Groklaw Examines Microsoft's Promises

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Groklaw has examined that 'new leaf' Microsoft turned the other day. PJ has a lengthy analysis of Microsoft's latest promises. To make a long story short, the promises are more of the same stuff and don't help anyone but Microsoft. They only protect 'noncommercial' development and are set up to create a patented standards toll road so that Microsoft can charge competitors to compete. As PJ puts it, 'This is a promise to remain incompatible with the GPL, as far as I can make out.'"

Comments

And there was a collective sigh of "no shit."

[Reality Master 201]

It's what we in the biz call "a load of bullshit," and probably comes from the legal department (by way of marketing), who're possibly worried that the EU might do something to them.

Re:And there was a collective sigh of "no shit."

[megaditto]

Well, I too am worried that EU (or our next Democrat president) will try to do something to "fix" things.

I agree it would be better for me as a consumer if Microsoft went all-open, but what right do I have to force them to do it? If I don't like it, I don't buy from them. What I shouldn't do is try to send in the Feds or other jackbooted thugs to take them down.

Look people, that's how our current capitalist/free market system works: each company has responsibility to its shareholders to maximize the business and profits. Why you think Microsoft ownes it to any of you to give away their computer code is beyond me.

Not posting as AC for obvious reasons.

Re:And there was a collective sigh of "no shit."

[filbranden]

I agree it would be better for me as a consumer if Microsoft went all-open, but what right do I have to force them to do it?

You forget that Microsoft is a convicted monopolist and that they use dirty tactics against their competitors.

that's how our current capitalist/free market system works

And that's exactly one of the problems of the capitalist and free market system (I'm not trolling here! No economic system is perfect and others failed miserably much quicker than capitalism, but that's not my point). The problem here is that once a company becomes a monopoly, it has too much power in its hands. It has, for example, power enough to extinguish small competitors by artificially lowering prices until the competitor dies and then, with no one to compete, rise prices again.

Microsoft is a good example of a company that takes profit from the "loopholes" of capitalism. By using lock in to their proprietary formats and bundling IE and WMP in the OS, they've achieved to keep for a long time more than 90% of market share on a wide range of products, to force people to upgrade and pay them more money, and all that without innovating (if you really look at their products, you'll see that in the last 5 years they didn't introduce any new feature worth buying, mostly cosmetic changes only). All that just using dirty tactics by making sure no one could create programs compatible or interoperatable with theirs.

I do believe in a free market, but this market we have with Microsoft is anything but free. And I do think governments have the responsability to level the playing field here.

Why you think Microsoft ownes it to any of you to give away their computer code is beyond me.

The biggest issue here is why did we get into this situation. If Microsoft had used and promoted open standards since the begining, they wouldn't be in this situation today. They would have to compete in quality of their products, not based on the legacy that only they can access. Since they chose to do everything they could to avoid interoperability at all costs, being forced to do that now is the least I expect.

Re:And there was a collective sigh of "no shit."

[that this is not und]

It's called the rule of law, and at the moment it's being enforced selectively. I would be arrested by jackbooted thugs if I took Microsoft products without paying, and would be forced to return the products.

Actually, you would find that you wouldn't be arrested by jackbooted thugs for doing so. Many people pirate Microsoft products without any repercussions at all.

Now, in a world of total enforcement, Microsoft would be split up. And we would all be in jail for being software pirates.

Well, not all of us. Just most of us.

And I am not that keen on living in a world of 'total enforcement.' Not because Microsoft is gonna roll into my home and confiscate my NetBSD box, of course.

Re:And there was a collective sigh of "no shit."

[filbranden]

O.J. Simpson is an acquitted murderer too that doesn't mean it's true.

Are you trying to imply that they were wrongly accused?

Microsoft is a monopoly for a fact, they detain more than 90% of the market share of OS for desktops and Office applications. In several occasions Microsoft was shown to use anti-competitive practices, using their monopoly to kill their opponents and keep their market share.

If their monopoly power was so great Apple & Linux wouldn't be here.

Well, if they're still here, it's not for lack of Microsoft efforts to get rid of them.

Apple was virtually dead in the mid-90s, they only reappeared due to the amazing success of the iMac. They've been able to keep alive after that by delivering superior products and by marketing them right.

Linux is an pretty good piece of software and newadays it's superior to Windows in most of its features. The fact that it still has less than 1% of market share in the desktop is a direct result of Microsoft's dirty practices (such as blackmailing hardware vendors into bundling their OS and using proprietary protocols to make interoperability impossible).

You can't have it both ways.. The death of Microsoft and Linux/Apple winning! Or Microsoft is so powerful the government has to destroy it for others to compete.

Actually Microsoft has enough money and enough good programmers that they could compete by delivering good quality products if they wanted too. Even if they're forced to play nice (use open standards, unbundle software, interoperate), either by the courts or by the fact that they're no longer a monopoly, they'll probably be here for long.

It would be good though, because they'll have to deliver good software to keep some market share. If they would put all the effort they put to FUD us into writing decent software, I would have no problem with them at all.

Re:And there was a collective sigh of "no shit."

[Libertarian001]

And for the most part I agree with you. The problem is that a company should be playing by the same rules that were already laid out and punished severely when they break them. The anti-trust lawsuits amounted to more of a slap on the wrist than any actual punishment. When a company engages in the exact same practices that got them into trouble to begin with, then the punishment was not sufficient. And using economic might (do it our way for better pricing or else you're just cut off) isn't a free market.

Re:And there was a collective sigh of "no shit."

[rohan972]

Look people, that's how our current capitalist/free market system works: each company has responsibility to its shareholders to maximize the business and profits. Why you think Microsoft ownes it to any of you to give away their computer code is beyond me.

First, since business models based on the charging per item for copyright and/or patented software depends entirely on government intervention it is nonsense to call it a free market. It is a market created by the government, on behalf of the people, for a particular purpose, being to promote progress of science and useful arts. Since it is a government created market, it is by nature a government regulated market. To be logically consistent in your application of the idea of a free market system to the software industry you would have to insist on no copyright or patent protection as well. To give the companies protection without regulation is to provide for the domination of the people.

As to code, it's about releasing API documentation, not code.

Re:And there was a collective sigh of "no shit."

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

If their monopoly power was so great Apple & Linux wouldn't be here.

Gee brilliant reasoning there sport. MS's primary customers are PC OEMs, like Dell, not end users. Can Dell buy MacOS to preinstall on their machines? Nope. That disqualifies Apple as a competitor in that market. And do I really need to go into Linux? When the closest thing you have to a competitor is a communal, nonprofit collaboration using creative licensing to bypass traditional methods of destruction using market economics, well that's a pretty sure sign that the market is not healthy. How many copies of Linux were sold last year? What did you say? None? Gee, that sounds like they are a pretty strong competitor.

Sure other desktop OS's exist. That does not mean the free market is functioning. Both are examples of bypassing the OS market because it is so unhealthy. In a truly competitive market Apple would not be able to bundle their OS and hardware because they would be being undercut by more agile developers of both. As it is the broken market forces them to bundle and so compete in the "computer system" market against Dell and HP because that is a reasonably healthy market. As for Linux, it is an attempt by people so fed up with the results of the broken market that they're willing to work for free on the weekend to avoid having to use the abortion created by MS's abuse of their monopoly.

You can't have it both ways.. The death of Microsoft and Linux/Apple winning! Or Microsoft is so powerful the government has to destroy it for others to compete.

The government destroy Microsoft? Who said that was going to happen or was even proposed? If anything the government breaking up Microsoft would motivate them to make good products again, because they would have to or go out of business... just like every other company.

Re:We come in peace!

[Derek Loev]

Statements like

To make a long story short, the promises are more of the same stuff and don't help anyone but Microsoft. make me not want to even come to RTFS anymore.
In my opinion, there are very few times when a company's main goal isn't to help themselves.

MS just don't get how the GPL works

[timmarhy]

I don't get how MS is so afraid of the GPL.

it only requires you provide the source code when you distribute your program. It doesn't mean you have to not charge for software or that software even be free. MS lose nothing if they say distributed win XP with source under the GPL, and it would certainly open up a whole new world of compatability for them that would result in tools that expand their market oppertunities.

it would at the same time prevent competitors taking that code and distributing a product without making the sources available themselfs, which would allow contribution of said sources into MS's own products.

Re:MS just don't get how the GPL works

[Chandon Seldon]

The GPL allows competition.

Microsoft's entire business model is to exploit the monopolies granted by copyright and patent law.

Re:MS just don't get how the GPL works

[rahvin112]

MS doesn't write all their own code, the license code all the time and they likely couldn't GPL windows even if they actually wanted to. The GPL is scary to MS because it eliminates any dollar value to the product, you don't make money selling GPL, you make money supporting GPL and Microsoft hasn't been in the support industry outside commercial sales for years and even their commercial support is only available with large site licenses and likely makes them very little.

Windows and Office are the only two software products that Microsoft makes money on. Everything else they do is to maintain those sales because they make so much money on them. The return on windows is phenomenal (no other company in the software industry comes even close to what they make) and office is even higher. If MS GPL'd their software and anyone could sell a different branded but an identical compatible version, MS would be out of business in a few months. You don't make freely available your core and only profitable product for anyone to make copies and sell or give away free and make any significant money on the product. MS has a workforce of 10's of thousands of employees (10's of millions in monthly salaries) and hundreds of software products as well as a console that they lose money on, in some cases like the XBOX they lose massive amounts of money. Without the Windows/Office Monopolies they don't exist as a profitable enterprise, their stock goes to 0, Bill gates suddenly only has a few 10's of millions and millions of American's 401k's go into the toilet along with a major export for the nation and likely create serious damage to the economy of the state of Washington.

Hey I hate that MS has a monopoly too, I hate that they dominate the operating system world and I think Linux is better technologically and could be even better without Windows around, but the fact is that MS giving away their two core products would be assine, and for them to have any GPL code in the code they distribute would destroy them as a company.

Re:We come in peace!

[filbranden]

In my opinion, there are very few times when a company's main goal isn't to help themselves.

The problem is not Microsoft wanting to profit and not wanting to help their competitors. The problem is they doing that while doing a big announcement that they want to help and interoperate, which is exactly what they did.

Re:Someone should make a horror movie.

[vux984]

More than 75,000 people have signed InfoWorld's "Save XP" petition in the three weeks since it was launched - many with passionate, often emotional pleas to not be forced to make a change."

Nobody is forcing them to make a change. They can run windows xp for as long as they like. People out there are still running windows 95.

Oh... you meant you want to force microsoft not to release a new edition while discontinuing their old ones? Tough shit. Might as well cry to ford that you don't want them to update their models every year. See how far you get with that.

Or perhaps you mean, Infoworld thinks if Microsoft sees enough demand for continued XP support they'll continue to support it, and that's what this stunt is all about. Of course its a nice theory. They're a company after all. They aren't going to leave a big pile of money on the table.

If MS thinks people WON'T buy Vista, and will migrate away from windows if they can't buy XP then they'll support XP.

But they aren't really in that predicament at all. Not many of these so-called respected IT people are going to switch to linux or OSX if they can't buy XP, switching to linux doesn't get their activeX/iis/active directory/whatever infrastrucure going seamlessly without any retraining or re-implementation, etc. Its not that they don't want vista, its that they don't want to change at all.

So they're fucked. They can bitch and throw a tantrum all they want, MS can move forward and they'll come kicking and screaming because they bought into an OS that they don't have any control over, and Vista is still the easiest upgrade path they have. They made their bed when they signed up for proprietary software. Microsoft has released how many versions of windows? And how many versions of DOS before that?? If they didn't think that sooner or later MS would drag them forward they haven't been paying attention.

Apple users went through the same thing when they switched from OS9 to OSX and from PPC to intel... its just that apple isn't 90+ percent of the business desktop operating system market so "Infoworld" and IT people in general never got up in arms over it.

OS9 -> OSX is a lot like XP to Vista... OSX ran like a DOG compared to OS9 on the same hardware, tons of incompatible software, missing drivers for tons of hardware, completely redone interface with a lot of controversial issues -- like the dock, unix and security added in... good thing OS9 was so different it had to be run completely virtualized because NOT a single OS9 program would have gotten off the ground in OSX. And then just a couple years later they switched to intel and OS9 was dead as a doornail, and couldn't even be virtualized.

That is the price of progress and the nature of vender lockin. I feel sorry for end users when they get caught with their pants down during a transition... but IT people? They should fucking know better and should have seen this coming miles away and planned for it.

Re:Someone should make a horror movie.

[vux984]

So how long are they going to continue to patch xp?

MS has published their guidelines on life cycle policy. The date the last license will be sold along with the end of the patch services is all readily available information. Look it up. Perhaps they'll extend the dates for XP as result of this stunt, perhaps not. But anyone in IT has known for a LONG time about this.

How long will the WGA servers continue to tell the customer's computers that it is okay to run xp?

Good question. I expect MS would be dragged through the courts and handed their asses if they even tried to shut down the servers within the next decade or two without first releasing an official fool-WGA-so-it-thinks-it-got-valid-response-from-the-server patch.

That said, IT people have known about WGA, activation, and so forth since it was first unveiled, and they chose to buy into the system. They had plenty of opportunity to reject it then. Again, they KNEW this was a risk when they bought in.

It certainly occurred to me the first time I heard about the planned Windows activation feature of XP that this could be a problem if MS ever got bought out, shut down, or something like that happened. I despise systems like this. Most really big enterprises, governments, militaries, etc have 'escrow' deals, that can be triggered in an event like the above; so that if a vendor can't live up to their obligations, source code, or pathces, signing keys, or whatever are released.

The general public unfortunately doesn't have this protection. Maybe we should demand it from government? That proprietary source code be placed in escrow, for example. To be released when the vendor vanishes from the face of the earth, copyright on it expires, and/or other circumstances in which it would be in the publics best interest to get the source.

How long will vendors continue to support multiple code forks for their apps as the APIs drift?

That would be up to the vendors. If your going to draw a line in the sand and say, "I am sticking with this platform", you better hope you make up enough of the market for them not to leave you behind. Even linux users have that issue...things only ever get backported so far. Sure its FOSS so you can backport it yourself if you want... but most IT shops really aren't prepared to go to that effort, even though it is an option.

Re:We come in peace!

[_Sprocket_]

In my opinion, there are very few times when a company's main goal isn't to help themselves. Oddly enough, IBM is able to contribute to the general IT community without the same kinds of shennanigans Microsoft is trying to pull here. And IBM is probably doing it because it helps themselves.

Re:To make a long story short:

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Can we have equal time for complaints about Apple's use of patented power connectors?

Sure, just as soon as Apple is declared to have a monopoly on portable, digital music players, which is still an undecided matter by the courts. Also, didn't I read somewhere that Apple just licensed the use of an existing variant of USB from JAE? While it is patented, I don't think it is Apple's patent, so that is a bit different.

How about Sun's legal threats against people who innovate on top of Java in unauthorized fashion?

Why? What do they have a monopoly on?

Is there any party Microsoft has made a patent sharing agreement with to date that is not a net recipient?

I don't think you understand the issue most people have with Microsoft. It isn't that they don't license their patents. It is that they use proprietary technologies to disadvantage potential competitors, and that disadvantage is only possible because of their monopolies (which is illegal and undermines the capitalist free market).