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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."
Yes.
The Software Freedom Law Center got the protocol documents for Microsoft workgroup networking, which they were supposed to make available in 2004.
The EU agreement also weakens Microsoft's FUD about Linux and other FOSS violating its patents. They now have to disclose patents covering its workgroup protocols so developers will be able to show their code doesn't infringe.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I've used a lot of MS products, and I've never, ever thought that any of them were the best in their field.
I really really hope you were paid to make that post.
More details can be found here from the previous round of talks: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070308-us-doj-microsoft-dragging-feet-on-documentation.html Or the official DOJ page http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f221700/221759.htm
"It's one thing to talk about the poetry of machines. Quite another to listen to it for yourself."
I like SQL Server, and have developed extensively for it, but this statement "certainly better then everything else in the opensource" is wrong because it infers SQL Server is an open sourced product. If you're going to compare am expensive DBMS to a free one, you need to account for the free one being free to install with a $0 per user cost. SQL Server is over-used in business today, with managers buying it for small projects where it's not warranted.
SQL Server is better for some applications than many open source DBMS's, but for some uses SQLite is far better still. It's largely down to requirements, and no DBMS is 'best' in all situations.
You do realise that for small installations and small projects, SQL Server is free, yes?
As a SharePoint geek (2003 and 2007) I'm curious about what's in the new OOXML formats that's SharePoint specific. I know I haven't
/. so much fun.
seen anything in the documents -- hell, out of the box SharePoint doesn't even correctly index all the new OOXML formats like it does
for the old binary ones.
Yes, SharePoint 2007 works best with Office 2007 (DIP, better dialogs, read-only means read-only, calendar sync, etc. etc.) but I have
yet to see _anything_ in the standard collaboration functionality* that screams "OMGWTFBBQ! Why aren't you using OOXML formats?".
All that said, please don't let facts get in the way of anti-Microsoft rants. It's part of what makes
*I don't consider writing features that generate OOXML to be standard collaboration. Yes, it's much easier to do OOXML than, say, WordML and/or SpreadsheetML.
P.S. As to the poster asking about Alfresco, I think the biggest hurdle there is lack of decent documentation.
On the contrary.
There are misguided FOSS attempts on going after what Microsoft is doing, but overall all they achieve is a loss of time for everyone. Why lose time replicating crappy technology? In this bag, I include, for instance, Mono and Moonlight. And, of course, the efforts on implementing MSOOXML, by Gnome, for instance. MSOOXML should be seen as a deprecated legacy format, for which only a half-assed converter should be created.
Take Samba, for instance. It's a great piece of software! But for what? For implementing a proprietary file sharing protocol, that is so flawed that it has to be changed with every major version of Microsoft's OS, many times with incompatibilities with previous versions. I mean, of course Samba made viable the implementation of Linux on the enterprise, on Windows networks, and should be praised for that. But, overall, isn't it a waste for these very talented guys to lose all this time coding this crappy protocol, when they could in fact be putting their effort on something other than following what Microsoft is doing?
Microsoft make lots of very good products, it's not fair to bag them on -everything-I don't agree. I don't know any Microsoft product that I could call "very good".
The reason to "bag them" is not because of their products, but because of their business practics, which are not based on competing on merits, but on spreading FUD and locking in customers as much as they can. Just see ODF/MSOOXML and the OLPC/Classmate for two great examples of why Microsoft is not to be trusted.
Unlimited users, but its a bit limited on how much hardware and RAM you can throw at it. Also limited to 4 gigs in size. Reporting Services is in, DTS (Which, as of SQL Server 2005, has been remade from scratch into the vastly superior SSIS) is NOT in (and that makes me very, very sad, since SSIS is my favorite ETL tool).
:) Postgres has OK dev tools, and onces its hidden behind an ORM like Hibernate or LLBLGEN, it all looks the same, aside for the business intelligence bits.
I'm not sure about the scheduling and stuff, but quite a bit of these features are there. The development tools for it are also free (they're part of a free version of Visual Studio). No Analysis Service and OLAP cubes either.
It is definately not for all scenarios, but considering the ease of development, it serves a lot of purposes. I still push the open source offering when we need an enterprise-class solution and the customer's being cheap though
Your argument is completely flawed. You start saying that you have to pick the right OS for your business needs, and then you say that for most people it is Microsoft, in a way to imply that everyone should go with Microsoft since it's good for most so it will be good for you? It doesn't make sense. You say: 1) You should pick what is good for you; 2) Most people pick this, so you should pick it too.
The problem today is that Microsoft has a monopoly for so long that people start thinking that their way is the only way... Stop thinking like this now! Save yourself! I have news for you: the earth is round! Break out of this cage of thought. With Linux and FOSS you can provide desktops, office suites, e-mail applications, web browsers. You have management tools such as LDAP servers. It's not exactly like MS Office, MS Outlook, MS Exchange and MS AD, but it works, it's stable, people are using it, you can get support for it. As the parent said, you should "pick the right OS for your business needs", so evaluate what Linux and FOSS has to offer, and pick it if you think it may be right for you.
yes there are vendors like red hat, but have you looked at their prices? it makes windows look cheap.No it doesn't. Red Hat will charge you for high-quality phone support, which means if you have issues with their software you can call them and they'll help you to fix it. It's not cheap, but if you account for all the costs of Microsoft, you'll see that Red Hat is much cheaper. With Microsoft, you have costs of licenses for the OS, licenses for the Office suite, support contract with Microsoft, subscription for anti-virus, license upgrades whenever Microsoft decides you should buy a new product (even if you don't need the new features, you'll end up having to buy it), costs of hardware more powerful to run their bloated software, and cost of administrating a Windows environment (virus and spyware, reinstalling machines, managing licenses, and so on, and so on, and so on).
Red Hat is certainly cheaper than that. But even then, if you can't afford it, you still can choose Ubuntu or SuSE. Heck, you can even go with CentOS, which is for all purposes a clone of Red Hat without the support contract. With Linux you choose how much you want to spend, and it will fit to your budget.
I think you missed the entire point, please reread what i said without the rabid anti-ms bias and you'll see i said 1. pick the best tool for the job and 2. most people pick MS for this reason, it's simply what they need to run their business. don't hate me because i'm right k?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
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.
being a monopoly is not illegal but being a monopoly means having a monopoly position in a market and new rules apply. The courts not only determined Microsoft had a monopoly position in operating systems but also illegally leveraged that position to harm competition. What I found disheartening was that the courts, after Judge Jackson was removed, did not institute any kind of penalty for the illegal behavior. It'll be a decade before the courts can possibly say that the required remedies have been implemented to the courts satisfaction. Ten freak'n years!
You want to bet there are Microsoft lawyers and exec's laughing their asses off at how easily they are able to drag out these pithy remedies. The US Federal courts were castrated by the Bush Administration when they put Ashcroft in place and he disemboweled the remedies Judge Jackson imposed.
But I will say that the lack of penalties imposed on Microsoft has helped open source software tremendously. Had Microsoft be split into three independent business units, competition amongst proprietary software vendors large and small would have flourished. Also, the industry support behind Linux and OSS we've seen over the last 8 years would likely have been 1/10 - 1/4 of what it is now. And a larger percentage of IT budgets go only to Microsoft.com, the easier it is for the businesses and governments to see savings from moving some of that to GNU/Linux. Look at the recent news of the French police. First it was huge savings by dropping MS Office and the security afforded by moving to Firefox. Then they save more by removing the Microsoft Windows OS and are better able to leverage much much more open source software after that.
The Bush backed US Federal courts are gutless in dealing with Microsoft and as you mentioned, think they know how to prevent Microsoft from further monopoly abuse. They've already shown they have no clue. The EU on the other hand has no problem using the stick and inflict penalties for the abuses and further penalize them for mocking the EU courts and dragging out the process. I applaud the EU justices for their handling of this. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus