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Appeals Court Sides With Microsoft On Java
burgburgburg writes "Reuters reports that the three-member federal appeals court in Virginia ruled today the U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz erred when he ordered Microsoft to include Java with the Windows operating system.
Fortunately, Dell and HP, the top 2 PC makers, have already decided to ship Java on the PCs that they sell. Apple, Red Hat and Lindows have also agreed to include Sun's Java." The ruling is available.
While I agree that MS has erred in the past, they shouldn't be forced to carry another company's product within their product.
However, they should not be allowed to continue carrying their own, proprietary version of java. Does the ruling say anything about that?
It isn't Microsoft's job to promote Java, it's the job of Sun and the resellers (Dell, Gateway, HPaq, etc.) If MS wants to include Java, that's their perogative. However, they shouldn't be required to; any more than Red Hat should be required to distribute Realplayer (for example).
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
Dell and HP are where I'd expect Sun to have to push Java - do an end-run around MS and deal with the OEMs. Now, if MS were preventing the OEMs from bundling Java, that would be different - but they're specifically barred from doing that anymore, and IMO rightly so.
Isn't middleware more of a server issue nowadays anyway? And how hard is it to include a runtime with your software?
By including an outdated and broken version of Java with Windows by default, Microsoft has effectively doomed Java on the desktop. This build has lead to a degree of fragmentation of the Java standard, has caused Java application developers to code their applications to support the lowest common denominator, the JRE bundled with Windows.
It's very exciting to see OEMs bundling a recent Java runtime with their new systems, especially Dell who is the largest OEM. Perhaps with this application developers can have a bit more freedom to code their applications in a manner which utilizes more recent features. There's no reason why everyone shouldn't be using the 1.4 JRE at this point in time.
They shouldn't be legally required to include it, but we should, as developers, code in such a way to JRE is the only way to go. If M$ wants to use their own Java Virtual Machine, fine, but we need to make sure that they have little choice but to make it compatible with the rest of the world.
I'm personally not going to go out of my way to recode everything so I have to make two seperate binaries, one for windows, and one for everyone else. The whole point of Java is that I shouldn't have to do that.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
The libertarian in you should also realize that unrestrained capitalism is functionally equivalent to communism. Instead of a top-down dictatorial system driven by government incompetence, we would live in a world of top-down dictatorship driven by corporate incompetence. Libertarians love to overlook the Enron's and the SCO lawsuits of the world, but the fact is in a world without well intended regulation of those who claim to be well intended, we might as well live in anarchy.
Since the HP and Dell announcements, this is pretty much a moot point anyway.
The real problem of all this is that Microsoft has walked away from the whole "let's release an incompatible version of Java", with only a "don't do that" slap on the wrist. The monopoly remains intact, and unpunished.
This should be a chilling reminder to anyone that does ANYTHING with Microsoft. If they're gonna screw you, don't expect them to be punished for it, no matter what happens.
This serves as restitution for bundling a broken version of Java whose purpose was to destroy the viability of Java. This was seen as illegal abuse of monopoly power.
They could have avoided this by:
1. Including Sun's Java from the get-go; or
2. Not including a broken Java with the OS.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
On the one hand, if Microsoft doesn't want to sell their product with Sun's Java, I don't think they should have to.
On the other hand, if they're gonna include something and call it Java, it should damned well BE Java.
-JDF
As a programmer, I really like Java's "write once, run everywhere" motto (while it may not always work out that way in practice). From what I understand, did not have a fully compatible VM, so Sun develops one for download. While I don't think MS should be forced to ship Java, they should be disallowed from trying to hijack Java (hence they went out and made C#).
Even though it's hard to swallow having the government dictate the operating conditions of a company (and include / disavow specific portions and products ) it's important to remember that this is/was a *penalty* for serious antitrust/anticometitive behavior.
It was a light "slap on the wrist that doesnt really cost much of anything" penalty too.
Guilt without punishment, well, isn't going to hinder them from this sort of behavior in the future is it.
I guess there is always justice for those that can afford it.
Kremvax
--- Little Atomo - The Amazing Thinking Robot from Atomocom! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIP9KisHi4k
I think we can all say that Java is rampant on the Internet. For instance, most online gambling sites use Java user interfaces. The average Joe six pack thinks he got the shaft from his computer company when IE displays a broken icon when he tries to view Java content. Companies such as Dell are bundling Java so their customers won't think they have broken computers.
"Unless Sun is given a fair opportunity to compete in a market untainted by the effects of Microsoft's past antitrust violations, there is a serious risk that in the near future the market will tip in favor of [Microsoft]"
Motz reasoned that Microsoft had illegally used its monopoly position to do irreparable harm a competitor's product, and that Sun was exceedingly likely to win their suit. This temporary order was necessary to level the playing ground until that suit was carried out.
Basically, as in all Microsoft's legal troubles, their strategy is to draw out the cases indefinitely until they can leverage their desktop monopoly to the point of making the suit a moot point. Then, they can just settle out of court for chump change. Anyone heard of Netscape?
--Mid
I'm going to take the contrarian view here. :).
It looks like alot of people here are of the view that the courts shouldn't force one company to bundle the product of another. Fair enough.
However, at this juncture, the courts might as well tell Microsoft that they can be anti-competitive all they want, as there will never be any real punishments for their actions. Microsoft has benifitted from the fragmentation of Java, through their distribution of an outdated, poorly functional version. And prior to that, they benifitted from their attempts to prevent Java from being a write-once, run-anywhere language.
At some point, justice has to incorporate the ideal of punishing organizations for their past bahaviour, in order to reduce the benifits of undertaking that behaviour, and in order to curb others from undertaking the same behaviour in the future.
If I were to go on a spree killing my enemies in society (not that I have any enemies... ;) ), the courts wouldn't haul me up and say "You are hereby enjoined from ever killing anybody ever again", and then setup a panel (that I get to select some of the members of) to make sure I don't. Instead, they'd take away my freedom to do whatever I want, and throw my sorry ass in jail.
You can't throw a whole company in jail, and in the MS case, nobody has directly died (I realize the extremity of my example :) ) due to MS's actions. But still, there has been zero accountability on their part up to this point. There has been nothing yet to aid the real victims of MS's anticompetitive acts, nor nothing that would really cause MS to want to avoid such acts in the future. Where is the justice in that for the companies who have had their intellictual property values eroded due to Microsoft's acts?
This was a chance for society to tell Microsoft (and other big computer software companies) that if they don't play fairly, there are consequences. Judge Mott gave a creative ruling that incorporated both punishment for past bad acts, while at the same time helping level and repair the playing field for Sun.
MS's come-uppance is long overdue. They've destroyed the value of new technologies from their competitors, and thus far, while techinically losing in the eyes of the courts, have gained from the experience. And you're not supposed to be able to gain when you violate the law -- but apparently MS has found that, in their industry, crime does pay.
Yaz.
Please note that the appellate court upheld the part of the injunction preventing Microsoft from shipping a non-compliant JRE.
The fact is, Sun could still obtain a final order that MS must bundle the Sun JRE with the Windows operating system. But this will only happen after a trial. The injunction here was issued at a preliminary stage of the judicial proceedings. But if you think forcing MS to ship the JRE at any point would be completely inappropriate and only market conditions should rule, you have a gross misunderstanding of antitrust laws and their purposes.
Microsoft has a monopoly in operating systems for the Intel platform. This is legal fact and Microsoft cannot walk into any court room and claim otherwise. It's been decided already. A monopoly means that market conditions cannot work. Even Adam Smith (you know, that guy who kind of invented capitalism) said that the market cannot work when there is a monopoly. Ensuring the market can still work in a monopoly is the purpose of antitrust laws.
Now that it is legally established MS has a monopoly, it completely changes how MS can do business in the market. In the case of the JRE, it means Microsoft cannot leverage their monopoly in the OS to obtain a monopoly in another area. You know, like they did with the browser!
What I expect would be a more likely outcome is that MS has to make a decision. If they want to bundle .NET, then they have to bundle a compliant JRE. Then the market truly would be deciding and it would not be a case of MS simply leveraging the OS monopoly into a new market.
All that said, the legal nuances are the important point to note from this decision. The appellate court was not saying MS would never have to include the Sun JRE. They were only saying that the legal burden of "irreparable harm" had not been met in order to obtain an injunction. That's why they vacated the order.
The capitalist idea should do that, but it doesn't. What if there is no choice. What if there was only 1 car company, and they owned all the roads? What would you do, becaus even if you built your own car, you still couldn't use the roads. That's how Microsoft's lock-in with Windows and Office works. All documents in office format, that all other businesses use, and Office only runs on windows. The capitalist system works fine when there is competition, and at least somewhat fair competition. When 1 company controls the market, that's not capitalism, it might as well be the government like in communism.
Thankfully that is changing slowly, but 3 years ago it was almost that bad.
In a way, shipping the "broken" java was doing Sun more harm than not shiping java at all, since it gave MS so many more opportunities to make java look bad.
The main problem is that the stuff that comes pre-installed with Windows and/or Windows Components (Media Player, Internet Exploder) is the stuff that everyone uses, whether it's better or not.
.WMV or .ASF, do you think any web sites would offer content in .WMV format? No, all web sites would offer stuff in Quicktime format by default because they'd know that they'd be able to reach the greatest number of users CONVENIENTLY. No company is going to want to tell users "We really want you to view our product, but you'll need to download this plugin to do so." All companies will say "We really want you to view our product, therefore we're going to use a format which you know you will already have pre-installed!"
If Microsoft suddenly started bundling Quicktime with Windows Media Player and suddenly forced users to manually download and install plug-ins to use file formats such as
Microsoft has pulled this BS time and time again. The law ought to be that if Microsoft ships with Windows Media Player pre-installed, that it must also pre-install all of its competitors too. If it ships with Internet Exploder pre-installed, it must ship with other browsers pre-installed too. Yeah this sounds kind of unreasonable, but there is a precedence. Remember how Windows 95 shipped with a bunch of shortcuts for other ISP's such as AOL?
There ain't no such thing as a true capitalist society. Inevitably you get market-deforming agglomerations of power. In a company town, there's no voluntary association with the only source of goods and services. Oligopoly/monopoly is a very different animal and obliterates the "free market" basis for libertarian thought.
That's why I'm disgusted with Republicans - they aren't acting like conservatives. They are anti-market and pro-business, and business has plenty of power vs. consumers as is.