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DoJ Extends Microsoft Oversight for Two Years
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The US Department of Justice has extended its anti-trust oversight of Microsoft by two years. This only applies to the requirement that Microsoft make protocol documentation available to competitors, though. All of the other requirements have expired, and Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly did not give the states complaining the full five years of oversight they requested. Still, this should prove useful given that one of Microsoft's new tricks is to use OOXML extensions to tie businesses to Sharepoint."
What's the point? The DoJ has achieved less real change in the past decade than the EU has achieved in past two years.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I consider anyone still using Microsoft, and OOXML in particular, to be making a major oversight.
Of course, among people I know, that's almost as many now as it ever was. *Sigh...*
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
In a rare "double-whammy" decision, the DOJ has ordered Steve Ballmer and Darl MacBride to co-produce (and star in) a feature length film entitled "2 CEOs, 1 Cup"... MacBride couldn't be reached for comment, but Ballmer was heard saying: "No problem. Bill has been preparing me for this for years".
Seriously, though. Why does the DOJ seem so toothless when it comes to corporations or the ultra-wealthy, yet act like right-stomping psychopaths for small players (to the point of waffling on definitions of torture, or weaseling around the constitution)? How could it be anything but corruption?
It is clear to me that the sanctions are still relevant. What is not clear to me is how the consent decree is going to change anything, since TFA also states that "protocol specifications" were supposed to be released in 2003, and still haven't been fully released.
Other than this text, there is no discernible information contained in this sig.
This is news to me. If this is true, it sounds like the Microsoft is making an attempt to entrench businesses with OOXML through there popular web-based collaboration software.
A quick search on Google turns up Alfresco as a F/OSS alternative to Sharepoint. Can anybody comment on the quality and effectiveness of Alfresco, and mention if it is mature enough to be a viable (and recommendable) alternative to Sharepoint as an enterprise solution for collaboration within large businesses?
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
Is it incompetence that caused Microsoft not to get the protocol specifications documented? If that is the case Microsoft is in big trouble. Or they are illegally going slow. Either way Microsoft should be in big trouble. I think the judge needs to wake up.
*ahem* Ubuntu
quite possibly best OS distro out there, even among the likes of commercial offerings like OSX and WinXP. Sure each has its advantages in certain areas, but as a jack of all trades ubuntu can get it all done without much fuss. What it really comes down to is application support, if you are using software that absolutely requires any one OS in exclusion of all others, then you are screwing yourself for the future (this mostly applies to businesses however)
The real important question: Is microsoft any less of a monopoly due to any of these remedy's?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I don't know if the DOJ is toothless or if they are selecting the best of a bad situation. Here is the problem:
What the DOJ would like is various American companies making competing software, each with relatively balanced marked share. This way the companies need to make products the customers want at a reasonable price. If one of the companies overprices their product they will loose market share. If one of the companies produces something the prohibits customers from doing what they want then the company will loose market share. This is all the ideal free market economy. The only hitch is they want American companies employee American works, paying American taxes, 'sponsoring' American politician, selling to the rest of the world, and leaving open doors for the CIA/NSA to spy on the rest of the worlds computers. What they have is a monopoly and rest of the world is buying or stealing it products. When the rest of the world is pressured into not stealing, they rest of the world is not just being good boys and girls and buy from the one American company, instead the world is developing their own software industry (using open source). Now the US government has decided it is better to shore up the monopoly instead of allowing the rest of the world to develop competing software industries.
as a matter of fact, I would generally agree with all the claims that they strong arm the competition to win against better products in the marketplace. But, MS (and Bill Gates) in particular has been shilling for Democrats as of lately. He put Gore as his de facto choice of a successful politician in his retirement video. And he talked about the necessity to "contribute to society" by charity rather than by progress -- a traditional Democratic dogma. I don't want to argue politics per se here. I just noticed that he came out in a number of way for the Democrats. So the Republican AG (in the tradition of corruption and vindictiveness that this particular Republican administration continues openly) took a political step against MS. Anyone surprised?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
How much more will it take before governments start to view Microsoft as a non-responsible contractor and stop entering into contracts with them?
This convicted monopolist Microsoft was found by the judge in this most recent order to PURPOSELY have been foot dragging in terms of compliance with the judge's orders:
"It is clear, at least to the court, that Microsoft is culpable for this inexcusable delay... practically speaking, Microsoft has never complied with III.E..."
See: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyId=13&articleId=9060099&intsrc=hm_topic
Governments have rules that say that they are statutorily prohibited from entering into contracts with companies that lack business ethics. See for example http://www.ogs.state.ny.us/purchase/snt/overviews/SPF2005S08OscVendorResponsibility.rtf
How the hell can governments continue to justify contracting with a company like this that repeatedly has been found to have been flouting the law? I just don't get it.
Microsoft has posted first and second quarterly results for fiscal year 2008 that that have been nothing less than spectacular. It is debt free, paying dividends, and holds $20 billion or so in cash.
Interestingly, since Windows Vista became generally available one year ago, Microsoft's client business has grown more than 20% and sales of Windows Vista have now surpassed 100 million licenses. Microsoft reports record second quarter results
If this is castration, then let's give the eunuchs their due:
Vista is the only client OS to show significant growth in years. OS Platform Stats
You can argue all you like about the specifics of the w3Schools stats but you are going to have a much harder time explaining away the long term trends exposed there.
Making DX10 Vista only really is a crime. The software I use professionally barely runs on Vista (OpenGL), so unless I want to duel boot for games, I can't enjoy the eye candy of DX10 games. The DOJ oversight? Bet they havn't a clue about MS making their 3D API Vista only.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
I don't like it, but we MUST interoperate and that takes time, money, talent, etc. For example:
So long as the majority of desktops use Windows, EVERYONE ELSE MUST INTEROPERATE OR STAGNATE.
I have a feeling this guy [Gates] won't shut up until he is either President of the United States or otherwise plugged into the political power machine. Microsoft in its present state, reminds me of a foaming, rabid dog at the end of a chain leash with the chain's peg in the ground almost up and out. I fear the beginning of a much larger, more powerful Microsoft, with Gates in government is still to come.
IMO, Microsoft has a free ride in the US compared to the EU. With events like what happened with Corel, Microsoft, and Corel Linux, and things coming full circle with patent agreement and Xandros, what hope is there for the good guys?
I think in the grand scheme of things, MS'es monopolistic practices are hardly anything to be concerned with. There is a lot more competition out there than you think. MS just has a better marketing machine to keep their motor running. While there is obvious concern on the part of the DoJ, they are doing just enough to keep the judge from getting too pissed. Usually in cases of monopolistic companies, resolutions take many years to resolve fully. The Bell phone company case took about 10 years to finalize. Standard Oil I believe was even longer, and RJ Reynolds Tobacco....not sure how long that took since it was well over a hundred years ago. So, in other words, stopy crying and complaining and have some patience.
I said it once and I will say it again, with out MS most of us tech-geeks wouldn't have a job/hobby/whatever, and I bet there is not a lot of us that can say "I have never-ever used an MS product".
Insert funny smart-ass comment here.
You should have said "because we have THIS republican president."
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Translated:
The DOJ is going to sit back and watch Micro$oft ignore their rulings, expand the monopoly and break laws for yet another two more years.
I'm inspired.
The OOXML extensions for SharePoint aren't in the OOXML standard submitted to the ISO per my understanding, so it feels like we're at "extend" now and "extinguish" comes later.
At least, that's my take on it.
You gotta pay for two more laps.
>This only applies to the requirement that Microsoft make protocol documentation available to competitors, though.
>All of the other requirements have expired [SNIP]
Quite the contrary. The protocol documentation requirements were already extended. She ordered that the rest of the requirements *NOT* expire.
The US DOJ did not ask the Judge in this case to extend the portions of the FJ which were expiring, so they expired. The DOJ already had extended oversight regarding the protocol licensing and documentation for two additional years, and that is still in effect.
The news is that the other Plaintiffs (the "States") petition to extend the expiring portions was granted, so that for at least the next two years oversight continues in full force. And the Judge indicated that she will look again at the situation again in two years, and that she has the right to extend the Judgment again, if appropriate.
Agreed, Microsoft makes good development tools. And a powerful GUI designer helps if you need to create some dialogs fast.
I think you missed some OSS solutions though, judging from your wx reference. Take a look at this Qt demo video (yay, no reading!), and compare it with the VS.Net solutions. There is a reason KDE has so many apps, Qt makes it possible to develop applications just as fast and customers drool over the API's. ;-)
The best way to accelerate a windows server is by 9.81 m/s2
> The US Department of Justice has extended its anti-trust oversight of Microsoft by two
> years.
No they didn't. US Federal District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly did.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.