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DOJ To Oversee Windows 7 Development
MrKaos writes "Windows 7 is already being reviewed by U.S. government technical appointees. Under the terms of Microsoft's November 2001 Justice Department settlement, and final court judgment issued about a year later, a government-sanctioned 'Technical Committee' has been formed to oversee Windows development. The TC is responsible for ensuring that Microsoft complies with the terms of the final judgment, investigating complaints about Microsoft abuses and regularly reporting on the company's compliance."
This.
Will signify the year of the Linux Desktop.
If there was anything that could make windows worse, this administration will find it.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
the staredown between the DOJ geeks and the MS geeks as they both fight for superiority. Think there'll be fistfights in the breakroom?
"Power to the people!" Smack.
"This one's for Billy!" Punch.
I have been waiting for a built-in Windows National Threat Advisory widget for so long.
At first I read that summary:
"...responsible for ensuring that Microsoft compiles with the terms of the final judgment...
Pity... I thought "final judgment" would be an altogether fitting and proper name for any compiler that could successfully compile a Windows OS.
Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
As judgements go, this seems toothless or perhaps worse . . . unless you consider the specter of this years ago to have caused Microsoft to make some different decisions.
According to TFA, the DoJ is mainly concerned with:
- Compatability/bundling in four areas, three of which, such as bundling an instant messenger, Microsoft has given up on since '01. Web browser is the area on that list still in play.
- Making sure that bugs in previous versions of Windows don't recur. Congratulations, your tax dollars are providing extra Windows QA.
With this much oversight, any development will slow to a crawl. If anything gets released at all, it will be a rehash of products they already make.
Insert Windows Vista joke here.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
does this not bother anyone else? Why is our government so powerful that it can involve itself in development of a commercial product by a private company? Do we not realize that by endorsing this, we are inviting government to get involved in more an more areas of out lives. Why not regulating what types of products you can build as a developer? This is insane. I cannot believe that my fellow slashdotters think this is ok. Government has gone too far.
Windows 7 is "scheduled" for maybe something like sometime in 2010, but they're not making any promises. And if you look at the slated "features" It also looks like they're not sure what they have going on there. Updated versions of Paint and WordPad? Is that really what they're going for?
Instead of "Windows 7" the real code name is "Maybe we can come up with something you will want to buy, unlike Vista...?" However, unfortunately, they really have no idea how to accomplish that.
Oh, and just to be a snob... by comparison, OS X 10.5 looks like it will be adding real features and actually be released in about one year from now.
(I know, -3 Troll/Flamebait... But it was too fun not to post.)
Yeah, or 4: you be the judge.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
they check for illegal cooperation between a OS powerhouse (Microsoft) and a music/movies powerhouse (RIAA/MPAA)
The more I read about government oversight of operating systems, the more FOSS software I install... "America who isn't paranoid must be crazy" -- Robert Anton Wilson
The DOJ will likely want to ensure that there's a backdoor into the system that's not going to be caught by AV and firewalls that will allow them to snoop into anyone's computer at will. If you don't think they want this, you've apparently had your head in the sand.
Seriously, I haven't seen anyone deeply concerned over the possibility this means for backdoors forced in by the government. Do you really trust the government to NOT do this when it is available to them? Thank god for linux...
I remember reading (long enough ago that I don't remember the source or exact words) something by Gates saying that he feared the worst case for Microsoft would be to end up like their partner IBM: big and slow, with lawyers wedged into every orifice impeding every move. Fast forward twenty/thirty years and now they're in pretty much the same situation. I don't envy them.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
They still aren't in compliance with documentation from the original order. There are lots of functions for example that iexplore/explorer call which are not found in a search of MSDN, and really google fails for a lot of them - except returning one page complaining about the lack of documentation.
The explorer shell could be seen as part of the OS, but a web browser has no business calling undocumented functions. Too bad they tried to bundle the two. And it's also too bad that there is a lot of duplicated code among explorer.exe, browseui.dll, shlwapi.dll, and some others - I can't imagine trying to make a patch for this stuff. Instead of just making a documented API, they copy the code into all sorts of different places. And slightly differently I might add - so patching is not just a copy and paste job - it definitely has to be merged.
This reminds me of Katrina...how do you make a huge disaster even worse? Throw some federal bureaucracy into the mix.
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the staredown between the DOJ geeks and the MS geeks as they both fight for superiority. Think there'll be fistfights in the breakroom?
Nope, because the DOJ geeks will have badges, guns, pepper spray and tasers.
Perhaps you haven't been following the Microsoft/DoJ saga. Microsoft has gained its dominance on the desktop by spiking its competitors software via the API. The gummint is just trying to be the police that makes sure that the API is fully open and available to developers just as it would be for Microsoft's internal developers.
Where have you been?
Best regards.
If you want a back door for spying coded right, code it yourself!
This looks to be a very interesting situation. MS being watched closely while Apple and F/OSS is not.
Should MS' new OS come up with a feature that is the only OS supporting a feature that is part of a newly regulated banking industry security system, how would that play out in court?
If the OS does not come up with anything new, and only adds performance hits, bloatware, and other usability problems, will the consumer throw off MS for other options? If that happens, can MS blame the government?
Somehow, I don't see this working out too well. Even if people just 'think' the government is putting in a super secret back door to spy with, MS' revenue stream will dry up fast. Foreign governments, banks, and businesses will not want that kind of spying going on in their data centers.
Knowing politicians and governments the way we do (when wearing tinfoil hats) if we know this much about how Windows7 is going to be developed, what do we NOT know?
I just don't see this as being good for the industry as a whole. A bad precedent, or so it looks.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Just wait until the first backdoor-so-that-the-govt-can-fight-terrorism is found... "doom" doesn't even begin to explain fallout.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I predict doom, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Slashdotter predicts death of Microsoft. Details at 11.Perhaps you tuned in late. Or, perhaps you just were not paying attention. Maybe you shouldn't be commenting about things that you have no clue about.
Microsoft came to dominance by sabotaging the API so that its competitors did not have a good API to use, and its internal divisions for Excel and Word had a secret API that worked well. This is monopolistic behavior.
Part of the judgement agreed to by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is that Microsoft will open its API to all.
Best regards.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If Microsoft had been split into separate competing companies back when they lost the original DoJ lawsuit then:
(1) Microsoft would collectively be bigger and more profitable than they are now.
(2) Microsoft would be largely free of this kind of oversight.
Why did they fight so hard to remain a regulated monopoly instead?
Dear Mr. Mukasey:
Linux kernel in Windows 7 please.
Thanks.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
There fixed that for you. Bureaucracy in itself isn't bad. The problem with FEMA was that it was run by idiots who, over the years, drove away all the competent people. FEMA for the most part did a good job with the 1996 Midwest floods, Nor Cal earthquake, and Sept. 11. By the time of Katrina, who was in charge of FEMA: A lawyer who had no experience in emergency management, no experience running a large organization, and may have exaggerated or falsified his resume. Also the federal government in its wisdom decided to merge the previously small and independent FEMA into the huge conglomerate that is the Department of Homeland Security while reducing its funding.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Pssst. DoJ had oversight of Vista, too, and it turned out just f...uhhh...oh. Nevermind. Nothing to see here, move along
My blog
Anyone who remembers that era knows that Microsoft's competitors got into marketplace trouble by sucking even worse than Microsoft. Netscape gave Microsoft the browser market because Communicator was a steaming pile of dog shit compared to IE4 and IE5. Java didn't take off because Sun didn't focus anywhere near enough effort early on into getting a fast interpreter (JIT should have been in version 1.0) and Sun didn't help things by treating Swing like a curiosity for the first few years of its existence. Need I go on?
With Windows Vista, the DOJ should have laid off. It was a total debacle for Microsoft and signaled that they are in decline. If there is anyone who merits a look for anti-competitive, restrictive behavior it's Apple. I say this as someone who still happens to enjoy a nearly 100% Apple ecosystem in his house (iPod, MacBook Pro, AppleTV...)
So we're going to get some DoJ PHB looking over the coder's shoulders, saying "Hrm, y'know, I really liked that paper clip thing. I turned him into a doggie and kept him jumping around all day long. He ever wrote all my memos for me. I-- I mean the DoJ-- really mandates that he be put back."
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Uh. That would be a good thing.
Microsoft used her portrait as a watermark on some of the old license certs, might as well use the language named in her honor. ;)
Am I the only one that thinks she was, well, kinda hot?
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
yer doin it wrong... Your post is gay, so you must also be gay, because you made a gay post, and only a gay person would make a gay post, notthattheresanythingwrongwithbeinggay... no...
We can hate Microsoft but as a libertarian, I find this development scary. Getting the federal government involved in the design and manufacture of a product is unwarranted and is akin to precrime. The US Government should leave Microsoft's development of Windows 7 alone. If it turns out to have anti-competitive effects, then the government can punish Microsoft for it. Everyone may say that would be too little, too late, but preemptive strikes are un-American. (And besides, we can always break MS up if it keeps pushing out monopolistic products.)
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
We can hate Microsoft but as a libertarian, I find this development scary. Getting the federal government involved in the design and manufacture of a product is unwarranted and is akin to precrime. The US Government should leave Microsoft's development of Windows 7 alone. If it turns out to have anti-competitive effects, then the government can punish Microsoft for it. Everyone may say that would be too little, too late, but preemptive strikes are un-American. (And besides, we can always break MS up if it keeps pushing out monopolistic products.)
As much as I would love to see a version of Windows that actually follows applicable laws before legal action is taken against it, I shudder to think of the precedent that this sets. If the government doesn't like/doesn't get enough kickbacks from a company, then all of a sudden their entire design and manufacturing process is subject to unwarranted government intervention.As a republican, I find this sort of increased government intervention frightening.
darkmeridian has a great point, too--we can always break Microsoft up if the monopolistic policies do not stop. It would likely even be easier to separate than Ma Bell was in the 80s--Microsoft peripherals, Microsoft software, Microsoft gaming, etc etc.
Just my $0.02.
$> man woman $> Segmentation fault. (Core dumped)
"We can hate Microsoft but as a libertarian, I find this development scary. "
That is okay I find libertarians scary.
This is part of the punishment that Microsoft received. A pretty ineffective one if you ask me but still one of them.
This isn't a precrime this is probation.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I love how much abuse FEMA gets. Everyone always leaves out the awesomely retarded governor of that state. The few things she did do... were interesting.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
I can just see it now for all us non-US users...
"Please look at the webcam, place your finger on the scanner and make sure your computer has a network connection."
or worse:
I'm sorry but your username has been placed on the 'no-compute' list. Please try again after the current US administration has expired.
Yes considering how astute government bureaucracies are I'm sure they'll really make a lot of difference
Government: We're having some issues with this 'notepad' program. You can't include it, it's anti-competitive.
Microsoft: Are you crazy?! Nobody uses that for actual word processing!
Government: That may be so, but including a word program with your operating system is unfair to the people who make MSOffice
Microsoft: Oh.. Okay... Well, what if we struck some sort of deal with the 'MSOffice' people as a gesture of good will? Maybe bundle their software with our OS?
Government: Why that sounds like a wonderful idea. I'm sure the MSOffice people would really appreciate such a brotherly gesture.
I have nothing compelling to say
From my standpoint, everyone that was involved with Katrina was over their heads. Why I put more blame on FEMA is that emergency management was the reason it was created and it failed due to the incompetence at top. The governor of a state and the mayor of the city might be idiots but they clearly were not trained for this kind of situation. One of the main reasons/excuses that the federal gave why aid was not sent earlier was that Louisiana and New Orleans had not formally requested it. Basically they didn't fill out the correct paperwork; however, numerous counter examples were given where detailed requests were being passed to FEMA and the federal government but for some reason, it did not act on the requests.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Actually, most of the actions they were convicted of were leveraging a monopoly to gain unfair advantage in other markets (office suites, Web browsers, server OS's, e-mail clients, media players, etc.).
This might actually be a good thing for Microsoft, as the company will know where they stand when building a product and shipping a product. If two years after Win7 ships a company cries foul play, Microsoft can point back to this committee.Unless the net administration has any more teeth than the current, this will not make much difference. All the big players have given up on the US courts as hopelessly ineffective. They just go straight to the EU these days.
"Netscape gave Microsoft the browser market because Communicator was a steaming pile of dog shit compared to IE4 and IE5"
.. Clone their client technology early and often (full embrace strategy)"
.. explicit sabotaging of any protocol extensions we make"
.. while infesting all other computing devices with it's programming language"
.. But Sun don't get invited to the party .. :)
.. er partners. Is there a differece .. :)
"I think we should have to do even more cloning of Netscape
"In worst case scenario, Netscape will
"Java didn't take off because Sun didn't focus anywhere near enough effort early on into getting a fast interpreter"
"it becomes clear to me that the Java OS will try to conquer the embedded marketplace
"We also talked about slowing down and coordinating modifications to the Java language - I proposed a "Java Language Council" made up of key tools vendors - MS, Borland, Symantec"
"With Windows Vista, the DOJ should have laid off. It was a total debacle for Microsoft and signaled that they are in decline"
The DOJ never did squat to reign in Microsoft. Vista isn't a problem for Microsoft as they have decided their key strategy is getting control of the Internet, through litigation threats and re-innovating the protocols. Billy boy is always ten steps ahead his partners
"If there is anyone who merits a look for anti-competitive, restrictive behavior it's Apple"
How many times has Apple been in court as often as Microsoft and for doing the same things.
davecb5620@gmail.com
Fine. If, as a libertarian, you don't want government meddling in a company like Microsoft, then I sure that, as a libertarian, you would be happy to remove all the government regulations that prop up a company like Microsoft; limited liability corporate status, for starters.
In this case, though, there is already a judgement against MSFT for antitrust violations, so it's not exactly "preemptive", it's more like Microsoft is on parole, and this is just part of the parole supervision.
-- Alastair
The only way to get a monopoly is to provide better service than the competition.
Hah! If that were true, there'd be no need for antitrust legislation. However, the issue isn't really how they got the monopoly in the first place (it was pretty much handed to them by IBM). The laws that they broke, and are being supervised to make sure they don't break them again, are laws that are intended to prevent a monopoly from abusing its monopoly status to either maintain or expand into other areas its monopoly without providing better service than the competition. You know, things like product-tying, questionable vendor pre-load contracts, etc.
-- Alastair
Really? Do you REALLY find Libertarians scary? I mean, in the sense that they want to change the status quo, they are scary... I'll go along with you on that. But Libertarians just want to bring us back to the ideals of the founding fathers of the country. Do you think that US independence was a bad idea too? Honestly?
Get a clue. There already is a free market for operating systems. There's Apple, for one. There are also hundreds, if not thousands, of companies that sell pre-built Linux and *BSD machines. Most people choose not to buy from those companies, and buy from companies that sell Windows PCs, like Dell and HP. Like it or not, most people choose to buy Windows PCs. There's nobody's holding people at gun point telling them to buy Dell.
The problem with Microsoft is that they use their dominant OS market share to unfairly compete in unrelated areas, like web browsers, media players, and security software.
Maybe not
Actually, from Wikipedia, "The Republican party generally supports lower taxes and limited government in most economic areas, allowing for more economic freedom"
Jesus loves me, he loves me a bunch, because he always puts Jiffy in my lunch.
The US Government should leave Microsoft's development of Windows 7 alone. If it turns out to have anti-competitive effects, then the government can punish Microsoft for it.
Once someone has been convicted of murder, they're put in jail until society can be reasonably sure they aren't going to do it again. The convict necessarily loses most or all of his freedoms until he regains society's trust.
While not murder, Microsoft (the corporate entity) has been convicted of anti-competitive behavior. I think it is entirely just for society to monitor them for a while to ensure they don't do it again. Think of it as a convict's probation period. Would a judge let a convicted murderer who feels their last murder was justified go without jail time or probation?
Microsoft's board has not admitted or acknowledged that they've committed anti-competitive acts; I think they still feel they've been unjustly treated by the DoJ. Saying we should just leave them alone and wait until they turn out something else that's anti-competitive is akin to saying we're not going to jail unrepentant murder convicts, not going to monitor them, and if they kill again, then we'll just tell them again that they shouldn't do that. That's not a deterrent!
Not to mention that Microsoft understands that some ethical/law violations make good business sense. They make more money by ignoring a law and paying the fines from the profits they reap than they would make by following the law. When an individual shows no scruples, we put them away. Why should a corporate entity be any different?
True, and it was the Clinton era justice department that went after Microsoft. The trial just lasted well into the Bush admini1stration. But do not confuse the Republican In Name Only's (RINO's, Aka Senator John McCain (Rino) Az, Senator Norm Coleman (Rino) MN, Senator Olympia Snowe (Rino) ME and many many others including President G.W. Bush), with conservatives or conservatism.
Are you kidding? They did great! It has really helped spread out the market and expand peoples awareness of the range of OS's out there. OS is really becoming more of that background as cross compatibility really expands. Wasn't that the point? At least in terms of the 2001 judgment?
IMHO, this is how most government intervention works. They are very clever.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
bring us back to the ideals of the founding fathers of the country
Well, if those ideas are still good and pertinent ideas today, then bringing them back may be good. I don't give a hoot who came up with them though. If our founding fathers said that blacks should be slaves I would flatly disagree with them. Just because our founding fathers said something doesn't automatically make it worthy of being brought back.
But what scares me is political extremism. I don't think that *everything* should be privatized, nor do I think that businesses should have no government oversight or intervention (especially in the Day of Monopolies), though I have heard extreme libertarians say this stuff.
Extreme republicans and democrats are just as scary, IMO. Real solutions to real problems will not come from extremism, nor from blind acceptance of overbroad party-line solutions that apply quite well in economic/social/technological landscapes other than the one we have.
but preemptive strikes are un-American.
You've missed the last 5 years of war haven't you?
Are you SURE you know what the founding fathers wanted? I sure as hell don't, since it was 200+ years ago, and I'm not psychic. I do know, though, that they never read Ayn Rand, which seems to be the basis of most libertarian thoughts. We interpret history (and thus historical intentions) through the window of the present, and our intentions. Thus claiming you know their true intentions seems impossible, unless you can strip away all of the onus of the intervening history and your own psychology.
I know our founding fathers, though, read Locke and Mills, both of whom would be somewhat at odds with modern libertarian ideals, since they supported a more communal version of "rights" than most libertarians do today, as opposed to the base individualism that haunts the modern libertarian ideal. I doubt that many people from before the modern age would ever actually identify unmitigated individual greed as the basis of a political or social system.
That said, libertarians don't personally scare me, even if I am at odds with their ideals (mostly on the economic front), libertarians getting their way scares me. As does any narrow political ideology. Our system works best with a high degree of contention, and argument.
Personally I find the economic ideals of most libertarians to be naive, and based on personal greed rather than any actually rational basis. A truly free market would be a very bad thing for most of us. I do buy some of the social, and legal, ideals of the libertarian ideal though. But... my idea that government should exist only to maximize the good of the people under it is antithetical to much of the libertarian ideal, which seems to say "government should exist only to maximize my good".
Being that this veers dangerously off topic, let me add, this DoJ thing rather scares me, even if I understand that it isn't a "spook" thing. If the DoJ wanted to peek at the product AFTER it was developed (publicly and transparently), and only limited in the scope of the antitrust issue, I would be slightly less paranoid about this.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
The problem with Katrina wasn't Katrina itself, it was the idiots who built levees that allowed a city to exist below the natural water level in a zone where hurricanes happen from time to time.
The problem with MS-Windows is the legislation that allows copyrights for binary executable files. Check the US Constitution: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". Which part of "Writings" they didn't understand? Where is it mentioned the exclusive Right to codes compiled from Writings?
If the US Constitution were fully respected, programmers should have to publish their source code in order to get copyright protection.
Call me a cynic, but I just don't think people would care even if something like this was discovered. Our government can now hold us (yes you or me, anyone, get it through your head voters!) indefinitely without charge or accountability and the population accepts this. Windows, meanwhile, can decide whether or not we are even allowed to use the files on our computer, and what we can do with them. Some schemes actively delete stuff from our hard drives. I would have reached the end of my tether with both the OS and the Government years ago, yet Bush got voted in for a second term, and people are still buying Windows Vista even as they discuss how crap it is in comparison to XP. What is the mystical point at which the common man decides that enough is enough? Surely it's been and gone by now?
"If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever." - George Orwell, 1984
The problem was after Witt left, Bush, forgetting history, replaced him with Joe Allbaugh (Bush's former campaign manager), a political appointee with no experience. When that Allbaugh left, Bush replaced him with Mike Brown, another political appointee with no experience. Today's director R. David Paulison, thankfully has some experience. Now this isn't a anti-Republican slant. Gore, had he been elected, could have made the same mistakes as Bush in appointing a new FEMA director.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Founding fathers did not intend to be interpreted the way they are interpreted now. Heck, they did not even intend "all men are create equal" to apply to blacks and women.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Look at the scope of the Federal Government during the early periods of the US and look at it now (up till around say Jackson or Polk). The Federal Government was nothing compared to its scope and breadth today and yet the ceiling didn't fall down around our heads. People by and large took care of themselves and others, without all the of the Federal bureaucracies.
Also, don't you think it is a little unfair that you accuse me of wrapping Libertarian thought in the flag when I referred you to a Frenchman as my inspiration for liberty? I used to think that Libertarian thought was nuts (I still think some of the fringes are way off base) until I heard Bastiat. I again invite you to listen to Bastiat as it is a step by step defense of Liberty, and decidedly not scary crazy. :-)
G. Washington on Government "it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."