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Antitrust Regulators To Monitor Windows 7, But Not Later Releases
CWmike writes "Gregg Keizer reports that federal and state regulators have struck a deal with Microsoft under which any version of Windows released after May 2011 will not be subject to the scrutiny mandated by a 2002 antitrust settlement. As previously promised, however, Windows 7 will be put under the microscope. Yesterday, the DOJ filed documents (PDF) with US District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly asking that she extend her oversight by at least 18 months, until May 12, 2011. Although Microsoft has consented to the extension — and acknowledged that the regulators can later ask for another 18 months — Kollar-Kotelly must approve the request."
I guess the present admistration has the same relationship as the last one.
At least it's non-partism
I guess that means there will be a new mandatory version update of windows7 out in June 2011 then.
good idea.
I'll file the papers immediately.
Seriously though, at the time including a browser or media player was a big deal. They were seen as additional programs, similar to Word, Excel, etc. that should be sold separately. Since MS bundled them we have all come to expect these programs to be free, thus "hurting" other businesses.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
It might be tough going through life with a name that sounds like a feminine hygiene product.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Nah, for including generic but basically functional device drivers, without an obvious prompt to visit the hardware manufacturer's website to obtain their drivers instead.
I actually agree. In the early days of the internet, when Netscape was being sold, bundling IE with Windows was definitely wrong, but these days, browsers are free. I need something to download Firefox with on a new computer, and ftp is a bit hard unless you memorize URLs. Also, Windows 7 is actually removing a lot of stuff from the core OS that was in Vista, such as the Photo Gallery and Movie Maker, in favor of splitting them off into the Windows Live suite. On a side note, WLMM is quite possibly the worst video editing software ever, and makes WMM look amazing.
All your base are belong to Wii.
There certainly was in 1998. Just because you were probably still crapping your pants back then (who knows, maybe you still are) doesn't mean that it wasn't an anti-competitive act then, or that Microsoft has really reformed itself. The OOXML fiasco shows the only way to deal with Microsoft is to cut it into pieces, or at least hold massive fines over its head and force it to play nice, not to go "Oh well, we don't care any more".
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Citing astounding technological advances (Clippy now mostly works), Microsoft expects to release Windows 8 just one week after the release of Windows 7. "We made a lot of significant and fundamental changes that support this new release" said Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.
No, I think that you're dead wrong on your history.
As I recall, I was downloading Netscape and other browsers for free at the time of the lawsuit - the issues were that Microsoft was either not allowing vendors such as HP and Dell to distribute Windows with non-IE browsers (loss of contract) or requiring a contract change that was basically punitive in the extreme.
MS then came out with the Active Desktop, showing that IE was just absolutely, completely technically required for the latest OS release - I recall dimly that it was Win2k.
And that's when the shit hit the fan, as far as the plaintiffs and the court was concerned.
I get that this is /. and there's no need to RTFA, but how about the other reference? http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/01/2034207&tid=123
This wasn't about browsers, it was about an illegal monopoly.
And, on a side note - you have got to be kidding me about ftp downloading, even back in the day. Seriously.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
If Microsoft went to the US govt a few years back to offer the DOJ / FBI / CIA etc a blind eye in spyware to help "catch terrorists" in return for an easy ride in any anti-trust investigations. If the govt have a vested interest in most people running Windows so they can infect and spy on it's users, the last thing they want is Microsoft losing it's user base to something they can't infect easily. If the concept of open source takes off, slipping an application like that in will be even harder. It's easier to deal with one person behind the scenes without any paper trail.
The problem when everything is done behind closed doors between nobody you can trust is that you just never know what's been arranged or agreed. All you do know is what their PR departments have said.
If IBM had not been subject to antitrust rulings, would it have developed its own OS for the PC? If ATT had not been subject to antitrust rulings, would it have developed/marketed UNIX differently?
That's not what the document says, however. It says that a "Windows client operating system" commercially released after the final judgement expires (whether that is May 11, 2011 or 18 months later given the provision allowing another 18-month extension) would not be subject to the final judgement (unsurprising -- that's naturally what "expires" means.) It also says that Windows 7 is already under review. It also says that: "If there is a reasonable expectation that a new version of Windows will be distributed commercially prior to the expiration of the Final Judgments, however, Plaintiffs would consider, after discussion with Microsoft, whether and to what extent pre-release review of the new version of Windows would be necessary and appropriate."
So the agreement is not an agreement either that no Microsoft operating system released after May 11, 2011 will be subject to scrutiny (since it allows another 18-month extension to the Final Judgement, and only states that no Microsoft operating system released after the expiration of the Final Judgement will be subject to the terms of the Final Judgement), or (as I have seen it characterized elsewhere) that no Microsoft operating system released after Windows 7, period, will be subject to scrutiny under the Final Judgement.
From TFA:
At that time, however, she left the door open to continued monitoring, and Microsoft agreed that she could extend it for up to three more years, to Nov. 12, 2012.
and
Although Microsoft has consented to the extension -- and acknowledged that the regulators can later ask for another 18 months -- Kollar-Kotelly must approve the request.
Microsoft agreed and Microsoft consented - my ass.
Good summary alert! This link is in the summary, kids - http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/01/2034207&tid=123
And I found this post - http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=43989&cid=4582608 - by VivianC, who read and quoted the full text of the AP and news.com relevant articles:
She also eliminated a technical committee that would have enforced the settlement terms. In its place, a corporate committee - consisting of board members who aren't Microsoft employees - will make sure the company lives up to the deal. The judge also gave herself more oversight authority.
Kollar-Kotelly also modified the oversight of Microsoft's compliance with the settlement. Originally, the proposal included a technical committee and an internal compliance officer, both potentially influenced by Microsoft. In Friday's ruling, the judge combined the two into a compliance committee made up of Microsoft board members. In turn, the committee must hire a compliance officer, to report to the committee and to Microsoft's CEO. As corporate officers and non-Microsoft employees, the compliance committee in theory would be more likely to appropriately enforce the settlement in this era of renewed corporate responsibility.
How could the language in the computerworld.com article shill any harder? Answer - not much - not much at all.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
It's good to hear that Microsoft is now a trustworthy company, and will now be making products with the features we need, and fairly competing with other companies.
Have they announced a built-in spellchecker in Windows 7 yet?
Seriously! When the EEE PC came on the scene, Microsoft was forced to dump Vista and go back to the old Windows XP and release a Service Pack to make it work. And likewise Downgrade Rights from Vista to XP.... which is now continuing with Windows 7 to XP as well.
And now, Windows 7 actually consumes lesser resources and is faster on the same hardware, compared to the previous version Vista. This has happened not because of the regulators, but the market realities. And likewise, the success of Firefox has made the different releases of IE and artificial restrictions of OS versions and IE versions meaningless in the market.
Honestly I cannot imagine a single useful thing achieved by these regulators. Better wind the whole organisation up and move on.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
As much as I hate MS, WTF are they pursued for anti-trust so much of the time? If anyone needs to be sued/slammed for antitrust, it's Time Warner who is clearly, blatantly making antitrust moves with their bandwidth tiered pricing. So what if MS doesn't bundle other browsers, it's all free anyway. The consumer is free to do whatever the hell they want after they purchase a product - install any browser, software, etc. It's one thing if MS codes their OS so other software not produced by MS will not run - THAT's antitrust. Kind of like Time Warner or Comcast charging extra when you want to pull competing content in on a medium they can't control...
I remember it differntly. I remember Netscape being a steaming pile of s*** and feeling liberated by IE. Finally a browser that was usable... and FREE!
I would like to have the ability to consent to the details of my punishment. "Yes, you may search my apartment, but this is the last time".
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I guess that your "usable" IE wasn't versions 1-3.x. IE4 was only barely there.
Put identity in the browser.
in this era of renewed corporate responsibility.
when i read that i laughed so hard i shit myself...
"You can kill the revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution."-- Fred Hampton
That is all.
You make it sound like the federal legal team are the judges. MS wasn't broken up by a neutral judge because the case didn't warrant it.
The problem from the beginning was that the DOJ was really representing the interests of those who lobbied for the case (e.g Sun, AOL) rather than consumers. The result was those companies got a big payday from MS.
The most important issue from a consumers perspective was the OEM agreements, but instead they focused on desktop Java and one-hit-wonder Netscape.
Yes I realize that my links are from 2002 - the andecent - for a reason.
Again - Microsoft agreed to an extension...... What do you think happened?
DOJ: Uh, Microsoft, can we please do our thing?
Microsoft: Oh.... OK, because I like you, you big, whacky DOJ, you! Now get over here and give me some sugar!
Or:
1. Microsoft is compelled by court....
2. Microsoft complies
3. Shills in the press say the new word for comply is agree
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
If you are big enough to stall long enough, the government loses interest.
Seems Both Microsoft and the terrorists have learned this.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
May 13, 2011.
Though it might slip up to 18 months for "technical reasons".
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
I just re-read your post for some reason. They were right - it's flamebait if you knew what a monopoly was, but I don't think you do so I'm going to give you a pass. There's a difference between monopoly and success.
OS X and Apple manufactured products are not a monopoly. You can load other operating systems on Apple hardware and Apple even gives you the tools to do it. They don't choose to support OS X on every random hardware combination so they try to limit where you can install it, but they don't completely disable it like they could. They can disable it, you know, but probably figure if you're smart enough to make OS X work on random hardware, you're smart enough to support it.
Logic Audio and Final Cut is not a monopoly. It's just software. In fact, they bought both from somewhere else. Apple said "nice software, wrong platform". Feel free to compete against it. Lots of people and companies do.
Most of the stuff on
Seriously though, at the time including a browser or media player was a big deal.
Rubbish. At least two OSes (OS/2 and MacOS) were already distributed with a web browser when Microsoft started doing it, and media players have been included with OSes (or freely available) even longer.
The simple fact is that neither web browsers, nor media players, have ever constituted significant and independent markets. They've always been either freebies, or leveraging tools for other products.
Saying Microsoft shouldn't have been allowes to include a web browser or media player, is like saying they shouldn't have been allowed to include a text editor or a file manager. Indeed, even that comparison is unfair, since back in the '80s there were significant markets for basic tools like text editors, file managers, and the like.
I guess that your "usable" IE wasn't versions 1-3.x. IE4 was only barely there.
Navigator 3.x vs IE 3.x was a toss-up (Navigator generally won by virtue of inertia). IE 4.x was vastly superior in pretty much every measurable way.