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Software Makers Lobby EU Against Microsoft
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Adobe and Symantec are lobbying EU regulators for action against Vista, the Wall Street Journal reports. Adobe is calling for Microsoft to be barred from building into the OS free software that competes with Acrobat. From the article: 'Adobe and Symantec have told EU regulators that Vista has put them squarely in Microsoft's cross hairs. Symantec is concerned that Vista will direct consumers toward a Microsoft-designed security console, or box that shows what level various security functions, such as an Internet firewall, are set on. The rival company wants to be able automatically to override the Microsoft template with its own design and features, as it has been allowed to do in the past.'"
"The things Apple continually receives praise for and advertises about, included applications and higher security, Microsoft gets sued over. Yeah, that's fair"
When you are deemed a monopoly, you have to play by different legal rules.
-- You need a license to write to a PDF format.
This is incorrect. Adobe says you can freely write software that will create PDF format documents as long as you don't break the spec and give them copyright credit on it.
disk? hmmm... I know I saw it somewhere...
Microsoft is not integrating its own PDF creation software into Vista. Microsoft is building software into Vista that reads and writes a Microsoft-created file format called XML Paper Specification (XPS). This is what Adobe is protesting. Adobe would prefer that it was PDF.
Adobe made PDF a standard because it was counting on people integrating it into their apps. What Adobe wasn't counting on is Microsoft coming along and saying, "Screw that, we don't want your standard."
Either way, it still sounds like sour grapes to me.
Breakfast served all day!
And apparently I'm also free to pay for these bundled apps as well. Now tell me why I should pay for Windows Vista + MS Defender and then just not use Defender and but and install Norton? I've already paid for MS Defender why would I buy Norton too?
This is Netscape all over again. What Symantec is complaining about is that Windows Defender will be installed automatically. If someone installs Norton, Norton will have to disable Windows Defender. Now Windows defender is going to report that "virus protection is disabled". This will make users think that their system isn't being protected anymore and will complain that Norton isn't working.
MS can't have it both ways. If windows Defender is a seperate product then it should be sold as seperate product. If its a part of windows then it should behave the same as the current XP security center behaves. That is when you install Norton or whatever then the security center tells the user that the system is being protected by Norton and give you its config options.
MS is basically arguing that Windows defender isn't like the XP security center in that its a separate product so they shouldn't have to allow other companies to alter it. But if its a seperate product why can't it be seperated from windows and sold on its own?
Break what law?
The Sherman Antitrust act in the US. I'm not sure what the antitrust law in the EU is called.
PDF is an open format.
Yes, it is. What is your point and what does that have to do with MS bundling a competing format?
LOL!!! Edumacate urself!!!
Umm, did you miss your meds today? Take a deep breath and sit down for a while. Maybe later you'll be able to handle reality.
There are always undocumented "feature".
As for any API, Win32 is the external layer of an onion. The internal layers are also organised sometimes in smaller private "APIs". Most of the time you don't see them and you cannot access them (eg: statically linked) but with in specific area you can call undocumented private function by selecting an entry in a dll or by updating some undocumented memory structure.
Needless to say that those function are highly susceptible to change from one security fix/patch to another, however in mature area a lot of them are stable and didn't change since a long long time.
Have a look at how rootkits are implemented. A lot of them use some sort of undocummented "API" at some point.
It seems crazy that a dispute between two US companies is being settled due to EU law. The US has very similar laws in this area, yet the DOJ has proven that they are doing nothing useful about curbing MS.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
If Microsoft generates PDF's then they will be readable on lots of OS'es with any PDF reader software.
First, we have no real guarantee they won't intentionally break PDF the same way they intentionally break HTML. Second, I believe the previous poster was referring to XPS, MS's proprietary, patented, closed competitor to PDF, which they are planning on bundling with Vista.
Either way, you seems very upset abotu things that are not real.
Nope, you're just not as informed as the previous poster.