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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?"
Microsoft are either off their heads, or someone at the State Dpt has given them a wink and they know they can get away with acting like two-year olds.
Looks like MS is facing more competition than they'd like. They can change their ways, improve their products, or falter and die. My bet is they'll try to get their systems in these places at a price cheaper than dirt, as they've tried before with Munich and the rest. Interesting to see how this will revolutionize the software industry in the long run.
A blog like any other.
Well, you have to admit that it is a little bit unfair since it is not a company on the free market developing a competing product, but it is the governments of those nations doing it. So, Microsoft has something of a point, since the nations do hinder free competition.
Tom Robertson on one hand says "Governments should not be in the position to decide who the winners are," and yet when asked if its an international trade issue says "You would have to look at what a government does--whether it's a protectionist issue," which if it was seen as protectionist would require action by the US Government. Wouldn't it then be a case of a government deciding the issue?
Was Microsoft ever fair? Doesn't it unfairly leverage its monopoly to crush competitors daily? Doesn't it lock people into their products, and charge an arm and a leg for upgrades? And now Microsoft is saying that other people wanting to develop an OS is "unfair"? Cry me a river.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Apparently the Asian triad wants to go as far away from Microsoft as they can. The bigger question, will open source innovation be shared.
If the Asian countries were deliberately trying to shut MS out of the private-sector market, then MS would have the beginning of a case (only the beginning, mind. There is still a reasonable case for anti-trust action like the EU is taking). Under world trade rules, etc. you're not supposed to deliberately shut out foreign competition.
BUT... It is accepted, and very common, for governments to deliberately favour their own producers for government contracts. This can be for any reason, including economic, security, and strategic considerations. Microsoft really don't have a leg to stand on on this count.
The US has a legal system which gives several critical advantages to companies like Microsoft (DMCA, software patents, etc)... it is only fair when other countries say "we don't like that" and choose a system that gives strong advantages to Free Software. Free Software is typically developed by its users and not as a product to be sold; since governments are among the largest software users it is only natural for them to consider making significant contributions to developing the Free Software that they would like to use.
But ultimately governments making software isn't a whole lot better than governments making airplanes or computer chips.
How about governments paying people to make airplanes because the government needs airplanes? Governments pays lots of people money to produce things. That includes producing software to meet their needs (as well as airplanes and computer chips). I think you need to be a little clearer as to what the problem is in this case. Governments want a better operating system, governments pay for it to be produced.
So would it be "unfair" for, say, the Pentagon to announce it wanted to use software developed in the USA in preference to overseas products?
I have to first take offense to Microsoft's philosophy that if it's not broken, fix it and charge more for it... and if it's broken, ignore it until something terrible happens.
That said, this latest call that it's unfair for countries to divert the giant cash waterfall from MS, I find the notion preposterous. Similar arguments have been used by MS lawyers for years now to defend against accusations of shenanigans. The point being, that free market is the underlying theme and MS can't cry about the free market deciding they are too greedy, and the demand can be met on less expensive systems that don't cause massive havoc every time some child gets a hold of their latest gaping hole.
Similarly, I think critical software is as much a national security issue as defence hardware; and in a world where the US is trusted less and less, and Microsoft hardly at all, it makes sense for other countries to ensure that they have a homegrown alternative that they can rely on.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Lol and your email adress is hotmail?
Anyway.
Awh, how sad. Poor little MS gets some competition. Except that it is not some tiny startup who can be easily kept out but a trillion dollar part of the world. It sounds like you are feeling sorry for the school bully who suddenly finds himself getting beaten senseless by a 400 pound gorilla. Personally I am going hope this is going to be like any decent western. MS doing the .45 dance.
MS screwed BeOS now they are going to get screwed. Bees should not complain about being stung, thiefs should not complain about things being stolen and MS should not complain about facing competition with a bottemless warchest.
MS has had for the last decade more then enough money and resources to make themselves popular. Instead they have opted to get more and more money and make themselves hated and despised. Now they are reaping the rewards. More and more people and even whole countries are refusing to deal on their terms anymore.
It is sad that it takes goverments to put up some serious competition but that is the way it works. With small companies it is possible but with say the car industrie competition came only about with goverment sponsored companies. Japan and korea spring to mind but also europe were the marshall plans, US money after WWII, was used to setup factories that would have been very hard to do with private money. For the current steel wars, the dutch "hoogovens" got its start from US money :)
Sometimes it takes goverment intervention to dictate changes in the market. Don't forget that in the rest of the world politics are not entirly decided by corporate sponsors. Goverment sponsored promotion of certain products over established products are hardly new. Eco-tax on petrol while subsidising natural gas. Tax breaks for enviromental production, coupons for low power consumption electronics.
But back to your post. MS facing competition from huge goverments is unfair. Small business facing competition from huge MS is fair. "Call for Mr Kibo. Bill Gates wants you to report for his 4 o'clock asslicking."
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You are right if your assumptions turn out to be true. The problem is that there aren't any good details on this three country deal, if it is even a deal.
One thing to keep in mind is that Microsoft's actions also subvert free market quite a bit IMO, I would question if there _is_ a free market for OS software, especially when all the competitors, even the free ones, can't muster ten percent combined. If the _real_ OS choices for most people are W2k, XP and coming sometime this decade, Longhorn then it _is_ time for governments to step in and start funding new alternatives or improvements for existing alternatives.
As it is, the governments really don't seem effective in curtailing the monopolist actions
The governments in question have the freedom to their own tyranny, under the philosophy of the forefathers of the USA. The USA fights against tyranny, but the true meaning of freedom isn't "freedom to" or "freedom from"; it's anarchy in it's finest form... to have anarchy in a state where it appears as if none exists.
Governments under socialist principles can and do own companies that operate at a loss to serve a better purpose. Hydro is one, even in many friendly states. The idea is that if software is a commodity, it is this commodity that ought be accessible to the public at large. It's about time that government started to incorporate computer technology in it's fold, like it would power and water technology. The freedom to create your own software under these umbrellas would be a better notion, as well.
We all know that operating systems can go on without major viral attacks and huge bugs causing havoc in the world. Linux. Mac.
So you tell me then, why is it that MS has one worldwide catastrophe every two months? It's because it's profitable for companies like Symantec and McAfee and the like to sell "protection" from the miscreants who would turn systems off if they could. That actual profit-cycle is set in a kind of catch 22.
That is the catch 22 that is going to bite Bill Gates in the arse.
If it's BSD, I wouldn't expect much sharing to happen. If it's the GPL, then they should [if they intend to redistribute modified products.]
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
If their sales fall then they won't be able to sustain their monolithic enterprise. As soon as they start laying off staff then it's the beginning of the end for Microsoft. News like that doesn't install investor confidence.
Their profit margins on Windows and Office are quite high, if they have to constantly undercut Linux solutions then their income from these two lines will be reduced. Problem with that scenerio is those two product lines keep the company going and allows them to take risks in other markets.
My conjecture is that they're realising that they cannot win against Free Software unless they manage to create the impression of Free Software such as GNU/Linux being "un-American" and "a threat from Asia against our economy".
Of course they'll consider it an added bonus that maybe they can get US dimplomats involved in putting pressure on foreign governments in areas like
Obviously, if Microsoft provided exactly what these governments wanted in an OS they wouldn't going off and making their own. They're not deciding who wins, they're trying to get the OS they want.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
If these governments were subsidizing the development of a commercial competitor to windows then I might agree that MS had some sort of WTO complaint, but they are planning to use Free software which benefits everyone when it is improved including Americans. So what is their actual grievance? It would be like Phizer compaining that a foreigner cured AIDS and then announced to the world how to do it. Or ADM complaining that foreigners grow some of their own food. Oh, right.
"A cartel of governments..."
...to answer.
You appear to disagree with all the "free trade" agreements the USA appears to have been arranging recently.
"...with an annual GDP in the 5 trillion range"
I assume you meant the combined GDPs of the combined populations of those countries. Which is very different to the amount of money their governments have to spend. And of course those governments have nothing else to spend that money on, apart from developing software (despite the USA's best efforts to accelerate a new arms race with their current level of military spending).
""compeating[sic]" with a company in the neighborhood of a thousand times smaller is not the free market."
Many of the companies Microsoft competes with in many areas are in the neighbourhood of a thousand times smaller.
Microsoft's position, and its business practises, have nothing to do with the free market.
"They should innovate"
Yeah, why don't those countries create their own damn operating system? Oh, wait.......
"But ultimately governments making software isn't a whole lot better than governments making airplanes or computer chips."
After all, the internet had absolutely nothing to do with a government agency called DARPA. And governments have never sponsored any sort of research in universities or wherever that have had anything to do with software, oh no.
"Microsoft does have a case..."
"And they probably should get the US to go to step up to the plate..."
After all, no other countries in the world should be able to do what they want, subject to their own rules (and any international treaties they happen to have signed up to), within their own countries.
"...especially considering how little of the MS software in use throughout asia was paid for."
Well if all that software had never been paid for in the first place, what on earth has Microsoft to be concerned about ? And supposing a large amount of piracy does take place there, what better means to stamp it out than by having the people of those countries come together, in the form of their governments, to design and build something to use legitimately in its place ?
Japan, the world's second largest economy, made a proposal at an Asian economic summit this week to build an inexpensive and trustworthy open-source operating system that would be based on a system such as Linux, which can be copied and modified freely.
"We'd like to see the market decide who the winners are in the software industry," Tom Robertson, Microsoft's Tokyo-based director for government affairs in Asia, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
I think the market IS deciding, which is going to be Microsoft's biggest problem for the next few years.
"Governments should not be in the position to decide who the winners are," Robertson said.
You know, I don't remember there being any protest from Microsoft when the US government stopped accepting RFP documents in WordPerfect format. I guess they've had a change of heart for some reason.
Full story at Netscape.com
It's not the governments of Japan or China that need to be put on alert, it is our own. As Departments of State, Treasury, and the White House among others, busily archive critical documents in .DOC format that will not easily be converted to anything else in a few years, low level management of these departments need to be aware that going the "safe route" of managing everything using Microsoft tools will in hindsight only allow you to say "But everyone else around me was doing that too".
I suspect there will be more and more defectors from this way of thinking, even within the US government as time goes on. However as that happens there will also be signs of desparation from Microsoft as they try and appeal to some sort of warped patriotism that says we should all keep using overpriced, buggy and undocumented junk.
We need to stop thinking of Windows as America's software equivalent to the Boeing 7x7, and start thinking of it as America's software equivalent of the Yugo...
Q: How do you make a Yugo go faster?
A: A towtruck.
Q: What do you call the shock absorbers inside a Yugo?
A: Passengers.
Is having a kitchen an impediment to the free market of restaurants?
Is driving a car an impediment to the free market of taxi and train companies?
Get real, man.
Free market means that people have the freedom to choose which product to use, and these countries choose to make and use their own. There is nothing wrong with that, not even considering the "free market" globalization iron fist of driving poor countries into complete bankruptcy (read the book and articles from Greg Palast for scary documentation about this).
In fact, it is in their best interest to reduce their dependency on software imports from other countries, and everyone acting in their own best interest is exactly the idea of free markets.
Right. In fact the US government is, by allowing software patents and tolerating that companies like SCO destroy other people's business without having to prove that they have a point, influencing the market much more than a government that stimulates the development of free software.
The US "free market" speech is cynicism of the highest order, which is abundantly clear with the US farm goods, which are highly subsidized by the government. Then the USA is using "free market" treaties to force the poor Mexicans (whose government can not afford these subsidies) to buy the "cheaper" US farm goods instead of their own, which are actually produced at substantially lower prices.
All the potentially noble thoughts behind this free market newspeak is completely eviscerated by the subsidies of the various governments. As long as governments subsidize their local producers, there is nothing free about the market.
MS are simply copying the line of the US government (and a lot of US companies and even /. users). Look at steel, farm goods, coding out-sourcing, skilled immigrants etc, etc. In all these fields the US or a lot of its citizens are actively seeking to halt global competition and seeking to privilege US companies, producers and citizens.
What's laughable about this is, there is no issue of protectionism anywhere to be seen. Protectionism is when a country erects trade barriers such as import duties to protect a local industry. Sponsoring R&D is not a trade barrier, it is just (hopefully) good management.
The other silly idea is that this has something to do with fair trade. Since the asian countries aren't exporting their OS, where is the trade, fair or not? Even if they were, since when did it become unfair for government and industry to collaborate on R&D?
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
... from any other customer. If they want to develop their own solution in-house, why shouldn't they be able to. As the size of an organization grows, the benefits of internalizing things like that increases. A 20 person company couldn't afford to develop it's own operating system, but a 250,000 person company could. Also, you shouldn't measure the government by the number of people it governs, but rather by the number of people it employs.
1) A government doesn't have a GDP. A country has a GDP.
2) The government has many, many things to do besides develop software. The money actually being earmarked for this project is the sort of amount that Microsoft could spend without noticeably affecting the balance sheets.
3) The fact is, the software Microsoft produces can never be adequate for the needs of foreign governments. Even if MS software functions perfectly, and is apparently immune to hackers, there is no way for the governments to assure themselves that the U.S. hasn't built backdoors and other spyware into it. Nor can they be sure that they will be able to support themselves in the event that Microsoft drops support. With a Linux-based OS, they can maintain it themselves, and run security audits to their hearts' content.
4) If no private entity makes a product that suits a government's needs, there is nothing wrong with them building it themselves.
5) If nobody is paying for Microsoft software over there anyways, why should Microsoft complain when the government decides to create an alternative? Perhaps because people pirating their software is better for them than people using non-Microsoft products.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Consindering that MS has more money than most goverments in the world it sounds more like 'let us decide for everyone'.
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
Thank god, the Internet, which has been mainly created by government-funded research, has competed "unfairly" with proprietary online services such as MSN, AOL and Compuserve.
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Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
Microsoft prefers competition between software applications to be determined in the free markets rather than by government agencies
perhaps they'd like to consider the following:
1: Withdraw all political lobbyists from pestering politicians.
2: Stop making bri.. oops, donations to political parties.
3: ensure that all "charitable" donations are made via banks rather than press agencies
4: Stop flying the UK E-Envoy and other countries IT decision makers to Redmond for freebies, oops there I go again - conferences at which to discuss which MS products they'll be buying next.
5: Talk to the DoJ and, after offering thanks for favours done in the past agree to undergo investigation for the parts of the anti-trust trial that were dropped when the current US administration came to power.
6: Open up their file formats so that makers of third party and competing software can compete on a level playing field rather than having to reverse engineer complicated code for the sake of interop' with monopoly creating products i.e. MS Office.
7: Release the API details reqd. to make software run as quick as theirs
Until these and the manifold other issues created by MS's monopoly are dealt with maybe they's be graceful enough to SHUT THE FUCK UP about free markets, a concept that they either don't understand or have no intention of utilising.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
Maybe US does not look upon itself as such but she sure fits the definition. My highlight below
Def:
The belief in the desirability of) the acquisition of colonies and dependencies, or the extension of a country's influence through trade, diplomacy
Excerpted from Oxford Dictionary Copyright (C) 1998 The Learning Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Help fight continental drift.
..."Microsoft prefers competition between software applications to be determined in the free markets rather than by government agencies." This from the company that last week said they would have document lock-in - they were going to design the new Office so you couldn't import word docs into other applications. You reap what you sow, baby.
Will there be people in 2100? Will they be real skinny? vote : the_real_38@yahoo.com
If I were a large MS shareholder, I would have already demanded MS split itself into OS and App companies.
I suspect if they did that, the result would be worth far more than the company today, we'd probably have a revival in PC innovation, and there would be a general economic revival in the tech sector.
Instead, MS is sitting on billions in cash, the stock price is in the dumper, and every foreign government is trying to dump MS. I can't believe the shareholders don't quietly ask Ballmer and Gates to step down.
And no, I am not trolling.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
As a result, Windows (the operating system company) would have been marginalized quickly. Most of the benefits that the applications side of the house derived from control of the OS -- undocumented APIs, for example, that are not available to the rest of the world, or embedded functions like an HTML rendering engine -- could be realized in the middleware.
At the time, I believe my official prediction was that Bill Gates would stay with the applications company, with an unstated goal of putting the OS company out of business within five years.
Microsoft's arguement is simple. It is bad policy for govts. to run businesses that compete with industry. A govt. that cares about individual rights has no business taking taxpayer money and using it to develop products that compete with industries. A govts. only job is to defend individual rights. It shouldn't be wasting taxpayer money on social engineering by messing with the free market. I certainly would object to the US govt investing in software that wasn't directly related to national security or other govt. functions. A govt developing software to compete directly with commercial software is taking a step towards communism. Let Redat, Mandrake, and free orgs. like FSF develop Linux, but don't force taxpayers to pay for it by turning it into a govt. project unless you have a really good reason. I won't even get into the practical problems of who's in charge of development when govts. get involved.
Vote for Pedro
2) "A government's only job is to defend individual rights" is an absurdly simplistic statement. Ask any ten people in any ten countries what the primary role of government is, and you're likely to get ten answers. Americans right now might tell you the primary role of government is to safeguard its citizens. Thirty years ago, they might have told you it was to provide every citizen an equal opportunity to succeed. A hundred years ago, they might have told you it was to provide law and order. Ask someone in South Korea right now, and they may say it's to prevent war. Ask someone in China, and they might say it's to raise the standard of living.
3) There is no truly free market, though as a libertarian I'm sure you would love it to be that way. Microsoft and other high-tech companies in the US receive tremendous tax benefits and the powerful backing of government agencies and elected officials, who apply pressure on other nations during trade negotiations. It would be fantastic if there were true globalization and dropping of subsidies and barriers worldwide. But that's not the reality. Microsoft is not acting alone. They have the support of the most powerful government on earth.
4) The US government considers weapons systems used by the US military to be of strategic importance. That's why, with few exceptions, almost all key American weapons systems are built by American companies, even when there are sometimes better alternatives produced in allied nations such as Germany, Britain, Italy, or France. What would happen, for example, if the French chose to stop supplying the US with weapons systems? Now imagine yourself making decisions about the security of any country on earth other than the US. The Americans have shown how sophisticated computer-driven information systems can reduce the fog of war and create staggeringly effective results. Would you want all of your own systems to be run by American-produced computer systems that you couldn't get the source code to? Wouldn't you be worried just as the French revealed the inner workings of the air defence systems they sold Iraq, Microsoft wouldn't do the same or worse to you?
Even close allies spy on each other. Why give the overwhelmingly most powerful nation on earth an open door into the heart of everything you're doing? Sure, that might be a paranoid conclusion. But if you're in charge of a nation's security, your job is to be paranoid.
Leaders in other countries are beginning to realize that software is not just an economic issue, it's an issue of much broader strategic importance.
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