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Possible Delays for Vista in Europe
tttonyyy writes "After Microsoft was hit with fines for anti-competitive behaviour in 2004 and 2006, it seems that the launch of Vista may be delayed in Europe. Microsoft is blaming this delay on a lack of guidelines from the European Commission. The Commission denies causing any delay, declaring that the impetus is not on them but on Microsoft to produce a product that conforms to the EU competition rules." Further,
The New York Times reports "Delaying the introduction in Europe, [members of the European Parliament] said in a letter made public by Microsoft on Thursday, 'would put European companies at a competitive disadvantage with every other company around the world who does have access to these new technologies.'"
Is it just me, or is it fucking ridiculous that you can't release a product because your competitors don't have "access to these new technologies?"
competitive disadvantage means one CEO of a Vista 0wn3d company distributing the holidays photos (packaged with a Vista gizmo) to his other Fortune500 colleagues and one of them not being able to see them because his company is based in europe and still runs that archaic OS called winXP. This of course ends up with a massive loss of kudos face to his colleagues. Now I call that **COMPETITIVE DISADVANTAGE**.
The argument is that they purposefully swindle their customers into using software that is designed to lock them into using a sole vendor [without otherwise good justification]. That they are abusing their POSITION as a large market share holder to FURTHER their lock in.
Arguing for MSFT is akin to saying "Yes MFST, release another product that I can't use as I choose, on the platform of my choosing with the tools of my choosing. I like being forced to use your tools, through out security and inefficiency problems because choice is bad."
They are not abusing shit, this has just been an easy way for the European governments to try and get a shitload of money out of Microsoft. MS is not FORCING any Europeans to use their tools, if you don't like the tools they have and the fact that they don't run on the platform of your choice then thats your problem. Stop using the damn software then.
There are no technical reasons why [for instance] the Office file formats are not well documented in the public. The *value* of Office is the connectivity and interface of the software. Not the file format. [hint: that's a big reason why people hate OpenOffice]. Releasing the file formats means that you can use third party tools to do things to your documents that you can't with Office [like edit them in GNU/Linux].
Yes, there are no technical reasons they are not publically documented but I don't think they should be forced to do so. It is THEIR software and I don't think they should be forced to "help out" other developers. I think it would great if they did decide to do that on their own but forcing them into it is downright ridiculous. The EU also needs to make things more clear for them, from what I have heard I agree with MS that the EU has not been clear.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
Intuit doesn't make an OS.
Sorry, I think I misunderstood your original point. So the issue is, MS doesn't make a version of the Windows OS that runs on top of a GNU/Linux OS? I thought you were saying they aren't real application (like Office, VS which you originally mentioned) providers because those applications aren't cross platform.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
If I worked in computer support I'd tell them they wanted Linux too. Nothing like the job security of being able to charge $50 every time they want to do virtually anything they used to do in windows!