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Evidence Surfaces That MS Violated 2002 Judgement
whoever57 writes "In the Comes Vs. Microsoft case, the plaintiffs believe they have found evidence that Microsoft has failed to fully disclose APIs to competitors. If true, this would mean that Microsoft has violated the 2002 judgement. This information has become available since the plaintiffs have obtained an order allowing them to disclose Microsoft's alleged misbehavior to the DOJ ('appropriate enforcement and compliance authorities')."
So by my reading, they've been given the right to talk to the DoJ about something they have found that may or may not prove that they have broken the law? It'll be interesting to see how this pans out, but I'll be waiting for the next story along in this chain before I start jumping to conclusions.
I'm sure someone else here will do that for me.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
A convicted monopolist can't change it's spots overnight, no matter what anyone might think.
Think about it logically, a business that big needs time to change, we are not 10 people sitting in a room here...
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
If the allegations are true, and it turns out that MS might somehow not be the shining beacon of Justice and Honour that we've come to regard it as (okay, I'll cut the sarcasm now), what is the worst that will happen to MS? And are they really concerned...ever?
I'd rather we skip the monetary fines that are becoming meaningless and go for revocation of patents. Can you imagine if MS had it's patents revoked and switched to a free-for-all? That would be nice... Ah, to dream.
If this is true, we shall be very angry!
And we shall write a letter, TELLING you how angry we are!
-- http://frobnosticate.com
In two more years, evidence of this might actually get somewhere with the DoJ. However, please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it still entirely controlled by the exact same administration that let Microsoft off in the first place?
Now, if Congress could somehow manage to get involved, that might make some difference...
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Based on a reading of the email offered as 'evidence' of this transgression, it occurred in 1992, 10 years before the settlement! So this is old evidence of a 'transgression' that allegedly occurred before the settlement. It is NOT evidence of a transgression that occurred AFTER the settlement. So it may not be 'new news' by any measure. Nothing to see, just a wookie, keep moving!
Free markets and specilizations work, when large systems are broken into simpler components, the performance metrics and interface details are specified by a neutral standard that do not play favourites. Does the consumer really know the vicosity vs temperature profile of 10W-40 and 5W-40? They dont know, they dont care. The IC engine manufacturers and the lubricant oil manufacturer know it. All the rest only care about the spec name. Free market takes care of the rest and provides us with the cheapest engine oil taking advantage of all economies of scale etc.
If GM could make its cars accept only GM engine oil and keeps the spec secret and the competition out, it will do it. But it is the consumers who would refuse to buy such cars and force GM to disclose the lubricant requirements for its IC engines. If consumers are willing to buy such "closed" cars from GM, could the courts or the govt do anything to change it? The can try. But they will never be able to reach the same level of efficiency the free market does.
So dont just blame MS, blame the consumers too. All the tech columnists who should be educating the public about these things are talking fluff about the latest and greatest gadgets and widgets in trade shows. Blame them too. Slashdotters who know these things better talk to the other consumers as though they are complete idiots, creating a backlash against nerds/geeks etc. People buy MS blindly because they are not fully informed. Not because they are idiots willing to fork over their money to a large corporation without asking questions. Only educated consumers can break the monopoly. It is our duty to educate them without insulting them.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
There is such a thing as bad publicity. Bad publicity is only good publicity if it's getting an unknown name into the news. There isn't anyone reading this who hasn't heard much about that Microsoft-thing.
do you know squarepusher?
Actually, if any Slashdot "Editors" read the actual document, you'd see that the document is actually favorable, and says that MS is making good headway with documenting and hand-holding their competitors. The document says that MS has somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 people working to get this documentation done, and that there have been no substantive complaints about MS's compliance.
Read The Fucking Article, Slashdot editors.
Eh? You think that's nothing do you?
You can do all kinds of ethically questionable things within the law. You can delay justice, you can even thwart it. But the one thing you can't do, the stupidest possible thing to try, is to sashay into a court and spit in the judge's eye. They won't stand for it. Nor will they stand for you doing it to to another judge, even another judge they despise and disagree with.
Defying any court is defying the authority of every court. Judicial power is a judge's basic stock in trade. If you willfuly undermine that, you'll find the judge putting judicial restraint up on the shelf and taking down the can of legal whupass. They don't like doing that. If there is a loophole, if it can be argued to be an honest mistake, maybe they'll turn the screw just one or two turns tighter. But once it becomes clear you think you are beyond the power of the court to restrain, the judge will introduce you to a whole new world of legal pain.
Oh please let it be so.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
You're obviously clueless to the issues at hand.
Please read some history on Windows API issues and why this matters to developers.
This isn't about stealing code or making life easier, this is about Microsoft writing both an OS and the software that sits on top of the OS. Since they write say, Office AND Windows, they could (and have) include API calls that benefit their version of Office on Windows that are hidden from (for example) OpenOffice. The court decision was that since Microsoft has a definite monopoly in the OS market, its unfair competition to not allow their competitors equal access to the API that they have IN THEIR NON-OS development divisions.
That is to say, I should be able to with equal talent and innovation create an equal product sitting on Windows to Microsoft's own and they shouldn't be allowed to unfairly hamper me or benefit themselves in the process using the Windows API.
That's why one of the court recommendations was to split Microsoft into OS and application divisions, and why tying of IE and Windows Media Player are a big deal.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
There is only one important thing to do to make the operating system market competitive - END THE PER-PC LICENSING. Every computer should have the option of having either Windows or another OS - the government should simply make sure that Microsoft doesn't discriminate against companies that offer an alternative. If I were the judge, I would have gone further and forced Microsoft to price Windows as a commodity so they would have to offer the same price to everyone - with stiff penalties for any sort of marketing kickbacks.
The per-model scheme we have now is slightly better than per-processor, but still not adequate.
Are you kidding?
c rosoft#Appeal
... Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect. It is also a company whose senior management is not averse to offering specious testimony to support spurious defenses to claims of its wrongdoing."
Do you even remember why the original senatance was overturned?
The appeals court ruled that Judge Jackson had an appearance of bias, because of his media statements. In the media, Judge Jackson made a series of statements, that I, personally, loved. Here's a quote for you:
"Following the trial's conclusion last June, Jackson's statements began appearing in news stories and books about the case. His views on Microsoft executives and the metaphors he used to describe the case troubled the appeals judges.
Among the examples, in the Jan. 8 issue of The New Yorker, Jackson said Microsoft founder Bill Gates "has a Napoleonic concept of himself and his company, an arrogance that derives from power and unalloyed success, with no leavening hard experience, no reverses." He added that company executives "don't act like grown-ups!"
Also in that book, Auletta writes that Jackson likened Microsoft's "proclamation of innocence to those of four members of the Newton Street Crew convicting in a racketeering, drug-dealing and murder trial he had presided over five years before."
Such sentiments drew the wrath of the appeals judges Tuesday.
"There are lots of things we think and feel about" the parties during a proceeding, said Chief Judge Harry Edwards. "The system would be a sham if all the judges were doing this."
The problem was the he got TOO angry. He basically "flipped out" legally, and Microsoft started to play nice, at least during appeals. If he had just kept his mouth shut, the judgment would have stood. http://news.com.com/2100-1001-253250.html
The appeals court overturned, "Judge Jackson's rulings against Microsoft on browser tying and attempted monopolization on grounds, that he gave off-the-record, but nevertheless disclosed, interviews to the news media during the case, and that Judge Jackson having opinions about the defendant was improper. "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Mi
In that sense, you might say that Microsoft's defense against contempt of court was shooting the moon. And it seemed to have worked out, in the short term. Here's what Jackson had to say, "Judge Jackson's response to this was that Microsoft's conduct itself was the cause of any "perceived bias"; Microsoft executives had "proved, time and time again, to be inaccurate, misleading, evasive, and transparently false.
Keep in mind that the appeals court did maintain Judge Jackson's findings of fact; that Microsoft did seek to misuse it's monopoly power to drastically damage the market for computer software.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
"One processor architecture (x86) is better than four completely different"
Not at all. If there were lots and lots of CPU architectures, OS's would have to be written to run or be ported easily to another processor architecture. This would open up competition to the "best" processor, rather than the best implementation of the X86 command line.
It probably would have forced OS vendor to be far more innovative in terms of virtualization and other technologies that we can't even dream of.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Microsoft's (international) revenues are less than a third of a percent of US GDP. Check, that's true.
.7% to 3%. Yet somehow, despite this, those were considered to be great economic years. The 1992-5 era is especially interesting, as spending dropped from 297 billion to 259 billion. That's about 38 billion dollars. I.e. roughly the same magnitude as Microsoft (albeit in more valuable 90s dollars rather than the relatively depreciated 2005 dollars). In other words, the defense shrinkage from 1992 to 1995 was actually larger in magnitude than Microsoft's revenues. Yet somehow the economy not only survived but prospered.
Adding Microsoft's revenues to those of two other companies can total *almost* one percent of GDP. Check, I can believe that too. Not sure why you picked 3M and P&G -- too lazy to search for a relationship. Therefore I'm simply going to assume that you picked two other decent sized but not huge companies (Microsoft is only 48th on the Fortune 500; Exxon Mobil is first with profits of about $36 billion -- i.e. almost the size of Microsoft's revenues; at #13, Berkshire Hathaway is more than twice as big as Microsoft). Combined, your three companies are smaller than Citigroup (8th on the Fortune 500). Not sure what your point was. Why combine those three companies? Is there some reason that breaking up the Microsoft monopoly would automatically affect the other two?
See http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/ full_list/index.html for Fortune 500 data.
If Microsoft's revenues went to zero, it would significantly harm the US economy. Basis? I don't believe that. Consider that defense use to make up about 6% (6.2% in 1986) of US GDP. It dropped from 4.8% to 3.7% between 1992 and 1995. In general, those were considered to be good economic years. From 1995 to 1999, it dropped a further
Of the twenty-nine agencies and departments listed in the 2005 federal budget, thirteen are larger than Microsoft's revenues.
Defense % of GDP from http://www.truthandpolitics.org/military-relative- size.php
Historical budget numbers from http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2007/ (in particular, http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2007/pdf/hi st.pdf ).
It's also worth noting that no one is talking about sending Microsoft's revenue to zero. In fact, because of the way monopolies work, the normal result would be to *increase* revenues while decreasing profits. A monopoly only produces up to the point where marginal revenue (from sales) exceeds marginal cost (of production). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly -- in particular, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e f/Monopoly-surpluses.svg/250px-Monopoly-surpluses. svg.png
The green line represents marginal revenue. The red line represents consumer demand. The blue line represents marginal cost of supply. Note that marginal revenue is positive for at least part of the distance between the monopoly quantity produced and the competitive price. Also note the yellow region. This is the area where the economy *gains* as a result of switching from a monopoly to a competitive market. It comprises the benefits of increased production minus the costs. The blue rectangle (i.e. the part above the Pc line) is gain shifted from producer (Microsoft) to consumers.
To reiterate:
1. Microsoft is not really that big a part of the US economy in terms of revenue.
2. Even if it were, no on is seriously argui