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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.'"
A while back, in the early 90's there was a statistic being bandied about, how there were gonna be far more lawyers in this country than engineers. And I recall someone (my Dad, prolly) saying "Yeah, we wont be able to invent anything new but we sure will be able to sue each other over it." That's whats happening here.
No one will make the claim that MS has the best product out there for anything except maybe Office and Visual Studio. Certainly NOT the best OS available when rated by security or stability (especially when compared to price). The major reason a lot of people buy MS is because it's pushed at them by the preponderance of available software.
See, if Adobe and Symantec wanted to put an end to Microsoft's monopoly they could have a long time ago. They could have joined the LSB project, they could have contributed to OpenGL and OpenAL, they could have released commercially supported apps for Linux or BSD. They could have helped to bring free, open OS'es into the mainstream. Then they could not have been locked out at any level.
Instead they have more lawyers than engineers. Instead of producing a varied line of products and diversifying their business they depended on one line of income from th MS user base. Instead of helping the industry avoid this pitfall they sat back and did very little.
There are a lot of proverbs to quote here...
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
You get what you deserve.
Dont put all your eggs in one basket.
Here's the thing. It's not too late. Fire some lawyers, hire more engineers, and mostly STOP MAKING MS SOFTWARE. Support Novell or work out some sort of corporate alliance to co-brand a commercial distro of something open source. get off the MS playing field and take your ball with you.
That's a common mistake a lot of Mac suckers have, Windows XP is even more stable than MacOS X.. You also think you have a cool computer on your desk, but you don't... You think you can run all commercial software, but you can't.. And it is just as much a nightmare to administrate as Windows XP is.. And how much do you think you Paid for you MacOS X to keep it up to date.. You talk about MS continue to copy Apple's innovations, but apple doesn't have any innovations, all they have done up till know is steal other companies ideas and present them as their own (starting with the original MacOS and with the mouse, hell they even claimed it when they released the 2 button mouse a few years back) oh and don't think the i-Pod is an idea by apple.....