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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.'"
Excerpt from a post by lawyer Andrew Updegrove, an open-standards advocate who tracks the issue on his Standards Blog:
I expect that it is no coincidence that this announcement comes just two business days (and only one, for most of the world) before the Ballot Resolution Meeting convenes in Geneva next Monday. This will effectively give those participating in the discussions of Microsoft's OOXML document format no opportunity to fully understand what Microsoft has actually promised to do, while reaping the maximum public relations benefit.
How about Sun's legal threats against people who innovate on top of Java in unauthorized fashion?
Is there any party Microsoft has made a patent sharing agreement with to date that is not a net recipient?
Microsoft to Novell: "Take this money or we will sue you"
Novell to Microsoft: "Curse your threats, we surrender!"
Slashdot to Novell: "Thhhrrrruuuppppp!!!!!"
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What right do Microsoft have to force me to pay for their product?
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.
Microsoft is illegally using its monopoly position to extort billions from me and other customers, and nobody's stopping the theft, nobody's making them return their ill-gotten gains.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Yeah, looking at it, it would seem like a win to standardize. But some companies felt otherwise, or saw a wider market, and wanted to ship multiple OSes. Microsoft punished these companies by canceling the standard volume discounts of up to 90%, effectively making the company pay retail - far more than its competitors.
In one world, paying everyone not to deal with your competitor is good business. In that world, his paying people to hunt near your house is justifiable as well.
We aim for a more civilized world. Where you can't just pay for the elimination of a competitor. Who cares if this is ultimately more free for business when we've discovered that it inevitably leads to abuse?
It's illegal to discriminate based on the color of an employee's skin. While this does restrict businesses and even no-doubt prevent some legitimate concerns like hiring to match the drapes, it's a value that society as a whole believes is worth enforcing. Monopoly-busting rules are the same. You're enjoying the protection of law (your competitor can't just kill you for interfering) but harming pretty much everyone else through blackmail (playing price games in a cornered market for essentials like food or housing is essentially blackmail) isn't something that law was intended to support.