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.

Comments

Good and Bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not optimistic about the whole settlement, but is it possible MS is changing? Seriously, is it possible MS is taking a different approach and is softening? Given the huge amount of attention on security by the government and the public, is MS actually changing? Not that anyone at /. would for definitively, but what is really happening with the latest move?

Re:Good and Bad...

[Helter]

I see most of their current actions as nothing more than a bid for some quick good faith.
Many of the .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.

Just the opinion of a professional MS boy.

Influence..

[donutello]

It's seen as a tactic to influence Judge Kollar-Kotelly's deliberation

Rather, one of the terms of the settlement with the DoJ was that the terms of the consent decree would be implemented immediately (in the next release) without waiting for the settlement to be approved.

IIRC, Microsoft would have been in violation of the settlement if it hadn't done this by now.

Too Little, Too Late

[Stephen VanDahm]

I don't want to troll, but I for one have lost hope that anything good will come out of the Microsoft trial. Their stranglehold on the Desktop market is pretty invincible, in my view. The penalties proposed by the States are too little, too late.

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.

Looking for competitors or for MS benevolence?

[swb]

I wonder if we're really looking for Microsoft competitors, or just looking for Microsoft to act the benevolent part of being a benevolent dictator.

While everyone wishes there was a viable desktop alternative to Microsoft, there isn't one and NO set of DOJ terms (except, maybe, open-sourcing of Windows) is going to bring forward a desktop alternative.

I think most people would be happy if MS would just appreciate that they own the market for PC desktops and many corporate server installations and quit trying to own the *world*. If MS actually focused on producing quality, secure products, providing sane documentation (more sane than "see technet article xyz123 involving registry key additions and changes...") for products and APIs, and licensing terms that didn't feel like sodomy I think most people could live with it.

The computer biz largely thrives on standards; you don't have to guess or reinvent the wheel every day, and I think the MS desktop standard is certainly not that much worse than any other monopoly desktop standard would be other than the bloodthirsty, all-your-base-are-belong-to-us marketing philosophy.