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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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Who said it was? Why do you even bring it up?
Actually im surprised we even use tcp/ip, email, html and http! i guess those were the last things to slip through...
We probably wouldn't be using those if Microsoft weren't four years late to the party. Ahh, the old Win 3.1 days, where you needed a third party set of utilities, such as Trumpet Winsock, to even get the PPP connection started.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
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"
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.
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.