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MS May Be Forced To Sell Stripped-Down OS In EU
An anonymous reader submits "According to this article at Infoworld, Microsoft may be forced to sell a stripped-down version of Windows in the EU as a result of antitrust rulings, unless a settlement is reached during the next month to six weeks." (See this post from last week for more background on the EU's antitrust proceedings.)
Does this mean apple may have to start shipping OS X without Quicktime? Seriously though, as much as a despise MS, have a default media player is nice, whats going to happen next, no notepad allowed as it competes with XXXXX wordprocessor? Make it like it used to be, an option when installing Windows, so if you dont want it, deselect it...
drunk chemists
I wonder if Americans would be able to purchase the EU "light" version. I'm positive we'll be able to pirate it anyways though.
//Blessed are they that run around in circles, for they shall be known as wheels.
Bill said it's *impossible* to do that, since extra crap like web browsers are an *integral* part of the operating system (I wonder how they made operating systems before web browsers were invented). If they do this, does it mean it suddenly and miraculously became possible?
Will they sell it in other countries, or to customers who want it? Back during the Netscape/IE fiasco, I read one of Microsoft's supporters say "customers must buy what is sold to them, not what they want". Uh huh. Right now Linux has exactly what I want, and I don't even have to pay for it. Beat that, MS!
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Microsoft has argued that unbundling Media Player from Windows would prevent the operating system from working properly.
really? didn't know an operating system needed a media player to work correctly.
unless for some reason other applications integrated wmp, in which case offering wmp as a seperate download is just as good. it annoys me when they make such dubious claims.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
The stripped down version will suck but will be available. Unless the EU wants to force them to not ship a full version in the EU at all, OEMs in the EU will just *elect* to use the full version. They probably won't want to ship an OS that lacks basic functionality that users have come to expect.
Back in the day when Netscrape was making noise about Internet Exploder being bundled with windows, Microsoft just integrated Exploder into the interface so that at one point it became "neccesary". So now windows users basicly use a web browser to navigate their files on their own hard drives.
I predict that a future version of windows will integrate sound and video into the interface. Making Media Player the new file-navigator, with animated talking program icons or some such.
Probably will call it WindowsMediaExplorer.
There are two kinds of fool. One says, This is old, and therefore good. And one says, This is new, and therefore better.
WMP 9 is offered on Windows update, but you need to select it specifically to install it. Even if you have windows set to automatically download updates, it won't install a new version of Media player. Microsoft doesn't seem especially keen on forcing current users to upgrade, why would they do any different with new customers.
Far more likely is that MS will allow vendors to bundle it (or slipstream it onto recovery media) and most will do it. I wouldn't want to be the OEM that shipped a PC without media capabilities from the start. The support headache just wouldn't be worth it.
finally
now maybe we'll be able to buy a copy of windows that comes with Firebird, Thunderbird, AIM, Norton, Winamp, and Earthlink. Instead of being forced to pay for Internet Explorer, Outlook, MSN Messenger, MS Anti-virus, MS Media Player, and MSN. I'm currently being forced to pay for all of those latter MS products even though I use all of the former products, and find them to be both cheaper and better programs.
Thats a valid point.
I'd much rather see interoperability improved by forcing Microsoft to publish some code that is need for better operability within the OS by third-party products.
The selling of a media-player less Windows is not a very well-thought out idea. Its great idealistically, but not very practically.
Easy way to sell bundled version - Sell both products at the same price, or about $5 dollars difference at most. Advertise one as standard, and one as a "Deluxe" version with latest, greatest Media Player et al, about to play DVD's etc etc.
Now which one do you think the majority of people will buy?
And of course, since we already have the market tending towards Windows Media files, when people go online they see alot of WM files, and hey presto, download Media Player.
Its still a great idea about selling a stripped down Windows XP, but if the commission think this is going to change much in reality, they have their heads in the clouds.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
Why would it suck?
Say all the article is accurate and all they are taking out is IE, WMP, ms messenger and outlook express... for each of these programs there are better alternatives out there that are free.
IE = Firefox
WMP = Mplayer (w32 binary is available) for movies, winamp for audio
ms messenger = gaim
outlook express = thunderbird
Seriously. No one will buy this.
It won't hurt MS one bit. They will jump at the first chance to get rid of this product. The question then becomes, how long can the courts force MS to make a product available, when no one is buying it? More importantly, why? Will it really address the issues?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
You're right, rules like yours do make for grey areas, which make for arbitrary laws, which make for arbitrary judgments.
Oh, and how long an application remains an app, and when it is included in an OS is something the market's already figured out ... see for example IE and WMP (or, if you like, Quicktime).
Ryan
The Ezine Directory
That is of course if I still want Windows. Why would I buy some crippled stripped down version while consumers who pay somewhat similar get a better working version elsewhere?
I am worried how EU will enforce that the stripped down version work the same way as the other one.
All of these antitrust "remedies" miss the mark completely. Bundling software into Windows is only one anticompetitive tactic and it isn't even the most important one. It is amusing in a watch-a-train-wreck way to watch them kill categories of software. AV vendors are about to feel the pinch. But then, we've been bitching at MS forever to beef up their security.
Besides as given categories of software become ubiqitous people start expecting more things to come with the OS. MS would probably have to bundle a browser and a media player even if destroying Netscape and Real weren't on their minds at all. Now they need to bundle a firewall and an AV scanner to protect the rest of the net from their own customers.
The true factors that give their monopoly power are secret OEM agreements and undocumented protocols and file formats. Breaking them up won't necessarily fix those and neither will dictating what MS can and can't ship with their OS. Take away the gun away from vendor's heads and document the formats and protocols. Their source code is not needed, wanted, or even particularly useful. It would have to be reverse engineered for those specs anyway.
do they have to change the title of this stripped down version? or can they still call it xp embeded?
Has the general PC using population ever heard of Firefox, GAIM or Thunderbird? I doubt it.
If the software isn't included, MS will just have a link on the desktop saying "Enable the World Wide Web", "Enable your Email" or "Chat to your friends instantly!", when clicked on will download a fluffy installer and install the modules to get it back to the full version.
This ruling, if it goes against MS, won't really change much. All it will do is make the EU feel good about themselves...
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
Theres nothing WRONG with Microsoft bundling in it's Media Player or Web Browser or whatever. Doing that is no different than them including Notepad.
The problem is when they use their monopoly of the operating system to pretty much require you to use their version of the software or when they use the monopoly to make their product inheirently better.
For example in windows if you go into the control panel and open up internet options will it configure your Mozilla browser? Can you setup your help file system to use a different default renderer for it's html files? Or my favorite your pretty much required to keep IE installed so you can use Windows Update to get the almost daily CRITICAL updates for their buggy software.
The media player isn't going to be quite the versatile system component that an HTML renderer is but there are still going to be a lot of applications that end up using it and they won't have much choice thanks to tie-ins like properitary windows media formats.
The sad thing is that Gates isn't lying when he says he's making this stuff a central part of the operating system. Clearly linux is following suit with it's own html renderers. The problem is that with Microsoft they never give the user any options to say "hey thanks for making html such an intergal part of my computing expierence now let me use X product instead of your sucky component please".
This brings up an interesting question... just what is an operating system?
Linux, in a pure techical state, is nothing but a kernel. A kernel alone is pretty useless, so that's why there's there's shells to provide an interface. There are multiple choices for windowing systems, multiple choices for basic word processors, multiple choices for just about everything...
Now, replacement shells for the WinNT kernel are possible... but Microsoft doesn't sell a release of Windows that doesn't contain a shell, which is why most everybody is using Explorer and there aren't too many other shells in circulation. So, most people think that Explorer is an intrinsic part of Windows, but in reality, you can live without it if you had another.
Isn't that the atomic level of an operating system? Wouldn't that be the true level Windows should be required to strip down to if it's going to be unbundled from all other software?
I am not pro-MS or pro-*nix pro-Apple (or pro-anything for that matter), but I think forcing MS to take out 'features' from its OS seems kinda trivial.
If I buy an OS and it happens to come with a web browser, media player, firewall, virus scanner, etc... then good for me. Its not like anyone's gonna go out and buy an OS based on 'standard' applications bundled with it, "Oohhh... I'm gonna by Windows XP cuz it comes with IE6 and WMP8!!".
Seriously, if any of those apps that came with the OS happen to suck, I'll go out and replace it with something else. To the average Joe, if an OS didnt come with something, (1) he'd probably be annoyed why the OS didnt come with a media player (cuz every other OS does), and (2) if he had to go out and buy one now, he'd probably sell one made by MS anyways cuz you know, "it'd go together better" or something like that...
In any case, forcing MS to take out features results in an inconvience to people who don't know better anyways, but saves anti-MS geeks a few (hundred) MB so that they can make space to install their smaller, faster, free, open-source apps...
Yeah, I'd trust anything written by a site which says this in its other articles:
"Microsoft - Get the facts on Microsoft(R) Windows(R) and Linux. Click here. Why pay more for Linux than Microsoft(R) Windows(R)? Through a variety of tests and comparisons, major third-party research and analysis firms found Windows to be less expensive than Linux in the long run. Read all the studies and see for yourself. Click here to get the facts."
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Like the unknowing user uses Windows Update in the first place.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Of course, you're also paying for MS's *other* unprofitable divisions, such as the XBox. In a perfect world, the EU could somehow get MS to sell a version of Windows where, when you buy it, money doesn't go to subsidize the XBox. But I don't see that happening.
There is a solution that'd force that to happen, and it's happened several times in history... the company's divisions are forced to split into stand-alone companies that aren't allowed to collude. The division that are in competitve fields must fend for themselves, the monopoly divisions are regulated as such.
Think AT&T breakup in 1984...
That's a bit of a loaded term in my opinion. We can take it the other direction and say a "Less bloated OS".
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Not to mention how "Search... on the Internet" doesn't launch my default browser, and doesn't recognize Mozilla's search sidebar, nor my Search Engine selection, nor... etc. With Windows, it's never about the user's decisions, it's about Microsoft's decisions. Just looking through my start menu I can see a wealth of things I never checked when I installed XP... such wonderfully useful and undoubtably well-designed programs as: Windows Movie Maker MSN Passport Service MSN Messenger Outlook Express Address Book Few people realize this, but Windows isn't really an operating system. It doesn't allow software to communicate efficiently with hardware - it simply replaces software! It should be called a Computer Substitute.
Notice how the consumers never entered this equation at all? Isn't it feasible that Joe User LIKES having an operating system that doesn't require him to go hunting all over the internet for simple things like media players and Instant messaging? My God, if they took out the browser the average computer illiterate wouldn't know what to do. Use an FTP client to get one? This is just a government mandate to protect competetitors that can't compete for various number of reasons.
You can argue all you want that it's because they have a monopoly but you'd be conveniently ignoring facts. Why do people use Windows XP? It's not relatively stable, but its stable enough for the average user and more importantly: It's user friendly. No Linux distro can compete with that level ease, and Apple is too expensive.
If you take out these components you're not only just pissing off Microsoft (which may be a laudable goal) but the millions of users who LOVE having everything in one nice package. But hey, at least that tiny minority of competetitors will get make some nice profit, right?
Make a significantly better product and communicate this to your target market. Do this, and you'll win. It happened with A & P Grocers (80% of the market was theirs, and they eventually went bankrupt for not responding to market trends) and it can happen with Microsoft. Don't hide behind litigation
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
The biggest problem in implementation is that you make life more difficult for the consumer by removing Media Player from Windows. Whether it's anti completive or not, I think it's safe to say that consumers prefer products with more features. Neither Media Player nor IE have stalled innovation in their respective markets, and overall, consumers have benefited from their stability/standardization.
Reason why US doesn't care
1) our high speed internet penetration is pathetic
2) what high speed internet there is, is in the hands of our local monopolistic telecom
3) Media streaming requires high speed connection
4) monopoly profits MS reaps ends up being Taxed in the US quite nicely
5) MS pays nice amounts of money to people getting elected
6) MS gives all kinds of free stuff to US schools
While in college I purchased my copy of win2k, winXP, Office, and frontpage for $5 each. I was then given Visual Studios and Visual SourceSafe
Consider a rather odd but apt example that illustrates why. Suppose one company, Microcar, manufactured 90% of the cars in the world. Suppose that they were trying to dominate radio broadcasting by including in each of their cars a free radio that would only receive broadcasts that used their technology. Would it make any difference if the EU required them to sell cars with and without this free radio?
Of course it wouldn't. The radio is free, so customers would say, "Well, I might as well get the version with it." And Microcar would help that process along by hinting, using their usual FUD tactics, that the radio-free car wouldn't be quite as reliable. It could leave you stranded on some lonely mountain road.
There's only one solution that makes sense. Require Microsoft to work with competing technologies (Real and QuickTime) and ship with Windows versions of those technologies that are as stable and well-integrated as WMA.
If the EU isn't willing to do that, justifying it by Microsoft's monopoly position, then they should drop this issue and look the other way when Microsoft uses its OS dominance to crush their competition in this and other areas.
--Mike Perry
http://www.InklingBooks.com/
Perhaps you would prefer to approach this from a different angle - Could you explain to me how giving away a browser benefitted Microsoft?
It allowed MS to control the defacto internet standards for a long time.. we're still in the process of getting away from that. How many sites do you see that still say "Best viewed with IE", and browsers that are actually adhering to W3C standards are being blocked?
That kind of lock-in means any possible competition is always playing catch-up. Not to mention gives MS huge leverage (which they used) against other standards, such as Java (hence why Sun sued), or in the market for selling server software ("IE works best with our software.. and everybody uses IE, so you should really get ours.")
But beyond this, it doesn't even matter. If IE was offered for free, but *not included* with the OS, Netscape wouldn't even have had arguing rights, because at that point MS would not have been leveraging monopoly status in one market (OS) to affect the business of another (Browser). However, they did, and that's where they crossed the line.
As for baseless generalizations, you also make one when you suggest that without MS we'd have a far worse mess. There's no proof of that, as the computing industry was already starting to realize the benefits of standardization, at least for interoperability, when MS came along.
From where I sit, MS's overwhelming monopoly actually hurt interoperability.. why? Because people didn't need to think about designing their programs for multiple systems.. they could just design for Windows and that was good enough.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
It's like telling a car maker not to include A/C or power windows because they're too competitive.
The only difference here is that if you told your car salesman you didn't want the air con or power windows, he WOULD take it out. Try telling the install program of XP you don't want IE.. or Outlook... or Windows Media Player. You can't can you?
Making a choice to use Windows shouldn't have to be a decision to use Windows Media Player AND Internet Explorer AND Outlook Express AND whatever else Microsoft doesn't give you an option to NOT install.
the EU's ruling is about giving CHOICE back to the consumer and OEM makers. This is a win for us, and if you can see how this is good you are nothing but an left wing prick.
This is not the US, where companies have the right to any money they want. It is the EU, where the law is not limited to consumers. Companies have to follow the law too over here.
Over here, MS does NOT have any right to illegally bundle anything with their OS. And they do NOT have any right to abuse their monopoly.
A bank robber has to pay the money gained illigally back, and still goes to jail. Having to remove WMP is actually a very minor punishment, since not only don't they go to jail, they also don't have to pay back the money gained from breaking, except for a small part to cover the fine. The only punishment here is the fine, because "stop breaking the law" is NOT considered a punishment at all. A bank robber would be very happy, if he only got a tiny fine (compared to the amount of money gained), and having to promise to not do it again (until next time).
While I am not a fan of Microsoft, you have to be fair. Computers get more powerful, and it's only natural the services that the operating system provides
In the 80's people bought or used shareware stuff like programmer's editors, macro tools, norton utilities, backup software that made backups to floppy, etc. If you wanted TCP/IP you'd buy something like Trumpet winsock for windows 3.11. Then 95 just integrated it into the OS, where it should be. I cannot imagine such things being unbundled. Can you imagine Linux with TCP/IP on the user level ?
Stuff like media player isn't in Windows without a reason. 90% of it are libraries, directshow filters etc. The player is just a token app that calls a few API functions. Any beginner with C# can write a simple mediaplayer in 30 minutes.
The idea that a browser is a separate application that can be sold for profit died together with Netscape. The whole idea is so 90's. Nowadays every damn application does html, help files are chm (compress html), etc.
Much as generally I'm fairly pro-Microsoft, IMHO this doesn't make sense at all.
.doc files, a browser for .html files and so on. The file manager does _not_ need any intrinsic knowledge about how to handle all those files. It just needs to know what application to launch for each of them. That's all.)
"Why shouldn't a desktop management system utilize an 128 MB graphics card?" Let's see:
1. Because it's a straw man argument. You can use all the fancy graphics you want to, even without being a web-browser tied into the very operating system. You can write the exact same Windows file- and/or desktop-manager in user space, _without_ making it a web browser, and it will work just as well. In fact, heck, you can even make your full 3D real-time manager, one that even _needs_ a DirectX 10 graphics card, and it still won't need to be a web browser, nor to be intimately tied into the OS itself.
Noone says that need to go back to a command line prompt. You can have your relations, memories and information, or whatever else, and you can have them presented with as much fancy graphics as you want to. All I'm saying is: there is _no_ real reason why the drawing program _has_ to be a web browser, and there is _no_ real reason why it can't be replaceable with other programs that do the same thing.
2. Because it doesn't need to. All that a file/desktop manager like Windows uses is some 2D and font acceleration. That's all. There is no real need to use 3D texture-mapped environment-bump-mapped pixel-shaded full-screen-antialiased anisotropic-filtered graphics just to display a list of files, nor to paint a border around a window. We're talking a relatively primitive 2D app, not a FPS game.
3. That goes double for the codecs and media playing capabilities. There is no way in heck to say you need streaming video codec hooks into the very OS itself... to make a file or desktop manager. How and where the heck would that file or desktop manager even use those codecs? For what? Unless it's going to have DivX movies instead of icons, there is exactly _zero_ need for it to even know what a codec is.
(Just in case someone wants to jump in with a stupidity like "it needs codecs to play the media files when you double-click them": *bzzzt* Wrong answer. What happens when you double-click a file is launching an external application which knows what to do with the file. A media player app for WMA files, Word for
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
With MicroSoft facing all these legal difficulties (although it remains to be seen how much any decission will be enforced), I can't help but wonder about other OS vendors.
Take Apple. If there ever was a company that practiced aggressive bundling, it had to be Apple. They sell the OS together with the hardware (and prohibit you from running the OS on non-Apple hardware), and bundle the whole iApps suite with that, plus IDE and dog knows what else. If bundling is MicroSoft's crime, then it's certainly Apple's, too.
And what about Linux distro's, and the BSDs? Most of the default installs give you not only the core OS, but also the distributers choice of window system (typically XFree86), window manager (typically few of many ones out there), browser (typically one or two, leaving out alternatives), mail client (few out of many excellent alternatives), etc. Not to mention how the more polished distros set up default applications for certain actions, just pushing those over the competition.
I don't think bundling should be a crime. From the end user's perspective, it's more a convenience than anything else. It happens in hardware, too. Computer suppliers will typically sell systems with components from certain vendors only. How many Dell's come with AMD CPUs? It's not like it's impossible to get a system with all the components the way _you_ want, just the vendors select certain standard configurations, which is convenient (and cost-effective) for them _and_ consumers.
Of course, these predefined setups do favor selected components over others. That's a problem in a system where your profits, chances og survival, and ability to innovate and improve depend on margins and quantities. You have to deliver a significantly more advantageous product to get people to use it over the default, but without the income stream that being the default generates, this is a lost battle.
The solution? I don't know. There are a few ideas, though. Split up every system in components. In the PC, the video card can be exchanged for another one, and the old one doesn't have to be paid for anymore. The same could be applied to software. However, where to draw the line? Do we allow a company to ship a text editor with their OS? A GUI? A standard library? Anything beyond the kernel? What about kernel modules? Bootloader? I don't think it's possible to come to a reasonable compromise here.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Say all the article is accurate and all they are taking out is IE, WMP, ms messenger and outlook express... for each of these programs there are better alternatives out there that are free.
l
IE = Firefox
Only removable if Microsoft makes a vendor agnostic version of Windows Update, otherwise must remain on system.
WMP = Mplayer (w32 binary is available) for movies, winamp for audio
Provide Link Please, I have never heard of an mplayer port to Windows.
ms messenger = gaim
Removeable now, not easy but removeable nonetheless
http://www.lecour.net/richard/archives/000278.htm
outlook express = thunderbird
I prefer Eudora on Windows myself
I'm not dumping on your suggestion, and in fact run Linux on my desktop's. I'm just saying that IE is too heavily integrated and unless WindowsUpdate became a full blown app that didn't rely on IE then it can't be removed.
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
Why does this only apply to media player?? I want to be able to decide not to install IE and Outlook as well as MP when I install windows.. Why would I want an email client on my gateway? Even worse I cant remove Outlook.. yeah I can uninstall it but the exe pervades no matter what! I say force them to strip outlook and IE as well so I am free to use a browser and email client of my choice safe in the knowledge that I will never have to see the nonstandard browser and plague like mail client aver again!
Same sex marriage? Since when? And although not everywhere in the EU gay marriage is recognized only people in the fringes of political ideology even suggest that gay unions are somehow immoral.
Cheerleaders? Give me a brake, you should go to Amsterdam, Hamburg if you want to see scantly dressed women.
Naked cowboys? Pass frankly, but there are multitude of naturist associations in Europe and in most places to be naked in public is not even illegal and in most situations will be looked at with amusement.
Playboy mansion? Marquis Sade.
So I think the US has little to teach others on this field of human endeavour as well.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
yeah, but only this instance because its not an EU company. If MS was a German or French company, they'd being giving it a subsidy.
- MS told Apple to make IE the default browser on Macs or they'd get no more Mac versions of Office, to show how you can leverage a monopoly in applications that you got by leveraging a monopoly in an OS to get a monopoly in another application on a completely different OS.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
If that happens I'm totally down. Hopefully Windows EU won't have product activation. That is the main part of Windows that needs to be stripped out. Who wants an OS that is going to expire? I mean come on, if you think they'll activate Windows forever then I want what your smoking cause it's got to be some good shit!