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Microsoft Leaves U.N. Standards Group
pk2000 writes "Microsoft withdrew from a United Nations software standards group for commerce. 'Unfortunately, for now, we have made the decision to stop participating in U.N./Cefact for business reasons and this serves as notification of our immediate withdrawal from all U.N./Cefact activities.' This might be connected to Microsoft's intention to build up its patent portfolio. Currently it has about 5,000 patents and seeks to at least double this number by the end of 2005."
The more and more they isolate themselves with proprietary technologies the more they cut their own throats.
Once their corporate clients realize a decision to go MS is a decision to STAY with MS for a LONG LONG time, that TCO will get a hard second (and third) review.
It's not suprising, but it's somewhat disappointing. MS was looking like they may be good to the community (and industry) for once. That didn't go far...
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
I think it makes sense. With alternatives to Microsoft products going strong, it is not in Microsoft's interest to standardize and create interoperability.
You will see that, historically, standards supported or developed by Microsoft are mostly those that enable Microsoft products to work better, whereas support for standards that enable interoperability of MS products with other products has been lacking, if even considered at all.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
One can only hope that MS' refusal to adhere to real standards will backfire. I just hope that corporations and governments aren't to dumb to realize that it is them who have to pay the prize for MS' tactics.
On the other hand, once patent laws are the way MS and others want them to be world wide open standards will simply not matter anymore. What a bright future lies ahead for freedom of information and freedom of choice...
If you even glance at UN/CEFACT's Mandate, it reads like a mission statement for GNU/Linux. Words like "inclusive", "help", and "free" (as in trade) won't inspire confidence up in Redmond.
With this many patents, Microsoft will win. Their intent is to kill all competition/freeware by patenting everything remotely interesting to them. They don't even put their name on any of their patents until they issue, so it's really hard to spot them. There's no telling exactly how many, or which patents they have in process at any time, unless you do a lot of educated snooping at the USPTO. And that tells you nothing about their international patents. Their pulling out of the organization will have little impact for them.
How many bored people, who are browsing Slashdot at night, would it piss off if one of the patents was this:
"This patent describes the process of placing the first comment on a Microsoft news story, and covers obfuscated spellings, such as 'frosty pist', etc."
Disclaimer: This was not an attempt, I realize I fail it.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
This is something we need to keep in mind while all the flames and MS troll rant. Microsoft is making a buisness descision, because it is a buisness and not a local geek club that does this in their spare time. Good or bad, we can't expect them to suddenly shake hands with Linux and begin working on universal standards for OS interopolbility because that is a buisness killing move and against the very reason buisness competition even exists in the first place.
"We're breaking out the ramen noodles. . . "
"Really? Is it someone's birthday?"
In this corner, we have Microsoft with a platform-specific lockin solution designed to drain business revenue without actually committing to fix reported problems.
In the other corner, we have IBM, Sun, HP, Novell, RedHat, Mandrake, Oracle, Sybase, and a few thousand other vendors supporting full POSIX stacks, international and national standards, and essentially working on the philosophy of building from a shared technology foundation.
While Microsoft may have bought their way out of court-imposed penalties by delaying the case until a change of government occured, they can't buy their way out of the opinions and mistrust they've built for the past 2-3 decades.
As they've refused to compete on quality, reliability, security, and performance of business solutions, what choice does Microsoft have except to try to use the courts and barratry to survive?
After all, they can't accept (or perhaps can't grasp) a service/quality based market. Their whole mindset is package and sell, not long-term services and support that generate stable revenue instead of bursts during purchase/upgrade cycles.
Business hates upgrades. A minor patch for an existing release means much lower retraining and deployment costs.
Consumers love upgrades, they get a whole bunch of new gadgets, features, toys, and shiny icons.
It's simple: Microsoft can service one market or the other, but not both. Any attempts to use their IP portfolio for barratry are likely to get them pimp-slapped by the vendors I mentioned above: they don't like Microsoft's intrusions on their turf any more than Microsoft want's Linux on the desktop.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Nice to see Microsoft taking a page from the good ol' Bush book of foreign relations and getting rid of those UN pussies.
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
Anti software-patent groups in the EU should seize on this, and note how Microsoft's use of its patent portfolio is so demonstrably at odds with the public interest.
What could be more in the public interest than the commoditisation of web services?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Companies that join working groups should be forced to say "right, these are my patents, i'll share with you and if i pull out, i cant use them against you".
:/
If Microsoft start patenting things the group is working at making, waiting until the standard is out to start suing (Hi, my names Rambus, id like to help you with your DDR tech!), or perhaps even joined, had a look what the groups doing, realises they have patents that covers it then pulls out.. ooh, i'll be angry!
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
Exactly. Thats why Windows NT was seperate from Windows 9x. When they merged at XP the seperation of buisness and consumers was lost. You may say that home and pro keep them seperate but home is just a crippled version of pro.
If you have nothing useful to say post as AC.
I mean, why would Microsoft do something that would bring so much criticism and ill will upon them? Engaging in a patent war of any kind will:
1) Really not help their case in terms of the whole monopoly thing.
2) Tell everyone that this company is on its way out, and treat it accordingly. When a company starts working the legal system to pay the bills, you know it's ready to sink.
3) Piss off countless unwashed computer/information systems people who have grown fond of application X, which may have to stop development due to legal fire from Microsoft.
4) Call into question a lot of Microsoft's more questionable patents.
On the other hand, why would they amass such a huge patent portfolio if they don't intend to use it? Perhaps just to ensure that nobody can use those silly patents against them? Hrm.
Of course, a tech company leaving the U.N. Standards Group wouldn't be their first choice of business strategy. With this and patent hoarding, it's getting easier to see that Microsoft is fighting just to remain at the top at all costs.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
from when Sun withdrew from ISO/IEC and ECMA because they didn't want to give up any control over Java?
Considering the amount of novalties presented by M$ through their software, how many of these 5'000 to 10'000 patents will actually hold up in court? Could this be a way to increase stock price in short term?
Seems kinda similar to George and Tonys democratic decision to ignore the UN's twisted sense of democracy (wtf is up with all these countries 'voting' on stuff!? wheres the bribery?!). Maybe what I think is democracy (accepting a decision from the majority even though its not the one you wanted) isnt? Microsoft (although under no obligation to follow the UN) are also big players with the ability to break away from anything they don't like and take the market with them. Actually im surprised we even use tcp/ip, email, html and http! i guess those were the last things to slip through...
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
With this many patents, Microsoft will win. Their intent is to kill all competition/freeware by patenting everything remotely interesting to them.
But if a programmer publishes their freeware on the Internet and reveals their ideas on a webpage that has an explicit, dated 'prior art' notice on it, will their efforts remain unpatentable and free for all to use? Otherwise, what's the point if such a 'prior art' notice has no legal weight in the court of law for a patent dispute.
They only win if the rest of the IT industry and society accept that it's reasonable to allow one company to "patent" such obvious ideas as timed clicks, TODO lists in code, etc. -- especially concepts that have been in use for years or decades.
So Microsoft bought their way out of penalties, can force the USPTO to approve bullshit patents, and has a few billion in cash.
Just how much do you think that matters when the other side of the court has IBM, Sun, HP, Novell, Cisco, Oracle, Sybase, ... and they all see more benefit in OSS and a shared technology stack than a lock-in for one vendor.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Now I'm no fan of the UN at all, but stuff like this is why folks don't want to collaborate with MS. Note to Microsoft if you're even listening - the Open Source community wants open standards. By continuing to try to close your file formats and program standards, you are continuing to motivate those who would like to see you out of business.
I guess the whole "team up with MS" was a pile of BS, anyway. Now they can say "OSS hates us, we tried to play nice, therefore we have no qualms about going them after with patents".
But wait... don't we hate the UN here on slashdot? And we hate MS... ow... so confused now.
Someone tell me what to think here.
The real problem is that Microsoft just doesn't get along with standards groups. Witness their history with XSL, Kerberos, ISO character sets, etc., etc. They go in determined to be good, cooperative techno-standard citizens, but always reach a point where continuing to participate means they can't do things exactly their own way. And they always want to do things exactly their own way.
You almost can't blame them -- the industry is dominated by emotionally immature technogeeks who always have to have their own way. Unfortunately, MS has the financial clout to make their tantrums into defacto standards.
You know, a lot of times when companies go under, they start to use their patent portfolio in a last kamakazi attempt to drag everyone else down with them. Perhaps Microsoft sees the writing on the wall, and realizes that things are going to go so well for them in the future.
This could cause huge problems in the IT world...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Microsoft have enough money, time and resources to patent pretty much anything in the future, and it looks like they're going to try and file as many patents as they possibly can.
This will be very damaging for the entire rest of the software industry including open-source - I mean you're going to have to think harder and harder to come up with a new software idea that Microsoft hasn't already thought of and patented...
Patents were introduced to level the playing field for the little guy with a big idea, helping him to compete with the giant corporations - what Microsoft is doing is exactly the opposite. The entire patent system needs to be overhauled before its too late.
Currently it has about 5,000 patents and seeks to at least double this number by the end of 2005.
Yeah, we'll see about that, MicroSoft!
00 Get "education."
01 Apply to USPTO.
10 Get job.
15 Profit!
It becomes more and more clear what software patens are doing. Protect the companies and screw the individuals.
For Europe it still is not too late.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
but a company representative said that the decision to withdraw was a "question of priorities" and that the focus of the standards body was moving away from Microsoft's expertise.
babelfish.av.com
Bullshit > english
Out priority is to make money by keeping buteforcing the patent system, and training genetically modified lawyers to enforce them in the future.
We are not known for our expertise in playing fairly, we preffer a borderline illegal approach to doing business.
Open letter to Microsoft:
Dear Microsoft,
Suck on my chocolate salty balls,
Hot lovin',
Chef.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Now, it's MS against the rest of the world. However, it hasn't always been that way and won't always be that way.
``In the other corner, we have IBM, Sun, HP, Novell, RedHat, Mandrake, Oracle, Sybase, and a few thousand other vendors supporting full POSIX stacks, international and national standards, and essentially working on the philosophy of building from a shared technology foundation.''
That coalition will only last as long as there is a common enemy. After that, there will be a new era of Unix Wars, a new Great Divide, and, in time, there will be a new Evil Empire.
``As they've refused to compete on quality, reliability, security, and performance of business solutions, what choice does Microsoft have except to try to use the courts and barratry to survive?''
So far, the bulk of people and businesses seem to be quite happy with Microsoft's solutions. As long as features equal quality, fewer crashes than the previous version equal reliability, service packs and managed code equal security, and "it works without hours of prodding with configuration files" equals performance, I don't see that changing. Sure, there have been more and stronger voices against Microsoft, but most people have either the "works for me" or the "everyone else uses it" attitude. The people who really care have already switched.
``After all, they can't accept (or perhaps can't grasp) a service/quality based market.''
I think they grasp it rather well. Instead of shipping a software package that needs a system administrator to work well, they ship software that any idiot can work with, and they handle all the issues for you. Not enough features? Not secure enough? Not enough "seen on the net" buzzwords? Don't worry, it will all be fixed in the next release. Just sit back and relax.
``Business hates upgrades...Consumers love upgrades...Microsoft can service one market or the other, but not both.''
I think Microsoft is large enough to serve many markets. Traditionally, they had different product lines for home users and business. However, home users have grown more demanding, and home PCs more powerful, and MS apparently considered it more beneficial to merge product lines than to keep adding features to the home products.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
It's because its opponents include people like you with a political axe to grind. You're not making a good poster boy for OSS. They'll use the specter of people like you to convince politicians that any measure is appropriate to defend free enterprise against you.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Not to start a euro flame war or anything, but "If your not with us, your agains us" comes to mind.
Next you will hear Ballmer refer to UN software standards as "old-tech".
"/Dread"
Apart from the digging man, who is a member of CEFACT?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I know a lot of users who hate upgrades, as they'll inevitably mean slower, more bloated and often less reliable software that makes it harder, not easier, to do the things they need to do.
That's if the upgrade even works.
Many people "upgrade" only when forced kicking and screaming by external factors such as format and protocol changes or hardware failures. I don't blame them, though personally I'll often prefer to upgrade.
Now the ms for food program cannot continue!
If Microsoft start patenting things the group is working at making, waiting until the standard is out to start suing (Hi, my names Rambus, id like to help you with your DDR tech!), or perhaps even joined, had a look what the groups doing, realises they have patents that covers it then pulls out.. ooh, i'll be angry! :/
Well, Microsoft did patent - behind the other members' backs - Cascading Style Sheets during the time the standard was developed at the W3C. Shortly thereafter they left the W3C.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Take a step back and remember socio-economic theory.
Until now, Apple was really the only alternative on the desktop, despite the efforts of OpenView or OpenLook to provide a Unix-based desktop. People needed something relatively easy to use, and so did business.
Now you have OS/X (still Apple), Gnome/Gtk (virtually any vendor's hardware that run's a *nix stack with X11R5 or newer), KDE3/Qt (as per Gnome, plus handheld/embedded support), and an ever-developing web UI infrastructure of defacto Apache standards and official HTML/CSS/ECMAScript facilities (XUL, XForms, Struts, ...)
All of those products and tools support a full POSIX/ANSI API stack, plus defacto standards like X11, OpenGL, Postscript, etc. All the functionality required to develop and deploy solutions to the desktop are available via Windows or cross-vendor solutions.
So you can lock in product development to a platform with a lousy security reputation that has no significant enterprise data center share, or you can shift development to cross-platform tools that still provide what business and end-users need.
Sure it needs to evolve, but Windows 3.11 was pretty shitty, too. Right now Gnome/Mozilla/SuSE have provided my full-functionality desktop for about a year. I've been living on Linux longer, but the release of SuSE 9.0 really made it a desktop experience I could sit down a normal user or relative in front of, and expect them to be able to work with it.
That's the key point: you now have much more choice about whose tools or products you use to deploy a solution.
That leaves the question of what other reasons you might opt to go Windows. Lots of developers? Sure, but they hardly outnumber the OSS community, much less the even larger army of *nix developers that service North American industry.
Colors, bells, bings, and eye candy? You can turn all that on in Gnome or KDE3. OS/X Aqua actually outdoes Microsoft eye candy for those who want beads and trinkets instead of a solid platform.
Videogame performance? OS/X and Linux are perfectly capable of providing a secure and stable gaming experience. Right now it's a bear to set up sometimes, but Id Software and others have proven there is no particular need for Windows to build a game. It's just a market share decision.
So the only lock in Microsoft has is insecure APIs that haven't been updated as the POSIX and other standards have. Other than companies 100% in bed with Microsoft who can't even conceive of alternatives, I really don't see the majority of IT providers and vendors sticking with Microsoft in the long run.
As I've said before, once upon a whence Microsoft had a chance to win the war when it was them vs. Apple and a small Unix-based business server market. That has changed -- AS400, Mainframe, hundreds of specialized variants like QNX -- everyone supports the standards.
Everyone, that is, but Microsoft. With a security hole nightmare. With stability problems. With high entry and support license costs.
The security holes are the real issue. Even if you spend millions building a hierarchy of firewalled departmental LANs to minimize the depth of a virus, worm, or cracker penetration, you still can't eliminate the risk.
When any kid with Google and a knack for technology can crack the admin password on the parent's laptop, install an infected piece
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I've been involved a little bit with the UN's EDIFACT body, and I believe the whole idea of the UN responsible for technical standards is fundamentally flawed.
Its primarily a political body, and really, politics have no purpose in what is supposed to be a technical arena.
That's why EDIFACT has lost out to other non-UN bodies now that XML has come to the forefront. Nobody is going to the UN on purpose these days.
So I say good to MS for stating the obvious.
No company would use "intellectual property" to hinder competition and litigate against its own customers.
I mean really guys. You totally need to take some Prozac or something. This could never happen.
Companies love their employees, competitors, and their customers. They always try to do what is best for everyone!
And on the slim chance they didn't, our legal system is more than capable of putting any company in their respective place!
GOD BLESS AMERICA!
They pretend to innovation ... they are just strangling poor countries economy
For those who actually read the article, it was stated that Microsoft, when it was in the standards union, was pushing for standards that would benefit them (not open Gnu/GPL standards). With Microsoft out of the consortium, they'll have less influence on the standards that the world decides to make, and in the end, lose say in standards that may become very popular.
Even better would be if MS made their own propreitary objects to compete with the UN standards, and LOSE (a la IPX and Novell). Because now not only do they lose say in something that's popular, they also wasted time on their own protocol that nobody uses.
Thank god for prior art. Without it M$ could just patent the process of applying for a patent.
...ever heard of a little thing called prior art? As far as I know, you can't just patent something that a person invented years ago, but failed to take out a patent on, because their work counts as prior art. Is this not the case?
Really, whatever the situation, it's past time that things were fixed so that you can only have patents on things which are demonstrably yours.
Sign the FSF's Anti-DMCA petit
unpatented prior has must have been published a year before the patent issue date to be considered prior art (this is in the US, it varies from region to region).
I think they grasp it rather well. Instead of shipping a software package that needs a system administrator to work well, they ship software that any idiot can work with, and they handle all the issues for you. Not enough features? Not secure enough? Not enough "seen on the net" buzzwords? Don't worry, it will all be fixed in the next release. Just sit back and relax.
You're kidding, right? Microsoft is constantly promising an idiot-proof operating system, but I have yet to see it deliver. You still need to be rather knowledgeable with computers to protect yourself from dangers online and local crashes.
The main problem with Microsoft isn't that the products have technical problems, because all software has. The problem is that MS is not honest about the problems and the responsibility/knowledge/experience needed to cope with them.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Consumers love upgrades, they get a whole bunch of new gadgets, features, toys, and shiny icons.
Maybe they should have stuck with their Windows NT and 98 philosophy. One OS for business, with a long time between releases but lots of nice security and bug patches. One OS for consumers, with frequent releases (95/98/ME) and few bugfixes.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
It's very rarely in the interests of a dominant entity to engage with a group like the UN. Whether you're talking about international law and the United States, or IT standards and Microsoft, you have the group wanting everyone to play by the same rules and the dominant player wanting to leverage its advantages.
Doesn't mean that Microsoft (or the US) is bad; that's just logical behavior for an entity in a dominant position.
Now I've just drawn a comparison between the US and Microsoft, so I know my karma's shot to hell.
I should buy some cement.
I don't think your karma should be burned for saying something so obviously right.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
You say it was a Huge scandal, but why the only source you have to propose is an anti-french one ?
Do you really think Europe was against the war because of some French money ?
But, if you are right, France was against the war because it wins a lot of money from petrol... and the USA went in Iraq to take the oil money for them.
In this perspective, it makes more sense...
And there are a lot of sources pretending that the USA went in Iraq for Oil and not for Liberty/WMD/you name it...
RAMMS+EIN, I just wanted to mention I like the way you think. I might not agree with your conclusions, but I like your approach anyhow.
P.S. The difference between the *nix "coalition" and the old Unix fragmentation is that the coalition is driven by agreed-on standards. Business is like people -- it has to learn and grow. The vendors I mentioned see the potential of a services-based business model and realize it's a better fit for the industry. Like the buggy and whip makers, those companies who resist the model too long are doomed to virtual extinction.
While we techies may be rabid supporters of particular approaches, business cares about generating revenue from it's customers, and the consumer wants to be able to access those business services and entertainments.
It's that simple. Beyond that, it's all a bitter bickering between techies, and no one outside our community really gives a damn unless it affects their life or wallet.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
No, they will win if people like you are supporting OSS. Both those issues - timed clicks & TODO lists in code - were reported as sensationalist headlines on /., but if you drilled into the patent, they were far more detailed than the /. groupthink headlines would have you believe and were genuinely patentable ideas, and not decades old.
Whether or not you fundamentally agree with software patents is another issue altogether, but they are playing within the rules.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
But geez, that is one major patent! Surely even MS wouldnt have the guts to try and collect on that one?
Not yet, anyway. There's a royalty free license for it's use, however there are also prior art issues that might arise should they decide to relicense and cash in on it.
Here are some relevant links:
Microsoft patents CSS?
zMS Withdraws From WC3 Web Services Working Group
What would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
People copy success. And if people can copy what Microsoft is doing, without going head-to-head with Microsoft, they're going to do it. And patents are a potential way to mimic Microsoft without going head-to-head. (Or, if you ARE already going head-to-head with Microsoft, having your own patent portfolio could offer some defense.)
The larger impact won't be Microsoft's patents, but their position as a trend setter in the industry. This sets the tone for a software world of greater patents.
This is an exercise in altruism - Let us first suspend all of our beliefs, open our minds and embrace the enigma that is Microsoft.
We all know that the US patent office is overwhelmed with patent applications and that the back-log worsens everyday. Patent officials are basically rubber-stamping many of the patent applications through without checking for prior-art and relying upon the "community" to bring that to their attention. Further, we are in agreement that the system is in dire need of an overhaul.
Unfortunately, many times a problem can be illustrated but isn't recognized or fully appreciated until all pleadings are exhausted and someone finally realizes that the only path to a real solution is to exploit the flaw. Perhaps Microsoft has also come to this realization that there is a fundamental flaw with our patent system and that it needs revised.
After much lobbying and discourse from the IT community, Microsoft has finally taken the lead to ensure the system is finally fixed. They realize that we can continue to lecture the officials in Washington but no one seems to be listening. Well, maybe now that MS has "taken one for the team" by showing how the system can be manipulated, they'll listen and we can finally see a resolution to the patent situaton once and for all. This is certainly a welcome move by Microsoft to help all of us in this struggle against the beauracracy.
I, for one, welcome my new patent overlords.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
I've heard that M$ has a patent on the number of bugs/line of code. They say they will license that technology, but for some reason, I think they really want to keep that one for themselves.
- Gentlemen, start your hybrids!
If M$ can't control it, they leave and will work to get around/subvert/ignore, any standards from this group. Standard M$ tactics. They have been consistant in working this way for years. Think of the battle for control of the web, what .NET is really about, they want all content on their standard format.
Why would anyone be surprised?
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Not at all. GNU was started in response to the lockin of IBM, AT&T, DEC, Pyramid, and others. Microsoft wasn't much more than Bill Gates' brain-fart at the point GNU began.
In fact, Microsoft began their approach to marketting from the same perspective as GNU: freedom from the big vendors and outrageous licensing fees.
What both were really saying is that competition is good for business. It leads to better solutions.
What Microsoft forgot is that business only benefits when the better solutions are generic and can be applied to a variety of problems without fear of barratry.
They never have been very good at delivering quality -- the first release of their C compiler didn't even handle pointers properly, making it effectively a useless, overpriced prototype of a compiler at best. The combination of market domination tactics and refusal to acknowledge or correct defects in their products or their support of industry standards is why Microsoft stands alone.
Despite their size, Microsoft is still only a small percentage of the global IT market. Outside the US, they don't matter half as much as they'd like. China, India, Japan, Europe, Australia, the UK -- most regions are backing the same international standards as the big vendors.
Standards level the playing field. It makes it easier to port apps, it makes it easier to implement secure systems because everyone is familiar with the essential capabilities and how to use them. With Windows, it's a perpetual churn as Microsoft tries to come up with their own way of doing what the industry has already been doing for years.
It seems a tremendous waste of energy and resources that costs society and industry an awful lot of overtime, lost weekends, lost data, and money. All to service the collective egos of one company's board of directors.
It just baffles me that anyone thinks Microsoft has real power when push comes to shove. When the final line is drawn, on one side are not just the standards, but everyone that Microsoft has pissed off by losing data, overcharging for an "upgrade" that still doesn't fix fundamental problems, etc.
More importantly, it is the revenue streams and survival of global industry vs. one company.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
While popular, I think the Rambus Jedec issues are more an example of the kind of disputes that
IP standards can create then SCO.
I fail to see the relevance of the SCO remark in this case. The SCOIBM case was totally different (and the suing of the individual users totally nonsense and legal wrestling at best)
I heard this from a friend of a friend who actually is a Linux developer at microsoft. I know him as well, he is a complete dumb ass but...
MS has rooms full of Linux computers with people learning Linux and open source software inside and out. Developers are tearing apart the source code to the kernel, KDE, Gnome, Apache, etc using/testing every little feature, making notes, and dicussing where they think the developers will go next. They even have people who monitor development mailing lists and forums.
This is a direct quote:
"The plan is no to patent where Linux is now, the plan is to patent where Linux is going."
Technically, the MS stratefy is the 'head them off at the pass'.
Very much agree with what you're saying... but it doesn't answer why you think IBM, Sun, HP and Novell have changed; where they get their chances they'll still play the proprietary game (as previously evidenced by CICS, Java, IPX/SPX etc.).
And it's not like Microsoft haven't gone the distance with some collaboratively-designed open standards: I'd nominate SOAP as an example.
It's my opinion that all of these companies have exactly the kind of schizophrenic approach to standards that makes business 'sense'...
You know, as more things like this begin to gather, i can't help but think this is the "quiet before the storm" here.
....hell, i don't even know what will happen then.
The reason i feel this way: take a look at what they have been up to. They started looking at actually improving security (SP2), hey, it's a start. Longhorn is on the way - it's not going to be XP SP3 when it comes out. There is going to be stuff in there not seen before, might even be great stuff. Think IE isn't getting a face lift/massive-rewrite? Think again.
They have begun the (successfully) Get the Facts tour, mixing the ideas of free (not beer), open, and free (beer) source ideas to muddy the water for those that don't know better. Even though most of us here at Slashdot and the F/OSS community as a whole know the difference (you do know the difference yes?), corporate folks (no need for name calling) don't...or.....or they aren't willing to spend the resources to really find out. Trust me, VP's and a lot of CIO/CTO folks listen to properly dressed, rational, non-frothing-at-the-mouth representatives from a reputable company (MS here on the GtF Tour) as opposed to...well, the frothing at the mouth rabid GNU fan in Unix-Ops. No, not all Gnu folks are like that, i know, but when it's your ass and $25mill on the line - you want contracts, guarantees, and an entity to point at when the shit hits the fan.
OK, back on the point: Microsoft has just only begun to start the war machine - those patents that are flying out the door so fast? They will be used when times get rough. They will mix and mash and muddle up the words, terms, courts, and with the correct patents, seriously damage F/OSS here in the US. i still have faith the rest of the world will give them the finger, but i'm worried about here...at home in the US.
Watching my government become more so one that listens to money, where lobbyists are bought, focus groups are bought, campaigns are purchased, "consumer advocacy groups" are funded (read bought), and laws are "purchased"...i become more and more disheartened that when Microsoft pulls out all the stops, our very own government will just "follow the money", hurt F/OSS in this country and consequently hurt the US on the world stage for technology, which then hurts the economy, which then hurts higher (and lower) education, which breeds a generation of dolts, who
What i'm trying to get at is, i'm more than a little concerned about the trend to "legislate" technology as opposed to common sense and how much these patents could stifle growth here in the US. Now, F/OSS will be fine on the world stage - think some programmer in South Africa that needs a quick tool for this or that gives a flying fuck about MS patents? No, the software will be written and shared with the world......but not the US. That is what scares me about when MS starts pulling out all the stops.
Now, i don't know about you, but no one will be taking my SuSe, Mandrake or Gentoo cd's from me, but i'm hoping there won't be a day, where if you don't have MS-insert-OS and the up-to-date payment stub of your "license" then you don't get on the internet, you don't check your email, you don't....blah, blah, blah.
i don't think it will come to that...there are too many bright people to let that happen, but i just get the feeling we're watching the storm clouds gather and well, it's going to be messy when the USPTO, Congress, MS, MS's Money, the large non-MS companies collide.
This is just my rambling...mod as you like, or better yet, reply - i'd rather know what you think in words as opposed to one lil dropbox.
1. Join the organization so you can have access to the organizations work and patent it.
2. Quit the organization so you are not bound by the bylaws so you can SUE.
Sound familiar.
Tom
Distributed Proofreaders Posts 5,000th E-book
Microsoft has 5000 patents coincidence? I think not.
no kidding. why on earth does the UN have anything to do with technical standards?
I would go even further and say that customers want open standards to a large degree. I completely fail to see how it is in the interest of a customer to end up with a lot of data/networks/storage/air or whatever that can end up being classed as an unsupported format any longer.
Customers need to be able to hook up various things to their data/networks/etc, and even have the ability to write in-house stuff to actually make use of all that stuff.
In the eyes of Microsoft (and as others have pointed out, other companies have tried this in the past) it is only advantageous to them if they get to determine what the standard is and change it at will. If someone else gets to have a list of features, Microsoft doesn't want to be obligated to try and implement something they don't want to (or just simply can't for whatever reason), so they stop consulting when it stops leaving them absolute freedom.
Locking out the competition (by licensing or simply refusing to document) makes it easy for them to just keep raking in money.
Unfortunately, by leaving this group, instead of the entire industry moving towards a set of standards which encourage interoperability, Microsoft is taking their ball and going home and saying "you'll get what we give you". I wish I could say this is the first time Microsoft has walked away from standards bodies to this effect.
Having other people able to access data stored in their formats just encourages people to access it with other tools, and why would they want that?
This is just part and parcel of being a monolopy in their case. Heck, the reasons they've been found guilty is because they specifically hinder others from accessing their data/formats, or they make you spend a whole truck-load of money to get involved in the program and you have to sign an NDA promising not to tell anyone anything.
Unfortunately, short of forcing them to adhere to agreed-upoon standards, there's just no incentive for them to actually do so.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Yes, that would be the ideal thing to do in a perfect world, but we live in a world driven by money and politics. So, anyone that has any connections, either politically or financially is the one that will win. The only loser will be the poor shmuck that invented something revolutionary, but just didn't patent it for whatever reason. *** Long live capitalism.***
Just how much do you think that matters when the other side of the court has IBM, Sun, HP, Novell, Cisco, Oracle, Sybase,
Don't be fooled... These companies, IBM especially, are just looking for a way out from under Redmond's boot. They are driven by the same market forces as MS, and if any of them were capable of creating such a monopoly, they would fight just as hard to protect it. The rest of their rhetoric about "open standards" is just marketing-speak designed to leverage their brand as the antipode of Microsoft's decreasing popularity.
-- "Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur."
- Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.
But were the patents novel ideas? It is not suspose to matter if it is new if it is only a logical progression from existing technologies. It is obvious that the patent office does not take this into consideration anymore with such things as sideways swinging, using a laser pointer as a cat toy, or one click shopping.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Hmm..
This reminds me of a certain isolationist and secretive country.. also well known for being a monopolist and 'bending' the rules whenever it doesn't suit it..
This is the death knell for IT development and innovation in the United States.
Let me paint you a picture:
1) Microsoft patents as much technology as it can under US jurisdiction.
2) If you want to make something new, and retain control over it, you must do it outside the US. The rest of the world will make IT innovation more attractive to the masses by championing open source and open standards.
3) All non-Microsoft IT development goes overseas. (Heck, the labor is already being offshored. Just offshore the whole shebang.)
4) US loses much of it's ability to innovate in the IT market.
5) US becomes a technology consumer instead of a technology creator.
This process is inevitable when so much greed is involved. Witness the US energy industry. By and large it is addicted to foreign sources. This is because of greed and an unwillingness to change the status quo. (i.e. moving to alternative sources other than oil.) Is being addicted to foreign oil a benefit to the US economy? Absolutely not. Is the control of all IT innovation by a central source a benefit to the US economy? Again, no. Does it matter to the short sighted corporations pushing these agendas? Nope. Not one bit.
It always blows my mind how companies/countries can come and go as they please with global organizations as these. At least, that's what it seems like from what I read in articles or see on tv. I mean, isn't there some sort of process and/or repurcussions for doing this? And why do they just let them come back later?
Take the U.S. for example... they just withdraw from the U.N., break the Geneva convention, and the next thing you know they're back in, all buddy-buddy, like nothing ever happened.
Maybe I'm wrong...
Microsoft is now above the law here in the US, so the only other entities that are above the law can do anything. Once MS own enough patents there will be no choice but to play with them, like it or not. They're subtler than mere barratry. Instead, think countless bludgeons custom made for each market, forcing the use of MS products.
MS has no choice because current offerings won't support Microsoft's stock prices. They have to branch out into completely new markets, and barratry is the obvious next step since they can't distinguish theft from innovation.
Unfortunately, you're not frightened enough. I don't think that even large multinationals will be able to stand as significantly against MS unless they cooperate.
MS is vast enough that simply pouring out resources in front of a powerful opponent will win a war of attrition. Cost vs. benefits? Terrible, but winning is everything.
SCO looks like a testing ground for their new business model. Whether SCO wins or loses is almost irrelevant, because the knowledge gained is invaluable. If the lumbering giants don't recognize what's happening and act quickly, they're in for a lot of pain.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
Then the only posts not in the negative would be the Funny ones...
I mean they're real people? Can't we like...communicate with them? Impeach them for incompetence?
CICS is just a transaction processor, much as Encina or Tuxedo. There never really has been a huge need for those systems because of their complexity, so there never were that many players.
MQ is in much the same boat. In order to provide cross-enterprise solutions, there has to be a standard for reliable message delivery. There isn't really much to the core code of such a system, so it's more a question of vendor reliability and pricing.
In other words, certain component services for building software are natural monopolies provided they maintain quality, reliability, and keep prices at a point that is reasonable for what they provide.
Java is a bit different. I agree that most standards bodies like ISO or ANSI take too long to come up with standards that include too many hard-to-implement esoteric features that very few people actually need. A community based process like the JCP keeps things under control like a standards body, but allows industry to steer it more effectively to provide the facilities the business customer needs.
For the most part, business wants services while the consumer wants products. Upgrades are like products -- a fixed price purchase that has specific options and features. Services like a weekly stream of minor patches to keep systems secure fit business better. The ability to adapt to changing rules, regulations, and market demand is as important as information security to modern business, especially the P2B/B2B internet segment.
That rounds back to why the commercial vendors will continue exist for the forseeable future -- business needs someone to contract and take legal responsibility for maintaining and supporting the core tools used to run the business.
Sometimes it's not all about price or about technical capability. Sometimes it boils down to estabilishing a verifiable chain of trust to show the customer and your potential market partners that you take your security and infrastructure as seriously as they take theirs. If they don't, then you are dealing with risk-benefit calculations, essentially gambling with the survival of the business.
I don't like gambling with business. It's bad for the revenue stream, for the customers, for the staff, and puts you at risk of losing everything to a coin toss. Some may find that thrilling, I just find it irresponsible.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
This would explain why they just released a guide on switching to Open Office.
If one company produced 95% of the power sockets on the marked, they surely would not be interested in standardization, so that others could easier interoperate with them or not have to worry about future compatibility etc.
I agree. It seems obvious that no matter what happens, the #1 company is going to act evil and ignore standards because it encourages lock-in, and everybody else will want standards, knowing that cooperation is the only way to compete with that lock-in.
It was IBM at one time. The fear that it would be Sun caused creation of the OSF by Dec and other companies. Now it is MicroSoft.
If MicroSoft loses their #1 position I think they will switch from "evil" to "good" so fast that it will make everybody's (including Gates) head spin. They will immediately start pushing standards, rewriting their code to standards, publishing source for sample implementations, and all the other stuff they refuse to do now. Take a look at how they fought the AOL IM protocols (where they were not #1) to see how fast they change.
Of course whoever is the new #1 (IBM? Novell? Sony?) will switch pretty quickly to evil, no matter how benevolent they seem right now. The hope is that Linux or some other open source will be more entrenched, raising the level at which interoperability is possible. Once upon a time standards monopolies controlled electricity and you could not plug competitors lights in. When IBM was evil you could not make hardware that plugged into their machine's interfaces. With MicroSoft it was the system. I would expect the next monopoly to only control application level stuff, it might be as powerful as MicroSoft Word's lock-in only.
Do you really think that MS is just applying for patents in the US? When they file a patent application, it is filed in numerous countries. This is common practice.
I think maybe they did at the time they spearheaded the CSS standard, but I think they have decided it is no longer useful to them. How else can you explain the fact that Internet Explorer, the browser offered by the company that INVENTED CSS, has pretty much the most broken implementation of the current CSS standard--and they are making literally ZERO effort into making the rendering engine of IE compliant?
.NET-ified, with all sorts of XML-based protocols like XAML (wrapped up in patents and licenses to "protect" them from the GPL and let MS control them). XHTML will be a piece in that puzzle, but MS wants the WWW to gradually and quietly go away and for HTTP servers to suck in and puke out web services using its new XML-based languages instead (the same ones to be used by its locally running applications).
I think that despite patenting CSS, Microsoft no longer sees it fitting in with their "vision" as they wish to relaise it in Longhorn. CSS isn't an XML application, it is already "embraced" by everyone and MS cannot easily "extend", is too closely tied with HTML/web page model and so on. Microsoft wants the future of personal computing to be Longhorn: A seamless desktop, all
The end result on the users desktop will look very slick and will be very elegant, seamless and smooth, such that you'd barely know or care about the difference between the local desktop and the 'net (so long as you are running the newest P-IV class PC with a gig of RAM and more than 3 GHz processor--and conected to fast broadband of course). That makes MS look revolutionalry and forward thinking, but that's not the most important motivation for such a grand vision.
What MS REALLY gets from this is a chance to perpetuate its lock-in and sustain its monopoly. It is hoping to establish a foundation that is visible and easy enough to implement by anyone, but is encumbered by patents and licensing. Money isn't the issue--in fact MS will probably encourage royalty-free implementations. However, they will use patent and copyright law to its full extent to limit that software's "freedom". They don't want your money, but they REALLY don't want you to make GPL software using the tools they offer you--they want you to close the source and make a profit and buy more MS products, or release it as public domain or BSD so they can steal it for themselves.
That's why I really hope GNOME, KDE, freedesktop.org, etc can push some of their currently bleeding-edge stuff out there before Longhorn can gain traction to take the steam out of MS big new thing. That, and I hope there is reluctance on the public's part to throw away their already-working hardware and software just to have the newest thing from MS.
It will also help to demonstrate that the involvement of Microsoft is not neccesary for the creation of standards and based on their past practices it is prefferable that they are not involved (they either accept what is being produced or end up being marginalised).
As for the morals of a corporation that behaves in this manner, well that is meaningless, as a coporation has no morals, it is just a vehicle for the directors and major share holders to hide behind (both legally and morally) and it is the morals of those directors and major shareholders of Microsoft that are, well less than positive ;-).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
We are just going to accept this as the way things are, are we? It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness in my book!
Sign the FSF's Anti-DMCA petit
Time has come to create a new cryptic language for software to retain the freedom intact against any such corporate strategies for attack throght patent regime on the valued freedom for software as an expression of knowledge . Any software which is not readable by startegists like these can be kept safe from them
I don't think industry would tolerate a company being that powerful. It might start out independant to develop and prove a conceptual model, but it would pretty much have to shift over to a JCP style process with an industry management board to work in the long run.
In other words, we really need the JCP style bodies to manage standards from a needs based perspective, not a pure technical or vendor lock-in approach. I think Sun/Java have done an exemplary job of implementing that model, though there will always be disgruntled members who want their features merged sooner than they're currently scheduled.
For example, I've been waiting for years for unsigned type support to deal with XML and external systems interfaces more effectively, but it's obvious the JCP has larger issues they're addressing first. No point griping too much about it, just periodically posting a reminder that industry really does need those extra data types for Java to reach it's full potential. It'll happen -- it just takes time and enough demand from the JCP membership to get it scheduled.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.