Slashdot Mirror
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. "
... I'm not sure that the markets are as worried about this as Slashdot readers are.
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
Once it gives over the information, 'Microsoft no longer has a stranglehold over the world's networks,' he said. "
Uh, we got to make up our minds here folks. Either Linux is prevalent in the server market or Microsoft has the stranglehold there too. You can't have it both ways...
MS just work it into the price of the OS, so the consumer ends up paying for it anyway. So it basically turns into a consumer tax on copies of Windows.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
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
You know, they could have said what the device was at the beginning of the quote, because when some geek type talks about the tiny device in the palm of their hand that may "emerge" if certain conditions are met, well, I just get the wrong impression....
FTA:
To achieve this so-called "interoperability," the Commission requires Microsoft to provide protocols--the rules of how to communicate between the so-called "client" computers and servers, and between the servers themselves.
But providing that information sweeps away Microsoft's intellectual-property rights, the company said.
"The Commission calls for functional equivalence," Microsoft lawyer Ian Forrester said, referring to the level of smoothness software needs to work well with Windows. "In order to achieve that, you have to go far beyond interoperability."
Possibly over-simplified and similar to the "Microsoft owns English" analogy, but if you invent a language, it's in your interest for people to speak it, so saying you're not going to teach people how to speak that language is like shooting yourself in the foot.
But I do like the quote from MS's lawyer about "the level of smoothness software needs to work well with Windows". :)
Just a minor correction but if everyone is communicating the same way, it does not make one platform have a stranglehold over the other. It merely means that they all are allowed to freely communicate.
For example, English could be considered an open standard and businesses from all over the world use the english language to communicate with each other regardless of who invented the language.
If English were proprietary and all businesses required it, every company that wanted to conduct business would have to pay a fee to whoever invented english.
Big diff.
Using your above statement within the metaphor, an open english language would not mean that China and Korea would instantly have an advantage in the market place over America (or England), it would just mean they would have equal footing to compete.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
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? 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. Flame on!
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
Have you followed the DOJ trial and the EU trial in any way? This case is crystal clear.
HTTP/1.1 400
I'm not usually on Microsoft's side but screw the EU on this one. This is a simple case of extortion. I mean there is no downside to fine a US company. They are fining MSFT just because they can and its somewhat fashionable to do so.
So let me get this straight, you think the EU is fining MS for intentionally breaking the law, after MS was judged guilty of doing the same thing by the US courts, because it is "fashionable?" MS broke and continues to break the law. The EU has a history of going after all sorts of companies both European and foreign for breaking antitrust law. To whine when they apply it to MS, means you probably have bought into some of MS's ridiculous propaganda.
Your nationalism is just moronic. You might as well go hang out with all the rednecks that think Americans should be above the law when visiting other countries.
If Microsoft don't like it, they can stop breaking the law.
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"
Bush illegally spying on us, Microsoft illegally marketing, what next, gas companies illegally price-gouging us? Is there no one we can trust?!
It's a girl!
It's actually good to see that Europe and the US can be sensible in this way about trade law.
Pining for the fjords
I don't buy any of Microsoft's bullshit but I still don't think this isn't going to help consumers anywhere.
.005% of consumers bought that version. Interesting, people in the EU really give a shit about this.
A Good example: The EU made Microsoft build a new version of XP without Media Player. I read something like
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.
Where open standards prevail, Linux has a sizable market share in server systems. Webservers, routers, etc, all work on open standards and there, Linux is for many the system of choice.
MS holds a grasp on the fileserver market for the simple reason that their clients, i.e. the systems that are dominant on the user end of a network, don't understand any network protocol but their own. And this is decidedly NOT an open standard.
That's where they have a stranglehold. And certainly not because their server system is superior to Linux. They simply have it because the client forces people to use a Server that is capable of delivering support for those "dumb terminals".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Illegal in the US is (fortunately) not (yet) automatically illegal over here. I'm far from defending MS, but using a verdict in the US as the foundation of one here could quickly backfire.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Problem is that so many of these 'standards' suck. Even our ubiquitous HTTP/1.1 standard has no automated test suite for clients or servers to tell developers 'Yes your client and/or server meets the HTTP/1.1 standard including WebDAV.'. Same thing with Samba, NFS, afs, etc... So we are all left with strange protocol handlers with exceptions for specific clients or obscure workarounds, and using the customers as beta test subjects.
--jeffk++
ipv6 is my vpn
Don't get me wrong, that's not supposed to be an attack on YOU when I say, you don't matter.
UNLESS you start to have a monopoly.
If your tool is so dominant in the market that it's virtually impossible for another company to actually compete with you, this is of course beneficial for you (hey, you could charge whatever you want, you could do whatever you want, and people would STILL have to buy your crap), but the general user base and the industry itself will suffer from it.
Private monopolies are by the standard capitalist definition something VERY, VERY bad. Competition is the driving engine of invention, of development and of progress. Without it, why try harder? Why invent? Why develop? Why put ANY effort into it?
Monopolies are the epitome of stagnancy. Where do you think we'd be today in CPU technology if AMD didn't exist? Intel would dominate the home computer market. Do you think we'd have CPUs like the dual core? Why should they invest so much time and effort into making our machines faster without a competetor that would take away their sales if they didn't?
I don't even want to imagine where we could be today with OSs if there was any meaningful desktop replacement for Windows. I might be curling up in a li'l ball and whimper in pain.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The BROKE THE LAW. Read the words. Not only EU law, but US law. It's not like it's opinion it's something that _has_ happened. The EU is not extorting anybody, it's simply following it's own (and many places') regulations to the letter.
Where in that can you POSSIBLY say the EU is moronic? It's (unlike microsoft) just following the rules!
PimTerry
"Youre so representtive of the idiocy that plagues 49% of the population her in the US and a much higher percentage of the population in the EU."
Yes he is, if idiocy by your terms equals difference of opinion.
"The basic themes of the Association of Useful Idiots of which you belong are as follows-
Bush is the root of all evil and is simultaneously a stupid man incapable of anything worthy while at the same time so brilliantly evil holds sway over all aspects of our lives."
Bush has done very much bad things in his time as president. The list is very long and he has succesfully made public opinion to sway from pro US after the 9/11 to a public disaster. Torturing innocent civilians isnt good for public relations abroad.
"The EU has anything on their agenda remotely resembling fairness other than whats really going on...rampant anti-americanism of which they pursue via litigation against very profitable american corporations since the EU cant influence and American election in spite of their boy George Soros investing millions. FU EU"
The EU is anything but anti-US. Most are big US fanboys and wouldnt let a staged trial pass without making a fuss.
"Microsoft occupies the position just below Bush on the evil scale regardless of the fact that they have made signifigant contributions furthering the cause of IT in spite of what its lame brained and leftist linux loving weasel critics say. Microsoft is evil to them handsdown and its ok for them (Microsoft cirtics) tp push their monopolistic agenda as the alternative, linux."
The only thing Microsoft has really added are salespoeple who could sell refridgerators to Antarctica. Name one technology you think stems from Microsoft or one product they havent copied.
"And then to throw in the USPTO as another one of Bush's evil conspircacies is just STUPID. That is a problem that has been brewing for years and you can blame that on one thing, lawyers."
This i can agree on. Its a stupid mistake done by former administrations also. "If our people patent it first the money and IP stays in the US" Too bad it hurts domestic companies even worse than it hurts companies abroad.
"Face it, your still smarting from 2000 and 2004, even if your a EU'bee. Guess what, get ready for more pain in 2008 and please keep it (idiotic rhetoric) coming, people like you help the cause more than they know!"
The TV is what helps the cause. Hopefully more people will find the internet and see for themselves how incredibly biased the US media really are.
"P.S. The EU has balls...just a little reminder, the countries that make up the EU were the same ones that rolled over for the Nazis with the exception of the UK..the EU is the last place you'll find balls, unless your in Amsterdam of course!"
You should sue your history teacher for malpractice. Germany won because of very good strategies and military supremacy.
HTTP/1.1 400
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
The bundling of Media Player was worldwide, including in the US where similar bundling was already found illegal. Therefore there is evidence that Microsoft was willingly in violation of some law in some country. Willfulness makes Microsoft looks like acting in bad faith and may discredit some of Microsoft's arguments.
IANAL
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.
"we were working with the GINA in the NT 4.0 days"
Was that the Veteran's Administration GINA?
You know, the VA GINA?
MjM
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Sure they are following the rules they they set. Really tough to do that...
I think you're a little unclear on the concept of "rule by law." It's not like the people who convicted and are responsible for overseeing MS's punishment had anything to do with passing the laws under which they were convicted. Anthropomorphizing the EU is absurd.
How does the US Law have anything to do with this??
Because the US, the EU, and almost every other country in the world has laws that make what MS did a crime. You can't complain that the EU is unfairly punishing MS by selective application of the law any more than you can complain when they convict someone of murder. Both murder and anti-trust tying are illegal almost everywhere. The EU enforces laws prohibit both offenses both against native residents and foreigners regularly. It is doubly hypocritical to make such a claim when they have been convicted in the US of the same offense.
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/
Its impossible to compete with someone who has precense in almost every network out there without good support for that companies products. The first thing people ask is "will it work with my existing network?" The second is "will i be able to talk to the outside world?". This is regardless if your own product is much better than Microsofts because frankly, there has been plenty of better products out there that has fallen flat on their noses because of lack of support for MS protocols.
About SMB, it was not "innovated" by Microsoft in any way. The thing people want is the alterations that made it incomatible with CIFS wich is the real implementation Microsoft got SMB from.
HTTP/1.1 400
Your faith in the good intentions of the EU Commission is likewise moronic. It is simply fortunate that our goal (of getting MS to open their protocols) is temporarily aligned with the goal of the Commission (extortion).
I think you are greatly oversimplifying the goals of the EU commission. None of them personally get any of this money you know. They are motivated by a desire to do their job well enough so that they stand a chance of promotion, by a desire to do the right thing, by political motivations to get funding and to bloody the nose of American corporate crime. At a very basic level they are motivated to enforce the law in such a way as to demonstrate that it has authority and power, so that others do not challenge the authority of the courts and the EU, or ignore the laws it enforces.
Now I'm not naive enough to believe that all the EU representatives want only to "do the right thing" and help people by correctly and impartially applying the law. Neither, however, am I willing to anthropomorphize the EU as some sort of greedy, extortionist. The whole point of "rule by law" is that it does not matter so much what the personal motivations of the people involved are, so long as the laws are applied and enforced the result will be relatively impartial and for the good of the people as their law making process provides. And I agree whole-heartedly with anti-trust laws like this. They are necessary and beneficial. The EU is applying the law properly and MS has obviously broken the law. However jaded you might be, this is a case of the system slowly but properly working (so far).
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).
"After reading a little about the case, my understanding was that the commission is asking Microsoft to publicize their protocol standards so that it encourages competition. As my understanding goes, competition is not based on knowing how your opponent does what he/she does; it is based on if you can do better than your opponent."
Well, the first sentence is accurate, so I assume the second one, about your understanding, is as well.
The problem is in your understanding.
If I have a monopoly, and in order for you to conduct business in this particular field, you HAVE to conduct business using my tools, and I REFUSE to provide those tools, then I am using my monopoly to prevent you from conducting business in this particular field.
We're not talking about somebody trying to write an OS to replace Windows, we're talking about someone trying to write Microsoft Networking compatible software in order to provide "network appliances", which have no real direct user interface at all. Microsoft doesn't make money by selling enterprise disk space on a netowrk, but they DO make money by selling the OS to run a server where that disk space can be hosted.
By refusing to provide the protocol definition, they are preventing people from competing with the companies that sell servers, ensuring additional sales of the Microsoft Server OS as a side effect.
They are generating extra income for themselves by preventing new products that do not compete in their direct territory from existing.
Microsoft is destroying competition for the hardware vendors that purchase the Microsoft OS.
This is not the only exmaple of what is going on, but it is the situation described in the articel in question.
Youre so representtive[sic] of the idiocy that plagues 49% of the population her[sic] in the US and a much higher percentage of the population in the EU.
If you want to go off on a rant about how some group of people are a bunch of idiots, perhaps you should try not to make quite so many elementary grammar and spelling errors. It makes your arguments rather comical. Further trying to group "49% of the population her[sic] in the US and a much higher percentage of the population in the EU" as having one set of beliefs as annotated in the rest of your post is just sad. People don't have homogeneous beliefs systems and your arguments smack of the classic fallacy, because you state A, I'll assume you also believe B, C, and D and since C is absurd you and all your statement must be wrong. Why aren't logic and rhetoric taught in schools anymore? The Greeks and Romans mocked people who tried to make these sort of illogical statements thousands of years ago. How long does it take for them to become mainstream again?
Now maybe you're just trolling here and I've fallen for it. If so, good job. If not though, please please please read a book on logic and rhetoric and perhaps one on critical thinking. Some of the points you make are more or less correct while others are infantile. Whether you are parroting the speaking points of others or honestly have such a fragmented world look, all you are doing here is embarrassing yourself.
After reading a little about the case, my understanding was that the commission is asking Microsoft to publicize their protocol standards so that it encourages competition. As my understanding goes, competition is not based on knowing how your opponent does what he/she does; it is based on if you can do better than your opponent.
What you are missing is an understanding of anti-trust law. You're looking too much at the specifics and not enough at the law and the reason for the law. You should read up on anti-trust law if you want to truly understand the topic.
Here is a short and dirty explanation. In most jurisdiction it is legal to have a monopoly. Whether the monopoly comes about because you make an innovative new product, or the nature of the industry, or geography, or some combination does not matter. Having gained a monopoly, you have done nothing illegal (necessarily). Once you have a monopoly, however, the law restricts you from using that monopoly in such a way as to gain an unfair advantage in another market. My stock explanations almost always involve cheese for some reason. Say you gain a monopoly on televisions; all well and good and legal. Now you decide, I think "I want to open a business that sells cheese as well. Since everyone has to buy a television from me or go without (I have a monopoly) why don't I just raise the price on TV's $3500 and give away a free lifetime supply of my cheese with it." It's brilliant! The cheese need not be as good as the competition, nor do I have to be able to make it cheaper. People will buy it anyway, because they want TVs. And what of other cheese sellers? Most will go out of business.
What happened in the above situation? The new cheese seller did not innovate better or cheaper cheese. In fact they might have more expensive and less tasty cheese. Still they have taken over a market. What happened is they used bundling to to bypass all the benefits (innovation, lower prices, etc.) that are brought about by the free market. Worse, there is nothing stopping them from parleying each of their two monopolies into yet more monopolies. People realized this was a bad thing long ago, and simply passed laws preventing it, for the good of consumers and the state of the industries.
Moving right along, we come to tying. What if, instead of bundling the two products together (like cheese and televisions) we just tied it to another product. Say we made all the TVs detect anything in between them and the cable TV and stop working if they found something. And then we added a special (patented) connector to the TV that hooked up to a VCR. Since only our VCRs worked, we'd quickly own the VCR market as well as the TV market. Maybe that would be too unsubtle. What if, instead we used a secret, encrypted protocol for the remote control, so people who bought VCRs from other people had to have two remotes, while ours only needed one. And in addition, what if we added a special connector that plugged into our new telephones and turned the TV volume down when you picked up the phone (but only our brand of phones). Well, we wouldn't take over the markets right away, but we would have an advantage over our competitors. And maybe we could sell cheap and crappy phones and VCRs at higher prices, since we were the only ones that worked with the TV that easily. Is there anything wrong with that?
According to the law in almost every country, yes. Consumers should not have to pay more and use crappier phones and VCRs just to gain the benefits of having them interoperate with TVs.
MS is not tying TVs and VCRs. They are tying their desktop OS (monopoly) with their server OS (which is gaining market share and selling well). Their server OS is slower, multitasks more poorly, is more expensive, is less secure, is less stable, and lacks a number of very useful features other server products have. People still buy it though, because it is tied to the desktop OS monopoly by being the only server that can speak the secret AD and Exchange protocols.
Please note that at no point was Microsoft ever required to give out sourcecode. It was required to publish an API.
It was Microsoft itself that offered sourcecode (with licensing strings attached) just so it wouldn't have to publish the API specification. And perhaps also to confuse the issue ... so that half-informed people could make snide remarks about poor Microsoft being required to hand over their precious IP.
But ... it seems that the EU has a healthy respect for the ability of US courts so determine matters of fact (as opposed to matters of law), which doesn't seem stupid at all.
If a US court, after about 3 years of discovery, expert witnesses taking the stand on both sides, concludes (as judge Jackson did) among other things that Microsoft:
- had a monopoly on desktop operating systems
- used this monopoly to prevent new entrants from entering the market
- lied in court when it stated that IE was needed for Windows to function (remember that video that was supposed to show Windows crashing after you removed IE? The video that was doctored to show the desired effect? Now I think that any ordinary person would have been prosecuted for perjury for pulling something like that, but apparently a company can get away with it.)
And if you further note that none of these findings were overturned on appeal ... then I believe it makes sense for a body such as the EU to take heed of it. And apparently the EU thought so too. How is this bad? What exactly is your complaint?
Inasmuch as I would love to believe that this is going to happen, I have to say that I have completely lost faith in the American. The fact that pro-Bush polls are 32% still, the fact that America voted him back in 2004 after all of his atrocities before then, and all the atrocities that he has committed since then....I cannot accept.
I feel defeated, worthless, helpless. The family and friends that claim to be Republican are blind to anything that the party and it's leaders do, just as long as they can hold onto the hope that abortion might get overturned someday. Never mind that countless thousands of people are tortured or murdered for corrupt foreign investment opportunities, "if Bush wasn't there, the gays could get married and we'd never overturn abortion".
When will the evangelical/fundamentalist right wake up, and realize that the favors they're trying to call in aren't working out. Yes, you amassed and put up with his bullshit, and all of his charade of cabinet leaders and their corporate influence. But, now you're finally starting to see the fruit of your ill-advised vote, and the real atrocities are starting to pour out more and more.
So yes, even though I hate to say it, I don't see the end coming soon, if ever. It would serve the fundy/evangelicals right if the government suffered a severe meltdown during the next term (which I am seeing as more of a possibility more and more all the time). Then, history could finally point and laugh at the monumental stupidity that people are willing to exhibit to try and get their religious agendas fulfilled.
Just another disillusioned American/slashdotter....
Read the only personal Runyon page out there.
The Commission is delving deeply into the technical issues surrounding the case.
Oh, that is bad news for Microsoft. Its success in persuading people to do what it wants has always depended on their not understanding the technology very well.
Put the Capital Gains tax up to 60% where it belongs
Are you kidding me? You don't fix the country by taxing the people MORE. Who do you think pays the difference between 15% (now) and the 60% you propose?
It's us! Guys/gals like you and I. Along with the "fat cats" you want to slaughter, you take out a lot of people. If you own ANY stocks or have (almost) ANY retirement fund of ANY kind, then you are affected. And you want to take an extra 45% of MY money?
Things certainly need fixed. But this is NOT the way to do it. Find something else.
There were 2 main replies to my post:
- one stating that in all probability the protocol wasn't so much designed as "grown"
- on stating that this is the normal industry practice for evolving software: "Rather, normal industry practice is that specifications for such a system are developed and enhanced on an ongoing basis in an iterative process through interaction with engineers skilled in the relevant art and who actually use the specifications" (source: the "Broy" report, written by Prof Broy of the Technische Universität München)
This seems to point in the same direction as the parent post, namely that Microsoft honestly doesn't have a protocol specification for its client-server communication.
The next question is of course: does this get them off the hook? Is it sufficient for them to offer licenses for source-code that allows interoperability? The answer to this question can be "yes" or "no".
(1) Assume the answer is "no", it doesn't get them off the hook. Then the implication is that a software firm with a monopoly must always expect to be required to go the extra mile and produce interface specifications for its software ... even if its rivals aren't required to do so. Do I sense an iniquity?
(2) Assume the answer is "yes" it does get them off the hook. Then the implication is that any software monopolist can deny others interoperability with its systems with impunity ... all it has to do is to not document the API, so that the source code is the only avalable documentation. In other words ... kiss goodbye to any "fair competition laws" in the software field since they can be easily circumvented.
Neither option seems attractive, but on balance I think that in this case option (1) is the lesser of the two evils. We need a functioning market (as protected by fair competition laws) more than we need the absence of iniquity for all players.
In short, as the consumer has already committed to the choice, the provider is leveraging the committment. So, why doesn't the consumer make a different choice? Cos' I really doubt if the provider can directly stop the consumer from making a different choice. As for the indirect influence, the consumer handed over the whip to the provider, hence, he/she has to bear the consequence.
Continuing on the cheese example, the situation is that the consumer knew it was crappy cheese but found it useful (this may not match with the analogy), hence, they became comfortable in using the crappy cheese. Now, when the TV maker decided to change the flavor of the cheese, the baker who was buying TV from TV maker is complaining about the cheese! Well, the purpose of buying a TV was not to buy condiments to run a bakery. So, I think the complaint is groundless.
A more primitive example is that Harry sells Pete all of the land that surrounds Harry's house, i.e. there is not path to Harry's house without going through the Pete's land. Then Harry whines that Pete is charging Harry to move through Pete's lands to get to Harry's house. Now, if Harry and Pete had agreed that Harry will be able to use Pete's lands to reach Harry's house when they transacted, then it is a violation of the anti-trust law. If not, then it is Harry's complacency that led him to his predicament. Further, if Harry and Pete did not agree on the amount of space that will be available to reach Harry's house and eventually Pete only provides enough space for only a single person reach the house, then once again it is Harry's fault and not Pete's.
As for the anti-trust law, the consumers should have complained 10+ years ago about the bundling (including SMB) into Windows with increased cost. I am sure none did as it was not a problem then, but they are complaining now because they don't want to bear responsibilities for their actions (hence, losses) but rather want MS to bear the losses. I would agree that this would be fair claim if MS has made a promise about the state of the items in the bundle in their present and future releases. No such thing ever happened. I doubt if EULA provides such protection to the consumer.
For me a competition is fair when I have the same freedom to develop a software as the opponent. Now if I choose to develop a software that depends on the software of my competitor, I think it is only proper to procure rights to this dependent software or choose an alternatre solution to solve the same problem. Independent of the reason, it is incorrect to infringe the a competitor's rights because it may be our rights that may be at stake in the future.
- Venkatesh Prasad Ranganath
So, who is responsible for supporting a product in a given environment? Is it the product vendor or the environment vendor? It is clearly the product vendor.
:-) )
May be the product vendor can function better if the environment vendor cooperated. Since there is no legally binding agreement between the vendors, I don't see a reason for the cooperation (except for the general good).
I stand corrected about attributing the innovation of SMB to MS.
As for the changes that made it incompatible to CIFS, why doesn't the commission buy the technology from MS? Have they even tried it? Cos' I'm sure MS would have spent time and resource on developing the technology (changes) and would like to benefit from it as its competitors. Instead the commission is forcing MS to release the changes and blatantly stealing propreitary information. (It is surprising that the western world harps about IP infringement in East Asia but condones the same in such cases -- this is for another day
I think this case is not about consumer rights or public good. It is more of a showcase to ascertain the commissions stand in Europe via bullying and, unfortunately, MS is the scape goat.
A more interesting and important question is "will the commission/governments not do the same to any other commercial and/or open source software organization?" I think this is certainly a possibility. Isn't this what happened in the Apple vs France case -- infringe rights in the name of interoperability? Now, what would happen if the creative and innovative companies like MS and Apple shutdown? Who would be at loss? Would it be the consumers or the companies?
Just because the creator benefit from the creation and the consumer, it would be naive to think that the consumer is the king. Without the creators, the king would be living an undeveloped wasteland.
- Venkatesh Prasad Ranganath
That's why monopolies are bad for competition.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I got as far as this bit,
and had to stop becauseI am wonder-struck by the fact that the /. lameness filter didn't pick this one up. After all it is a very lame (but very, very long and very, very boring) defense of a company which is quite simply in contempt of court and, if its actions are any indication, is seeking to prove that it's above the law. Ah yes, some of the words of the song come back to me now "if my aunt had testicles, she'd be my uncle...tum tee tum". Is the parent post a specimen of what is called astro-turfing ? Or is it just a rather pathetic attempt to get some brownie points from Uncle Bill - the lame Indian's friend ?
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
"Just because the creator benefit from the creation and the consumer, it would be naive to think that the consumer is the king. Without the creators, the king would be living an undeveloped wasteland."
Well, there is this thing called Open Source where the users are its creators. Rest assured that there wouldnt be no wasteland.
HTTP/1.1 400
If consumers wanted Linux based PC, then there will be some vendor who will cater it -- supply and demand. The issue is that consumers don't make the Linux choice for various reasons.
Supply and demand does not apply when dealing with a monopoly. It is one of the aspects of the market that is bypassed. For example, I have personally signed off on machine orders for hundreds of towers, all of which would be running Linux or OpenBSD. That order included hundreds of Windows licenses, because the major OEMs have been coerced into shipping only machines with Windows on them. That is hundreds of licenses unused, but money paid to MS for them. In larger companies it is much worse. Almost all major corporations by a corporate license which they use on all their machines, each of which already shipped to them with a regular Windows license included. The market is not demanding machines with Windows licenses that will never be used, but that is what it is getting.
Do you want to know why? MS has a monopoly on the desktop. Basically, no major computer retailer can afford not to sell Windows machines. The market is locked in in a huge number of ways. Several courts have ruled this to be true now. This means all the computer retailers must deal with MS for their licenses, which make up an ever larger portion of each sale. Now given that this is a very price sensitive and commoditized market, the company that succeeds is the one with the lowest price. MS has variable pricing. You don't just buy licenses from MS, you negotiate to try to get the lowest price from them. One major requirement to not be paying twice as much as your competitors is, don't ship any machines without Windows on them. Thus, they use their monopoly to create an illegal barrier to entry, despite the demands of the market.
In short, as the consumer has already committed to the choice, the provider is leveraging the committment. So, why doesn't the consumer make a different choice?
I think you're oversimplifying. The point of a monopoly is that companies have no other choice. Whether you agree with it or not, the courts have found that most consumers have no choice but to buy Windows for the desktop. They need it to interoperate with file formats, it is the only option available in pretty much all stores, it is the only option you can purchase in bulk from Dell for your company. If you are using desktop computers, there are many things locking you into Windows, including the availability of software you need for some given task.
Given that ruling, and reality, the best choice for many consumers of servers is to buy Windows server because of the fact that it is illegally tied to the desktop (with which they must interoperate). If that tying did not exist then the best choice would probably be a different server OS. Companies go with Windows server because it is the best solution for them, but that is only the case because of MS's illegal behavior.
Continuing on the cheese example, the situation is that the consumer knew it was crappy cheese but found it useful (this may not match with the analogy), hence, they became comfortable in using the crappy cheese.
Ahh, but here's why the free market has failed... the cheese doesn't have to be as good, it just has to be "good enough" that consumers won't throw it away and buy cheese from somewhere else. And even if they do, they've already paid for it. Right now some users throw away IE and install Firefox, paying the very small price of the download bandwidth and time and looking at ads for a second browser. Most users, however, find IE "good enough" and don't pay a second time (having already paid for IE as part of the cost of Windows). The result, 85% of users use an inferior browser. Thus consumers have greatly suffered.
Now, when the TV maker decided to change the flavor of the cheese, the baker who was buying TV from TV maker is complaining about the cheese! Well, the purpose of buying a TV was not to buy condiments to run a bakery. So, I think the complaint is groundless.
You miss the point. The baker was forced to buy the cheese in order to get a TV. He paid for it, even though it is sub-par and now, he can't afford to pay again. He especially can't afford to pay again because the only cheese sellers left are very small and expensive specialty cheeses, since all the normal grade cheese sellers were driven out of business.
Forcing consumers to pay twice in a destroyed market, is not a good solution, compared to just banning the monopolist from ruining the market in the first place.
A more primitive example is that Harry sells Pete all of the land that surrounds Harry's house...
At this point your analogy is already critically flawed. You're talking about individuals, not markets. Yesterday some kid turned 18 and gained all the rights of an adult. He rents and apartment and goes to buy a workstation and server to start his own small business and become a big success. Due to the decisions of those who came before him, he has to buy a Windows desktop in order to run the software he needs. That is no fault of his own. The decisions were made by others long before he had any ability to make decisions. His choice of server to go with it is now encumbered by the fact that it has to work with his desktop. The best solution for him as an individual might be to buy a Windows server, but that is only true because of the illegal tying. Thus he buys what would otherwise be the inferior machine. MS's market share increases and they move towards having a monopoly on the server space as well... and so on into other markets.
As for the anti-trust law, the consumers should have complained 10+ years ago about the bundling (including SMB) into Windows with increased cost. I am sure none did as it was
There are two rulings at issue. First they were ordered to produce documentation. They attempted to comply. Second their documentation was ruled to be inadquate and they were fined. It is this second ruling that is being appealed.
The difficulties of producing the documentation speak about the harshness of the penalty. The harder it is to produce documentation, the more burdensome the penalty of being ordered to produce it. This is relevant to the first ruling and was presumably resolved in the appeals to the original 2004 ruling.
Now that Microsoft are experiencing difficulty complying with the first ruling they are asking the court to revisit the penalty. One can see how a court, hearing an appeal on the second ruling, might listen to evidence that new and unexpected difficulties had arisen in attempting to comply with the penalty. The court might be persuaded to revisit the penalty.
One the other hand, evidence that the likely burden imposed by the penalty was known at the time at which the penalty was imposed and was available to the appeals to the first ruling will dissuade the court from revisiting the issue in the appeal to the second ruling. The court is likely to say that the issue of the appropriateness of the penalty is already decided and concern itself solely with whether of not Microsoft has complied.
The standard by which Prof. Broy is judging Microsoft is the normal industry standard for the quality of information in these circumstances: A company makes two products that talk to each other using a protocol and the customer wishes to buy one product from the company and the other from a third party. That is to say, Professor Broy has answered affirmatively to the question "Did Microsofts efforts reach the level of being grudging and inadequate."
I do not see how Prof. Broy's report is going to help Microsoft in court. The Judge must have heard in evidence that computer software is often let down by poor documentation. Producing documentation is a cost and companies will skimp as much as the market place permits. He will expect to hear that in response to a court order the company made a special effort to produce documentation the way it is supposed to be done, as taught in academic courses on software engineering. The judge might conclude that normal industry standards are what the company would have done anyway and understand Prof. Broy's evidence as saying that Microsoft made no effort to comply with the court order.
So, you do agree the market has locked in. And this is by choice of the market not because of MS (yes, MS may have twisted the arm in the deal, but the market still had a choice). Hence, it is the markets fault not MSs.
"Markets" don't make choices. Individuals within markets do. Players within a market who don't play by the rules (AKA laws). By your logic, just because the mafia held a gun to your head and forced you to buy a particular brand, you still had a choice. You could have stuck to your principals and died and then they would not have been able to dominate. It is all "the market's fault" because people weren't willing to die.
MS broke the law. The EU convicted them of it. What's the problem?
law requires a retailer to sell the machine with some O/S
Wherever did you get this idea from? It is not true in the US, or anywhere else I know of except China. MS is the one that keeps retailers from selling OS-less computers to big business.
Also, I don't think this case is about bundling of software with the PC or bundling of the browser with the OS. It is more about competitors using the government to bite into the market share of the leader.
You're wrong in both cases. This particular case is about tying, not bundling. It is about competitors demanding various governments enforce the law evenly and protect the free market. MS only exists because the US government enforced anti-trust law against IBM and prevented them from leveraging their monopoly to dominate the PC market. For them or you to complain because the UE is now enforcing the very same laws to stop them from ruining the market is just hypocritical nonsense.
You have nothing else to criticise[sic] so you resort to semantical[sic] nonsense and critcise[sic] my spelling and grammar of which is rushed since I am at work and suck at typing!
I have plenty of other things to criticize; and I did. I just though I'd point out you are unlikely to be taken seriously when your spelling and grammar is worse than the average high school drop-out.
Let me clue you in, I do agree, generallizing[sic] populations is rarely something I would agree on but when it comes to BUSH[sic], its[sic] unamimous[sic].
The actions the US have taken during Bush's presidency have certainly increased the already present dislike for the US in many locations, created it in places it did not before exist, and has driven a number of people to a level of hatred that is significant. That does not mean you can assume any person who dislikes some actions of Bush, or the US government holds all the viewpoint you listed and attributed to them. You were generalizing and without cause.
It is also obvious to me that my perception on the EU is correct... the bias emmanating[sic] from the EU.
This entire sentence has no meaning. Europeans are biased against a person who does things they dislike? Of course they are and they should be; otherwise they would have a mental illness.
I truly believe we have entered and age of rampant anti-americanism...
Yeah, people do tend to dislike you when you repeatedly fuck them over, bully, and kill people for profit and to further domestic political agendas.
MS is breaking the law, very blatantly and deserve to be punished for it. Even the US government agreed with that. Boeing, on the other hand, is not being litigated against, but rather is part of a battle between the EU and US where both want to unfairly subsidize their domestic airline production in order to bolster their technological capabilities. To be fair, I believe the US was the first to violate our treaty on this matter.
We are not only engaged in a war on terror...
Please stop parroting that absurd rhetoric. You can't wage a war against a basic human emotion. You can't wage a war against 500 guys with bombs, and little relation to one another other than their hatred of what the US has done. You can't wage war against how upset people are by what the US has done. "Terrorists" are not now, and never have been a serious threat on the scale of a war, especially foreign "terrorists." Strictly speaking, the US army is the largest terrorist organization I know of. Remember the "shock and awe" campaign. It could just as easily be called the "incite terror" campaign. The whole "terrorist threat" is just a win-win for those running the US government and foreign religious radicals. Religious fanatics get a huge jump in recruiting and the US to alienate an entire religion. US official get an excuse to grab more power from the people and draw attention away from their corruption. Foreign "terrorists" have killed fewer people total than accidentally drown in the bathtub every year. Why don't we wage a "war on bathtubs."
Please spare me. The US citizens invested in large multinationals to a significant degree make up a tiny portion of the US about equal to the number of foreigners who own stock. These "american" companies are not american, they are multinationals. They aren't supporting the US, they're supporting themselves.
All litigation against american corps is the last tool the EU...
Yeah, how dare they enforce the laws, especially when they are the same laws we convicted that company of breaking. Those sneaky bastards!
You are just spouting uninforme