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Halloween X Author Mike Anderer Speaks Out
cdlu writes "Mike Anderer, author of the now-famous Halloween X document, has spoken out at NewsForge. Among the highlights is a prediction by Mr. Anderer that Microsoft has many more disruptive lawsuits planned up their sleeves."
What exactly does he mean by this? Traditional EULAs push liability onto the user as well.
Did anyone else read this interview and get the feeling that Anderer spoke a lot but didn't really say anything specific or all that relevant?
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What an asshole.
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In a world where there are $500 million dollar patent infringement lawsuits imposed on OS companies (although this is not completely settled yet), how would somebody like Red Hat compete when 6 months ago they only had $80-$90 million in cash? At that point they could not even afford to settle a fraction of a single judgment without devastating their shareholders. I suspect Microsoft may have 50 or more of these lawsuits in the queue. All of them are not asking for hundreds of millions, but most would be large enough to ruin anything but the largest companies. Red Hat did recently raise several hundred million which certainly gives them more staying power. Ultimately, I do not think any company except a few of the largest companies can offer any reasonable insulation to their customers from these types of judgments. You would need a market cap of more than a couple billion to just survive in the OS space.
This attitude is wrong at SO many levels. New players can't enter the OS space NOT because they will have to compete against marketing schemes/ad campaigns of a richer company BUT because they'll be sued into oblivion by the competition.
It is being assumed here that a company with $85 million in the bank won't be able to survive because they don't have money to survive a LAWSUIT...the quality of their products/service/innovation apparently doesn't even enter the equation anywhere.
litiguous fucking bastards
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Do you recall reading that leaked memo (Halloween X)? A lot of us doubted its authenticity in light of the atrocious spelling and grammar.
For this article, ol' Mikey must have used a spell checker. Heck, given his grammar problems, he must have had someone proofread it for him. Hmmm, ghostwriter?
I just know I'm going to get every partisan in the place foamed up by saying this, but the Clinton DOJ was actually pursuing the MS antitrust case, and the Bush people dropped it like a hot rock.
.
To be fair, Bush campaigned openly that he'd instruct the DOJ to seek a settlement. And, to be fair as well, there is a high likelihood that the anti-trust action was brought as a political move, rather than one based on law. That's not to discount the legal merits of the case, but that's the reason the case was brought. Most of the evidence supports the idea that Sun, AOL/Netscape, and other hi-techs with *vast* lobbying efforts in Washington DC consistently lobbied for a harsh line against MS. Both Clinton and Al Gore personally appealed to higher ups during the Clinton re-election for campaign donations - and both were refused. Until this point, MS had no widescale lobbying program, no nationwide political agenda, and no significant history of donations or involvement in DC politics. Not long after the Clinton re-election did the real meat of the DOJ attack start. The strongest likelihood is that MS was being punished for being politically neutral. The result? Now MS learned that lesson and in less than 10 years has the most well-funded lobbying operation in history. Go figure.
IANAL but I know the industry, and so do most of you. Let's be realistic. MS basically got off with a "please don't do it again, OK?"
There is another aspect you might have missed. The DOJ was going for a breakup. Ruling after ruling the DOJ was rebuffed on this issue, at one point the judge saying basically "it ain't ever going to happen with this case". At that point, the DOJ "lost" in terms of public perception. They lost the case by not winning their chosen punishment. Any penalty tha the point was moot - as we know, MS can work around any wording no matter how clever.
The only way in the long run to stop this "compete with anything but quality and price" attitude is for the government to finally enforce the antitrust law. And that may only happen if you all vote
The problem is now, there isn't a reasonable tech saavy person around who can argue that Windows still has a monopoly hold on any market. Linux is an equal or superior product in every possible way, without exception, without question, period. There is nothing MS can do to stop its growth, and its plain as fact for everyone to see. MS is fighting a holding battle as of now. And any future action would require first that MS be proven a current monopoly. Between Linux, MacOSX, and misc. products, it is MOST highly unlikely that MS would face any significant challenge.
I think it's time to start calling your local attorneys general and suggest that they work on anti-trust proceedings against microsoft again. am i correct in assuming that these sorts of actions start at the attorneys general? my impression is that some of these guys are actually out to defend us, so if we give them a barrage of phone calls maybe they will look into it. Here's where you can get some contact info.
Perhaps being an (ex-)man of SCO and a friend of Darl McBride (in case he has real friends) is enough for many of us. But there is more in it. If you actually read the article, you will find plenty of reasons to consider this guy a major asshole. Here is a short list:
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- I have filed more patents and owned/managed more businesses than you can think of. This deal was a microscopic, ultimately forgettable fraction of my business.
- I have nothing to say about the money Microsoft funneled to SCO (my excuse is that they won't let me).
- Everybody licenses Unix and they've been doing so for years. SCO as a licensor is only executing a rational business decision based on current market trends. Microsoft bought SCO licenses for SFU just like everybody else has been doing for years, there's nothing wrong with it.
- Microsoft is actually cooperating with you Linux guys with their SFU. They're good guys!
- The GPL makes IP matters confusing, and we have to leave it to the big companies like Sun and SCO to figure it out for the rest of us. They might even be kind enough to give it all away for free!
- Red Hat is still a bunch of small boys. Do you really think this johnny-just-come company with a few hundred million in the bank can actually indemnify its customers from the devastating effects of a settlement? They will be obliterated in no time! Better leave it to the big guys (Sun, MS, SCO...).
- We used to have all this crap figured out with patents and cross-licensing and stuff. You GPL people came around and messed up the whole thing, and now we're trying to clean up your mess. Stop making noise and let's clean this whole thing up for you.
- Why is everyone picking on me? I've done a lot of good stuff, and nobody says anything about that!
[Wow. I have to give this guy an award for managing to say so little in so many words.]
Am I a hipster-doofus?
Up until the mid 90s, Microsoft hadn't initiated a single lawsuit against anybody. If memory serves, the first lawsuit involved one of the larger distributors of bogus Microsoft software, so even that was fairly benign. This is not a litigation-happy company.
That said, they have started to wrap some pretty evil licenses around all technical information disseminated about Windows, its SDKs and technical papers. Furthermore, they're starting to layer gratuitous DRM over the new MS Office file formats even where it doesn't make sense, leaving room to invoke the DMCA when people make Office file format importers/exporters.
MS salespeople have started to tell shops migrating to Linux that there would be "legal issues" preventing Linux from interoperating with future versions of Windows. There may well be a sea change in Microsoft's tactics ahead, or the salesmen may be talking through their hats. Either way, MS is starting to build up an arsenal of twisted legal manipulation every bit as formidable as IBM's patent arsenal.
Linux is an equal or superior product in every possible way, without exception
Even with respect to driver support for more recent desktop peripherals? My scanner didn't come with a SANE driver on its CD, and there exists no such driver in SANE CVS either.
No offence, but what mad weed are you smoking? Windows isn't a monopoly even though it runs roughly 95% of desktop computers?
You don't have to have 100% marketshare to be a monopoly. Simply saying "now there is an alternative, kind of, for some people, if they're willing to do complex and expensive migrations means Windows doesn't have a monopoly" is one of the most incredible pieces of doublethink I've seen for along time.
Not only is it important that MS is recognized to have a monopoly, but that there is nothing legally wrong with having a monopoly as long as you are playing fair in the market and maintain the monopoly without interferring in the market. However, once you try to use your monopoly position to prevent entry to the market or to squeeze others out of it, or otherwise use the monopoly position to maintain that position, then it's considered to be a illegal practice, which is what the cruft of the MS trial was about.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
> Even with respect to driver support for more recent desktop peripherals? My scanner didn't
> come with a SANE driver on its CD, and there exists no such driver in SANE CVS either.
Rather than just stating that it doesn't, think about why it doesn't. Is
it because of the technical superiority of Windows? Or the superior innovation
coming out of Microsoft? Do you think they wrote all those drivers themselves?
Or, is it because the Windows monopoly is, like most monopolies, self-perpetuating?
Since they have the monopoly, not only do the realities of the market make it
more likely that Scanners, Inc. will write a Windows driver before, or perhaps
to the exclusion of all others; it also means that Microsoft is in a position to
illegally abuse their monopoly by REQUIRING that Scanners, Inc. play by MS's
rules if they want their scanner to work on Windows at all.
The playing field is not level at all, as should be obvious. Vendors bend over
backwards to make their devices work within the bizarro world that is Windows.
Counterwise, most of them expend no effort whatsoever, often denying even
basic documentation that would cost them nothing to provide, to the development
of Linux drivers. The very existence of drivers for ANY sufficiently complex
devices is a small miracle, and should be taken as testament to the innate superiority
of Linux and her developers.
Once the Windows stranglehold is broken, just you sit back and watch what Linux
turns into when the playing field is leveled.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
Firstly, I admire Mike Anderer for speaking up for himself. Although he is apparently very well known in the insider community of IP-financing he was unknown to the rest of the world prior to ESR's Halloween X release. Being catapulted into the public eye in such a way is not easy for anyone, even more so when the response of the public at large is quite venomous.
Secondly, I get the impression that Mike Anderer is almost there, almost beiginning to fathom the changes in the software industry which he has referred to. He is not simply stuck in the old-style IP tradition which became utterly dominant in the last 20 years-no he was one of the architects of this development.
Secondly, For people like him compatibility, exhangability and interoperatibilty means cross-licenscing. According to this view if companies want to exchange documents between various applications cross-licensing agreements must already be in place which allow for this to happen.I can imagine that for many companies, during the time frame where the IP hegemony system was comming into being(early 80's), the idea of cross-licenscing as the way to enable open exchange and interoperation was quite obvious and even common sensical.
What people didn't realize then, and which many fail to still realize now, is that all of the problems of compatibility, exhangability and interoperatibilty are created by this IP regime to begin with. Only when one sees that these issues are contrived issues, issued which have no technical merit, and are issues which themselves promote and prolong their own very being, does one begin to see how self-servingt the IP regime really is.
Mike Anderer has been in the buisness of creating the need for his own buisness for the last 20 years- and he is not alone. He is but one of an entire industry of IP tychoons which arose in the ecosystem of IP. HE and people like him worked to develop the IP system and these same people then provided the solutions to the self-created problems which the IP system inherently produces-one could view this as a form of autopoesis.
Thirdly, his confusing of the GPL with public domain is pre-programmed. The notion that something can be licensced in such a way that this license itself cannot be bought or sold contradicts, in it's very roots, what licensces have always traditionally meant. The price of the GPL is priceless -and the free software community will stand forever in debt to the brilliance of this licensce. Mike Anderer cannot really grasp this concept fully without fundamentally re-evalutating what licenscing means-and this is of course the fundament of his occupation for the last 20 odd years. For him to fathom this sea-change in the software industry it is necessary for him to understand the incredibly subtle, yet profoundly deep difference between the GPL and public domain/propietary IP.
Understanding this difference means relinquishing the defining oppsoite self-definition of IP-IP has always defined itself through it's opposition to it's other(andere)- public domain. The two notions need each other and exist for each other's benefit. The temporary evil of IP find's it's absolution in the eventual transition to public domain. The defered time, the temporary evil-to-be-covercome, constitutes the horizon of the economy of relative value which is traded in the IP system.
The GPL is never public domain and is never to be bought or sold-it is a-economic in the strictest sense of the word. For Mike Anderer to understand this he would need to call into question the raison d'etre of his entire proffesional life and therein lies the damning self-service of the IP industry.
You're right - and another poster made the same point. Money has a lot to do with politics. All I am pointing out is that there appears to be a lesser evil. Or look at it my way: when they screw up, just keep voting the bastards out... better to keep spinning the wheel than give up! If you believe our chances with Kerry might be better - even microscopically better is enough to justify it.
It's a big government. It took political attention span to stop the antitrust case, not the other way around.
Monopolies are terrible for the economy. Showing you're serious about economic policy might be very good for a sitting president with problems like Bush.
You can make criticism of Bush look like a reflex on Slashdot, the same way everyone paints the readership as Linux zealots or anti-Microsoft... But pardon me for being blunt, I call it rude and ignorant.
It seems to annoy people when a group develops a consensus on something - even when they are correct. Even when what they disapprove of is particularly egregious. Microsoft doesn't deserve scorn, here or wherever thinking people discuss things? Hello? SCO?
You know what you sound like to me? "If you want to take shots at Hitler... have at it... that's practically required here at soc.culture.jewish."
And we, on Slashdot, should be called "partisan" (or the same implied) as if the political developments of the last 4 years don't suitably justify it?
Sorry, just have to get that off my chest. Snidely poking at a consensus opinion (without appearing to worry on wether it's correct) just makes you look ignorant. Say why you think Bush gets short shrift, if you feel differently.
Don't you think there's a reason people here (and in general anywhere people are more educated than average) dislike Bush?
If they do this they will force IBM to supply their own IBM-Linux (Or buy Novell) that will be covered by the Gadzillion Cross-licensing deals they have plus anyone that attacks will be counter sued for Patent infringement by IBM.
The "Best" MS can do it nible around Linux as is the case with the Paul Allen funded SCO harrassment case.
IBM-Linux is a nightmare scenario for MS. The only reason IBM has not done this is that they development process of Linux is performing well and IBM do not want to face some of the Patent issues that may be lurking inside Linux. By Lurking I am not implying that Linux has stolen anything but maybe a lot of potential SCOs is watching.
IBM knows this and that's why they will make an example out of SCO. SCO will not only be leveled but the fields around it will be salted. Corporate Veil to Canopy will be ruled broken and they will be forced to admit guilt and settle or face extinction.
IBM has actively collected Patents for the better part of its life for a reason. This is it.
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