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Microsoft Submits Windows 7 for Antitrust Review
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has submitted the follow-up to Windows Vista to the committee that oversees its US antitrust compliance, to ensure the operating system is meeting the terms of the company's agreement with the government. According to last week's status report on the US antitrust case, Microsoft "recently supplied" the Technical Committee (TC) with a build of the OS, code-named Windows 7, and the TC will "conduct middleware-related tests on future builds" of the software. The move was revealed in papers filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. Those on the TC so far are the only ones privy to what the follow-up to Vista will look like, and Microsoft is mum on details of the software. But recent company moves and revelations hint at what can be expected from the software, which is due for release in late 2009 or early 2010. Lets hope Microsoft learns some lessons from the "Vista Capable" dilemma!!"
A big part of antitrust is windows overrides default browsers and such, and forces it's own bundled applications on the user by making it difficult to discover how to make your software run well on the OS when it's not clearly documented (secret hooks only available to MS).
If windows media player is able to achieve better performance through some type of black magic that other media players don't have access to, how will this be tested on a pre-release secret platform? Same with browsers, office suites, or any other MS application.
Have these copies been distributed with the complete source code so secrets can be uncovered? Even if that was the case, who would pay for the man hours to sift through millions of lines of code? Even with a full source code audit, the released binaries could be completely different anyhow.
I think the only solution to restore fair competition is massive fines that go directly to marketing and development of competing platforms. Paying consumers who have been locked into the MS trap still leaves them trapped.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
So that's it? All that to-do about Vista and how it's the Next Big Thing and it's slated to be replaced by "Windows 7" inside of a year and some change from now? That'll mean that Windows Vista was in production longer than it will be in service.