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Allchin Admits MSFT Violated the Law
An Anonymous Coward writes: "CNN is running what amounts to a two part article about the nine states who are continuing their case against Microsoft in which Jim Allchins admits Microsoft violated the law.
The first part of the article deals with Jim Allchins assertion that there is no way for Microsoft to remove Internet Explorer from Windows without crippling the OS. However, he admits that the demonstration in court which showed this crippling was in fact rigged and that they have not done studies to se if it would be possible to produce an OS without the browser imbedded in it.
The second part of the story involves Allchin admitting that Microsoft has violated the law but refused to specify the violations. 'I don't think that I can summarize those,' Allchin said. 'I'm not an attorney.'"
How can Microsoft state that they cannot create an OS without an imbedded browser, when Solaris, BSD, and Linux are all perfectly viable, and usable operating systems, that do not have the browser imbedded in them. Someone please enlighten me.
So after a federal judge and court of appeals said that they violated a law and after half a year of haggling someone in Microsoft finally admits it. Well, what a headline. :)
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Gee does he? I must have missed where in the article he actually said that.
Plus the big claim that Allchin is admitting some big thing is overblown (admittedly the linked-to article makes the same mistake). If you wade through Allchin's 250+ page deposition, the exchange is (p. 27):
Q. Well, you understand, do you not, that Microsoft was found to have done certain things that violated the law?
A. Yes.
This is just a statement of fact...Microsoft was indeed found guilty. It doesn't imply he thinks Microsoft *should* have been found guilty.
- adam
If you want the "Scheduled Tasks" folder in My Computer, you have to install Internet Explorer...Since when has the equivilent of cron needed a web browser to work?
Pbur
Regardless of what Microsoft says, anyone who works in IT knows that you can essentially achieve anything you can dream if given enough time and money. They *can* remove IE from their operating system should they decide to do it. Would it cost them alot of money? Would it cost them more than they earned by driving competition from the marketplace?
Seems to me like this suit is something they foresaw so they built themselves a defense by integrating their browser into the OS just in case this argument was needed...
Of course we torture people, we need the information --Gen. Pinochet
It's perfectly possible to know whether or not something is possible (meaning "realistic", since given unlimited time/resources anything is possible) without performing a study to find out.
Given the direction that Microsoft is gone, it probably ISN'T possible to remove IE without rewriting massive parts of the OS. With the amount of in-depth knowledge Allchin has, he can probably state that with 100% certainty - and he doesn't need to do a study to know it for certain.
The question is not whether they can provide an OS without a browser embedded - it's whether it is reasonable to modify their current OS's to that end.
Also, Allchin cannot either confirm or deny whether Microsoft broke the law. That determination is for the courts, and his statement, in either direction, does not make it so.
I hate to say it, but isnt this the same company that claims they ARE smart enough to securely handle ALL of our id's and financial information (ie Hailstorm)
And now this same company tells me it can not do something as simple as modularize source code. I don't feel very safe anymore.
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
- adam
The lack of economic knowledge is finally too much for me: I'm posting!
Microsoft didn't break the law by having a monoploy, being too big, having too much market power, etc.
Monopolies by themselves aren't (economically speaking) a bad thing. Economies of scale, and the desire for interoperability, make the OS market something of a natural monopoly.
Microsoft should be punished not because they are the benefactors of this natural monopoly, but because the used leveraged this monopoly into restrictive contracts with OEMs and to gain marketshare in the browser market.
You may love MS, you may hate them, but there are certain things any company with market power isn't allowed to do, and for good reason.
You don't get it. Of course MS could remove IE, after rewriting the dozens of other apps in Windows that depend on it. But that wouldn't help me or others like me- small ISVs who've been building on top of IE and relying on its presence in the OS ever since it became middleware. It's simple: you use 98lite or IEradicator or whatever, you disable my app. I don't mind if you use it on your own system, but a bunch of lawyers forcing its removal from the Windows retail or OEM distribution is fucking insane.
Too bad you can't kill one as easily as a person.
No, really - Corporate Personhood is one of the worst legal abuses of the 19th century. Corporations can own stock, lobby congress, and sue people, but they aren't as vulnerable as humans, they don't do jailtime, and they tend to have more money for lawyers. Nice recipe for abuse, huh?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
the question, essentially, is this:
is it your understanding that Microsoft tried to maintain a monopoly by engaging in certain practices that the courts have held to be unlawful?
Now, to me, the phrase "by engaging in certain practices that the courts have held to be unlawful" is the exact same thing as "by breaking the law".
so in other words:
is it your understanding that Microsoft tried to maintain a monopoly by breaking the law?
To which he answered yes. Sounds like an admission to me...
Gee...I wonder how Daimler-Chrysler offers so many versions of the PT Cruiser? Four models, nine colors, manual or automatic transmission, three choices for "security group", side airbags or not, deep tint windows or not, three choices of exterior accents, six more options one can choose or not....let's see, that comes to 165,888 possible variations on the PT Cruiser (and I'm leaving out the "woody" and gold exteriors, I think...). Mr. Ballmer, Henry "you can have a Model T in any color you want as long as it's black" Ford was a long time ago--why should computer users have fewer choices than car buyers?
This sticking point is just so old it's unbalievable. If you aren't shipping a browser with a desktop OS, you are crazy. Have you seen what XP does with embeded IE? It's beautiful. I go from browsing files to browsing the internet seemlessley. Pick on IE for security all you want, but it's definetley a usability improvement the way they have it bundled in like that.
Anyway, yeah. My point was that arguing about building a browser into the OS is so 1997.
Win98, and Win95 aren't their current OSes. I'm fairly certain MS' latest OSes *do* have IE integrated. Those programs can't and won't work for Win2K or XP.
I really wouldn't be surprised to hear that Microsoft intentionally integrated IE with its newer OSes for legal purposes as opposed to genuine software-requirement purposes. I think it would be a lot harder to legally tell MS to de-integrate IE with their OS rather than legally telling them not to package IE with their OS.
Win98 and Win95 are slowing becoming too obselete to be used in the IE integration argument.
Microsoft licensed some of the Central Point utilities. Those were the ones included 'for free' in Windows 3 and later. They worked pretty damn good, and I suspect the folks at Central Point made their fortune for licensing it to Microsoft.
For decades now, Peter Norton has just been a bitmap on a box. That's why I always refer to any of the 'Norton' products as 'Bitmap Antivirus' and so on.
He's sorta the Aunt Jemima of software.
This is simple.
First, note that IE was included in the OS to forclose the market for NS. This is itself illegal.
Second, by creating an artificial tie between the OS and the browser, they have made it impossible for an end user or anyone else to remove IE. Yes, I know about 98lite, but 98lite only restores the system to how it ought have been.
Third, by promoting IE as "the browser of choice" and by making it available only for Windows, it makes Windows the "OS of choice" for Internet access, and therefore protect their monopoly.
Fourthly, that Windows cannot change its shell and that functionality is affected is clearly not true. Consider:
- The default shell in Win 1.x and 2.x is msdos.exe, a "file open" dialog box.
- The default shell in Win 3.x was lifted from OS/2 1.3's desktop manager and file manager, even replicatng the bugs... Lining up the icons in a vertical list is straight out of OS/2's program manager.
- Windows 95 and NT4 sported a shell that did not have any internet or web based hooks.
- The shell in Windows 2000, 98 and Me can all be replaced, but XP and SP 2 onwards can not.
- All it needs is a "new-found desire" to move the shell into "new and exciting directions" to get MS to uncouple the shell from the browser.
But even removing the icons from the desktop does not remove the code. All it does is remove the icon. Ye might as well say that there is no registry editor, since there is no icon for it.The third largest market of Win3x software was programs to replace the default shell: Norton Desktop for Windows was pretty common that programs needed to be aware of it.
98lite pro, really DOES remove IE code. It also patches a number of files (including wordpad and notepad), so that the dependance is gone. There's about a dozen files it patches to make Windows work without IE.
Whether or not you can use the RTF tool if you're making a competing word processor has never been tested in court, as far as I know.
Microsoft are saying "They can't remove IE", because it is the comingling of code that they're in the courts for. They have not been accused of comingling DefectX code, or notepad, into the OS. Both of these are freely installable and uninstallable. Like browsers in every other OS.
Microsoft could charge you for using DefectX right now. DefectX basically allows you to play DefectX games. Offis plugins allow you to extend Offis, and you need that virus installed for the plugin to work. I mean, Netscape charged in the order of 25$ for their browser, and people brought it.
I mean, there is nothing wrong with charging for an engine, and then charging a different amount for games to play under that.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.