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FSFE Supports Microsoft Antitrust Investigation
An anonymous reader sends us to LinuxElectrons.com for an announcement from the Free Software Foundation Europe, in the form of a letter (PDF) sent to the European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes. FSFE offers to support a possible EU antitrust investigation of Microsoft, declaring that "Microsoft should be required openly, fully and faithfully to implement free and open industry standards." Opera Software issued a complaint to the Competition Commissioner based on anti-competitive behavior in the web browser market. FSFE president Georg Greve writes in the letter, "Although Opera Software does not produce Free Software, we largely share their assessment and concerns regarding the present situation in the Internet browser market."
I never really understood the whole browser inclusion with the antitrust aspect. Of all things Microsoft does, not including a free alternative, or alternative at all, to a internet browser seems petty. I just recently had to format this computer, and recently built another and I promptly downloaded Fire Fox. I think Opera's problem is they just aren't making it like FF and IE are...
That's not to say that MS is innocent, but they're not blatantly stopping any installation of alternative browsers, or office suites.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
Microsoft anti-trust investigation... it's the type of thing that makes you feel warm inside on a cheery Christmas day. Merry Christmas Slashdot!
If they'd put as much effort into writing a better platform as they do into whining about how closed off Microsoft is, then maybe competition wouldn't be an issue. Interoperability is useful for everyone but that doesn't mean that they should be able to sue Microsoft into being compliant with the full HTML spec or CSS or whatever the new technology may be.
The difference is that if you don't like Safari in Mac OS X, you drag it to the trash. If you don't like Internet Explorer in Windows... well, tough.
The issue here isn't that Microsoft has a monopoly, it's that they abuse that monopoly by strong-arming hardware manufacturers into bundling Windows (and IE) on every PC sold. If you buy a PC, you're FORCED to purchase Windows and IE. You can wipe the drive and install Linux or a *BSD, but that doesn't change the fact that Microsoft has made a sale of Windows/IE. Windows is simply the platform of people who don't know any better. It's the AOL of operating systems.
I don't wanna hear the tired argument that Apple should be forced to remove Mac OS X from their Macintosh computers. If Microsoft manufactured computers, I would expect them to be have Windows preinstalled.
Yeah, I know I'm not supposed to feed the trolls, but I didn't want to take the chance of someone taking you seriously.
Ok, let me clear it up, Opera is suing MS over their lack of standards compliance, not browser monopoly. Web standards are probably the biggest pain in the ass when it comes to IE. There aren't many good JS debuggers for IE (there are, but I don't find them very bug free). I think getting organizations to support this is a good thing, although in the end it'll probably slip through the cracks...
it always amazes me how sheep like you consistently put their head on the chopping block for the slaughter. microsft never fails to leverage new garbage on the consumer using their already established monopoly and the fact they can't find any reasons not to use alternatives other than you're already using microsoft software and probably are not intelligent enough to apply any of that elsewhere speaks volumes.
*sigh* I don't know why I'm bothering replying to someone who can't spell "lawsuit" and doesn't know the difference between "an" and "and", but here goes...
Having a monopoly on anything doesn't make you illegal, but it does prevent you from using your monopoly in one market to discourage competition in another market. That's exactly what antitrust laws are designed to prevent.
Which is exactly what Microsoft did here -- and does. IE7 comes with Vista. IE6 comes with XP. IE has come with every OS they've put out since at least Win98, if not Win95 (too lazy to double-check that). It's not "free", because it's tied to an OS -- but it is bundled with that OS. That basically killed any chance Netscape had of selling a browser, because Microsoft uses their OS monopoly to effectively make IE "free", even though it isn't.
And that, in turn, helps perpetuate their Windows monopoly, as no one can legally run IE without owning a copy of Windows, and it certainly was never designed to run outside of Windows. Thus, if someone makes a website which is not standards-compliant, but which is dependent on IE (even without ActiveX), that website will only work on Windows.
In the old business world, the end of that story would have been: Netscape goes out of business, IE is suddenly no longer free, but there's no alternative. (Think like the story of Office before OpenOffice.org.)
The only reason we avoided this is, Netscape released their browser as open source, thus making it both truly free (in both senses of the word) and actively developed, and IE is none of these things -- thus, Netscape/Mozilla/Pheonix/Firebird/Firefox can actually compete with IE, whereas the original Netscape couldn't. (I know IE7 is better, but it is a direct response to Firefox.)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I'm curious... Does removing Safari also remove Webkit? And if so, does it break other OS X apps?
If removing Safari does not remove Webkit, then they're really not much better than MS in that respect. If you don't like IE on Windows, you can, in fact, prevent it from being used for just about anything except as an HTML engine for other things -- and even that can be replaced with Gecko, though people generally only bother to do it under Wine.
I realize it's different because MS is a monopoly, but Apple does exactly the same thing -- only worse. They control both the hardware and software, and God help you if you should try selling a Mac clone that can run OS X. And that was on PowerPC.
No longer the case. For instance, you could buy a Mac -- yes, they ARE PCs now, amusing ads notwithstanding. Or you can buy a computer with Linux preloaded -- off the top of my head, Dell and Asus are doing this.
The only way this is true is if you define a PC as an x86-compatible machine running Windows, which makes your point moot -- if you buy a Windows machine, of course you're forced to run Windows, because, guess what, you're buying a Windows machine!
No, it's worse. It's the platform of people who can't use better.
I have to use Windows at work. Specifically, I have to use Windows XP Professional, since one of the programs I rely on will only run on Windows XP -- not 2K, not Vista. (Oh, and it needs Windows Media Player 10. Not 9, not 11.)
I could install Linux, and I have, but I can't use it during work. I can't get virtualization working properly at the moment, so I can't run Windows in a virtual machine. And this software does NOT work on Wine.
I suppose I could buy a Mac, but what would be the point? The only difference between Apple and Microsoft is Apple products look shinier and work out of the box more often.
Except that if Microsoft manufactured PCs, you almost certainly could still install Windows on other PCs. That is the very thing that made Windows a disruptive technology -- the deal that they got from IBM which allowed Windows to run on IBM clones.
Apple does not allow OS X to run on anything but a Mac, and does not allow Macs to come without OS X. So, it is absolutely one huge package, and it is exactly the kind of thing that would get you worked into a froth if Microsoft did something half as bad. The only difference is, Apple is a minority, and people actually want to use Apple products, whereas people are most often forced to use MS products -- but that is not a legal difference.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Didn't we just have an article a few days ago about the next version of IE that's still in development passing the acid 2 test? That's about HTML and CSS standards right? Why would they be suing to get something that's already on the horizon anyway; wont the upcoming IE8 do everything they're asking? There will still be all those un-updated versions of IE out there that will remain none compliant with standards, but you can't mandate that people upgrade, and punishing MS retroactively for those copies that will never work with the new standards doesn't seem legal.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
I seem to remember that they'd allow you to ship a modern OS with an alternative browser.
And besides, the only reason that sounds insane is that we've been doing things that way for awhile. How insane is it that MS still ships an OS without antivirus? Especially when their Control Center will nag you to install some third-party antivirus?
No, that's exactly what anti-trust laws are for. Read that again until you get it, because I cannot make it any simpler. Anti-trust laws were created to restrict monopolies. Microsoft is a monopoly, Apple is not. Therefore, Microsoft gets restricted, and Apple does not. If Apple had 90% of the market and Microsoft had 10%, we might be seeing the same thing in reverse...
Oh, one more thing: I strongly suspect that at least half this argument has nothing to do with unbundling IE, and is really about forcing IE to comply with the web standards they've been shitting on all these years. And this provides a neat counterpoint to above -- if Apple had 90% and MS had 10%, Apple still wouldn't be under as much fire, because Webkit actually follows standards. Wasn't it the first to pass ACID2?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
"Microsoft should be required openly, fully and faithfully to implement free and open industry standards."
Meh, I don't see why. It's up to the customers. They should use open standars, so that they have freedom to select the best vendor and can interoperate with everybody else. If customers choose to pay to get locked into proprietary formats (be they Microsoft's or anybody else's), I don't see how that's Microsoft's fault.
``Opera Software issued a complaint to the Competition Commissioner based on anti-competitive behavior in the web browser market.''
Now there is something to that. Microsoft is _still_ using their dominance on the desktop market to push their browser (push in a very real sense - IE7 was pushed over Windows update without asking any questions, as far as I understand). The poor support for standards in Internet Explorer causes webmasters extra work, but also combines with the fact that it's bundled with a widely sold operating system to make competition even more difficult for vendors of other browsers.
I understand that the sort of bundling Microsoft does here is illegal in both the USA and the EU (but note that IANAL). _That_ is something they can be held accountable for.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Personally, I think applying monopoly principles to something like OS's or Software is silly. Its really only effective at covering two situations, A. Government granted monopoly. B. Monopoly over resources that are limited.. Ie...the government can GIVE you a monopoly, right of way, land usage, spectrum usage Or...you could own all the Water,Oil,Wheat. That is what a monopoly is and I find it honestly impossible to say that MS controls, all software. And an OS is just that,software. The existance of Linux is a perfect example of this fact.
As to the idea of forcing someone or some company into complying with a "industry" standard, it is a horrid idea. What about the priciple of capitalism. You know,letting the market decide? Who decides, what standards, who controls those standards etc. What if your local government official came in tomorrow and started telling you, how to do business..and they were taking their guidance from a competitor.
Its easy to cheer on a bad idea when it benefits you personally, but bad ideas tend to stick around alot longer than there good intentions.
Clever. AC offers a minicity troll and comments his own troll confirming it wasn't.
But it is. Stay off.
There should be a "-5 Knob head" that I could use to rat this parent post.
Opera are certainly pushing for this issue, partly because IE makes their jobs difficult and every web developer I know probably spends 10% of their time specifically hacking stuff together to work with IE 6 and 7. On one hand (Microsoft get their shit together) their hailed as saviours for getting Microsoft to be a responsible company, or if it goes the other way they end up with bigger market share.
Personally I think this could've been made much better on the PR side of things, instead of going straight for the neck they could've written an open letter and a petition to present to Microsoft saying how much of an absolute turd they've been acting over the past years and it's time to change their ways. With enough support - yes, you could eventually get a relatively large boycot... and then if Microsoft still don't do anything - the whole anti-trust & monopoly law thing should follow in full force.
My first ever reply, so,,, Well have at it! I love every last one of you! MERRY CHRISTMAS! Just thinking back to the excitement of my very first (used win 95) computer with no software at all... How Much is it??? $295.00 Can it access the internet... Yes... SOLD! FYI... First website I went to... Netscape!
I think the anti-virus issue is always an interesting one to bring up. Customers would probably be happy if Windows came with anti-virus software, because it would mean one less thing to worry about, one less thing to buy and one less hassle. However, you can bet that Norton and McAfee and all the rest would have an anti-trust lawsuit on Microsoft's plate before the product was even released because it would mean they'd sell fewer pieces of software. In fact, if Windows could be made significantly more hardened to viruses without even writing an actual separate piece of anti-virus software, those same companies could quite likely be out of business in short order.
If you just got your first computer this morning from ol' saint nick (or OLPC), wouldn't you want it equipped with the functionality to access the internet??? (even if it is riddled with security holes that will have your new computer slower than ever before new years)! I doubt very many computers (any OS) would be sold if they did not come out of the box with this option... I'll bring over a CD of FireFox sometime next week, and get you surfing...
Ahh yes I love when people write revisionist history.
>It's not "free", because it's tied to an OS -- but it is bundled with that OS. That basically killed any chance Netscape had of selling a browser, because Microsoft uses their OS monopoly to effectively make IE "free", even though it isn't.
What killed Netscape is arrogance! I was in the business world, and my company (which happened to be a very very big bank) was shunned by Netscape. I am not kidding here. The bank wanted to license Netscape Navigator in 1996, and Netscape decided that the bank was not a big enough client (they only wanted to buy 4,000 licenses). Thus we were left hanging in the wind and mighty annoyed.
Next Netscape actually was the first company to support ActiveX in the form of Active Documents. I used it to illustrate how stocks could traded in 1996. Yes it was an undocumented feature, but it worked. I then asked the head honchos on when they would be extending this, and their reply was, "it is not going to be extended because it is Microsoft technology." Notice though how XPCOM is very much like COM?
Standards? I find it ironic that the EFF is going after Microsoft. Netscape in its heyday was notorious for ignoring the standards and creating their own. They would constantly add features and do-dads that would only work in the Netscape browser. I remember when frames and tables were added. It sent browsers like Mosaic into a tailspin.
So to rewrite history and say that IE won because Microsoft was a big bad monopoly is a pile horse hooy... Microsoft was massively behind and they won because Netscape blundered!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
I always thought that MS being a monopoly made it a legal difference as well.
That's why Apple may do some things, while if MS did the same, that would be anti-competitive.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Microsoft is a part of the W3C.
That means they first make the standards, then when everybody else implements them, they decide not to comply.
Ignore this signature. By order.
So how is something made to keep working for the anti-virus programs, but not web browsers?
Why the discrepancy?
Ignore this signature. By order.
So in fact you are paying a tax when you buy your computer, which may very well be of a few hundreds of EUROS. A TAX most computer manufacturers will not let you abdicate from paying.
That is immoral and an abuse of competition law (anti-trust only comes in point if we're talking about a monopolist entering another market). Buying a good which binds you to buy a specific non-essential service is usually forbidden by law.
This could be easily solved if the pre-installed software would only work after you insert an activation code related to your license IF AND ONLY IF you bought said license as well as the computer, but it would have to be two quite different things.
Opera is definately a competitor to firefox in browser quality. There are many whom argue that it is a superior browser.
"IE7 comes with Vista. IE6 comes with XP. IE has come with every OS they've put out since at least Win98, if not Win95 (too lazy to double-check that).
Unless you knew, we live in (soon to be) 2008. I, for one, am really fucking satisfied that operating systems are shipped with a browser. How on earth would I be able to download one otherwise? Should Windows ship with wget, so that we can grab another browser? Or should I use another computer to download a browser, burn a CD and then install it from there?
You are so full of shit if you think it's reasonable to assume that an operating system can be shipped without a browser. In fact, no such operating system exists today, pretty much because the concept of "operating system" is vague, and nowadays surely has to include a browser. A browser is pretty much as important as a file manager. Does Mac OSX come without a browser? Ubuntu? Any BSD? ANYTHING?
Why should Microsoft be punished because they are big, when they ship an OS including a browser? Should they be sued because they ship explorer.exe, when there are competitive shells and file managers out there (there are)? Mine sweeper? Notepad?
It's not "free", because it's tied to an OS -- but it is bundled with that OS. That basically killed any chance Netscape had of selling a browser, because Microsoft uses their OS monopoly to effectively make IE "free", even though it isn't."
Lots of people use Firefox, because it's better than IE, and the Firefox user base is growing. So, obviously what you claim, is a lie. Well, except you use the word "sell". Anyone trying to "sell" a browser today is an idiot (except perhaps for special embedded devices).
And that, in turn, helps perpetuate their Windows monopoly, as no one can legally run IE without owning a copy of Windows, and it certainly was never designed to run outside of Windows. Thus, if someone makes a website which is not standards-compliant, but which is dependent on IE (even without ActiveX), that website will only work on Windows.
Utter lie and complete bullshit and idiocy. "One can not legally run IE without owning a copy of Windows". So? Some don't even want to run IE at all, ever thought of that?
If any random idiot somewhere makes a web site which is IE-compliant, is that reason enough to sue Microsoft? If someone writes a program which only runs on Windows, is that reason enough to sue Microsoft? Bullcrap.
And worse yet, you claim that the fact that IE ships with Windows "helps perpetuate their Windows monopoly". You are so full of shit. What helps them perpetuate the Windows monopoly is that businesses around the world uses Word, nothing else, at all. Word and Word alone. Not even Office (people can't use anything but Word).
It's not Microsoft's fault they have a monopoly. Enter any random company, and you see them use Windows and Word. THEY are to blaim for Microsoft's monopoly.
In the old business world, the end of that story would have been: Netscape goes out of business, IE is suddenly no longer free, but there's no alternative. (Think like the story of Office before OpenOffice.org.)
The only reason we avoided this is, Netscape released their browser as open source, thus making it both truly free (in both senses of the word) and actively developed, and IE is none of these things -- thus, Netscape/Mozilla/Pheonix/Firebird/Firefox can actually compete with IE, whereas the original Netscape couldn't. (I know IE7 is better, but it is a direct response to Firefox.)
And the lies and bullshit continues. Netscape died because it wasn't open source? It was free (of charge) but not open source, yes. That's why it died? Where the hell do you come from? Netscape SUCKS, SUCKED, and HAS ALWAYS SUCKED. It was the most crappy browser every existing (except IE < 4). That's why no-one used it. NS 3 was cool when it came out, but it didn't take many years for it to become as completely deprecated crap
Can people please start using their brains to realise that if you don't have a web browser installed, that you can still download it? Yes, that's still possible nowadays! You don't even need to have a web browser to do it!
OEMs could install a tiny program that connects to the Internet and downloads your favourite web browser after asking you which one you would like. They could host a recent version on a fixed spot on their website.
Can an OEM choose to not install IE and provide Firefox or Opera instead? No, it can't. Back in the day Microsoft would even threaten to revoke their OEM licenses if they uninstalled IE, or even removed the icons, and/or installed Netscape. That's Microsoft abusing their monopoly right there!
A lot of people seem to have forgotten why bundling IE was so bad and are making up excuses. They should be ashamed of themselves. And shot. Twice.
No, you simply don't understand how the world works. Microsoft doesn't have any competition because nobody is better, that's what has given Microsoft their #1 position in the marketplace.
IE is the most stable and secure browser out there. Firefox was plagued by over 300 memory leaks, a metric ton of security holes, and denied each and every problem and flaw. That lack of honesty right there is why FOSS will never win over corporate customers, and the FOSS "support" model of telling the customer to go into the source code and fix it themselves hasn't proved popular with customers either.
Safari for Windows is complete garbage, and may put your computer in an unrecoverable state. Kind of like Quicktime.
So that's the two major competitors. Who does that leave? Opera... a browser which does the same thing IE does, but Opera charges you money for it. And even if they didn't charge... IE is still a far better browser, and doesn't require me to install anything.
Hey Opera, Netscape called, and they want their business model back. Seems Opera never got the memo that the Browser Wars are over.
So now, let's move our comparison over to the desktop operating system. Apple doesn't have the tools corporate customers are looking for- it's seriously lacking when you are trying to manage hundreds (or even thousands) of desktops. And the same goes for Teh Lunix. Neither of them are enterprise-quality, because their focus is on a single computer home user. Well, good luck getting enterprise customers to adopt your consumer-level technology. Not gonna happen. And I've already mentioned the Munich Lunix disaster.
So, you have laid before you the reality of the situation. Microsoft has no competition, not because "they are a monopoly", but because their product is, by a huge margin, far better than any other "competing" product. It's what customers choose after considering all the options. MS has a reputation for quality, and for the quality of their support. THAT is why businesses choose Microsoft. But hey, you guys keep blaming "their monopoly", since it's easier to do that than to improve your product to the degree to which it's actually good enough to start being chosen by consumers.
If Opera manages to get precedence set for forcing Microsoft to adopt CSS standards, imagine the implications with regards to ODF and PDF....
Ww need more soap, lots of it. Let's make this slope as slippery as we can.
This could be easily solved if the pre-installed software would only work after you insert an activation code related to your license IF AND ONLY IF you bought said license as well as the computer, but it would have to be two quite different things.
That is a most excellent point. In fact you could include a variety of Windows (XP, Vista with MCE/Home/Premium/Pro 32 bit or 64 bit etc, including a variety of Linux and even Solaris i86/i86_64 for that mater. Even a 160GB drive could hold 30+ choices and just wipe out the ones not selected. And this would not be hard for the OEMs to do either, in fact quite trivial.
Or alternatively put the OS on a $10 USB drive or 20 cent DVD at time of purchase.
I do agree, if Microsoft manufactured it's own PCs, it should be allowed to do like Apple, bundle. But given Microsoft is more like a tire manufacture, a component of the system Dell, HP, Lenovo and others sell, it is bundling/MS tax. If simply because we have no choice.
Just like car companies do with tires/rims. Let the consumer choose.
Faggy Apple fanboy. Don't you know only homosexuals use Macintoshis?
I miss the days when "monopoly" actually meant something. e.g. if my oil company is the only place I can buy oil, or if one steel company is the single source of steel for the country. Good times. Nowadays monopoly basically means any company whose competitors are too inefficient to compete in a few very narrowly defined markets.
This always comes up. The fact is that the difference in standards between monopolies and non-monopolies are not nearly as vast as many slashdotters think. It's not so simple as Apple can do it and MS can't. In addition, once a particular government has had its day in court and won, it rapidly loses interest in pursing the company further.
Of course, the US government ignores monopolies all the time: TicketMaster has had a monopoly far more pervasive than MS's for a decade or more but nothing was done. Ironically, it usually requires a competitor with deep pockets and influence (e.g. IBM, Sun etc) to get the government to do anything.
Monopolies do not need to be 100% to be considered monopolies.
You must've failed Econ 101.
Monopolies are one prominent example of a failure of capitalism. This should be explained in detail in any decent textbook.
And just because I'm an ass, you must've also failed Spelling.
Part of MS' problem is seeing the standards bodies as "competitors".
But more to the point, remember that no matter who you are, so long as you're not a 100% monopoly, you are a competitor to someone, just as they are a competitor to you. Doesn't it make more sense for the government, local or otherwise, to look to all parties for guidance?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
How insane is it that MS still ships an OS without antivirus? Especially when their Control Center will nag you to install some third-party antivirus?
How insane is it that MS still ship an OS that is susceptible to viruses and other malware?
Game Over, Microsoft!
Safari supports web standards, IE does not. That is a fundamental difference.
As long as you code in Web standards,they will appear fine in Safari, you don't even need the browser to test while it runs under Windows.
To make sure your site is visible to monsters majority (IE) users, you HAVE TO buy Windows and test it with IE. It fails the standards so you either code specifically to "fix" your standards compliant code or you live real life, financial consequences.
That is what Opera demands, standards compliance AND/OR the user given choice what to run as browser.
They don't want MSHTML removed from Windows as a framework, they just don't want "Internet" icon being IE or if it will stay as IE, make the damn thing standards compliant.
Consumers are getting Safari on iPhones, Opera on Wiis, and occasionally are testing out OS X and Linux on the desktop. They do indeed just want a browser that works, but part of a working browser is one which displays websites properly. The only working definition of "properly", and even MS agrees with me here, is "according to the standard".
Standards which Microsoft helped create, and now doesn't follow.
Give up your own blind hatred. I have a real IT job. I am forced to use Windows and Linux every day, and occasionally help the boss out with OS X.
But I don't suppose I'm going to get through to you. I've been trolled pretty hard, haven't I?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Look you fucking retard, Apple is not a monopoly. Monopolies have to operate by whole different set of rules.
/. and hope that there's someone equally dimwitted to buy into the crapola line cooked up by the liars in Redmond.
This concept has been around for decades, and has been explained ad nauseum since Microsoft first began running afoul of the DoJ in the early 1990s, so either you are a fucking stupid troll-faced idiot or you're yet another pathetic immoral Microsoft shill whose job is to come on to
Merry Christmas you no-good piece of human garbage.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Sigh. Please go re-read your history and economics texts. There never was any time in the U.S. when you could only buy steel or oil from just one company, although there were times when just one company controlled the vast majority of both. However, when a U.S. Federal court finds that you have a monopoly, then guess what: You've got a legal monopoly under U.S. law.
:)
:(
U.S. Steel, Standard Oil, and now Microsoft have all been found to have such a legal monopoly. U.S. Steel and Standard Oil were both forced to break up. Microsoft avoided that particular hazard only because Judge Jackson screwed up and talked to the press.
When the European Commission finds that you have a monopoly, then guess what: You've got a legal monopoly under European law. So, now that Microsoft has been found to have a legal monopoly under the laws covering roughly 2/3rds of the world's economy, I'd say it's safe to say that they're pretty much forced to operate as if they did have a globally defined legal monopoly.
P.S. Yes, Microsoft does demonstrably have pricing power in the OS market. If they don't, then please explain to me why the retail shelf price for XP and Vista hovers between $250 and $500 in the U.S. and Europe, and about $3 in China. Heck, explain to me why it's between $50 and $150 for the top tier OEMs who have been forced to accept Microsoft's demand that they prominently display the "XXX Vendor recommends (the most expensive versions of) Windows Vista® (Home or Business edition, depending upon which section of their Website that you're on)", yet still only charge $3 for the exact same software in China! Tell me again that Microsoft doesn't have pricing power. Please. I'd like another bitter laugh.
In other words, yes, they certainly do have pricing power over XP and Vista, want a cookie? In the end for you people it all boils down to "but, poor Joe Schmoe doesn't know any better and the computers come with Windows!". I would call this a ridiculous argument generally not even worthy of a rebuttal. People are lazy/dumb, so company X should be effectively siezed and dispositioned. Yeah, that's rational.
So fall back on "law" if you must, but law is often irrational and capricious. In fact, it seems the dweebs love it when the law goes against MS, but then lament how silly the "law" is when they seem to find things Microsoft's way. Microsoft simply isn't a monopoly in any rational, meaningful way and no finding of anything by anybody will change that.
Back in the day, long before we had competing FREE browsers, we had to pay for em. I for one was happy Microsoft bundled What I considered "necessary" Applications with the OS. Why should we have to plop down (back then) $4000 for a PC and then run out and spend another couple hundred to $1000 for apps, just to listen to music or browse the web.
Sure like everyone else here, I wish it wasn't IE. But at least you could browse the web. It wasn't the bundling we were upset with, it was the anti competitiveness of MS to OEMs who wanted to ship Netscape.
Skip ahead to present.
Personally I hope IE phones home to see that every Windows reinstall I've ever done shows Firefox download as the very first web destination. I used to replace the Firefox icon with IE's now I replace the IE Icon with this one. That is assuming I cannot convince them to switch to Linux.
I understand Opera being upset. But I don't see where they can complain anymore. They should focus their efforts on bundling their browser with hardware, like the Wii, and cell phones. Does doing so make their position hypocritical?
How many people still code for IE? I don't. If it doesn't look good in IE, I could care less. @work I force everybody to use Firefox. We put a best viewed in Firefox badge on our sites and fret not, Saving untold # of man hours and headaches.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Apple produces quality products and has no desire to mar the image of their software products by allowing them to work on cheep hardware; the least expensive Apple products are still mid-range in terms of quality. I'm not saying Apple's perfect; they make plenty of mistakes, and Steve Jobs has made a good number of his own. But they don't do business with the objective of hurting the customer, who, in their eyes, is the actual consumer.
Microsoft on the other hand, produces poor products and has an intense desire to improve their image while putting forth the minimal effort to do so; the most expensive Microsoft products (with the possible exception of Excel, some of their games, like Freelancer, and some of their hardware, like their mice) are mid-range at best in terms of quality. They do business with the objective of controlling every market they enter with no regard for the consumer, only their immediate customers.
Comparing the way Apple bundles their software with the way Microsoft bundles their software ignores the real point; the arguments against Microsoft should be about the Microsoft method of doing business. The acts of hobbling IE in terms of compliance with legitimate standards and bundling it with Windows has been made as a deliberate move to force the market to use IE and accept its deficiencies as a standard. Apple's inclusion of Safari, which is compliant with legitimate standards, in Mac OS X doesn't even begin to compare, since that has been made as a move to give their customers a means of easily accessing the internet, and nothing more; they don't want to control the market with Safari. I can't see any real similarity in these two business models.
And the idea that IE is completely stable is, in my opinion, extremely laughable. As the AC stated, Firefox does have its problems, but contrary to the AC's statements, Mozilla doesn't just sit on their hands and ignore the issues; they may not respond immediately to every bug, but they don't rest on their laurels, either. Microsoft, on the other hand, sat on the buggy IE6 until Firefox began threatening its market dominance. IE7 may be better (though I'll never know, since I've now nearly detached myself from Microsoft completely, and have no intention of returning; I only VM Windows so I can use the WordPerfect 9 suite), but Microsoft lost my interest in finding out.
Standard Oil had a monopoly. I'm pretty sure there were Amish folk back then. Just because they didn't use oil doesn't mean that S.O. didn't have a monopoly.
The geeks who run that "alternate OS" were almost certainly forced to buy a copy of MS Windows, unless they built that machine themselves. Heck, here in Korea, Samsung sells the bare hard disks with Windows.
Put identity in the browser.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
And geeks who run alternate OS's are most certainly not forced to buy a copy of MS Windows. 1995 called, it wants its complaint back. I can not only go to any of numerous alternate-source manufacturers, I can go to plain old Dell.com and buy myself a Linux desktop. If a company bundles a product, talk to the source company - e.g. Samsung, or don't buy their products.
No, Microsoft was not "convicted" of being a monopoly. I chose my words very carefully. However, you make a leap that is just not based on the law. The reason why the next "whiny ass competitor" can come to court and point at that finding of fact is because the law allows them to. The law and legal precedent covering the special status that a company holding a monopoly are well established, in part because of what happened under Standard Oil and U.S. Steel.
In addition, there is other case law covering similar activities. AT&T's refusal to allow the connection of 3rd party phones, for example, until their monopoly was taken away from them. IBM's refusal to honor warranties when 3rd party peripherals were connected to their mainframes, or when people ran IBM code on mainframe clones is another. Both faced the U.S. courts and were forced to back down. You may remember that AT&T was also broken up, at least partly due to the fact they continued to stonewall the court instead of accepting defeat gracefully.
IBM's case is closer to the conditions that Microsoft finds itself faced with. Unlike AT&T, IBM chose to negotiate a settlement with the courts that essentially acknowledged their competitors' right to compete. Since then, IBM has operated strictly within a set of moral and legal constraints that are well within what most people would find both legal and acceptable. That's why they don't find themselves facing constant legal battles and court supervision the way that Microsoft is at this time. (The sometimes questionable competence of said supervision notwithstanding.)
As to your contention that Microsoft has no pricing power outside of their own OS? Well, what do you think happens when someone goes to buy a new PC? Microsoft can clearly arbitrarily change pricing to force purchasing behavior for items other than the OS.
That's what I was illustrating by pointing out that the retail cost of Microsoft's OS is so much higher than what the top tier OEMs are allowed to charge. Microsoft holds a HUGE club over their heads. Those vendors either bury alternatives as deeply as possible /and/ prominently display that "XXX Vendor recommends..." tagline, or they'll be forced to pay the retail cost for XP, Vista, MS Office, and all of Microsoft's other products.
Do you really think any of these vendors can afford to do that? As has been repeatedly demonstrated, the margins on PC hardware is razor thin. No single top tier vendor can afford to compete by breaking ranks with the rest. The fact that all of the big vendors now have at least some form of Linux desktop available is only possible because the U.S. court found that Microsoft had engaged in restraint of trade.
Sigh again. I doubt anyone is still reading this thread besides the two of us, so I'll probably just drop this after one final observation: If you find the law irrational, capricious, and silly, by all means work to change it. However, when multiple courts and most commentators in this thread (and elsewhere, I might add) all take a view that opposes yours, maybe it's time for you to reflect on the possibility that maybe, just maybe, you are the one who is wrong.
in the U.S., MS has a free ride, break up MS? Sure... in the same country where marijuana is illegal and O.J. has walked free?
Replace "Apple" with "Microsoft", and "iPod" with "Zune" in the above statement.
The only difference I see here is that Apple has not yet succeeded as entirely.
Well, there's that, too. That's another difference -- Microsoft produces very little of notable quality.
Yes, I get this argument.
But understand, you are trying to tell me that Apple has limited my choice, as a consumer, to preserve their image. I happen to agree with you, I just find it absolutely disgusting.
It may not be their objective, but it is the result, in a few important ways.
Oh, and Visual Studio. And the Xbox 360. And...
I'm no Microsoft fanboy, but they are capable, at least in small ways, of putting forth a very solid product. I suspect that they don't unless they have to, but you have to also consider that Microsoft does not function as a unit. Compare Halo with... well... any other Microsoft product. You can criticize the game all you want -- I happen to like it -- but the engine is absolutely rock solid.
The real point, for me, is that as a consumer, a world ruled by Apple is better for me only in that Apple makes quality products. As such, a world ruled by Microsoft is almost more appealing, because there would be more choice.
Now you are addressing motivation and business models, and we can really only guess at that. As I said in the conclusion of my other post, I understand that there is a difference -- I just don't think it's one you can define legally, except for the bit where Microsoft has actually succeeded at becoming a monopoly.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
No, they just control the market into which an alternative OS might be sold. No one wants to run an alternative OS, because everything is exclusively for Windows -- in some cases due to MS deliberately being incompatible (like, oh, Internet Explorer).
Or, for those who want to run an alternative OS, they often cannot, due to being dependent on Windows software.
Hmm.
At home, I run Linux pretty exclusively, but mostly because I haven't gotten my XP dual boot back. This is because I want to play games like Portal, the best game ever made, and I'd be lucky if it runs on Linux at all. If it does, it will most certainly run better on XP.
Now, I didn't have to pay for this XP, but that's because I got it for free from my college. I fail to see how anyone other than MS can pull off a deal like that -- the college pays a yearly subscription to have access, for all their students, to most MS software. Of course, that comes out of my tuition, which means MS is not only bundled with hardware manufacturers, they're bundled with higher education.
At work, I run Windows pretty exclusively. I try my damndest to at least be able to boot Linux most of the time, but I'm pretty much stuck with Windows, due to relying on Windows-only software which depends on .NET, Windows Media Player, and requires WGA to download, meaning it will be a cold day in Hell before it runs on Wine. But this same laptop came with Vista, and had to be downgraded to XP -- on the company dime. So, there's a useless Vista license lying around.
Supply is not the only way to control this, but let's pretend it is, for a moment.
Now, where can I buy an x86-based computer without Windows? Can I actually do this without paying for Windows?
The situation is better now, but remember, it was not very long ago that Dell selling computers with Ubuntu preloaded made the front page of Slashdot. That's how thoroughly Microsoft is entrenched.
How is "the computers come with Windows" not worthy of a rebuttal?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Thanks.
I should also say that your earlier reply was actually not as aggressive in tone as mine... I'm trying to find a diplomatic way of saying "I'm an ass."
Just know that I almost never attack people on Slashdot, only arguments, and not always bad ones.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Firefox did not always have the free money you speak of. From what I remember, even before Firefox, Mozilla had more users than Opera.
Firefox would be nowhere near what it is, but it would probably still be ahead of Opera.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
You're welcome. I would like to say that your response to my earlier post didn't sound like an attack on me, just a counter balance to my arguments. I, too, avoid attacking people when I make responses. I tend to find that attacks on people generally say that the writer is speaking emotionally, and isn't thinking his comments through very thoroughly.
I didn't mention Visual Studio because I have no experience with the product, nor have I ever seen it. I've seen the XBox 360, but I haven't seen anything that is XBox only that I would want to purchase the console for.
I've seen Halo, but it didn't really interest me, so I never bothered playing. I watched my brother playing it for a few minutes when he borrowed it from his friend, but only for a minute or two at a time before I got bored and went back to whatever else it was I was doing at the time (likely working on one of my projects, though it was too long ago for me to remember clearly). I can say the game seemed pretty solid and stable, but it's been years since the traditional FPS interested me; the only FPS I've play in the past seven years or so is Metroid Prime, and that's an FPS only in that you have a first person view and a weapon. I also recognize that Microsoft isn't a unit.
Again, I agree with you, in principle. I'm not sure, however, that Apple's products would remain quality if they managed to take over the world, and I'm equally unsure that customers would still have more choice if Microsoft gained absolute control. Apple, after all, did fire Steve Jobs, then started producing some pretty bad products, and Microsoft has a history of taking actions that would limit customer choice. Basically, I'm saying that the freedom to choose cannot be guaranteed under the rule of any one corporation.
Good point. I should have worded that a little differently; I don't see that Apple is trying to control the market with Safari, while I do see Microsoft working hard to force IE on the market. As I said at the beginning of my original comment, I believe comparing the evident business strategies is more beneficial to arguments than trying to compare similar actions that have been taken by different companies. Overall, I actually never use Safari (the only time I did was when I got my Mac, and I downloaded Firefox immediately afterward).
I guess my original point is that I never really looked at Microsoft including Internet Explorer with Windows as a problem; when I asked others what the problem was, their answers never seemed to make a lot of sense, so I don't really see that using the same argument against Safari is logical. However, I do see attempts to force customers to use a product over all others as a
Well, it's solid, stable, visually beautiful, has a very intuitive UI, and absolutely no loading screens. That puts it ahead of most other games, at least technologically.
You'd like Portal, then.
Personally, I'd say Halo and Half-Life are probably the best of the traditional FPSes, and I'd buy a console just to play either one. But then, I have managed to find an exclusive for everything except the PS3 that I'd gladly buy the console just to play.
I don't think they'd have more choice than right now, only more choice than if Apple gained absolute control.
Oh, absolutely. I would much rather have none of them gain control... though, of course, I would also rather applications were more portable. Not just that you can make a portable app -- there's always some cross-platform libraries to help you there -- but more like POSIX, where it becomes almost more difficult to write an application that's not portable than to write one that is.
The trouble there, of course, is that a world in which application development is commoditized like that is a world where both Apple and Microsoft lose. Apple would no longer be as able to innovate, as innovative new Mac-only features would be ignored, even by Mac developers -- and Microsoft would no longer have a stranglehold on the world. So I'm not sure anyone really has the motivation to do that.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!