Slashdot Mirror
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.)
Would this be the 99 cent Diet Coke I've heard so much about?
True story.
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
Microsoft may be forced to sell a stripped-down version of Windows in the EU
Why just the EU? Why can't we all have access to the stripped down version?
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.
Of course, once this settlement is reached, they can start a new lawsuit over them putting Antivirus into XP SP2...
Though yes, the AV does serve a much better purpose than RealPlayer and WMP and such...
M$ can strip this out, that out and have a million different versions.
But in the end windows 2000 + XP nowadays really only differ by a few registry keys. Some programs can do the magic for you. Cough.... NTswitcher.... Cough.
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.
Some guys stripped out all the crap that was loaded onto Windows 98 and all of a sudden, it because a pretty damn good OS.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
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.
Sell full version of Windows at normal price, and sell stripped version at DOUBLE, via mail order.
That should do an end run on the EU.
It's too bad that it takes the EC in order to bring about the possibility of these changes. I know it's not the same system [insert pro-America comment here], but aren't these the type of things that the United States should be fighting for?
;>
Monti may also demand that Microsoft itself should propose "within a few months of a ruling" what Windows computer code it should reveal in order to make the operating system fully interoperable with rival software makers' programs for servers
Long overdue in my opinion, Microsoft is bundling way too much s&*^ together these days. They've built their entire market strategy around this idea; Just try to ask your Microsoft rep about any one product. The conversation may start with InfoPath, Sharepoint, Office, whatever, but will undoubtedly end up with discussions on Server 2003, MS SQL, Exchange, Commerce Server, ad infinitum until you have seen every single, poorly designed intertwined product they own. The truth is, Microsoft is right - their products only work well with each other.
I already have the source code anyway
Last August the Commission told Microsoft that its practice of bundling Media Player into Windows amounted to an abuse of the operating system's dominant position because it placed rival music and video players at a disadvantage.
Since I have never opened Media Player on my Windows box, I have no idea what sense Microsoft's position makes... Although their crowd control, err DRM, may not work properly.
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
Why just the EU? Why can't we all have access to the stripped down version?
Because if you can't handle a one second shot of a bare nipple during the Super Bowl halftime show then I don't think you're ready for a stripped down anything.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
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
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.
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.
a) giving a clear choice... instead of the 'only for advanced users' install time configuration allowing you to explicitly choose installables with an easy to use interface.
:( (are there others ?) ....and MS always seems to like shutting the door on the competition instead of providing a better product than it.
b) and keeping open-interfaces(even if not open src), so that other players can easily integrate their products into windows.
now how tough (or harmful) can that be ? (both a question and statement)
additions/mods to the list welcome...
It seems nothing short of total domination will satisfy microsoft... yet somehow that seems to be the only way to make money
[all generalizations are untrue except this one]
I always thought that the Plus! packs were pretty cool concepts. Why doesn't Microsoft just do a barebones OS then a cheapy Plus! product with all the extra crap nobody needs?
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".
Unlike the US who just gives M$ a slap on the wrist.
Yes, I'm from the US.
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.
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/
What? No Clippey? Damn!
Table-ized A.I.
And you know what, after 20 years prices for landlines are almost back down to inflation adjusted cost they were in 1984
And long distance is much much cheaper than it ever was in 1984...
See, long distance was the profitable service that subsidized the landlines. When the prices were adjusted to reflect the actual costs of the services, local loops were more expensive, and the competed-for long distance fell to the floor.
We never were able to sucessfully get local loop competition to happen again. The ILEC/CLEC model is trying, but most of the initial stand-alone ILECs have gone bust, and nobody's stringing additional copper networks where there already is one. Some things are just meant to be monopolies, and the only thing to do is to regulate them so they don't get abusive...
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
Why not, instead of making MS strip everything out of it's operatings system, things we've all come to expect and demand. Imagine buying an operating system, in todays day and age, without a web browser. In order to get online, you would need to go to a retailer, buy some softaware package, bring it home, install it, then update it to the most recent version. Next you have to find a decent media player, but you don't know much about computers so you're not sure where to look. There 'computer machines' are also supposed to be good for email, but that's not bundled either. It's not practical to suggest stripping anything from any OS. But rather, to stop the monopoly, legislate that it must distribute with 2 or 3 alternatives to each program in question, all equally as visible as the next. Then, the consumer can chose which default browser, media player and other free products they would like to use as their defaults. This seems a much more practical solution, that would even give much more exposure to the smaller companies in competition with Microsoft.
(Futurama) Fry: "My folks were always on me to groom myself and wear underpants. What am I, the pope?"
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.
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!
1.Remove any references to MSN (so they cant push their MSN internet service or e.g. MSN search .NET binaries etc etc). Ditto for all their "secret" APIs (such as apis in MSHTML.DLL, SHELL32.DLL, SHLWAPI.DLL, SHDOCVW.DLL, SHFOLDER.DLL, WININET.DLL, COMCTL32.DLL, ADVAPI32.DLL, JSCRIPT.DLL, VBSCRIPT.DLL, .NET runtime, .NET libraries, DirectX, Media Player libs and whatever else) .NET to attack mono)
2.Make MSN messenger something that you can choose to install or choose not to install (i.e. if you dont want it, you can choose not to install it and install another messenger or no messenger at all)
3.Completly open up the Windows Media Player codec layer such that anyone can write WMP codecs and anyone can use those codecs in their app (making it so that e.g. games can use the codecs for displaying full-screen video clips or playing game audio would be a nice thing also, I dont know if its already possible or not)
4.Detatch the Windows Media Player UI from windows and from the codecs and make it an optional install.
5.Force microsoft to have one OEM price and one OEM contract. Anyone that wants windows OEM can buy at the same price (as long as they are bundling with a PC, they qualify for OEM price).
6.MS not able to dictate what OEMs can/cant do.
For example, let OEMs install whatever they want alongside windows (i.e. Linux, Mozilla or whatever else)
7.Publish all the communications protocols used by anything that comes on the windows CD under a clear "anyone can use this with no restrictions" licence. Also, publish all of their various data storage formats under the same sort of licence (e.g. NTFS filesystem specs, MS office document formats, MS media files, regular and HTML help document files,
That way, anyone can talk to/use their HTML renderer, internet DLLs and whatever else.
Also, it would (presumably) allow one to write a new HTML renderer (e.g. based on gecko) that could replace the MS one.
8.Force MS to unbundle Outlook Express, publish all the data formats that OE uses to store stuff, etc etc etc. (so that other mail programs can be used instead if you want to)
8.Force MS to completly implement the current W3C standards for HTML, XML and such. This includes complete support for ALL parts of formats like PNG
9.MS not allowed to use patents to protect their monopoly in the OS space (for example, cant use patents on
and 10.MS not allowed to use influence to try and spread products inside EU (e.g. applying pressure to governments/corps who are trying to decide between windows and linux)
These are all important but the most important IMO is point 7 (i.e. the "open all their secrets" thing) since that will level the playingfield as far as competitors go.
For example, Mozilla will be able to talk MS server authentication on all platforms, with no licence conditions or strings attatched.
And things like Linux and ReactOS will have full information to be able to read NTFS file systems.
And so on.
"If bundling is MicroSoft's crime, then it's certainly Apple's, too."
No, it certainly isn't. You are misunderstanding anti-trust, and people modding you up seem to be misunderstanding it as well.
Anti-trust legislation deals with using an existing monopoly to increase your market share in other areas. Apple is not a monopoly, and there is no law against vertically integrated solutions. When apple bundles a media player, their media player is not suddenly dominant in the world of media players.
Microsoft on the other hand basically has a monopoly on desktop operating systems (if you want to run a very common range of applications, your only choice is often Microsoft).
It means that when Microsoft decides to bundle an application, this application becomes dominant in it's market unless it really, really stinks (read Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player).
Apples bundling takes their applications to 1-2% of the market. Microsofts take their applications to 90-95% of the market. It is the last problem that antitrust tries to help against (very unsuccesfully if I might add).
A free Linux solution can never be a monopoly because everyone is free to distribute them as they see fit.
The focus is getting Microsoft to unbundle because of the manner in which they're doing it, making it excessively difficult to replace their bundled applications with competitors products (which, by the way, existed prior to the bundling. Microsoft has essentially shut them out)
Remember, people didn't buy the OS when all this stuff was bundled. They bought it when any number of applications could be used to do these jobs. Once Microsoft had achieved a monopoly on the market, *then* they started the whole bundle-applications -> hide the interface -> force consumer upgrade cycle. That's what is causing the trouble.
People have previously used the analogy of BMW putting their own radios in cars. It's wrong. A more accurate version would be this:
BMW, through a series of back-door trade deals and fleet discounts, gain a monopoly in the worldwide car market. Now consider Pioneer. For years, they've made replacement radios for BMWs. They make a healthy living out of it. Suddenly, BMW changes all the connectors to the radios and require a coded signal to be sent between the radio and car electronics for it to work. Add to that they won't tell anyone else how the signal is coded and have the radios welded into the car.
Now you're getting near where Microsoft is at. Forcing the unbundling is the first step. Forcing the release of the interface spec would be the next step. That, unfortunately, looks unlikely to happen.
Once again, we're not just talking about 'a large corporation', we're talking about a *monopoly*, ie. a coporation who controls the market. What the bundling is doing is leveraging MS's monopoly in the OS market to gain a monopoly in the browser and media player market. That needs to be stopped.
-Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience-