Microsoft's Ethical Guidelines

hankwang writes "Did you know that Microsoft has ethical guidelines? It's good to know that 'Microsoft did not make any payments to foreign government officials' while lobbying for OOXML, and that 'Microsoft conducts its business in compliance with laws designed to promote fair competition' every time they suppressed competitors. In their Corporate Citizenship section, they discuss how the customer-focused approach creates products that work well with those of competitors and open-source solutions. So all the reverse-engineering by Samba and OpenOffice.org developers wasn't really necessary."

Comments

All your base are belong to us...

[Muckluck]

Ethics? Make your time...

Re:All your base are belong to us...

[Chrisq]

Sorry, I'm lost with this. What has this to do with Microsoft's ethics ?

It was written with the same degree of sincerity.

Unsurprising

[David Gerard]

Microsoft has really lost it when it comes to evil these days. Apple's evil is just ridiculously better. Microsoft's evil was damn fine in the 1990s, but these days it's just ... sorta lame. I mean, Vista - what dismally poorly executed evil! And the Zune, oh dear.

So trying to be good is all that's left to them. Can they go straight? Or will it be straight back to crime?

Re:Unsurprising

[weber]

"You're not quite evil enough. You're semi-evil. You're quasi-evil. You're the margarine of evil. You're the Diet Coke of evil, just one calorie, not evil enough."
    -- Dr. Evil

Re:Unsurprising

[elrous0]

Apple users don't need food. The Koolaid sustains them.

Re:Unsurprising

[MrMr]

How exactly does this crossing the boundaries of law in the other direction work? Buy a new government and you're crimes are all forgotten?

Looking for ethics

[crispi]

I'm sure they have some ethics around somewhere? ...somewhere... ...still looking...

Aha! ActiveEthics(TM).

Re:Looking for ethics

[ciderVisor]

MS don't know anything about Ethex, so they held this in Thuthex:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ukschools/archive/2008/04/01/east-sussex-harnessing-whole-school-technology-conference.aspx

Re:A string of meaningless words!!

[dvice_null]

> Where is the choice?

You can pick any browser you want from these alternatives: IE6, IE7, IE8

Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that if I looked up Ethics in MS Encarta it would probably say

"Ethics - A county to the east of London"

---------
Essex for non-uk readers

"Do Some Evil"

[Anonymous Coward]

"We find the word 'no' to be a bit strong, and not in the best interest of the company or some of its stock holders. For this reason, 'some' evil is allowed if it increases long term growth or profits. Or if Steve Ballmer wishes it. Please keep this in mind in your dealings as we do not want employees to become confused that they are working for Google."

Actual ethics section from the manual

[Anonymous Coward]

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Re:A string of meaningless words!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? How about because Firefox wasn't there when Exchange 2003 was released? Because Netscape didn't have an XMLHTTP facility; Ajax came from IE and Outlook Web access.

But no, really it's a conspiracy that MS didn't have a soothsayer on the Exchange team so they could plan from a browser that wouldn't be created for another year, and when there wasn't a standard way of accessing what was, at the time, an IE only extension. Damn them. DAMN THEM TO HELL.

Re:A string of meaningless words!!

[omeomi]

Not always. You can't pick IE6 AND Vista.

Thank God.

Guidelines?

[DJRumpy]

Really, their more of a suggestion...

Not evil

[HangingChad]

Microsoft is not evil, they have merely raised incompetence to a level that's indistinguishable from malice. Redmond is not capable of the consistency of purpose and execution that really good evil requires.

Re:A string of meaningless words!!

[ciderVisor]

Sex Change Team ?

Re:what is the point of this MS bashing?

[MyLongNickName]

Slashdot is like midnight basketball leagues for nerds. It keeps them off the streets where they might get into trouble.

Microsoft is just misunderstood.

[Anonymous Coward]

All true, but somewhat beside the point.

Microsoft is just misunderstood. People think that Microsoft is a software company, but it isn't. Microsoft is an abuse company that sells software as a way of delivering abuse. Microsoft's evil is not a side-effect of their management philosophy, Microsoft's evil is their business model.

Re:Microsoft is just misunderstood.

[jacquesm]

now who names their file '; delete from files ;

?

Re:Microsoft is just misunderstood.

[Anonymous Coward]

Little bobby files, we call him.

Clippy here!

[Hognoxious]

It looks like you're trying to write some ethical conduct guidelines.

Would you prefer:

* Vague platitudes and general statements of the obvious
* Poetic idealism interspersed with wishful thinking
* A statement that boils down to "We do what we can get away with, no more no less. If it was wrong it would be illegal, wouldn't it?"

Re:A string of meaningless words!!

[Sun.Jedi]

Sarah Palin? Is that you?

Re:A string of meaningless words!!

[NatasRevol]

Almost. it's the mobile sex change team.

m-sex-change-team.com

For use only on windows mobile :-)

Nigeria

[Enderandrew]

Didn't the Nigerian government expose how Microsoft was bribing them to move away from Linux on Classmate PCs?