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

We come in peace!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shoot to kill!

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:We come in peace!

[zonker]

"It's a cookbook!"

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."

[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."

[ozmanjusri]

what right do I have to force them to do it?

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.

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."

[Foople]

The phrase "free market" has been corrupted by doublespeak. When Adam Smith wrote about the free market, he meant the market should be free. Today's corrupted meaning is that people within the market should be free. The two meanings are contradictory.

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

[WNight]

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.

To make a long story short:

[MMC Monster]

The promise is to not litigate if you use their patents/documents for non-commercial applications.

The problem is that GPL software cannot have this limitation.

Re:To make a long story short:

[Zeinfeld]

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

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!!!!!"

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).

Darn it!

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean to say I printed all these "Sorry I doubted you Microsoft"-T-shirts FOR NOTHING?

Just before OOXML-vote

[jbrax]

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.

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.

European Comission is not so impressed

[jbrax]

Seems like European Comission has learned something about Microsoft's previous four announcements. Excerpt:

The Commission would welcome any move towards genuine interoperability. Nonetheless, the Commission notes that today's announcement follows at least four similar statements by Microsoft in the past on the importance of interoperability.

ECIS's Thomas Vinje has also issued a statement that is worth reading.

Is msft honesty too much to ask?

[walterbyrd]

> Groklaw wouldn't be happy unless Microsoft announced that it was filing for bankruptcy and submitting everything they own into the public domain

Wrong. Groklaw just asks that msft stop lying. If msft wants to keep their MSOOXML thing proprietary, that is no problem.

The problem is that msft claims that MSOOXML is an open standard, when it's not.

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.

Slashdot is still not posting the good stuff...

[NullProg]

The real story from Groklaw, How to Get Your Platform Accepted as a Standard - Microsoft Style http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071023002351958

I submitted this story last weekend. One of the many juicy excerpts....

I have mentioned before the "stacked panel". Panel discussions naturally favor alliances of relatively weak partners - our usual opposition. For example, an "unbiased" panel on OLE vs. OpenDoc would contain representatives of the backers of OLE (Microsoft) and the backers of OpenDoc (Apple, IBM, Novell, WordPerfect, OMG, etc.). Thus we find ourselves outnumbered in almost every "naturally occurring" panel debate.
A stacked panel, on the other hand, is like a stacked deck: it is packed with people who, on the face of things, should be neutral, but who are in fact strong supporters of our technology. The key to stacking a panel is being able to choose the moderator. Most conference organizers allow the moderator to select the panel, so if you can pick the moderator, you win. Since you can't expect representatives of our competitors to speak on your behalf, you have to get the moderator to agree to having only "independent ISVs" on the panel. No one from Microsoft or any other formal backer of the competing technologies would be allowed - just ISVs who have to use this stuff in the "real world." Sounds marvelously independent doesn't it? In fact, it allows us to stack the panel with ISVs that back our cause. Thus, the "independent" panel ends up telling the audience that our technology beats the others hands down. Get the press to cover this panel, and you've got a major win on your hands.


If you can't win by technical merit, stack the panel and buy the moderator. OpenDoc was superior and I find it interesting that were there again after 10+ years with the OOXML vs ODF battle.

I think Microsoft just killed my subscription(s) to every Pro-Windows magazine I subscribe too (DrDobbs, MSDN, etc). Now every favorable opinion I've read about Microsoft will be biased with a "Did Microsoft purchase that expert opinion?". If you compete against Microsoft you will loose because they control the Pundits/Press, and Moderators. Its all about the marketing, not the technical advantages of your product.

My opinion and I reserve the right to be wrong.
Enjoy,

Re:Hear All About It

[filbranden]

Groklaw is complaining that, as usual, Microsoft's marketing department is saying something that doesn't match what Microsoft is doing.

Marketing is saying: "Look! We care for open source! We'll release documentation they can use! We want to interoperate!!!"

Meanwhile, they're releasing some documentation that can be used only for non-commercial projects, and they're only saying they won't sue the developers of such projects.

They try to connect "non-commercial" with "open source", when in fact those are distinct, for instance Red Hat uses open source code for commercial purposes, they sell it. Not to mention Microsoft also tries to mix "open source" and "free software", which are also different concepts, and when their marketing department tries to imply they'll be good to free software, in fact their actions are totally against it.

And consider this snippet (from TFA):

BRAD SMITH: With respect to other distributors, and users, the clear message is that patent licenses will be freely available.
STEVE BALLMER: Patents will be, not freely, will be available.
BRAD SMITH: Readily available.
STEVE BALLMER: Readily available for the right fee.

I mentioned before, they're saying they won't sue the developers... but the users? Oh... they'll have to license Microsoft's valuable patents to be able to use such software!

In other words, it's all FUD. Marketing doing a big fuss about something that is completely different of what they announce. All to try to look good at EU's eyes. It's still just business at usual, Microsoft way.

Microsoft promises better-feigned interoperability

[David Gerard]

MORDOR, Washington, Friday (UnGadget) -- Microsoft today announced a set of carefully-phrased promises to appear more open about its business practices and technologies, so as to expand its reach through developers, partners, customers and competitors' wallets.

The interoperability principles and promises are an apparent, lengthy, reluctant, and necessary step for Microsoft's sudden efforts to fulfill the obligations outlined in the September 2007 judgment of the European Court of First Instance (CFI). And the hope of half a chance of getting OOXML through ISO.

"These pronouncements appear to be an important step and significant change in how we share information about our products and technologies and a significant expansion in apparent transparency," said Microsoft CEO Heave Stallmore. "While we've promised considerable progress over the past several years, today's announcement takes our virtual commitment to a new level.

"For the past thirty years, we have carefully shared misinformation with thousands of now-bankrupt partners around the world. By promoting greater interoperability, opportunity and choice, we hope to share even more of their information to our benefit."

To enable third-party products to connect to Microsoft products, Microsoft will publish for free!!! voluminous documentation, setting a new low in information per page, to contaminate developers with claimed knowledge for which their employers can later be sued, should they not cough up at what Microsoft considers reasonable and non-discriminatory (or not unreasonably so) terms. Open source developers may use these protocols too!!! precisely so long as they do not do anything that involves people not giving Microsoft money.

"The promises announced today by Microsoft will benefit the broader IT community," said Vomit Togel, head of Microsoft partner Perception Management, "where 'IT community' is defined as 'Microsoft partner.' This provides remarkable opportunity for IT consultants and increased choice of us in the marketplace."

Microsoft will expand industry outreach and dialog through an online Interoperability Forum and Fee Collection Channel. In addition, an initiative will address data exchange between widely deployed bank accounts.

"Sincerity is the key," says Microsoft founder Jill Bates III. "If we can fake that, we've got it made."

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq MNPLY) is the worldwide dominator in software, services and solutions that make people and businesses help it realise its full potential.