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Microsoft Case Proceeds
YeOldeCurmudgeon writes "This story just posted on Yahoo: Federal Judge Denies Microsoft Motion to Dismiss Antitrust Case. Microsoft's motion to dismiss the suit filed by the 9 dissenting states was denied. The judge agrees the states can sue." An article in the San Francisco Chronicle summarizes the case's current state and what's coming up next.
Exactly! Can you please tell me how you can avoid buying Windows XP now when you are buying Toshiba notebook?
You're right. Microsoft lost and was found guilty in federal court of monopolistic pratices, but they outlasted us and outlasted the administration that beat them and got the next one to give them exactly what they wanted, including a free pass to keep doing business as usual. Lets not let those few states still fighting them conflict with our short attention span. We might as well realize that no matter what the court says, Microsoft will do whatever Bill damn well pleases.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Since the mid 80's, the 'operating system' has been extremely important to Microsoft. Making sure everyone adopted Windows 95 and 98 was extremely important for the success of the company, as it locked them into the current architecture (2000/XP etc). This has meant that operating systems are VERY important to MS.
.NET, the operating system is not as important as it once was.. in the future, a proper .NET program will run on any system that has a .NET compatible VM and the correct class libraries!
.NET allows Microsoft's software to dominate on EVERY PLATFORM, and this is a great thing for them. A very clever move, and it may make all this antitrust case very irrelevant.
This may not be the case for much longer. With the advent of Linux, operating systems have been somewhat commoditized. With
Believe it or not, in 5 years, you could see Mac/Linux people buying, and running natively, stuff like Office and Visual Basic.NET, thanks to Microsoft embracing the concept of the virtual machine.
I think Microsoft is going to bank on the success of its virtual machine (.NET) and this whole new platform-independant architecture. Even if Microsoft was forced out of the OS game.. it's not a disaster for them. They still have the critical mass of users to sell software to (Office, etc), and a critical mass of developers used to developing for their platforms.
In essence,
mogorific carpentry experiments
Instead of suing them for 'monopoly practices', which will be next-to-impossible to prove in court
Which Microsoft Anti-trust trial have you been watching? Microsoft has already been found guilty of abusive monopoly prcatices, and the case didn't even deal with their most damaging practices; their OEM agreements. In fact, their appeal has nothing to do with overturning that verdict, that appeal was rejected. This one is about trying to reduce the punishment.
I agree about not buying their software, though.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
So I'm thinking then that M$ will suddenly start to look at thin clients in a whole new light.
.NET to leverage!
If the OS is commoditized, they still have to make their money elsewhere.
*wavy lines*
Office? No problem! Don't buy that expensive Dell workstation - buy the cheapo thin client for your drones, and a big old server running WinXX and use
Oh yeah, now we got you where we want you on per seat licensing, and even though you just realized it, what you gonna do? Eat the cost of those 400 thin clients? Or pay us our per-seat fee?
Good boy, sign here.
*/end wavy lines*
An interesting point, but one that is easily answered.
.NET. Okay, some things like 'Windows Forms' are a bit proprietary, but there's still tons of documentation for it. The Ximian guys are even going to be spinning their own compatible version.
.NET solution.
.NET framework on them. This means people can go out and buy Microsoft Office 2005, and it'll run on their PC, Mac, or Linux box. What has Microsoft lost here? Nothing really, infact, they're likely to gain market share.
.NET. Microsoft will lock coders into .NET with its own development systems.. and Microsoft won't care what operating system the resultant programs work on, as long as Microsoft is making money on a) the dev tools, b) sales of its own software across multiple platforms, c) sales of its server software across multiple platforms, and d) the 'faithful' who will stick with Microsoft's own OS.
Microsoft has totally opened up the specs to
But it doesn't matter if the users aren't running Microsoft's VM. Unlike in the old days, Microsoft is not going to get rich by selling its platform anymore. It's going to stay rich by providing the best
Let's jump ahead 3 years. Let's say that Linux and MacOS X have a perfect compatible
Look it in terms of the browser war. Microsoft gave away the browser, but locked developers into its solution with proprietary coding styles. Many pages only appear correctly in IE nowadays! The same will happen with
mogorific carpentry experiments
who had been given this case came to hate MS, in much the same way as the previous judge had. She hated them because they lied, they cheated and they were trying all kinds of tricks to sway her viewpoint.
Now imagine you were really set to hit them upside the head with a nasty verdict. What would be the smartest thing in the world to do. Right... keep quiet about it. Never give a hint or whiff that you felt that way, or you'd never get your chance to apply a verdict at all. You'd know the previous judge really f*cked up when he talked about the case, so you wont make the same mistake. In fact, it would be nearly impossible for anyone to guess what you were planning on doing.
This is clearly conjecture on my part, but god it would be nice if it was true.
I've said it time and time again that that this is not a trivial issue at all. To YOU it is obvious because of your clear bias against MS. Personally, myself (and many others) do not believe that what was done with IE was anti-competitive in any way. This is America, and everyone has a right to a fair trial and to voice their side of an argument. MS has been found guilty, but what they are guilty of is not trivial either. Personally, I believe in pro-customer solutions not anti-MS punishments. Remember, the point of antitrust is to restore competition not to punish the corporation. For example, I think that MS's strongarmed OEM licensing agreements should be regulated or banned altogether. But that's just me. There are many other people who's full time job is to think about all of these issues, so while we have our opinions, none of us really see the depth of the issues at hand.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
I'd be interested to know how giving away a product that costs money to make for free, deliberately, in order to "cut off their air supply" (I think that was the phrase MS execs used, right?) is not anti-competitive. Please enlighten me.