the producer that we accept *everything* they do with respect to how that product is made, marketed, and consumed. If you want to hurt Microsoft - do it with your power as a consumer. Hit them where it hurts the most - in the P&L statement. Sell your MSFT and invest the funds in a company you admire.
If you _have_ to use Microsoft products, that's fine, but I've found I can convince my employers to switch not by voicing my hatred of Microsoft, but simply comparing Microsoft products side by side with similarly capable open source alternatives.
Three words: Return on Investment.
That is all.
Mmmm... Pistol Whip...
Because back when IBM and Microsoft where developing OS/2, Microsoft told WordPerfect and Lotus that OS/2 was the platform of the future.
... until it was blatently obvious that OS/2 was going nowhere fast. Lots of 3rd party vendors saw the tide and got onto the Windows bandwagon.)
People keep posting this 'argument' on Slashdot who obviously never used either WordPerfect or Lotus 1-2-3 for OS/2. Those products on OS/2 were fucking terrible -- worse than the Windows versions! WP/2 was usually typified as a "bad Windows port" and was off the market within a year or so, and the early versions of 1-2-3/2 weren't even feature complete.
Incidentially, MS almost shipped Office for OS/2 PM. It would have soundly beaten Lotus & WP on that platform too. Could it be that Lotus and WP just had no clue how to write a GUI application, whereas MS had been writing them for years on the Mac side?
(And yes, IBM/MS said "OS/2 is the platform of the future!" in 1987, 88, 89, 90
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
The economic concept of monopoly power holds that a "monopoly" is not an absolute, it is a point on a scale. Where they are on the scale is uncertain.
... don't think for a minute that it is simple. It's not.
You missed. Monopolies are perfectly legal.
Yes, Microsoft has a high degree of monopoly power, but it's not cut-and-dry about how much power they have.
And it doesn't matter how much monopoly power they have.
The issue is actions. Certain actions to maintain a monopoly position are illegal. Certain actions using a monopoly to create a new monopoly are illegal. Legal fact: Microsoft's actions were illegal.
it's certainly not cut-and-dry what to do
No agument there, lol.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Have a brouse through Jackson's findings of fact, where the story of what happened to OS/2 is laid out in all its glory. To cut a long story short, it went something like:
Microsoft: If you don't stop bundling OS/2 with your computers, we're going to make it close to impossible for you to offer Windows
IBM: Ha, just try.
Microsoft: OK.
IBM: (Later) Er, how are we supposed to offer Windows 95 with our PCs if you wont give us a single copy until after you've launched it?
Microsoft: We're not telling you again, DROP OS/2. You're already unable to support Windows 95 at the same time as everyone else, do you want to pay retail too?
IBM: Oh fuck.
That OS/2 died due to poor marketing, or a kludgy user interface, or because 1.3 was so dreadful, is a popular but mistaken myth. It might have ended up dying for any of those reasons had MS not intervened (in my view it's not as great an OS as its supporters like to claim), but the actual reason is that MS blackmailed IBM into dropping it.
So to answer your question, IBM produced a PC-based OS and launched a significant marketing effort to sell it. It wasn't able to compete, not because of superiority of MS software, but because Microsoft's monopoly made it impossible to stay in the market.
IBM put money on the line and tried to compete.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Well, I did use WP and 1-2-3 on OS/2, hell, I coded on OS/2 1.0 and 1.1. At that time, it was Microsoft, not IBM, that was pushing us to code new apps on OS/2. 1-2-3 3.0 was an amazing app, spreadsheets didn't get that cool again until Lotus Improv.
I wasn't talking about the GUI apps, BTW, I was talking about the multi-windowed character mode apps, that everyone was trying to madly get out the door. Everyone except Microsoft, that is.
Could it be that no one had a clue how to write a PM GUI application, and Microsoft gave up and wrote for Windows, instead? Especially since they had control over the entire platform.
Oh, and Microsoft almost shipped Office for OS/2? Was the product in the pipeline, or was it just Microsoft FUD?
I also don't agree that lots of 3rd party vendors saw the tide and got onto the Windows bandwagon. I remember when Windows 3.0 came out in 1990, and apart from the Microsoft apps (Excel was available immediately) there was one graphics company that had products ready. We waited for Procomm, dBase, 3270 emulators, etc. Most people ran their old apps in the DOS window.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
But we'll be back! just as soon as someone has fuel for the helicopters . . .
hawk, who denies being a member
In Canada, the law that is supposed to protect Canadian consumers and businesses is the Competition Act. The Government agency in charge of upholding this law is the Competition Bureau.
It is funny how the Microsoft has been convicted in the US and EU of illegal monopolistic business practices yet the Canadian Competition Bureau has done nothing. You can email them to ask why here.
If you are Canadian and want to ask the same question of your member of parliment, their email addresses are here.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
I like Bush, I "liked" Sen. Ashcroft. I'm not terribly thrilled with Ashcroft post 9/11. I give the FBI props for doing a great job of rounding up the suspects. I don't like the power grab.
I voted in Florida...
I don't think that Clinton/Reno was attempting to apply Justice, I think that they were making a point to Microsoft that they need to "participate" in the government. Once the "participation" checks arrived, the situation changed.
All the politicians are corrupt to some extent, its the nature of the beast. I refuse to believe that Clinton/Reno were anything but corrupt in this case, as their 8 years of behavior indicated.
Microsoft has criticized the alternative remedy offered by the hold-out states as ``radical and punitive'' measures that ''seem calculated to inflict maximum commercial harm on Microsoft.''
... isn't that the point when someone is found guilty?
Uhmmmm
> But read the appeals court judgement -- the DOJ's
> (broader) case was pretty well undermined.
That's nonsense, even by slashdot standards!
The tying issue was sent back. The findings of fact, however, were upheld in their entirety. The findings of illegal use of market power were upheld.
> Microsoft was a mean boy to the OEMs. That's the only thing that the
> government's got them on,
I'm not sure what to say, other than that you should put the crack pipe down. The *process* by which the remedy was chosen (specifically, a judge breaking ethical rules by granting interviews) was rejected, and one conclusion of law was rejected. Microsoft shills are claiming that the breakup was overturned, which is a willfully false statement. The court was very clear, and even issued a second opinion to make clear, that it had not ruled out *any* remedies.
hawk, esq.
>
I won't speak for slashdot, or even claim it is coherent, but I'll answer as a free market economist, and as an antitrust lawyer.
Markets generally work, and evidence from the present all the way back to the Roman empire and Summeria show that government intervention in markets fails.
Many stop at this point, and call for the DOJ to back off. But that's where the error occurs.
Functioning markets work, are good, and should not be tampered with by the government.
The problem with monopolies is that they ruin our precious markets--even moreso than government intervention.
So is interventionin the market good? No. But it's better than a monopolist making matters even worse.
hawk
Available for viewing - roughly an hour long.
Here 'tis
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Renata Hesse, Trial Attorney
Suite 1200, Antitrust Division
Department of Justice
601 D Street NW
Washington, DC 20530;
(facsimile) 202-616-9937
Dear Sir or Madam:
I am a computer programmer and consider myself knowledgeable of the computer industry. I am writing concerning the proposed Microsoft settlement with the Department of Justice. Since Microsoft has already been found guilty, I consider the existing settlement to be severely lacking in several areas. As it is currently written, the settlement will not prevent Microsoft from continuing their anti-competitive behavior. Also, it provides no penalty for Microsoft's past behavior. A meaningful settlement needs, at a minimum, the following:
Sincerely,
Michael J. Green
concerned, informed Citizen
Should have been more clear -- I was talking about the GUI apps too. The char mode apps were probably fine, although I could see why the customer base might not see the advantage over plain ol DOS.
Excel & Word for PM were in beta, apparently. My guess is that MS was playing it both ways, and they hadn't yet decided to bet the farm on Windows.
But the actual OS is unimportant. MS beat WP and Lotus in the apps market because the latter two didn't take GUI apps seriously, not because of some platform switcheroo.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
> You'll have to come up with better than a little heat from the
> marketing guys to prove there was coercion involved. Citing a
> single instance where Microsoft followed through on their threats would
> be a help. However, nobody presents evidence of a follow-through.
> So you're all blowing hot air.
Never say all. How about DR-DOS? Here's a link where the settlement is mentioned, and I leave it to you to dig into the details of the case if you dare. In several instances (two in Europe and one in the U.S.) Microsoft stated in contracts that the companies in question were not allowed to sell a computer without paying them for a license for MS-DOS, even if they didn't actually install MS-DOS. When the company in the U.S. complained, they were told that if they sold a computer without paying the royalty, they'd lose the right to sell MS-DOS at all. This made computers with DR-DOS more expensive than computers with MS-DOS only, and since these companies couldn't afford not to sell MS-DOS, they had to knuckle under. This pressure came in the form of legal documents from Microsoft's attorneys, not "a little heat from the marketing guys" as you put it. This is one of the parts of the case that has Microsoft in such hot water in Europe.
On a more personal note, I recently got a PC from Dell. It came with Windows Millenium preinstalled, and I could not buy a PC without some Microsoft OS installed. I decided that I didn't really want it, so when I got the computer I clicked "I Do Not Agree" to the EULA. It told me to contact my PC vendor for refund information. I called Dell, and they said they wouldn't refund my money, and that I'd have to contact Microsoft if I wanted my refund. I contacted Microsoft and they told me they wouldn't refund my money either. I reminded them that Dell said they'd pay me back, and they said, "take it up with Dell." I called Dell back and they said they can't give me a refund because they can't get the money back from Microsoft.
Now would you like to tell me about hot air? Or perhaps you'd like to refute my points? Or maybe you'll give me back the money that Microsoft won't for a product I don't want and didn't have a choice about buying? Especially since they lied in their license about being willing to refund it if I didn't agree to their ridiculous EULA?
Didn't think so.
Virg
That's a gross misrepresentation.
First of all, after 7 years of unsuccessfully marketing OS/2, IBM was already 'leaking' to the tradepress that the product was on it's last legs long before Win95 shipped.
You are talking about events that occurred long after everyone in the industry knew that OS/2 was dead. And you are citing 1 IBM executive with a grudge spin on the story.
But anyway, the conversation really went like this:
IBM: Remember that "divorce" agreement we had that gave us rights to Windows 3.0?
MS: Fuck yes. You only pay $11 per copy of Windows, while Compaq and everyone else pays 3 times that amount.
IBM: Well, we want the same deal for Windows 95.
MS: You gotta be kidding. We just spent the last 5 years rewriting that hunk of junk.
IBM: Give it to us or we'll sue your ass sideways.
MS: Well, OK, but do us a favor and stop bundling OS/2 in a duelboot config on your corporate models.
IBM: Well, we were going to dump OS/2 anyway, so that's fine with us.
(I would also point out that OS/2 had significantly higher hardware requirements than Windows and was never marketed as a general desktop OS.)
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I won't even begin to wonder why you think Apple hasn't tried to compete with Microsoft, or hasn't poured a lot into marketing, but I don't even need that one. Here's mine:
Digital Research - Published DR-DOS, which was a direct (and fairly successful) competitor for MS-DOS. They were driven out of the market when Microsoft went to computer OEMs and said, "if you offer DR-DOS on any machine you sell, we'll refuse to sell you licenses for MS-DOS." Because OEMs were selling about 40 percent DR-DOS and 60 percent MS-DOS, many of them could not afford to drop support for MS-DOS, so they dropped support for DR-DOS. In addition, when Windows 3.0 came out, during the installation it would check for DR-DOS on the machine, and if it was found, would throw three screenfuls of warnings about possible malfunctions (not a single one of which could they prove when Caldera, who now owns DR-DOS, sucessfully sued them). Many users were scared off by these warnings, and DR-DOS died out.
Maybe you have a different definition of "compete", but this seems to have involved a company (Digital Research) putting "some" money on the line, and getting spanked because Microsoft bullied OEMs.
But hey, thanks for playing...
Virg
This Reuters story on Yahoo! could cast an interesting light on the case, as these are companies who are not (currently) directly competing with Microsoft.
Well, in answer to your comment, your logic pans out to "why are you so mad at Microsoft for doing something that companies X, Y and Z would do if given the chance?" I'm mad because:
1.) Those other companies may wish to do these things, but they haven't actually been convicted of breaking the law yet.
2.) Arguing that others would break the law if they could is not an excuse for breaking the law.
3.) They broke the law.
That's a pretty simple explanation. When any of the others break the law, I'll start hue-ing and crying about them.
Virg
You are wrong. Anti-trust laws are designed to protect competition, not the consumers. An anti-trust lawyer told me this.
-- Will program for bandwidth
I'd say that consitutes pretty heavy marketing.
They didn't. They wanted to sell PCs with Windows 95 when Windows 95 came out, as I said above.You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I can't comment on your version of the conversation, but given the choice of believing you or Judge Jackson...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Reference Please. I just re-read the FoF, and neither your or my story made it in there (both are based on the testimony of a IBM exec, and I maintain that getting a steep discount was more important to IBM than OS/2 in 1995).
What Jackson found was a significant amount of ball-squeezing around Lotus Notes & SmartSuite. IBM did not capitulate and it hurt the PC company.
It was marketed as a general destop OS thoughout 1994 and most of 1995.
True, but I always thought this was last minute dumping to make up some cash on a failed product. OS2 had previously only been sold to 'enterprise' customers, who for the most part ended up using Windows. Jackson's story indicates that it was part of a "IBM First" effort that started in 94.
The funny thing is that Jackson says:
Of course OS/2 _always_ cost 2-3x the price of Windows, so therefore it never really competed.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
* Microsoft's punishment devolves to giving away software that costs them little or nothing to produce... and is likely to build it's market share (not to mention killing any recourse the complaintants may have coming to them.)
* Microsoft essentially gets to pick the people who watchdog them. -- Ain't this a crock of...
* A public forum gathering information about and likely to have a strongly worded and televised position on the antitrust decision - has been effectively shutdown because one senator wanted to be somewhere else at the time?!
Jeezus Kkkkrist! What the heck is going on!? I'll tell you what *I* think... we're getting screwed royally!
Reminds me of the political cartoons I saw while studying U.S. History. The big trusts having powerful connections in government... closing out the voice of the people. I believe the solution was the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Warp Connect was a different kettle of fish, as was getting it with Windows - but then you'd expect OS/2 + Windows to cost more than Windows.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The core question is: "Would IBM have de-emphisized OS/2 in 1995 if it were not for Microsoft Windows licencing considerations?"
Ultimately unanswerable. Reading the trial document tea leaves has proven fruitless.
I can see how from the perspective of a home "Teamer" one might see the consumer sales momentum of 1994 and think that OS/2 was really gaining, and that it's shelving _had_ to be a massive consipricy.
On the otherhand, as someone who worked with OS/2 for years, including a year as a OS/2 sysadmin, it just seemed everything about the marketing of that product was "half" assed, and the conculsion was inevitable as early as 1992-3.
It never really reached it's intended top shelf enterprise market. The PPC strategy had exploded into an expensive debacle. IBM was dumping cheapo copies on hobbiest dabblers for quick cash, while telling corporate customers that the product was dead. The fix was in for OS/2, long before Win95 stepped into the picture.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
But they weren't plain old DOS. OS/2 1.0 was a fully multi-threaded, multi-tasking OS, but IBM hadn't finished the GUI yet. So Lotus and WordPrefect got their products to market first, because they believed Microsoft. And Microsoft suckered 'em.
Remember that Excel had something like a 90% share on the Mac back then. And, in the "Pirates of Silicon Valley" version of history, Gates wanted a way to get that kind of market share for his apps on the PC. He won't be as sure of getting it if IBM was in the driver's seat.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
...I didn't have a choice, through the very favorable circumstance that someone bought the machine for me as a gift. You could say that I therefore shouldn't be looking a gift horse in the mouth, but the point is not that I could have bought a machine elsewhere, but that I shouldn't have to buy from someone else because they won't keep their word. They flat-out lied to me, and that's why I presented the scenario.
Virg
> You didn't read my post. I said a PC-based OS.
I did read your post. "PC-based" means "runs on PCs" so I didn't naturally compare that to "runs on Intel architecture" like you did. To defend my point, Windows NT can install on PowerPC systems, so even they don't directly agree with your assumption. And, considering how often people and companies buy new hardware, it's not nearly as likely today as ten years ago to be a problem to buy a different hardware platform. Like I said, you could buy PowerPCs (or Alphas) and not have to leave Microsoft if you wanted.
> In any case, I don't think DR's experience 15 years ago is
> sufficient excuse for all the other competitors today.
This belief would be funny if it wasn't so sad. "DR's experience fifteen years ago" happened about ten years ago, and it led directly to the dominance of Windows (and thus Windows 95 and so on) since then. To cite another example of abuse of monopoly power that closed up a market, let's look at the railroad industry. When railroads were first beginning to appear in the U.S., there were literally hundreds of them all over the country. Soon, large rail companies discovered that they could use their size to push out competitors. Their tactics included:
1.) Drive out with prices: the large rail company would set up operations in the area of an established railroad, and begin moving goods for virtually no cost. The large rail company would subsidize this startup so it could run at a huge loss, and the established rail company would have to eat huge losses just to compete. Most of them could not, and when they went out of business, the large rail company would then jack prices up to whatever they wanted. Any time a competitor would appear, they'd drop prices until that competitor was gone.
2.) Large rail companies would engage in "Grange busting" by refusing to ship the goods of farmers who unionized for better pricing. They'd do the same for any company that tried to organize their industry to get better bargaining power. In some cases, specific companies were targetted for elimination (and were mostly driven out of business). This also extended to the practice of refusing to ship any goods for a company unless they used said large rail company for all shipping, so most manufacturers couldn't risk shipping by anyone else, even in part.
Now, if drawing the parallels between example 1 and what happened to Netscape and example 2 and what happened to the OEMs selling DR-DOS, (and by extension, Digital Research) is difficult, you're not paying attention. The moral of the story is that these hundreds of competitive rail companies were reduced by these practices to four (who didn't directly compete because they agreed not to encroach on each other's territory) and entry into the market was made prohibitive because the established giants were too big to fight after they'd chased away everyone else. This is what happened with Microsoft, and this is why there are so many companies taking issue today. They're not decrying MS creating a monopoly a decade ago, they're decrying that MS is using that market stronghold to prevent competition today.
Virg
> Well I'm not going to quible over the exact number of years,
> but I notice that you haven't given a specific year either so
> perhaps you're not so sure.
The lawsuit was filed in 1996, and encompassed activities during the 1991-1994 time frame. The reason for the delay was that Novell executives (Novell bought out DR) were loathe to try to take on Microsoft in 1994 because they were afraid the fight would bankrupt the company. Ray Noorda (the CEO of Novell) retired from Novell, created his own company (Caldera), bought the rights to DR-DOS, and immediately filed suit. You can claim that 1996 was also ancient history in this industry, but since the antitrust suit began in 1997 and is still being resolved today, that would be a big stretch.
> Your conclusion that Windows is dominant because MS derailed
> DR-DOS seems to me a big leap.
Split it into to logical steps. MS-DOS gained hugely in installed base when DR-DOS was driven from the marketplace. By the time Windows 95 came around, there was effectively no other OS to choose, and Microsoft helped that along by stopping OEMs from selling Windows 3.1 on new machines after Win95 came out. It's not very realistic to assume that if DR was still in the market, that they would not have developed an integrated GUI in the four years between Microsoft's torpedoing them and the advent of Windows 95. Peter Norton's Windows bolt-on (called Norton Desktop for Windows) was doing quite well, in fact, but he (and then Symantec) couldn't get clearance from the VCs and board of directors, respectively, to make it a stand-alone GUI product because nobody thought that it would stand a chance against Microsoft, seeing what they did to DR. That is to me a pretty good indicator that their market share coupled with their monopoly abuse (keep in mind that Microsoft paid up on the case involving DR-DOS so I can say they did abuse their position) doomed other GUI products before they ever got out in the field.
Virg