Slashdot Mirror
Opera Files EU Complaint Against Microsoft
A number of readers have sent word about Opera Software ASA's antitrust complaint against Microsoft filed with the EU. Here is Opera's press release on the filing. The company wants the EU to "obligate Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop" and to "require Microsoft to follow fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities." The latter request makes this a case to watch. Will the Commissioner take the Acid2 test using IE7?
This seems like a rehash of the Netscape suit years ago. Didnt that jumpstart the initial monopoly case? Anyway I find it more interesting at this point that they want for force IE into compliance with a standard that is defined and regulated by an open assembly. I think that is more important as that will ensure that web 3.0 doesn't use mono/.net, Silverlight or some proprietary based framework that forces us back to the days when you can't go to a bank, school, work, website w/o IE.
How am I going to download an Internet browser if my Operating System has no way of browsing the Internet?
It's the built-in aspect which is the problem...
Apple bundle Safari, but it's trivial to remove in it's entirety (or simply not install), different linux distributions bundle different browsers and they can always be removed/replaced easily... What windows distributors (ie OEMs) really need is the ability to remove ie completely and replace it with a third party browser, instead of being forced to install the third party browser alongside the buggy outdated one that's built in.
And as for not having a functional browser, there are many many other areas where windows lacks functional apps in comparison to other systems, they don't bundle a functional spreadsheet (or even a facility to view spreadsheets) for instance, nor do they bundle an ssh client/server (everyone else does, and ssh is becoming the standard for remote admin of network devices, replacing telnet), they don't even have a secure erase tool by default and many other shortcomings compared to other systems.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Not true if you are talking about front-end stuff like browsing web pages. Making things up?
If you are talking about back end stuff like Windows Update, that's not even done through a web page in Vista anyway. Maybe it uses some IE components in the background but I doubt the Firefox people want to make a module to update Windows anyway and updates to the OS is Microsoft's space anyway - a basic part of the OS. Not sure what else you could be referring to. Web based Help for Windows? Same idea.
They might want to specify that Microsoft should be compelled to follow published w3c standards, not just accepted standards. The "standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities" today are pretty much "Code everything for IE6. If there's free time after that's done and the pub isn't open yet, test in Firefox"...
0 1 - just my two bits
People forget quickly. Yes, most OSs bundle a web browser but they don't hold a desktop monopoly. My guess is Opera wants to revisit that story in Europe.
[alk]
This is demonstrably false.
I have Vista and Opera, and Opera is set as default. If you click a link anywhere in Windows, it launches Opera. For example, if you get an error there is a link to an appropriate KB article on microsoft.com. Clicking this for me launches it in Opera.
The only programs I've found that don't honour the default are Yahoo Messenger and City of Heroes - apparently they prefer to hardcode to launch IE, which is their choice.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
And that's why this unbundling crap is so retarded and has been since the American antitrust case. OEMs will go right ahead and install the full suite of MS freebies anyway, even if they install others as well.
The good news is someone's finally getting it: they finally want to force MS into standards compliance. That's all that really matters. I don't see the browser application itself (or media player, for that matter) as a monopoly abuse - it's the content that's the abuse. IE/WMP both play proprietary content, using Windows as the vehicle.
Sabotaging Windows' built-in media capabilities only harms consumers. Preventing MS from leveraging those capabilities to push their own proprietary, non-interoperable formats helps them and everyone else.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
You are right. The part that might surprise you is that I think Opera is counting on that. I am currently doing some web development work. The biggest problem we run in to is the weird crazy shit that IE does. I run our pages on IE, FireFox, Safari, and Opera. By far IE is the BIGGEST pain in the ass. Why? It does not follow the standards at all. It just laughs at you. "oh you want that over there. Haha that's funny. Keep dreaming." It flat out ignores some HTML. Your code can be fucking perfect according to the W3C standards but IE just does not care. So what happens? People have started to code to IE and just IE. I know for a fact that I am the only person here who even tried to use Safari and Opera on our pages. The result is that our code ONLY works right in IE. This is why FireFox dominates the alternate browser market. It's slower, bigger and just not as cool as Opera but it can work like IE to the point where finding a page that it does not render correctly is a rare thing. The problem with IE's browser dominance is not that other browsers want to get shipped with Windows but that they get thrown to the side for doing the right thing.
Surely it should be left up to the OEM to decide what browser to include. They are after all the distributors of the software. Microsoft could be allowed to bundle their browser/media player in with the shrink wrapped copy of the operating systems when they themselves are the distributors, but it should be unbundled when sold by OEMs so a different browser or media player could be included. Just like OEM distributors of Linux systems can decide what software components they want to include by default.
I'd normally agree with you, but in this case the obviously inferior and downright broken product is winning, and it's got nothing to do with price. Two words: market failure.
-sigh-
The rules are DIFFERENT when dealing with a monopoly.
Stuff that is perfectly legal, reasonable, and even encouraged in a competitive environment are disallowed in a monopoly.
You're absolutely right.
The thing to bear in mind here is that the web browser is not part of the operating system when you take into account what an operating system actually is. The web browser is an application that runs on the operating system; it is not a part of the OS itself. Microsoft may have built IE in this way, but the implementation doesn't necessarily define where the lines are drawn. The availability of a myriad of different web browsers, each of which is fully capable of running on a variety of OSs without being integrated, proves this. Microsoft has gotten away with IE bundling primarily because they claimed it isn't feasible to remove IE from the OS. That is a load of BS, but they fooled the courts once.
Design by committee rarely works well. You're proposing something even worse. Let's allow Microsoft's competitors to define "standards" then force Microsoft to follow them. That's really a recipe for innovation.
;-) would understand the issue.
But we do this all the time. For example, here in the US, electrical devices are required to work on 120V 60Hz AC, and I haven't heard that this is a major impediment to innovation. Granted, there are minor grumbles from manufacturers about needing several different power supplies, so that 240V AC and 50Hz AC can also be used. But still, how has this stifled innovation?
And note that both the Internet and the Web have standards that are in every sense a "committee" design. In this case, we did hear a lot of grumbling from knowedgeable geeks that both IP/TCP and HTTP/HTML were far from optimal designs. But in fact we don't hear this much from the vendors, who are mostly managed by people who don't have a clue about data packets or text markup. And in fact, both the Internet and the Web have led to a blizzard of innovation from millions of companies, despite their suboptimal committee design nature.
The real problem here is that the legal and political systems are fairly clueless about computer technology, and are likely to totally screw up any decrees with a technical component. Thus, the right solution to the problems caused by Microsoft's obstructionism is a strict separation between "system" and "application" software. Since MS sells an OS, it shouldn't be permitted to sell user-level applications. This would eliminate things like claiming that a browser is tied into the OS, and it would put pressure on the OS people to fully document their APIs. But there's no chance whatsoever that such a separation will ever come about, because nobody in any legislature or court (except Al Gore
In fact, IE is already a good example of how not imposing such a "committee" design causes problems. If MS's claim that IE is tied to the OS are true, then their desire for market control has led to an atrociously bad design of their OS. Of course, the fact that they did quickly supply IE-free versions of Windows showed that they were simply lying. But the fact that they have mostly gotten away with doing this is itself a major block to innovation. It has led to the widespread management support of web sites that only "work" with IE. This not only sabotages the general need for industry standards; it also forces developers not working for MS to waste time trying to make their software work for non-standard browsers for where there is no full documentation.
It's hard to see how this helps innovation, when the really innovative web software such as opera, firefox, safari, icab, konqueror, et al are pushed aside by the general pressure to work only with IE and not worry about the "unpopular" browsers.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
From the Opera press release:
Unbundling IE doesn't necessarily mean shipping an OS without a browser. If IE is an optional component, OEMs could still preinstall one browser or another. Even Opera is taking into account the fact that removing IE entirely might not be feasible, and suggesting that the system come with at least one alternative.
I agree that an OS needs to ship with a web browser. But it doesn't necessarily have to be a specific browser except for company policy. Witness Apple replacing IE with Safari, or Red Hat replacing Mozilla with Firefox, etc.