Hungary Officials Raid Microsoft Office

Steve writes "Hungarian government officers raided the offices of a Microsoft subsidiary this week, as part of a probe into the company's relationship with large software distributors. From the article: 'According to the statement, Microsoft used sales conditions and offered software distributors incentives - described as loyalty discounts - so they wouldn't offer clients anything but Microsoft Office products. Such behavior could lead to the exclusion of competitive products from the market and violate European Union rules, according to the authority known as the GVH.'"

Comments

Hungary, Hungary Hippos

[jollyreaper]

What, did they think Microsoft had something tasty in there?

Everyone face down on the floor!

[somersault]

Now, tell me where your mother****in cookies are!! I'm Hungary!

Sorry, couldn't resist..

Re:Everyone face down on the floor!

[TWX]

And to think that the headline writer could have prevented all of this off-topic banter by writing "Hungarian Officials..." instead of "Hungary Officials..."

Re:Everyone face down on the floor!

[truthsearch]

But without the off-topic banter why would we visit slashdot?

First read as..

[HangingChad]

First read as "Hungry Officials Raid Microsoft Office". Well, buy them a pizza.

Re:First read as..

[nine-times]

I read it as the most odd collection of ideas, like, "Hungry Officials RAID 'Microsoft Office XP'.

What?

[realdodgeman]

Microsoft uses its monopoly to block others? What is going on here?

Re:What?

[jeffasselin]

Euh Monopoly 100% market. Microsoft does have a monopoly on the operating system market, and has used it illegally. That was clear from the US trial and has been declared such by the EU officials in charge of this matter.

And this may be regular business for other companies, but although monopolies aren't illegal per se, they face specific legal restrictions as to their business practices. Such as these, which Microsoft is barred from doing.

Microsoft raids Hungarian government offices...

[conspirator57]

...for anti-anti-competitive practices. According to a Microsoft spokesperson, "We are troubled by evidence of direct resistance to Microsoft corporate directives."

In other news, Microsoft is merging with the RIAA and MPAA to reform the Dutch East India Company. Pirates beware!

Same Old Microsoft

[NeverVotedBush]

Doing their best to eliminate all competition with their monopolistic practices.

It's no different than their blood deals with SuSe and such. Tie everyone up with obligations to not use other products or make them pay royalties with Microsoft's threats of lawsuits for crap patents.

I bought my last Microsoft product years ago. No way in hell will I support a company like them.

And for those that talk about Microsoft's "innovation", I'd like to counter with their outright thefts of code (Stacker), their sabotaging other company's products when they detect them running in Windows (Word Perfect), their screwing customers so they could pretend that IE was a critical component of the OS (Win98), and all the other dirty tricks they constantly pull.

Doesn't Bill Gates have enough money? When will they actually produce a quality product instead of pushing junk on people? When will they let the market actually support innovation?

Yeah, yeah - I know I am no Microsoft fan boy and this may get labelled as flame bait or a troll, but seriously - this is just another example of Microsoft's dirty tricks and using their weight to screw everyone else - including their very own fan boys.

Re:Same Old Microsoft

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Doesn't Bill Gates have enough money?

Actually, no, not anymore. Carlos Slim has more, and that cannot stand.

Re:Same Old Microsoft

[rebootconrad]

What part of 'fiduciary duty' do you not understand?

Until you change the system, it will continue to be garbage-in garbage-out.

This sentence caught my eye....

[8127972]

"Microsoft used sales conditions and offered software distributors incentives - described as loyalty discounts - so they wouldn't offer clients anything but Microsoft Office products. "

And if that didn't work, then they brought out the chairs.

Re:This sentence caught my eye....

[MadMidnightBomber]

Not the *comfy* chairs?

Re:On Wii news last night

[poetmatt]

read about this on my wii last night Be careful. If you read too much on your wii you could go blind!

Enough with the MS bashing!

[Luke Dawson]

According to the statement, Microsoft used sales conditions and offered software distributors incentives - described as loyalty discounts - so they wouldn't offer clients anything but Microsoft Office products.

That doesn't sound anything like the Microsoft I know.

This isn't fair!

[davmoo]

Wahh!!! Only a handful of comments and still all the good jokes are already taken!

Re:This isn't fair!

[realdodgeman]

You are too slow. You shouldn't be using Vista.

Charles Simonyi, it was nice knowing ye.

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

So much for Hungarian notation.

So, MS, how does it feel?

[Opportunist]

How does it feel when you didn't do anything illegal and suddenly your office is raided, productivity grinds to a halt and all because someone somehow felt that you might have done something illegal?

Think 'bout that next time your BSA guys believe a disgruntled ex-employee who just wants to give his ex-company a piece of mind as a revenge bit. Unlike some other companies, you'll brush this loss of productivity off. Other companies ain't so lucky, and a day of ZERO productivity (lacking any other offices abroad that could compensate) is quite hard on companies that have to meet tight deadlines.

(sorry for the venting, but it really, really felt good)

Re:So, MS, how does it feel?

[JustNiz]

...except MS DID do something illegal.

Re:So, MS, how does it feel?

[DataBroker]

I was wondering something similar, but almost opposite. In this case, a relatively small office was closed down for investigation. What if the Hungarians declared that they felt that the evidence was also stored on the "main" network, which was connected by intranet. How would MS (or any large company) handle a demand that full access be granted to the entire intranet for investigation. What if the demand included suspending all activity, or introducing all details found into (public) evidence.

Would a large company like MSFT be willing to absolutely refuse demands from a policing body, be it American, the E.U., or Hungary? Reversing that question, how small of a policing body could make such a demand before MSFT would comply?

Re:So, MS, how does it feel?

[OrangeCowHide]

I feel for you. Have you tried sending the BSA a bill?

We recently had an unknown tipster (possibly the ex-employees who started a competing company using our code base that we are suing for copyright infringement, being the only ex-employees) turn our company into the BSA. We have four employees, 20 machines 10 of which run Linux or BSD, 2 run Novell, leaving 8 windows/macs with a grand total of 20 BSA member programs running on them (including Acroread, and MS Word Viewer), of which 10 were non-free and we had licenses for all of them. But we spent 80 hours preparing our response to the BSA who demanding we inventory everything, that's 80 hours we couldn't be doing actual business (only 4 employees, and one is a receptionist, and another does accounts). I want to send them a bill so badly, but I presume that will precipitate a visit, and like a cop who "finds drugs in your car," I am sure some copies of Office will suddenly appear on our systems.

Re:So, MS, how does it feel?

[jollyreaper]

...except MS DID do something illegal. Only if you can prove it in court. What's the going rate for Hungary judges, a nice pastrami on rye?

Re:So, MS, how does it feel?

[OrangeCowHide]

6 of our 10 BSA member products (id est: the non-free ones) were Windows (XP Pro and 2000). I cannot find any terms in the EULA (Note: this is the terms for Genuine Advantage, but most MS EULAs are essentially the same) where I agree to perform inventorying on the system at my own cost and expense to be made available at their request. I cannot locate a Mac OS X EULA, but I don't remember that in there either. The other two were an ancient (1996) VB compiler (Which is still MS and is probably an even more primitive version of linked one), and Delphi EULA (pdf) which states they have the right to terminate the license if we breach any of the conditions, but does not say that we at our own expense must perform the work necessary to prove we aren't in violation of these terms.

I frequently do read license agreements (exclusions are GPL, LGPL, BSD, Apache, or others that I am quite sure what the terms are as I have already read them). I have never agreed to pay to be somebody's lackey.

Re:On Wii news last night

[alcmaeon]

Microsoft hasn't done anything illegal, but we are a former Stalinist dictatorship, so we just raid people's businesses and homes for the fun of it and to keep them on their toes. It's all the rage. Even the U.S. is getting in on the game. We call it CHEKA-chic.

Hungary systems ?

[alexhs]

It's Microsoft that introduced the (in)famous Hungary notation.

Hungary officials obviously weren't pleased ;)

And I can't resist to link to How to write unmaintainable code, a must read if you didn't read it already ;)

Hunagary and open-source

[ianare]

Not directly related, but Hungary is very much into open source. Also, according to google analytics for my open source project, I get quite a few hits from Hungary. And remember European Firefox usage from a few weeks ago? Hungary is one of the leading adopters of Firefox in the world. I wonder if this kind of IT culture has any bearing on how hard they will go after M$.

Re:Hunagary and open-source

[broeman]

and don't forget MPlayer :)

Re:Hunagary and open-source

[A beautiful mind]

That unfortunately doesn't stand for the Hungarian government. They keep giving Microsoft millions of dollars for the so called "Campus" contract, which supplies the whole of hungarian education and universities with "free" Microsoft software, so that the students and professors can use them. Too bad that this is the case, as in my opinion Microsoft should pay for the priviledge instead, since basically they are getting mindshare from young developers etc.

My hovercraft is full of eels.

[JesseL]

This is all probably because of a misunderstanding caused by a bad Hungarian-English dictionary.

MS ran afoul of the lArm of the law...

[WebCowboy]

by offering a strOfBribes to nVendors to successfully fnDominateMarket.

The police pFinger at MS for performing an illegal operation, however MS contends that bAllegations == False.

Re:Where is the US??

[ClosedSource]

Yes, because government raids are the cornerstone of freedom and democracy.

Seriously, I think the EU should start charging companies like Real, Sun, etc for the service they provide in helping them to succeed in business without really trying.

Hungarian Notation

[hotsauce]

No, Hungarian Notation was invented by Charles Simonyi when he worked at PARC. When he took a job at Microsoft and tried to introduce it there, it was completely misunderstood, and that bastardized version is what most untrained programmers came to know (no thanks to Microsoft's developer training). Since they seemingly couldn't even be bothered to pronounce his name, it became known as Hungarian Notation.

The real thing is incredibly useful, and I encourage all unfamiliar with it to read through Joel's article.

Re:Hungarian Notation

[jez9999]

Interesting, but at the end he bashes exceptions whilst conveniently forgetting to suggest any kind of workable alternative. Without exceptions, you end up with nested if's and/or a doSomething-checkError-doSomething-checkError pattern that looks horrid.

Comments from Budapest

[Anonymous Coward]

First, please stop the hungry-Hungarian jokes. It is not funny. It never was.
Someone mentioned that open source software is widely used here. Unfortunately, it is not the case. Windows XP and MS Office .doc format is the (un)official standard at lots of places. And the government does not want to change that: for example, the Ministry of Education pays a huge amount each year to MS, for licensing MS operating systems and office apps for every Hungarian schools and universities.
On the other hand, lots of pirated MS software was used previously, so now the Ministry pays this yearly "protection money" so the BSA does not go after the teachers and students.
This "attack" on MS could be a simple mistake, an attempt to lower the prices for the government, or perhaps MS.hu forgot about the bribe for the GVH... we will never know the truth.

This whole story might seem incoherent for anyone living in a sane country... but Hungary is FUBAR now :(

András

Re:I am done with slashdot

[NeverVotedBush]

It's ignorant bullshit? Am I wrong about Microsoft stealing code verbatim from Stacker to use as their on-the-fly disk compression routine? Am I wrong about Microsoft actually scanning to see if a user was running Word Perfect and having the system slow it to a crawl or have it fault out? Am I wrong about how when Microsoft was being investigated for anti-competitive behaviors with their bundling of IE that they quickly - and crudely - swapped out pieces of code from Windows into IE and from IE into Windows? To the point that anyone that uninstalled IE completely hosed their operating system and had to reinstall?

But I did leave out a few things - like when Microsoft on numerous occasions threatened computer vendors - as they are now. How they refused to honor their own shrinkwrap about how if people don't agree to the EULA, they can have their money refunded (see the Australian case where one user had to fight them in court to get them to honor their own EULA). You know, stuff like that.

I stand by my assertion - Microsoft plays dirty. Please provide any rebuttal you wish. I'd love to see it. I will stick with OSX and Linux.

Re:On Wii news last night

[CynicArmy]

Nah, they had reports from a reliable intelligence source that there are illegal weapons of mass destruction in the office, so they just sent in the army to grab them, and do a little democratic clean-up in that monopolistic snake-pit. ;)