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EU/Microsoft Antitrust Case Delves Into Tech
oscartheduck writes "ZDNet is reporting on the Microsoft/EU case, and things aren't going too well for the software giant. The Commission is delving deeply into the technical issues surrounding the case. In addition to 'a record $617 million' that may well be leveled against the American monopolist, Microsoft is also standing accused of knowingly going forward with marketing practices 'that had already been judged illegal by U.S. courts when it was used on Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.'" More from the article: " The founder of the Samba team of developers, which took years to create print and file server software that works with Windows, said his team is held back and playing catch-up. 'The tiny device I have here in the palm of my hand is the sort of product that could emerge if the information required by the Commission were available,' Andrew Tridgell said, holding a paperback-size storage server that he said could be turned into a work group server. Once it gives over the information, 'Microsoft no longer has a stranglehold over the world's networks,' he said. "
That MSFT is gonna get kicked in the nuts for just more than bundling a mediaplayer and a browser.
It's time to finish their sleezeball business practises once and for all.
Windows has become such a huge part of European infratructure that we can no longer rely on a shady corporation.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
Microsoft is also standing accused of knowingly going forward with marketing practices 'that had already been judged illegal by U.S. courts when it was used on Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.
And how exactly does US law apply to EU courts? Do EU courts ever use US laws? That would seem utterly stupid to me.
"We...submit that the (Commission) decision is an attempt to reconfigure (how the) market works by handicapping the leading player in perpetuity," Forrester told the court.
Perhaps "levelling the playing field" is a better way of looking at it. Look, I'm all for innovation and the right to make money off your ideas, but when it comes to computers and software, you have to bite the bullet and admit that people need choice. Admittedly, you want that choice to be your software or your server, and you can ensure that by dominating the market. Just as we've seen though, that makes you the target of everyone's wrath, whether from competitors, governments, or hackers.
So yes, Microsoft has a "right" to its intellectual property within reason, but when it come to interoperability, they need to rethink their stance. Ultimately they could conceivably eliminate most of their competition, but then that would spell the end of innovation on the grand scale, and force them to become even larger and more bloated than they are now. It's bad enough that one hand doesn't seem to know what the other is doing in Redmond, without consigning the rest of us to oblivion. MS needs to take its lumps, fix the interoperability/bundling issue, and move on.
Won't happen anytime soon.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
That the article mentioned SMB as the example where Microsoft is screaming, this is our IP, it is not. SMB was originally defined by IBM and an open protocol, Microsoft embraced and extended it until it closed the doors and now it is a Microsoft we own it and do not give the specs protocol. Guess who is on the payroll of the original inventor currently. Yes some of the SMB core devs. This behavior reminds me of someone who goes into a house throws the owner out, replaces the locks, the owner hires a guy who opens the locks, the thief goes to court and cries, this is my house, this guy has no right to go in there.
I get the distinct impression that Microsoft being tardy to release the documentation for their protocols isn't purely due to malice - or even not malice at all. I get the impression that things like this simply aren't documented INSIDE of Microsoft, and the original developers of the code have left, and MS staff are now busily trying to document a gigantic mass of source code.
I have direct experience of Microsoft having none or inadequate internal documentation (see my latest JE for the full discussion - http://slashdot.org/~Alioth/journal/133996). A quick precis is that we were working with the GINA in the NT 4.0 days, and we had an expensive support contract with Microsoft (IIRC, numbers bandied about were US $40K) because of what we were doing with the GINA. We actually ended up speaking to Microsoft developers - who couldn't answer our questions. We ended up reverse engineering the MS GINA to find out how to set everything up correctly. It was interesting to note that the publically available GINA documentation improved substantially a couple of years later when Windows 2000 came out. Perhaps the developers felt ashamed that their customers had to resort to reverse engineering because this expensive support contract fell flat.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Ok, so if I get this right, if I create an interface to provide interoperability between my programs, and my programs become popular enough that people want to connect to them for reasons I didn't intend (and don't want to have to support), why is it a good business decision to release an API for that interface?
First, MS did not "invent" the interface they copied an existing open standard then intentionally broke it. Second, it is not a "good business decision" but it is required by the law if one of the two products you are talking about is in a market you have monopolized.
It seems like that might shooting myself in the foot if I'm giving it to others who intend (as the linux community does) to supplant me with my own technology. To me, that's like bring a tank to war and then giving the enemy the keys to it.
No it's like bringing a tank to the mall and then arguing when the cops arrest you for breaking the law by crushing other people's cars and driving a vehicle banned on public roads. "But officer, my tank lets me park more easily and closer to the doors! I'm special and rich, I don't have to obey the laws! I did the same thing in Kentucky and after I bribed the governor they let me go!"
Please, if you make up anymore analogies, don't forget to include that you are a monopoly and do a little research on what monopolies can and can't do and why. Bundling and tying are illegal actions for monopolies because they remove all the benefits provided by a capitalist free market. You may be ignorant, but you can bet MS isn't and they decided breaking the law was a good business decision. No sympathy for the devil.
When the Bush administration took over here in the US, a wave of corruption swept through this country like sugar through a diabetic, stunning our enforcement agencies and causing public insitutions like the Patent Office to roll over and play dead. The Justice Department, which had already won and had Microsoft on the ropes, dropped the anti-trust suit like a hot potato, settling for a useless slap-on-the wrist penalty.
Thankfully the EU has some *balls*, and is not emasculated by the cult-of-monoplists that has shredded the integrity of the US government.
Hopefully, the massive inflation that is snowballing due to price-gouging in the oil industry and the resulting collapse of the real-estate balloon market will shock the US populace into sweeping the Republicans out of both houses of Congress while they clean out the White House.
Then there will be a chance that the US Dept. of Justice will get back into the business of enforcing the law.
It is my dearest fantasy to believe that I will someday see "Ballmer and Butthead" being led off to jail in handcuffs.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
don't buy any of Microsoft's bullshit but I still don't think this isn't going to help consumers anywhere. A Good example: The EU made Microsoft build a new version of XP without Media Player. I read something like .005% of consumers bought that version. Interesting, people in the EU really give a shit about this.
You have just committed the logical fallacy, "argument by association." Arguing that previous EU punishment was ineffective, thus the one we are discussing must also be ineffective is not a logical argument. I agree the previous punishment was pretty pointless. It looked to me like they make a ruling, set up a way to correct the imbalance, and then that ruling was modified by someone with no clue what the whole thing was about.
This particular requirement, however, is quite different. If MS is forced to comply and publish and adhere to open specifications for interactions between their server and their desktop, it will have a real and positive affect upon the industry. Right now MS servers are slow, less stable than Linux, more expensive than Linux, unable to properly support multiple server tasks, poorly secured, and lacking in many important tools. People still buy them for one main reason, they are the only thing that properly speaks AD and Exchange to interact with Windows desktops.
With open standards for AD and Exchange (among other protocols) many, many server rooms would move away from MS products until MS provided actual value for the cost. MS would have to fix their half-assed shit or actually lose market share in the server space, kind of like a free market, huh? I know the concept of OS's competing on features instead of lock-in seems strange and foreign to many people who buy them but a few of us feel it would actually be beneficial to the market.
With this judgement two things will happen in some combination. Consumers will switch to alternatives or MS will be forced to make a better product. Either way, consumers win.
Actually, you're barking up the wrong tree. I'm neither EU nor a Democrat. I'm a fundamentalist Christian Republican who voted Republican since Reagan, *but* has finally realized that he has been conned with -family values- rhetoric while the robber barons on the right-wing fringe of the Republican party have raped the country blind. That 32% and falling rating that Bush is getting is the fundamentalists realizing that they have been hoodwinked, and abandoning the party. Hopefully the Democrats will have the common sense ( a risky hope admittedly) to use this as a mandate to fix the *right* things. Put the Capital Gains tax up to 60% where it belongs, cut the parasitical military-industrial corporate welfare system in half, fix our schools, and socialize the medical system so everyone gets care. Of course it goes without saying that we should disband the comically incompetent Department of Good-ole-boy Security and open our borders. Say good bye to facism folks, we're about to clean out its last stronghold in the next couple of elections.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
When I first heard of the EU slamming M$ I was excited that someone finally did it, but it has turned into a farce. As much as M$ disgusts me I think the EU has over stepped its bounds. I think this is just the EU's way of America bashing. M$ is a big US company and the EU wants to take them down a notch.
The only thing stifling innovation in the EU is the consumers themselves. If the EU doesn't like M$, they should not #$%@ing buy it. I bet if the EU used all non M$ products it would be few short months before M$ was compatible with them and doing anything to win back the market. Just because the EU has not come up with a viable option to M$ doesn't mean they have the right to mold M$ into the product they want.
If you will excuse me, I believe sticking up for M$ has made me want to vomit.
~Kuazz
I don't think my logic is off here. Thats just my point. The fact is you have these politicans making technical decisions that they know nothing about.
This is the logical fallacy of "ad hominem attack."
Media Player was wrong and so is this.
This is a repeat of your "argument by association."
You haven't provided any logical reasons why you think this particular ruling will be ineffective. Stop wasting my time by avoiding the topic. Why do you think this particular punishment will not help in the way I described?
I'm for open standards just as much as the next guy. But arguing that a private company must comply with that belief is wrong.
I'm all for nonviolent resolution of problems, but trying to force convicted murderers to not illegally carrying concealed guns while on parole is just wrong.
What MS has done is against the law. This particular part of the punishment says they will stop breaking the law in this particular way. It isn't about open standards, it is about tying a product from a monopolized market with a product from a non-monopolized market. Ford can make tires and size they want with weird, proprietary ways to attach the rim to the rotor. If, however, they gain a monopoly on cars, they have to document that attachment and allow third parties to interoperate with it. Otherwise, they can just spread their monopoly into new monopolies, thus removing customer choice, competition, innovation, and all the other benefits of the free market. It is the law, and MS broke it, intentionally, under the belief that they would make more money doing so than obeying the law.
In theory, MS can comply with the law in another way, by removing all the secret interaction between their desktop and server completely. Just tear the functionality out of one of the products and they will be in compliance with the law, if not with their signed agreement for how they would stop breaking the law.
MS business practices have been shady to say the least but this is the wrong way to fix that.
They haven't been shady in this case, they have been blatantly illegal as ruled by numerous court systems. Ordering them to stop breaking the law is definitely the way to fix it.
Is this the logic? 1) MS makes a shitty / poor documented product. 2) Everyone buys it 3) Sue MS until they fix it 4) Make some cash in the process.
1) You're right so far. 2) Wrong. MS coerces many people into buying it, by tying it to their desktop system, which is a monopoly and no one can do business without. 3) This isn't a lawsuit. No one is being sued. This is committing a crime, criminal law, not civil. The courts don't sue you for murder. They convict you, as they did MS. 4) Fines are very nearly the only punishment that can be levied against corporations. They could order them broken up into separate companies, but this is a step in the right direction.
You seem to be very misinformed in numerous ways. You should do a little research on this case and on antitrust law (both what it is and why almost every country has it in similar form). MS has not been convicted of making shitty/ poorly documented products. They've been convicted of leveraging their monopoly on desktop OSs to make consumers buy those products, even though they are shitty. The basic purpose of anti-trust law is to stop companies from abusing monopolies in ways that obviously harm consumers and markets.
James Flynn of the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) about the value of the SMB information:
...these information are not kept secret because they are valuable, they are valuable because they are kept secret.
...die Informationen würden nicht geheim gehalten, weil sie wertvoll seien, sondern seien wertvoll, weil sie geheim gehalten werden.
Source in german from heise.de:
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
MS did not release SMB, it was an existing standard before their molopolistic practices broke it for everyone else. They also deliberately break projects like SAMBA by adjusting their implementation once SAMBA has caught up. If you bothered to read anything about SAMBA you would soon learn that the SAMBA team has to implement logic that is on contradictions with the protocol and MS's specifications, just to keep it operating with windows. Yes, this means they have to implement the same bugs as MS.
How can you develop a better protocol when there is a monolopy trying to block every move?
Don't forget Gates tried to kill TCP/IP with their own protocol. Fortunately for us and the Internet, he failed.
Gates is shit scared that once he is prevented from breaking rival products, he knows he'll lose ground in the server space, and with that, leaverage for other offerings.
It is not in the public interest to have any company behave in this manner. Laws are their to protect people, it's only in the last centuary or so that companies have become above the law (or so they think).
Erm ... actually, the fact that English is such a prevelent language is partially due to it being the linguistic equivilent of an open source product - there's never been a central body to regulate the English language, and thus it can take in a foreign word whenever it doesn't have a good word for what it is describing.
Contrast to French, which is like a proprietry language, regulated, kept French, as it were - I'm unsure about where the term "ordinateur" came from, but I'm sure that it's from the same body that one day decided that "email" wasn't an appopriate word for the French lanuage.
I'm sure that the inflexibility of French in these matters because of that, is part of why it isn't more popular internationally than it is now (granted, it's not exactly an obscure language and is rather widely used anyway, but we can all agree that it's been less sucessful than English!).
That was just a thought I was having, thinking about it again, the fact that English was the language of the British Empire and then America (who basically inherited world dominance) and English's verbal elasticity (can pronounce lots of sounds, and most words don't have inflections - so a word doesn't have to end in "um" or "a" or ... whatever ... or that weird thing that Japanese have where every word ends in a vowel.) probably has a lot more to do with its success than what I have been saying, but ... still.
Make of this what you will, a rather heavy deviation from the topic but ... eh.