Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft To Appeal EU Decision
An anonymous reader writes "News.com has an article on Microsoft's upcoming appeal of the EU antitrust decision. Their argument is essentially that they shouldn't be penalized for becoming successful in a marketplace." From the article: "Microsoft relies on the fact that its communication protocols are technologically innovative and are covered by intellectual-property rights ... [the company] had designed its Windows server operating systems from the outset to interoperate with non-Microsoft server operating systems"
If this is the case why are they complaining so much about documenting the protocols that would allow non-Microsoft software to interoperate?
A lot of people don't agree with the EU anti-trust, personally I think the EU is succeeding where the US anti-trust cases failed, they are actually punishing M$, hopefully, Microsoft will learn a lesson this time around.....I doubt they will though.
GeekServ Unix Consulting Services (http://www.geekserv.com)
Sure, they were designed to interoperate. They just weren't documented. Or not documented well.
Anything can interoperate with any other as long as the protocols are documented and those documents are made available.
Developers: We can use your help.
Their argument is essentially that they shouldn't be penalized for becoming successful in a marketplace
:-)
Shouldn't that be "penalised" not "penalized" as I'm pretty sure they use English rather than American in the EU, certainally we do in my part
Anyhow it's a deliberatley misleading argument - they're not being penalised for being successful, they're being penalised for BREAKING THE LAW. They really need to understand that the EU sees them as CRIMINALS and not contributing members of society. If they don't want to be treated as criminals then they shouldn't willfully and deliberatley break the law.
They may be attempting to appeal that decision, however for the fact remains that it's not their success that has them up in the dock, it's their illegal behaviour.
Specifically for abusing their monopoly position to the detriment of the market - adminttedly the monoply does show they were successful but that entire argument is a fallacy.
the Commission's demands threaten Microsoft's intellectual-property rights.
What intellectual property rights ? The EU Commision didn't ask for the source code (copyright), and software patents have no legal value in Europe...
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
What objective standard do you intend to use? How much is 'too much'? Who gets to decide?
The idea is you don't punish the good for being the good. That's like saying, why don't we ban the New York Yankees from baseball because they have the most talented players? I think they're hitting way more home runs than they need to.
If I owned a farm and had a bumper crop of corn one year, should I be penalized for being successful? What if I have ten farmers, all working cooperatively? What is the demarcation line for government or anyone to step in because 'success' has been too great.
At least with the oil companies example, people can (falsely) argue that gas is 'owned by everyone' and therefore has a 'public responsibility'. With your arguement, the ideas of Microsoft and their labor is 'owned by everybody' and therefore subject to limiting restrictions as someone sees fit.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
The best thing is both blaster and slammer had fixes released well before the worms hit.
It's most assuredly not Microsoft's fault that people don't patch.
And any fool who says Linux or MacOS X don't need to be patched, are just that, fools.
I think they're making way more money than they need to. Just like gas companies. Being successful
doesn't make it right.
Comments like yours are the ones that the 'other side' love. Someone who doesn't have the slightest
grasp as to what is going on and makes comments that lead everyone else to believe that you don't have
a grasp on capitalism. The simple fact that a company makes a lot of money doesn't make them bad or
mean that restrictions should be placed on them. The company makes what the market permits, supply
and demand. It's not up to you to say 'they are making too much money', there's no such thing as too
much money (legally).
You're probably one of those people that think the rich should be taxed to death for the simple fact
that they have more money. "You make 1 million dollars a year.. I think we should tax you to death so
you only take on 50k a year!... that is fair in my warped concept of fair".
* Now, to be fair... you may very well have grasp on the facts, in fact I hope you do. Your comment
alone is what I find rediculous, however you'll prolly get mod'd up as 'insightful' based on this
crowd.
It is, at least partially. Microsoft had (have?) a habit of releasing 'new features' with security patches. This meant that the security patches needed careful testing before deployment, since the new features often came free with new bugs that could break existing software. For most other operating systems, the security updates are just that; security updates. If you install a security update for OS X/FreeBSD/whatever, the only things that it should break are programs that made use of the insecurity that is fixed (and you probably want these to break, rather than being exploited, anyway). On Windows, it can be a game of Russian Roulette to patch a running server.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News