Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Here's how the scam allegedly worked: Saddam sold oil to his friends and allies around the world at deep discounts. The buyers resold the oil at huge profits. Saddam then got kickbacks of 10 percent from both the oil traders and the suppliers of humanitarian goods. Iraqi bean counters, fortunately, kept meticulous records. Coincidence. If you wondered why the French were so hostile to America's approach to Iraq and even opposed to ending the sanctions after the 1991 Gulf War, here's one possible explanation: French oil traders got 165 million barrels of Iraqi crude at cut-rate prices. The CEO of one French company, SOCO International, got vouchers for 36 million barrels of Iraqi oil. Was it just a coincidence that the man is a close political and financial supporter of President Jacques Chirac?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
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.
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
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!
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.
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 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'.