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Microsoft Dislikes Nations Trying to Escape Lock-in
Johnny Mnemonic writes "Reuters, link to C|Net, is reporting that Microsoft considers a possible collaboration among three Asian nations to produce their own OS "unfair". You just can't make this stuff up. Shouldn't Asian nations also have the Freedom to Innovate? Or is this merely a dodge by Microsoft to demonstrate that they really do face competition? Will they hire Boies to prosecute their case?"
As much of a microsoft critique I am I will however stand up for them on this case. While it does seem like MS is trying to dominate the world markets what they are doing is also business sense to try to keep as many markets as they can. Microsoft is simply getting the backlash from doing this is because they have a large company who has tried to dominate the markets of america. But how many linux people thought when they saw this "Thats where linux will go next." The linux community is looking at this case to become the dominate OS and Microsoft is looking at this case where they want be the reigning champ. But perhaps this is the opporunity that MS will take and become partly open source. To sum this up, Microsoft is doing what a normal business would do at the sign of being dethroned by their enemy (Linux and open source). They are likely still licking their wounds from the Munich case and now they might lose their foot hold in asia is tramatic to anyone. Whether or not MS creates a open source alternitave or Linux steals away Asia, this will be an interesting topic.
Protectionism certainly stems from an anti-globalization mentality that is still embedded in most countries' policies, even those who strongly advocate globalization, and there are ongoing trade wars all the time, so it's not just one country that is bending the rules.
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Here is a link about it if anyone is interested:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/ffd/2003/0718
(it seems biased, but explains the issue...)
I don't know if they are right, but in this case, for instance, Microsoft's issue is similar to steel, farm goods, etc, but they're on the other side of the fence, trying to ensure China doesn't give their companies unfair trade advantage.
Good troll article. MS never said anything abotu "fair". The only place "fair" or "unfair" was used in this article was the headline. It was not used in any quotes attributed to Microsoft.
- This offer is only for buyers of the low cost computer program, which comes preloaded with LinuxTLE. It is not available to the general public, where the prices still stand as usual. Some say it is a fight against Linux, but many Linux columnists say it is a fight against Panthip Plaza (the famous computer mall where illegal software is available for virtually nothing), and
- It is for XP Home and Office Standard edition, which is nothing like the military purchase.
I still think it's sucks to be able to legally offer this price only on certain computers, but Thailand's laws are not like the west's. As an aside, the story from your link referenced LinuxTLE with another story, citing it as a "Thai language version," but that other story did not mention the operating system and only generally talked about Linux in Asia. Rather odd.Put identity in the browser.
TRON has been open source for a long time. BSD license -- go get the real, genuine source if you want. Do you mean by "has been open-sourced" that there is a GPL version?
This looks to me to be similar to what Qualcomm did in their war against GSM. Qualcomm, who are behind the competing IS-95 standard (usually known as "CDMA" though as that's also the name of a technology component used in IS-95.) Qualcomm realised they had an entrenched competitor, and used some rather, er, creative, arguments to portray it GSM as something imposed by governments. GSM was originally created by a group of phone companies of which most were nationalised, so despite being an industry lead standard, Qualcomm could get away with claiming it was "created" by the government. Likewise, the EU, desperate to have at least one mobile phone standard that worked across the continent (virtually none of the different member nation's analogue systems were compatable), told the industry to agree on a standard, and offered in return to open up the 900MHz range in every country to support it. (Individual member nations could open up other frequencies for other standards if they wanted to, but 900MHz would be for whatever standard the industry agree upon.) Again, Qualcomm portrayed this as showing GSM was government imposed.
The campaign had limited success. Qualcomm was able to persuade the US government to lobby countries with nationalised mobile phone systems to choose IS-95. In China they were partially successful, though the IS-95 based system they adopted was substantially modified to be more GSM-like. Qualcomm was even able to persuade a senator to demand the State Department impose IS-95 on US controlled Iraq, though the government didn't buy the argument.
The basic strategy is to make use of modern politician's free market instincts to get them to advocate government and legislative support when they normally wouldn't and when their gut would normally be against it. You do this by twisting what's happening a little, portray the situation as evil foreign "socialists" providing unfair support to an unAmerican technology, and then suggest the American government has to intervene, just to level the playing field.
Microsoft is following in some fairly successful footsteps here, but it also needs to note that the footsteps were used by a company facing an entrenched rival pretty-much from the beginning. The US Government was more inclined to support Qualcomm because it was clearly the underdog, regardless of the technical merits of IS-95 (a mixed bag, CDMA is delightful, the ESN-locked closed AMPS work-a-like nature of conventional IS-95 phones though is less so); Microsoft will have to lobby hard to be seen as the "underdog" in this situation. OTOH, the rival to Microsoft most certainly is Government backed, something GSM really wasn't, at least, not in the way Qualcomm portrayed it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Who is the troll?
I did Read The Friendly Article. There is no need to use any fucking profanity in an attempt to be unfair to slashdot.
Let's see the title of the article is... And...
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
MS is missing the real point. They may whine about it being "unfair", but it is all entirely their fault. Microsoft has had 10+ years to deliver a stable, secure operating system to the people of the world. They have been unable to do so, and now the world has had enough. The confidence in Microsoft products has finally gotten low enough that goverments, and people around the world are looking for something better. That's all there really is to it.
:)
At this point I think that if the OpenSource community wants to become the next big provider of OS's and software, then the product delivered needs to be three things:
1. Easy to Use
2. Stable
3. Secure
It's pretty much got 2 and 3 set, although maybe a little more work needs to be done there. As for ease of use, great strides have been made in that direction, but a lot of work is still needed. As a recent article said, there is a lot of amazing OpenSource software out there, but most of it lacks the polish required to be great. I really hope the open source developers can rise to the occasion. It would really be the nail in Microsoft's coffin.
Ender
Of course, that just my opinion. I could be wrong
Nothing to see here
Ok, company: Adobe, product: FrameMaker.
http://www.redflag-linux.com/eindex.html
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
There were probably buggy whip companies that had record revenues around the time the Model T Ford came out, or American steel mills that had record revenues just before they got their asses handed to them by foreign competition. That doesn't mean they were great stocks.
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
Well, with $46 billion, you could stop making money entirely, spend $10 million a month and you would not run out of money for about 383 years. Heck, you could spend 100 million a month and not run out of money for 38 years. That also is assuming that you have your money in a non-interest bearing account.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
You're not thinking it through.
My comment had nothing to do with fair business practices, it has to do with return on investment. MS is making billions. Great. Where is the *return* for the investor? The stock prices are bad, and they only recently paid a paultry dividend.
MS's doing well is great for Ballmer, Allen, and Gates, but is it good for anybody else?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you