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The History of Microsoft's Anti-Competitive Behavior
jabjoe writes "Groklaw is highlighting a new document from the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (PDF) about the history of Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior. Quoting: 'ECIS has written it in support of the EU Commission's recent preliminary findings, on January 15, 2009, that Microsoft violated antitrust law by tying IE to Windows. It is, to the best of my knowledge, the first time that the issue of Microsoft's patent threats against Linux have been framed in a context of anti-competitive conduct.' The report itself contains interesting quotes, like this one from Microsoft's Thomas Reardon: '[W]e should just quietly grow j++ share and assume that people will take more advantage of our classes without ever realizing they are building win32-only java apps.' It also has the Gates 1998 Deposition."
I remember one of my first computer courses in school where we were taught computer history. I still remember the professor telling us about the early days of Microsoft and how it didn't take long for them to start ripping off ideas, only to then buy the company that was suing them.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
This might be old news but it is relevant as with the likes of BPOS and Azure it appears that Microsoft is attempting to shift their existing monopolies into the cloud by both providing different licensing models for themselves and competitors in a cloud and by linking it closer to services offered in their next generation operating systems.
Clearly Microsoft's agenda is to use their existing desktop monopoly to grab a monopoly in the cloud.
Posted Anonymously for a reason.
Bill's strong point was always the fact that he was a shrewd businessman. His tactics obviously weren't always friendly but you can't deny that he created an incredibly powerful company in a relatively short period of time. I am, however, looking forward to seeing more time spent on technology and less time spent sidelining competitors.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
Microsoft, anti competive? Wow... like we all did not know this?! In all seriousness, this is GOOD to keep the pressure and public awareness on what is going on. Even if we all have to hear about it 100's of times quarterly. The public and governments MUST be made aware that MS sucks.
I think they ARE aware of that. I think they're acting like the battered/abused woman who stays with the abusive man for years and years because she's fucked up in the head. After a while she starts defending the guy, not unlike the pro-MS posters here on Slashdot that you swear must be shills except they're probably not actually getting paid. Seriously, those people just can't understand that Microsoft is not your buddy, when you stick up for Microsoft like a loyal little sycophant it's not like they are capable of appreciating it, they are a mindless faceless corporation without any sort of feeling.
Ok, I'm showing some age here.
Remember in 1989 the Stacker disk compression fiaso?
I think that was one of the original examples of this kind of behavior, in this case Stac electronics were able to get some money from MS - but it was a sour victory as MS has effectively removed them from the market place in the process.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics
nearly 30 years of watching MS I have no faith that the firm will *ever* play fair, and as a business trying to please their shareholders it is very naive to expect them to do so. they have a monopoly and will abuse it to their benefit as long as they can get away with it.
Given the opportunity it is very hard for any person or company to pass up a chance to change the rules of a game in a way that disadvantages its competition in that game. This is especially true when survival is at stake. We do not and should never condone this type of behavior but we must realize it is natural and (without regard to morality) should be expected. This type behavior is bad for our industry as we have all seen so we must always be aware that some company out there will always try this as a means to advantage and stop it to allow strength to be generated via fierce competition.
lol. Slashdot has always been like this. The mainstream media noticed us and ignored us years ago.
I've noticed a lot of posters relatively recently that are popping up and basically saying "linux is not ready yet, until you plug it in and it 'just works' it won't be ready", either implying Windows does "just work" or explicitly stating it. I know no computer does that, there's niggles in everything, but I seem to hear that mantra more often than I ever did.
Maybe you havn't been paying attention to them, but they're there.
There are a lot of pro-MS postings, I've done them myself, but they tend to be more objective against trolls saying Linux is perfect at everything and Windows couldn't possibly be any good. Windows is a perfectly usable OS, I just consider Linux to be architecturally better and has the potential to be significantly better.