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States Demand Windows Source Code
Zeb writes: "Looks like the states who are continuing the anti-trust case
don't believe MS' claim that they cannot provide a stripped down version of Windows. They want MS to release the source code so they can verify MS' claims . Maybe MS shot itself in the foot here?" The Register has a story as well.
I always wondered how useful the source code would be. At X million lines of code, plus the quality of comments and format might take an army of programmers a year to even figure out where to start.
If they did get it, could they afford the time and expense of analyzing it?
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
Having had to read -one- person's code and make sense of it, can I ask where in the world the judge is going to find people who can read the source code -and- make sense of it -and- determine if the arguements have merit? And, of course, have it happen inside of a year? Any sufficiently learned group of programmers will probably be either too expensive to hire for the job or bicker amongst themselves... you have to admit, most programmers are either biased for or against MS in the first place. All it takes is one arguement and poof...
"I'm sorry, your honor, but the witnesses are deadlocked..."
Better yet, I can imagine MS giving the states the source code to, say, Microsoft BOB or Windows 3.1, and waiting to see how long it takes them to figure out it's the wrong thing.
Wouldn't this cause the trial penalties to be further delayed? I mean delaying plays into MS hands as it gains further marketshare. How long would it possibly take to have an indepedent team verify MS's claims it cannot offer a stripped down Windows?
...stripped of comments, white space stripped,
merged all into one file, variable names mapped
to numbers, etc...
...I think it's safe to predict the winner of this year's obfuscated C contest.
Clippy:"It looks like your Searchig and Replacing!"
Drone421:(Absently talking to Clippy)"Yep, I good go through each one of these
Clippy:"Please type your question"
Drone421:"hmmmmmm..." How to I do a global search and replace?
Clippy:"Please choose your Encarta (TM) topic: Harlem Globetrotters, Search and Rescue, or UNIX"
Drone421:"Hmmmm... I think on second thought, I'll ask the Hotmail people how they got rid of all the BSD copyright stuff in their code"
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Even if it did exist, what would programmers say other than "yes, with enough hacking, we can separate this out"? I mean, with enough hacking, you can get OS/2 to emulate Windows, or Linux. And if Windows cannot be split up, it only means that it is not well-modularized (but you guessed that already).
Most of these problems come from the peculiar notion in the US legal system that a company must have done something wrong in order to be subject to monopoly restrictions. The simple fact is that dominance of the operating system market by any system, be it Windows, Linux, or whatever, is not good. We need a diversity of operating systems, and that's what remedies should be aimed at. Leave Microsoft's source code alone.
They don't want anyone to see the source code because no one must ever know that Windows XP is written in Visual Basic...
States: We'd really like to know what this following section of code does.
Balmer: Code? What Code?
States: The line of code that says
while 1 {
gosub microsoft.world.domination();
}
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I would like to address two points that will come up.
1)A good software engineer will know how to approach this kind of project, and will know how to start.
2)its ease will determine on MS's standards and adherence policy.
3)If they can get the source code(I doubt it, but I hope so), I'm sure they can get documentation.
And no, I can't imagine a beo...you know the rest.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I got rid of Internet Explorer a few months ago, and my system is just fine.
I wonder if their proof involved deleting C:\winnt\system32\kernel32.dll.
just ask *explicitly* for a buildable source tree.
then build it, it would pre pretty simple to figure it out.
"Contrary to popular belief, UNIX is user friendly. It just happens to be selective on who it makes friendship with"
From TheRegister:
"The States also asked the judge to appoint a technical expert to provide "impartial opinions on the complex, technical issues" of the case. If she grants source access, we fear one of these may not be enough."
Just how, *how* are you going to find a geek that is impartial?
Not going to rehash all the "It'll take years to understand..." comments, that's obvious enough. So what does all this mean? Insert IANAL disclaimer.
Source released openly: What the states are asking for. This really won't get them anywhere. MS has been declared a monopolist, and going back like this is akin to going back to the murder scene for more evidence after the killer's been convicted. It doesn't do them any good other than to cause MS nightmares about their IP being compromised. Needless to say, MS hates this idea. Expect to see a scathing rebuttal within a couple of days. (Historical note: This is what one prosecutor did in the DeCSS case... put the code in as open/unsealed evidence, making it part of the public record. oops!) OSS advocates would love this idea, but without the compilation capabilities, it doesn't do Joe Sixpack any good unless MS accepts patches submitted by the public and makes them available for download.
Source released under seal: Same as an open release, but the source code doesn't get published, and only those people approved by the court get to see it. Takes even more time, more money, and accomplishes just as little. Only here, MS doesn't have to lose sleep over IP loss, just take care of a nasty migraine. Joe Sixpack gains nothing.
No release: Obvious victory for MS, but the case moves on faster than it would have otherwise, which (as we all know) MS does't want. Joe Sixpack doesn't get anything here, either.
I suspect that one of these choices is incorrect. Correct.
Microsoft Research Source Code
So...
Quit.. Yer... BITCHIN.. If you REALLY want to look at/dis MS source code, perhaps you should just go to school. About 2 years into it perhaps you'll realize you're taking life a BIT too seriously.
From the page:
Microsoft® makes source code to Microsoft operating system products like Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows CE available to universities and other "not-for-profit" research institutions at no charge. Currently, there are over 100 universities worldwide with our source licenses.
Microsoft has made a number of assertions during the original trial and is sure to attempt to make a bunch of other assertions now.
All the States have to do (yeah, merely) is to look at one or two of the assertions and attempt to disprove them with the source code. At that point they can call the credibility of a particular witness into doubt and impeach their entire testimony.
Remember, the biggest complaint most of us have had is that MS has been making unsubstantiated claims about the technical merits and difficulties of certain actions. This way the States could go out and prove they're unsubstantiated.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Doesn't the existance of programs like 98lite prove that Windows can run without IE. Yes the mshtml.dll engine is left in there for programs that want to use it, but the browser itself can be purged. Why isn't this proof enough?
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
Could the states higher experts, possibly former MS employees to guide them through the code or would that be seen as a conflict of interest since the technical experts in question are former employees? There has to be a lot of people who have worked with the windows source code over the years.
...that Windows XP was really developed in Fortran
I Heart Sorting Networks
It should be obvious to everyone that trully removing IE from windows would break it!
The problem with referring to Microsoft's operating system as simply "Windows" means that we mesh together the kernel and the user interface into one generic term. Would removing IE break the kernel? Of course not. UI code such as browsers does not live in the kernel. But would it break the Windows user interface? Yes.
IE is tightly integrated into the UI. Click "My Computer", "My Documens", or open the File "Explorer" and what pops up? Why it's IE! Not, chance that url at the top that say "My Computer" to http://slashdot.org and now you're browsing Slashdot with Internet Explorer.
It would be impossible to remove IE without breaking the user interface. And why should they remove it? It's their user interface. The same thing holds true in the KDE world. You browse your home directory guess what you're using? Konqueror! The same web browser that comes packaged with the desktop. Similar? I think so.
The point is, I hate MS probably more than most people, but should we care that IE is tightly integrated? I think it's to the user's benefit that it is. Now whether or not Microsoft should allow the user to entirely disable IE's internet exploring abilities is another question. If I make Mozilla my default browser and I click on a link in my email, Windows will open up Mozilla. However, if I type a link into "My Computer" explorer, it just opens the link in that window (ala IE). Maybe the behavior should be to pop open Mozilla?
Anyway, like them or not, Microsoft destructive monopoly. But should packaging a tightly integrated web browser with the user interface illegal? I think not.
I gather that the TCP/IP stack is BSD-derived. And guess what? That part of Windows works. ;-)
It would take a week or so, max.
If the court orders this and selects competent experts, they aren't going to wait while MS prepares a very special set of media. They will send in Federal Marshals to take control of the MS servers containing all source code for anything that ends up on the Windows OEM disc and copy *everything* on them. MS won't regain access to its systems until the experts can build the Windows OEM disc on their own systems.
If Microsoft claims it doesn't know where all of the source code is stored (yeah, right), that's not a problem. The Marshals can seize the entire Redmond campus just as easily as they can seize a few server rooms. They should be able to seize the computers and media from all offices within a week or so, then they can sort it out back in the lab. Microsoft can easily afford to replace all of those computers. (The contents are another matter, but they'll have to request copies from the Marshals.)
Think this is unrealistic? Ask any victim of a BSA raid - and they've only been alleged of doing something wrong. Microsoft has had its day in court, been found guilty (and this verdict has been sustained on appeal), and is now being told to sustain its claims during the penalty phase.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I removed emacs and all libraries it used and suddenly my entire system stopped working. After some testing, I discovered that if I left the libc library around, removing of the remainder of emacs did not cause the entire system to become unusable.
Libraries used by an application are not the application. This is the root of the debate. Microsoft has defined IE to include libraries used by other programs, and other people have a more limited definition.
I could define IE to include the entire Windows operating system as part of it. I do not consider that a valid definition, as there are very few computers with Windows installed for the express single purpose of using IE. As soon as the HTML engine was being used by other applications than IE, it was no longer part of the IE application.
We return back to this same issue - the tying of the browser to the OS. However, it seems like the real question is never asked, and an answer is never forthcoming...
Even if it is proven that the browser could be separate, that does nothing to bring Netscape, the company (rather than the AOL subsidiary or whatever they are now), back. It does not help any stock valuing, it doesn't help investors - Netscape - the company - is dead.
Yet we don't hear from the states - the last hope (maybe) to get this settled honestly and justly - that Microsoft has been found to be guilty of using its monopoly powers illegally, to force another company out of business. They VIOLATED ANTI-TRUST MEASURES! It wouldn't have mattered if the browser was part of the OS, if it was separate and installed with it, or if it was given away free on a CD in every box of Cherrios on the store shelves. The fact that they dropped the price to zero and gave it away, plus using thier advantage in the OS market to sway people into using it (by either installing it with the OS or tying it in someway), in order to undermine a competitor in an "unrelated" software product (Netscape and the browser business) at the time - this is illegal under the Anti-Trust laws.
This lawsuit is not about today - it is about what happened so many years ago. Today, it seems pretty obvious that a browsable UI and OS seem like a good solution (or at least "a" solution). Back then, though, they were nearly two separate pieces of software. But today, the states seem to be treating this lawsuit as if it were about the present situation in software - when that isn't the case, nor should it be.
I want Microsoft to be punished for its actions against Netscape and against the consumer - for these actions removed a choice from the consumer - a choice to spend or not spend their money (ie, buy Netscape for $$$), as well as causing what may have been the premature "death" of a company (of course, this is only one aspect of the entire lawsuit - the whole thing with licensing restrictions on OEMs to prevent them from selling or installing onto systems other OSs, etc - locking in a OS monopoly on hardware OEMs - more anti-trust issues)...
I want an full answer on that - why aren't we (as citizens and consumers) getting that answer?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Being modular is part of the problem. The entire help system, the file system explorer, large parts of applications and so on are all reliant upon the HTML rendering engine of Internet Explorer.
Honestly, Microsoft should just remove iexplore.exe from the system and say "There we've removed IE." and leave it at that. Instead they are arguing semantics with people who are technically incompetent.
I also don't see an argument for why we need a diversity of operating systems. Or rather, why you feel we don't already today have a diversity of operating systems. Linux is available, so is various forms of MacOS, BSD and so on. Fact is there is probably a wider variety of operating systems available today than at any other time in the history of personal computing.
The fact that not all of these operating systems are on equal footing in terms of hardware and software support is a result of effeciences of scale. The scale argument is the reason against diverse operating environments.(I include the hardware in along with the OS)
MS Attorney: Your Honor, my client agrees to turn over the Windows source code when it is finished.
Judge: And when will that be?
NY Attorney General (whispering): When no one has any money left with which to buy Windows.
MS Attorney: Well, it's hard to say...
Judge: You will deliver the source code in its present state to this court no later than two months from today.
MS Attorney: Your Honor, my client respectfully requests that Windows be treated as an intelligent life form and therefore allowed to plead the fifth.
Hmmm... seeing "Microsoft" and "victim" in the same sentence is making me go cross-eyed. As soon as my eyeballs return to center, I'll roll them up voluntarily.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
This is no different than health inspectors demanding to see the conditions of a food-packaging facility.
Would you want the government to take the word of the people that run the meat-packing plant that everything inside is clean and tidy, or do you want inspectors going inside and looking for themselves?
Microsoft set themselves up by claiming that they can't strip out that code but then refuses to allow the government to review that code.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
We don't want or need the MS source code. As a matter of fact, we're better off without it, because anyone who looks at it becomes questionable as a programmer, because of 'copyright contamination.'
We need file formats, wire formats, protocols. If Microsoft doesn't have clear, concise documentation, if Microsoft considers 'the source IS the documentation' for this stuff, then *THAT* is part of the problem with computing today.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
"Among the illegal tactics cited by the court was the "commingling" of Windows source code with add-on middleware.
I fail to see how stripping out add-on middleware from Windows will benefit the consumer in the end.
Currently the home OS ships for $100 and comes with a good browser, decent/basic archiver, basic CD burner and a bunch of other utilities that are "good enough" for 90% of the users. Is this unfair to other vendors that make more robust version of these utilities commercially? Perhaps...
However, consider the impact on the consumer if these add-ons were removed from the OS? Now, on top of the OS license cost, the user must purchase a CD burner ($50), a browser($30), an archiver($30 for Winzip), an FTP client($40 CuteFTP c4.2), etc etc etc.
Suddenly the TCO of the system is going up at a prohibitive rate. Software isn't cheap, if you actually bother to license everything you use at home. Do we expect users, who don't bother now to research alternative options to Windows software, to make rational, cost-effective decisions about purchasing add-ons for their OS? Or do we expect middleware vendors to drop their prices once the competition ball is in their court? I don't see how the consumer's wallet will benefit from all this litigation in the end.
This is a little different legal situation, though - Microsoft has based its defense on the source code. As a loyal viewer of Law & Order, this then leads to the "Well, they raised the issue, Your Honor, so I can follow it up" situation. Microsoft can't be permitted to make a defense based on secret evidence that only they can see.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Is that the kind of world we want?
Yes.
It's one thing with code, and one could argue that even code should be better documented. Then we can get into commenting and documentation extractors, but that's not the point.
It's an entirely different thing with file formats, protocols, and the like. Microsoft tries to call these things Standards. In order to truly be a standard, something has to exist apart from its implementation. It's OK to have a reference implementation, but that's a supplement to documentation, not a replacement for documentation. Plus a live program implementing a standard is a completely different thing than a reference implementation.
Standards are supposed to have a life beyond any single given implementation - that's why it's called a Standard. Otherwise, every version might well be incompatible with the one before in subtle ways. This is also a good reason for Standards to be simple and clear.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I would imagine that microsoft the turkey in this equation is filled with a similar amount of bugs and may make those poor reviewers equally ill.
I got my entire grocery bill reimbursed and a 200 dollar gift certificate. I wish microsoft would do the same for all the poor suckers out there that lost data, time, and resources to them.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
This is the CRIMINAL anti-trust case, not the civil anti-trust case that MS tried to get dismissed by having the education market handed to it.
This is action is also being taken during the penalty phase after conviction of criminal charges. That eliminates any legal presumption of innocence - the legal burden is now on the convicted party to prove innocence, not the state to prove guilt. (That's also why it's so hard to get convictions overturned even when new evidence is discovered.)
As for the bench warrant, all it requires is that the judge believe that the most expedient way to resolve the matter is to seize those servers. I doubt there are many experts who would look at Microsoft's performance during the trial phase and not foresee months of stonewalling unless the experts had full access to all source from the first day - and that would require seizure. I would expect many experts would make this a condition of serving in this role, to avoid wasting their own time.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
February 15, Redmond, Washington (AP) -- "Microsoft officials, who were initially outraged over the rebel states' request for source code access adopted an abruptly accommodating stance late yesterday."
"It seems that Bill Gates had started an internal initiative to find the best way to obfuscate the Windows source code in the event the states' request were to receive a successful ruling."
"Almost immediately, some of the top programmers from Microsoft, some of whom had spent years working on the Windows product, declared that native source itself already represented a sufficiently obtuse format and that not further obfuscation could better fulfill Bill's objectives."
"Let them have it!" declared one programmer gleefully and without hesitation."
"Provided by the management for your protection."
COnsidering that they have done everything except drop support for the old oses, they are doing pretty good. The only OS they sell in the store is XP and xp is much more compatable with programs written for WinNT (any version) then 95/98/ME was. They are slowly getting windows back to one platform. After the splits they created when they switched from win16 -> win32 (95 version) -> win32 (nt version) finally you should be able to write a program and have it work on Win2000, and WinXP and whatever next without having OS specific hooks and code paths.
The problem with this argument should be fairly obvious, though.
The main problem is the fact that they're not providing you with a browser: they're providing you with a browser that's impossible to remove. And people who claim that "well, it's nice to be able to enter stuff in the go window" are missing the point - There's NO reason that MS couldn't have made the OS able to accept a browser of any type as a file manager, provided it met some specifications (see GNOME's WM spec). Or use a different HTML renderer. But, no, they were scared of Netscape, and so they bundled IE in with Windows.
Think I'm crazy? What about this - what if Windows didn't allow you to change the default "Open" program for filetypes? How is this any different than what's going on now? The point is NOT that MS bundled these programs - look at Linux, for instance. If RedHat started bundling commercial programs with Linux, great - but the OS allows you to remove them.
So, I'm not saying "strip out the middleware". What I'm saying is "strip out the integration of the middleware into the OS" or "make the middleware removable". If MSN was set up in Windows to be the ONLY ISP, and any other ISP didn't have nearly the flexibility that MSN had under Windows (for no good reason other than Microsoft won't tell anyone what the APIs that MSN uses are), would that be fair? What the states and everyone else is saying is add everything you want, but DON'T BREAK THE LAW. MS has a monopoly. If you have a monopoly, you can't go around acting as if you don't - you have to act differently. Basically, you have to be very "nice" with your monopoly - not use it to bully around people or increase your business.
That's kindof what the antitrust laws are for. They acknowledge that monopolies sometimes occur, but that when they do, the company needs to somehow maintain the air of a competitive environment.
There's buildable and there's legible. I can see MS complying with the letter of such an order by running the source code through obfuscate.pl and delivering *that*. Sure, the code is FUNCTIONALLY the same, but you waste State money trying to decypher the source code.
Finding God in a Dog
So you get a free turkey, a 200 gift certificate AND all the added protien of all those yummy yummy 'features'? You are living large my friend!
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Courts frown on such tricks and trying them would get them slapped with contempt of court. They aren't totally stupid, you know.
If you know what you are doing, you can run W2K server WITOUT IE, You need to make a special OEM cd using their toolkit, and you can even do other fun things like put InetPub AND IIS on a sperate partition, under users that have no access to the rest of the partiotions , hence the OS. NSA has some good info on the latter.
:)
The courts are compltley ignorant on this matter, so are their 'expets' for the most part. Windwows will run fine without IE, at least, 95, NT 4.0 and W2K , SP is 2k on steroids with eye candy, The OEM install kit(XP) has a network ready bootable CD image that wii RUN ANY(IE included, Abobe, you name it), Windows app under it you want this should be PROOF alone. It starts as only a background and a shell window, you can run anything else from it you want executing it from the command line, Beauty is it will handle Win32 AND NTFS partitions, makes a wicked hack tool for a dead or funked machine, or to change the SAM around
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
The reason people are making a fuss is that the wrong antitrust argument was presented to the courts. I've given up on this whole thing. The real argument and UNDENIABLE proof of abusing the monopoly (remember kids: monopolies aren't illegal. Abusing your monopoly power is.) power against competitors was the bootloader issue.
The OEM license agreements were the proof and the smoking gun.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
For example, there is a 'standard' API call to refresh a window - but IE doesn't use it - it uses a different publicly undocumented call. (Anyone who's used IE under VNC will know what I mean - VNC hooks into the standard API for screen updates.. when you use IE and scroll the screen, the VNC client doesn't know that the window has changed.)
Why is this? Because doing so gives IE some advantage over other (non-MS) programs.
Uh, no, it doesn't.
IE just paints outside of the WM_PAINT handler sometimes. You can do that you know - the call is GetDC. Or GetDCEx if you need better control.
Not to mention that IE doesn't paint directly to the screen. It paints to a memory DC first for compositing, and then paints the memory DC to the screen.
Just because the VNC client isn't complete, don't start claiming that "IE uses undocumented calls" -- because it doesn't.
But tell ya what, prove that it does, and that it's not a bug in VNC, and I'll eat my hat.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
I remember a case from way way back ago, concerning a game console that had been reversed engineered so that a third party could develop games for it without having to license the technology.
However, when such games ran, the startup automatically triggered a screen that said something to the effect of "This game has been officially licensed by Somecompany".
At trial, since the console manufacturer failed to show that there was a way of booting a game without that text, they lost the case.
Now there is something remotely similar to the MS case here. MS is claiming that there is no way to deintegrate IE. *However*, they have failed to prove this. True, its proving a negative, which is difficult (at least logically, legally is another story), but MS will be on weak footing until they show the source code to someone else and let them try.
Oh, and IANAL.