Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Trial Resumes Today
paitre wrote in to remind us that the little trial thing
between Microsoft and the DOJ is back in session today after
a lengthy recess.
News.com has a summary of
whats going on over there. Fun stuff coming up includes
economics wiz's claiming that MS is a monopoly, and MS will
try to prove that IE can be seperated from Win98. I'm sure
we're all wetting ourselves.
>>Microsoft has lost, folks.
>>The rest of this trial will consist of posturing on the part of Microsoft to get the best deal.
Remember, M$ lost the last one too. (1995?) The posturing they do is very important. If they lose but get another slap on the wrist, who has really won?
Cal
If you wanted me to agree with you, you shouldn't have given me Mod points.
This entire case misses the _real_ Microsoft monopoly. The Office applications are the real monopoly. If I want to send email, use IRC, send files, non-MS OS's interoperate well enough with MS OS's. It is the _content_ of the files, i.e. Word/Excel that is where the real problem is. Not only do you have to have the same application, but you also need the same version. If someone sends me a document chances are that I cannot read/view it unless I match application/version. This forces me to upgrade the application, which in turn forces me to upgrade the OS, which in turn forces me to upgrade the HW.
Hal Duston
Boring is good
I love this quote:
"The government is going forward in its rebuttal case with an eye toward the relief that it is going to seek,...As a consequence, it is focusing on the consumer harm that they believe has flowed from Microsoft's business practices."
For all the people out there who try to defend MS, saying that their actions are just good business practice, look at this quote. Microsoft has actually caused consumer harm (in lost productivity, unfair business practices, etc). I get the feeling that not a lot of people fully understand that.
The ruling may wind up being irrelevant to the outcome. The big problem with MS has been that they have used their market share to bully everyone else, threatening to pull the Windows rug completely out from under anyone who even thinks about offering an alternative. The trial has changed that. While the trial goes on, MS cannot try their usual arm-twisting. Even after the trial, even if MS wins, they won't be able to go back to the way things were a year ago without triggering major outrage and probable legal problems. Whether the DOJ wins or loses, MS lost this one when the trial started.
no one has ever complained that MS bundled notepad with their OS -- the only reason IE became an issue was because bundling IE killed Netscape -- an up and coming company relying on their browser as pretty much their only product.
MS should never have said that IE was an integral part of their OS -- it's not, any more than notepad is. Heck, all a web-browser is is a fancy text-viewer. You can't argue that an OS won't boot or run without one, unless you include "read HTML" in the definition of "run."
elflord> What do you mean by "require open
elflord> standards" ? I don't see why MS shouldn't
elflord> be allowed to invent their own
elflord> networking protocols, etc. On the other
elflord> hand, asking them to document their
elflord> networking protocols is more reasonable.
I interpret it as the latter.
What is needed is not the crippling of Microsoft, either by breaking them up or by forcing them to comply with some arbitrary protocols. What is needed is the opening-up of Microsoft's code *just enough* to allow competition.
elflord> Sure, and forcing them to release all
elflord> their products under the GPL will also
elflord> make it easier for the open source
elflord> community to compete. I think a lot of
elflord> slashdot readers aren't really interested
elflord> in a fair outcome- they are more
elflord> interested in propping up open source.
elflord> Personally, I'd rather see open source
elflord> win on its merits.
I think most of them are interested in allowing competition, open-sourced or otherwise. Also, keep in mind that there already is an open-source clone of NT Server. It's called "Samba". The Samba developers have had to reverse-engineer a lot of the more well-guarded NT Server APIs. Opening up NT's APIs would level the playing field between NT Server and Samba (and also the million closed-source SMB server programs out there). It would force NT Server to win or lose "on its merits", not the obscurity of its protocols.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
I recall getting into this argument with somebody once. I oppose government intervention, they argued that the market will take too long to correct Microsoft's undue dominance, and that we need the government to speed things up.
So, what are we, a year and a half into this? The judge is expected to issue his decision NEXT YEAR? And then appeals? Then maybe a delay for settlement talks?
If you want something to cost less or get done faster, how often do you turn to a lawyer? Linux wasn't even on the general public's radar when this started. It might be on everybody's desktop by the time it's done.
Microsoft has lost, folks.
The rest of this trial will consist of posturing on the part of Microsoft to get the best deal.
To that extent, the story is dead. What remains to be seen is just how intelligently the Judge will curtail the monopoly that we know and love to hate as "microsoft".
Hopefully, the Judge will see that breaking Microsoft up is no solution.
As has been argued quite effectively in a number of places, the key is requiring open standards (API/Networking/etc). But will the Judge appreciate this fact?
Let's hope so. Requiring open standards would effectively de-claw what, so far as I can tell, is the only weapon Microsoft can use against the open source community: closing or "decomoditizing" (sp?) standards.
The government will try to prove that IE can be separated from 98, and M$ will try to prove it can't. If IE is a separate product that M$ merely bundled - as it appears is the case - then the government's case gets a lot stronger.
Personally, I've always thought it at least disingenuous for M$ to claim that IE is an integral part of 98, while still providing it as an independent product for the few other platforms it supports.
--
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!