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...

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

[davester666]

Microsoft isn't evil. It simply spends a lot of it's time exploring the boundaries of the law around the world. And when you explore boarders, half the time you're on one side and the rest on the other side.

All in an effort to help the children (new corporations).

So they will know "You can go this far without getting into trouble. You can go this much further, and pay a small fine after doing it for 10 years. You can go twice as far, but then the fine will be 10 times higher, but you will only have to pay it 50 years later." And so on...

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

A string of meaningless words!!

[jkrise]

"....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.

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

Re:A string of meaningless words!!

[jkrise]

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

Not always. You can't pick IE6 AND Vista. Many sites work well only with IE6.

Recent versions of Exchange Server work well only with IE7 or later. So in a Corporate setting with Win2K systems running IE6 for the Corporate Intranet, things get very clunky and unmanagable. Add multiple versions of SharePoint, Office, Active Directory... and pretty soon, you realise even Microsoft's products do not work well between and amnongst themselves. Unless you upgrade all of them, all at once. Which is pretty much impractical and terribly expensive.

Re:A string of meaningless words!!

[canix]

Strange definition of "works just fine" - works fine but not everything works. "Works just about" would have been better.

Re:A string of meaningless words!!

[Sun.Jedi]

Sarah Palin? Is that you?

Ethics

[symes]

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).

Re:Ethics

[dnoyeb]

Whats funny is that at least what is posted is not MS ethics. Those are Federal laws. They can call them ethics if they want, but not paying off foreign officials is not an ethical question. Its a legal one.

Anything to do with gaining favor from a foreign government is strictly illegal. (except for attempts to speed up what is the natural process)

Looking for ethics

[crispi]

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

Aha! ActiveEthics(TM).

Re:What is a code of conduct for?

[b00le]

My own employers have an ethics code which is 33 pages of closely-spaced Maoist gibberish, most of which has nothing at all to do with the ethics of company, or managerial, behaviour and much of which is actually exhortations to blind obedience for employees. All corporations tend to authoritarianism, and these are the people who actually own the world, while blathering about freedom and democracy. The truth is that anyone employed by a large corporation spends most of their waking hours living in a totalitarian dictatorship - could this be what is wrong with Western Civilisation?

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

Actual ethics section from the manual

[Anonymous Coward]

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Weasel words

[dutchd00d]

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!

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.