Microsoft Expert Witness Stumbles

parking_god writes "MIT prof Stuart Madnick, testifying on MS's behalf, was caught out twice when a government attorney asked him to name an OS (other than one made by Microsoft) where the browser couldn't be removed. Madnick also faltered on several other questions." Basically he doesn't understand what GNOME and KDE are, and since we're all holier-than-thou know-it-alls around here, we might as well laugh at Microsoft's expense ;)

Comments

Re:IE is just a shell

[radja]

THE shell? would that be bash, ksh or tcsh?

//rdj

Re:IE is just a shell

[BusterB]

Is Internet Explorer any less a part of Windows than the shell is a part of Unix? Where exactly do you draw the line? Discuss.

Does Unix require one type of shell over another? You could write init scripts that used csh, ksh, bash, tcsh, or something else entirely. You could use python interactively, or make emacs the default shell. There is no requirement of one over another fundamentally.

how hard could it be to remove the brower, anyway?

[cheesyfru]

This has been bugging me forever. Nobody is saying that they need to remove the browser from the OS, they just need to disable it. How hard is it to remove the icons for it, and disable the "internet http browser" aspect until the user voluntarily downloads a tiny piece of plug-in code which enables the browser to work with internet protocols? If the world's largest and most powerful software company can't figure out how to do this, then how in the world are they getting big business to pay them millions of dollars to manage their mission critical software?

Try This...

[ScumBiker]

If Internet Explorer is so tightly integrated into Windows, how come you can upgrade it? I just upgraded the browser on my NT workstation here at the office from Internet Explorer 5.5 to Internet Explorer 6.0. Does that mean I also upgraded my operating system? Do I get better performance reading large files? Can I crunch data faster? Is there better communication between my hard drive controller and my memory sub-system? Microsoft is SO full of shit.

Madnick is *not* a CS prof

[Anonymous Coward]

Madnick is a has-been professor in Course 15, the Sloan business school, and he has nothing at all to do with Course 6-3, the computer science department at MIT. He teaches "MIS" style courses to accountants and economists.

He is most famous for co-authoring the book mostly called "Madnick and Donovan" which was some sort of IBM 360 OS bible back in the way-back days of punch cards.

BTW, it is might be interesting to note that Richard Schmalensee was the MIT professor who humiliated himself on the stand in the first phase of the trial, and he is also a professor of management in the same school at MIT. It's really not a bad school, they only look bad when they whore themselves for Microsoft money

well, isn't he right?

[ceswiedler]

Konqi serves the same purpose in KDE/Linux as Internet/Windows Explorer (same thing these days) serves in Windows. It does file management, web browsing, help, and html email rendering. Both do all of this through a component architecture.

What would KDE be without Konq? Same thing as Windows. Not really usable the way it was intended.

The article ribs the witness for calling KDE an operating system. Well, no, KDE is a user interface / window manager / shell sitting on top of the Linux (or other) kernel. Same as Explorer, which is a user interface / window manager / shell on top of the Windows NT kernel (in NT/2000/XP anyway). Perhaps he should have said KDE/Linux, but do we really want to go there?

Feh

[Greyfox]

I would think that all you'd have to do to replace the browser would be to code your replacement to export the same APIs that IE does. If those APIs were documented, replacing the browser would be simple -- the Mozilla people probably would have already coded to those APIs if they were available. The desktop should just call an API to perform browsing functions. It should not care who wrote the program providing the API.

Seems to me all you'd have to do is force MS to publically document the API. Actually they should be forced to document APIs, file formats and protocols BEFORE their products are released, and they should be compelled to use only protocols and formats unencumbered by patents or copyrights (for things like XML DTDs.) The documentation should be unencumbered by any license and should be freely available on their web site for all to download.

Re: Business press doesn't see it that way

[Black Parrot]

> the general business press is taking the line that Microsoft's legal team has everything under control this time and is crushing the States.

Let's not forget that the business press exists for the sole purpose of keeping stock prices high. It's hard to imagine that they would say anything different no matter what was going on.

But of course, they have the DoJ's desire to throw the game to give them confidence that they're going to be right this time anyway.

Re:Unbelievable

[Lonath]

That's so right. The really sad part is that I think the states would be happy if MS would just let the OEMs remove the IE shortcut from the desktop when they set up their customers' computers. It isn't even about removing IE, it's about not having IE staring you in the face and preventing any other browser from appearing anywhere. If MS wants to use IE for internal stuff so that it pops up when used automatically, who cares? Just let Dell and Gateway put Netscape on the desktop and remove IE from the desktop if they want. All of this bitching is over default icons on the desktop. :P

Re:IE is just a shell

[GreyPoopon]

Perhaps I'm taking you a bit too literally, but what is stopping people from installing and using another browser?

The issue is not the ability to install and use another browser. It's a tad more complicated than that.

1. Microsoft argues that they can't unbundle the browser, and it must be included with a Windows installation. This, of course, puts all potential competitors at a loss because a user is not likely to be motivated enough to try a competing product when they already have what seems to be a perfectly good tool.
2. Many people say that they should just remove the IE icons. That doesn't work either because too many other tools and applications on the system tie directly into the IE application. It will still come up anyway.
3. Footprint is the big one for me. If you don't unbundle the IE browser so that it can be replaced with another one, you're drastically increasing the memory and hard disk footprint needed for browsing. With today's monster hard drives, the storage space isn't all that much of an issue, but those blasted libraries that get loaded at bootup are already hogging memory. When I run Mozilla or Opera, they have to compete with IE because it is already loaded and taking up memory.

The truly surprising thing

[SwiftOne]

I'm not surprised that an MS witness didn't have perfect understanding of a different software paradigm.

I am surprised (pleasantly) that the lawyer recognized and was able to deal with the situation. I mean, sure, I have little doubt that the lawyers have been briefed, but this lawyer:

• Had to know that GNOME and KDE existed
• Had to know what they were, generally
• Had to understand that the answer was wrong
• Had to be able to articulate that the answer was wrong, with enough accuracy/confidence to have a witness with Comp Sci experience admit his error

I haven't been wowwed by this trial (I think MS has stiffled the industry, and I think the charges have focused on the wrong elements of MS behavior), but I am pleased to see that the legal staff has assumed an apparently comfortable amount of non-MS technical familiarity. This is a rare bit of good foreshadowing for future technical cases.

Re:Know-It-Alls

[stinky wizzleteats]

I'm not quite sure how they've been so successful in the server market, though.

The answer lies in your analysis of their success in the desktop OS segment. Here's how it works:

• You are a business with 50,000 users. 99% of those users use some flavor of Windows.
• Microsoft shows up at your door one day, and suggests that you change all your servers to NT. If bribing the CIO into forcing the change down IT's throat doesn't work, and/or this suggestion is resisted...
• Microsoft threatens to do a license audit of all your PCs. You can either:
  1. Find 50,000 license certificates spread among 15 campuses, 10,000 of which are remote laptop users, and 1,000 of those are overseas, all within the two week preparation period Microsoft gives you before the audit
  2. Swallow the blue pill and become a 100% Microsoft shop.

Cisco employs similar tactics, but since they don't have the license audit leverage, they engage in character assassination of IT people who resist Cisco implementations. Isn't capitalism fun?

Focusing on the wrong issue

[g_bit]

Why do OEM's care so much about altering the desktop? It's M$'s product, the OEM's shouldn't be allowed to mess with it.

The fact that you can't be a licensed Windows PC Provider AND sell naked PC's or PC's with Linux or ANY OTHER OS on them when you sign the contract with Microsoft is the issue they should be looking at.

If I told you that you could sell PC's with Mandrake on them but if you signed up to do so were then legally inable to sell naked PC's or PC's with Windows on them you'd be pissed too.

Re:IE is just a shell

[walt-sjc]

Damn. Wish there was a "clueless" mod option. The shell has virtually NOTHING to do with permissions. It hardly even touches them. The kernel enforces permissions and other applications (such as chmod and ls) set and view them using the functions provided by the kernel. The shell is mainly just a user interface. In fact, when you "exec" a command from the shell, the shell is GONE and replaced by the application.

What you don't comprehend is that UNIX is modular. This allows us to replace virtually every single command/component in the system with a different one. It also is what allows us to fairly easily support multiple differnt file systems of which linux supports over a dozen (maybe almost 2 dozen), different terminal programs, window managers, desktop environments (kde/gnome/etc) and web browsers.

What MS is trying to do (and having a hard time with) is actually having a stand-alone component be integrated. If MS wants to be able to upgrade IE (and it history proves that it does), it MUST be modular. The very fact that IE is upgradable totally blows MS's argument that IE cannot be separated.

Now there is the argument that you would lose the shell. This is bull. MS already has a IE-free shell that was available in 95 and NT4. What they did since then was add hooks in the shell to call IE at various places.

The bottom line is that there is no reason that Mozilla / netscape / opera couldn't use the same APIs that windows uses to "integrate" with IE other than the fact that MS keeps those APIs secret.

Re:don't be too polemic

[walt-sjc]

Um, you seem to be forgetting something. MS WAS tried and found guilty of abusing their monopoly power. This was upheld in the court of appeals. MS broke the law.

We are now in the remedy phase where indeed the government CAN tell MS what to do, just like in any civil case where the guilty party can have all sorts of penalties such as fines, requirments to change contracts, etc., etc. etc.

Our laws are here to protect us from companies that behave like MS, and allow for penalties to prohibit them from continuing illegal behavior.

Your analogy is also like a rapist defending his right to rape. "Why should the government be allowed to tell me what to do?" Well, maybe to protect society from the people breaking the law.

If you don't like it, write your congressmen. Tell him that you don't like having the government penalize people for breaking the law and see how far that gets you...

Re:of course....

[_Sprocket_]

Nah ... Remedy phase designed to help Microsoft's competitors. Let's not sugar-coat the truth.

By definition, anything that hurts Microsoft will help their competitors. How does hurting Microsoft help the consumer?

The consumer is supposed to be served by a free market. A free market requires competitors. Yet, Microsoft has been rather skillfull in dismantling that free market - abusing their position to remove competition.

The remedy phase is designed to help consumers by restoring competition. Let's not obscure the truth with anti-market Microsoft cheering.