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MS to Implement Some DoJ Settlement Terms Preemptively
lysurgon writes: "The New York Times (free registration, blah blah blah) is reporting that Microsoft will today announce it is taking some steps in implementing parts of the original DoJ settlement, a settlement which is still under review and not yet official. It's seen as a tactic to influence Judge Kollar-Kotelly's deliberation on the more stringent restrictions asked for by nine states attorneys general. Looks like MS wants to get off making some cosmetic changes (no surprise there), but given their rather stormy relationship with the judge, it could backfire. The other interesting thing is that at this stage, without an official ruling, no matter what they do or why they say they're doing it it's legally voluntary." Update: 08/05 17:00 GMT by T : HeUnique adds a link to another story on ZDnet which tosses in a few numbers while remaining fairly vague on what exactly will be released and under what terms.
I see most of their current actions as nothing more than a bid for some quick good faith. .Net and Palladium structures that they're trying to push through have been met with an extreme (and understandable) amount of skepticism and mistrust. I think that they're trying to force a quick image makeover so that people will be less likely to look at their plans in a "worst case scenario" kind of way.
Many of the
Just the opinion of a professional MS boy.
Why? Microsoft own and write (or have bought the companies which wrote) the applications that are shipped with Windows, and would claim that they are all part of Windows. A linux distribution contains both Linux and multiple applications - often several applications which serve the same function. So a typical Linux distribution encourages competition whereas Windows stifles it.
M$ on the otherhand restrained third parties (Dell, Gateway) from shipping Windows with other software such as Netscape, or other OSs such as BeOS, installed on the machine.
McFly777
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"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
If they release a stripped-down version of Windows without a web browser, what good will it do? Microsoft already owns something like 95% of that market, and its only competitor, Mozilla, isn't so much better than IE that anyone will switch back. I suppose that they haven't won the "Media-Format War," for lack of a better term, so maybe a version of Windows without WMP might help. But I don't think it'll make that much difference.
The real reason that the Microsoft monopoly is invincible is that there are no competitors. Linux on the desktop isn't working out too well. BeOS is out of business, and while there are Open-Source BeOS clones, they aren't ready yet. OS X is frickin' sweet but it doesn't run on i386 hardware. None of these options, even if viable, would allow users to run their old Windows programs.
The best case situation is that Microsoft behaves a little better towards the folks they've already beaten. Nothing in the proposed penalties (that I've heard about, anyway) will keep Microsoft from crushing competition in the server/Enterprise area, or from implementing their Palladium project.
In my view, an effective set of penalties that solves current and future problems would contain the following:
- Full Disclosure of their APIs. There should be a mandatory waiting period between the release of a modified API and the release of MS software that implements that API (so that competitors have time to implement them too). Proprietary HTML extensions count as an API for this purpose.
- Ensure that Palladium is a fully open system. It should be compatible with Linux and other Open Source projects both at the technical level and at the legal level. In other words, GPLed software should run on Palladium-enabled hardware without violating the GPL.
- Ensure that
.NET runs on UNIX. Even the graphical applications. - Anyone should be able to write software that understands Microsoft file formats.
- Windows network protocols should be well documented in such a way that other companies can write software that interfaces with Windows clients (like SAMBA) and Windows servers (like Ximian Connector).
These are the penalties that the states should be demanding. These are the penalties that will allow for the creation of competitive alternatives to Windows. Until this happens, we're fucked.The States that oppose the settlement are right. Nothing but an OS, no browser or media player.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. What's an OS? Just the kernel? Are you allowed to add a file browser? A GUI? A network stack?
Every one of these used to be available as an extra-cost add on for Windows and other OSs. Trumpet used to make good coin with Winsock: do we make MS strip the TCP/IP stack from Windows? (It wasn't just MS: we paid serious dollar$ for a TCP/IP stack for the VMS cluster I used to admin.)
Indeed, perhaps even the kernel is removeable: Win3 ran fine with DR-DOS underneath instead of MS-DOS, despite what MS said.
I have a really hard time with this: where *exactly* do you draw the line on what you include? Does that line move? Selling an OS without modem support and a network stack would be suicide today, but it wasn't ten years ago.
A web browser IMHO has reached the point where it should be included as part of the OS: there isn't a single OS on the market today that doesn't bundle one. A media player might be under the umbrella. Just try and strip Quicktime out of MacOSX and see how far you get.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A convicted child molester awaiting final sentencing has voluntarily stopped giving cherry flavor lollypops to children. He continues to insist that prison time and losing his job as school teacher are unacceptable.
He further argues that it would be inappropriate for the sentence to place any restriction on his freedom to use candybars to lure children. While he admits he has used candybars in this manner, the district attorney got his conviction based on solely on cases where he used cherry lollypops. Candybar evidence was never presented in court due to budgetary constraints the complexity of the numerous brands and flavors of candybars involved.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
"Are you saying that instead of having one set of rules, we should have several that depend on the size of your organization and the amount of power it wields?"
No, hes saying that when a company breaks the law they should be punished. MS has been convicted of breaking a law, hence they should be punished by forcing modularity.
You have the right to own a gun, however people who are on parole can be restrictred from owning one.
What I'd really like to see opened up is either the MAPI extensions used for calendaring/scheduling, or the Exchange wire protocol used to do the same. If either were opened up, we'd be able to extend groupware servers like Citadel to handle Outlook calendaring/scheduling with the same capabilities as an Exchange server.
Let's go, Bill: put your money where your mouth is. Is your software good enough to stand on its own merits instead of being propped up by platform lock-in?
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
And the reason you keep saying it is because you still don't understand what Microsoft got in trouble for.
The court case was not about the bundling of the browser. It was about the forceful tactics used by Microsoft against OEMs who wanted to ship Netscape Navigator. The OEMs were told - in no uncertain terms - that they would ship IE instead of Netscape or Microsoft would force them into bankruptcy.
OEMs should have the right to change bits as they see fit. Microsoft removed that right. This is the same reason why the so-called argument that "KDE ships with Konqueror!" is so idiotic. Vendors like RedHat have the option to ship KDE with or without Konqueror. OEMs like Compaq were not given that choice with IE on Windows.
Fileformats are a key issue and do not seem to be addressed either. It's not just an issue for competitors. How many MS users have upgraded because of changes in MS-Word, MS-Excel, or MS-PPT file formats? Also, if you go over to renting software, License 6.0, the day you give up your subscription is the day you lose access to your own data...unless those files can be read by a non-MS program. Additionally, the DMCA probably could be used as a hinder unless the file specs are public.
Apply Occam's Razor to the ZDNet and CNet articles and you'll see that, like most such press releases, there's really nothing there but a few kernels buried here and there. From the ZDnet article : if other companies got too much access to the inner workings of the operating system. It said that would allow them to "clone" Windows, prompting Microsoft to stop investing in research and development on the operating system. Perhaps this is a form of not complying or a softening up to the end of the MS-Office and MS-Windows product line.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.