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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."
Ethics? Make your time...
--I like turtles...
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?
http://rocknerd.co.uk
"....Microsoft provides a broad range of policies, programs, and products that are focused on our commitment to responsible and ethical business practices that promote user choice, industry opportunity, interoperability, and transparency....."
Last I checked Microsoft's Exchange Server works well only with IE. Unlike Gmail or Yahoo mail. Exchange is lousy with Firefox, Opera or Safari. Where is the choice?
And Exchange Server 2008 I belive even screws up the IMAP support, so Thunderbird users get the bird as well... So much for interoperability and transparency.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
You know, sometimes you'll find organisations with the most detailed and extensive ethical guidelines imaginable. And in the same cupboard you'll find several inches of dust. "A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, Nothing else" (Gandhi, M).
I'm sure they have some ethics around somewhere? ...somewhere... ...still looking...
Aha! ActiveEthics(TM).
I'll point out that they've had a big anti-trust target painted on their foreheads (both in the US and the EU) for a long long time now. I'm sure they actually do spend a lot of time making sure they don't run afoul of the local regulators, watchdog groups and newspapers.
Having said that, Microsoft?? Ethics??? hahahahaha LET THE BASHING BEGIN! Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of assholes!
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
There really do seem to be people who believe that a Code of Conduct is there to limit what a company can do. Nothing could be further from the truth.
First and foremost, a Code of Conduct is an integral part of the company's PR effort. Every self-respecting company has to have one. It's cool to have one, and you look stupid and unsophisticated if you don't. Besides, there is no need to be without. There are templates with good-sounding Codes of Conduct that are guaranteed to leave everyone a comfortably free hand.
Secondly: damage limitation. A Code of Conduct is there to be able to shield a company from legal consequences of unethical conduct by it's employees on its behalf. If an employee is caught red-handed, it really helps if a company is able to state (truthfully) that this action contravenes their official Code of Conduct. This can really limit the damage.
'Microsoft did not make any payments to foreign government officials' while lobbying for OOXML
But obviously they pay bribes to squash the Open Source Software Law in Peru
If they repeat this stuff often enough, people will get used to it. Or even believe !
http://revj.sourceforge.net
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
"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."
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What happened to the kdawsonfud tags?
The problem with tags like these is that they get overused so that every story by kdawson ends up with one. One might argue that this might be entirely warranted due to constant bias, but it still looks like a knee-jerk reaction to any post. It dilutes the term when used too much.
In this case: yes, it does seem unfair to associate these ethical guidelines with the reverse-engineering that went on prior to the guidelines being published. The work on Samba started over a decade before the Microsoft document was written.
If the question was rephrased into the current tense, then the answer would be that it is not necessary to reverse engineer the protocols/file formats, because they have now been published by Microsoft. It may have been ten years later than we would have liked, but then Microsoft do have a habit of trying to ignore anything that might result in the reduction of lock-in for Windows until way too late. This was why they were late in seeing the Internet as a priority, along with XML, VMs, and now open source and interoperability.
Funny how they say "Microsoft conducts its business in compliance with laws designed to promote fair competition" instead of "Microsoft will not engage in unfair competition". Gotta keep those loopholes open!
I'm surprised at your reaction to this.
MS bashing has been happening since Windows 95, and has since then become part of geek culture. It's all but automatic now, and just for fun. Like Chuck Norris jokes and the like. And you do know that this is /. right?
In the nineties a friend of mine also used to get angry when I bashed MS (again just for fun), and it really confounded me that he would get so angry. Perhaps you can enlighten me?
My UID is prime. Hah!
Really, their more of a suggestion...
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.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Slashdot is like midnight basketball leagues for nerds. It keeps them off the streets where they might get into trouble.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
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.
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?"
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Ethics: Things you can get fired for but Microsoft executives can't.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928233
There's some other registry tweaks that may apply and you can google for them. The above referenced MS article makes it sound as if all those DHCP servers are implemented incorrectly but then when Vista is the only client having trouble.........
Didn't the Nigerian government expose how Microsoft was bribing them to move away from Linux on Classmate PCs?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
that might be the dumbest thing I have ever read on any messageboard anywhere on the net.
Actually, both sides are at fault in the spirit if not in the letter of the RFC.
The broadcast flag is included as a work around for a nasty catch 22 situation that some network interfaces might suffer from, namely not being able to receive unicast IP packets until they have been configured with an IP address. This means that such an interface cannot receive its own IP address in an IP packet which is what the DHCP server would normally use.
Acording to the DHCP RFC ( http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1541.html )
"A client that cannot receive unicast IP datagrams until its protocol software has been configured with an IP address SHOULD set the BROADCAST bit in the 'flags' field to 1 in any DHCPDISCOVER or DHCPREQUEST messages that client sends. The BROADCAST bit will provide a hint to the DHCP server and BOOTP relay agent to broadcast any messages to the client on the client's subnet. A client that can receive unicast IP datagrams before its protocol software has been configured SHOULD clear the BROADCAST bit to 0."
So Vista is - was (because it was fixed in sp1 I believe) - morally at fault because its IP stack is capable of receiving unicast packets before the IP address has been configured. However, the word "should" rather than "must" was used so Microsoft is still in compliance with the letter of the protocol.
On the server side:
"A server or relay agent sending or relaying a DHCP message directly to a DHCP client ... SHOULD examine the BROADCAST bit in the 'flags' field. If this bit is set to 1, the DHCP message SHOULD be sent as an IP broadcast using an IP broadcast address (preferably 255.255.255.255) as the IP destination address and the link-layer broadcast address as the link-layer destination address."
Again, it says "should" instead of "must" and so the server side is also morally wrong, but still in compliance with the protocol.
The bug is actually in the RFC
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
I've been keeping tabs on it since about 1999. See http://kegel.com/corporate_ethics.html
Pretty much every big corporation has a code of ethics.
Few abide by it.
So what's the fuzz?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org