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The Post-Microsoft Era
Welcome to the Post-Microsoft Era.
For many of the people reading this, today offers a different reality than Friday morning, the demarcation between one period and, suddenly, another.
On the Net, the idea that Microsoft is predatory, ruthless, greedy and monopolistic is so endemic, so long ingrained, that Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's findings of fact almost seem to be merely affirming an obvious truth.
Off-line, in the parallel universe, it's a different story. There, where Bill Gates has been lionized as a mainstream icon and Millenial visionary, the findings are a shock. America's favorite new media executive, the one who made all this crazy new stuff seem safe and comprehensible to old-line businesspeople and adoring journalists, was de-constructed in the very cold-blooded, take-no-prisoners, business-like manner that's been such a hallmark of his own style.
It's almost impossible to find a critical profile or probing interview of the man in all of traditional media. Try it yourself. For years, the most powerful people in journalism and politics have made the pilgrimages to Redmond, kneeling before the great man, appropriately admiring the digital chips that change the artwork on the walls of his gargantuan home.
So the idea that his mythic company brutalized competitors and then brazenly lied about it in federal court for months is an understandable surprise, triggering big headlines, special TV reports, and a talk show blabathon - especially on CNN, MSNBC and CNBC -- that will only accelerate today when financial markets re-open and brokers and analysts get their sound-bites off.
This will not be a happy day for Microsoft or its many fat and happy stockholders. Investors and analysts have now had the weekend to digest Judge Jackson's brutal indictment of Microsoft and its business practices and, as one of them told CNN on Sunday, "It isn't pretty, I can tell you."
Judge Jackson, First Finding Of Fact: 'Three main facts indicate that Microsoft enjoys monopoly power. First, Microsoft's chare of the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems is extremely large and stable. Second, Microsoft's dominant market share is protected by a high barrier to entry. Third, and largely as a result of that barrier, Microsoft's customers lack a commercially viable alternative to Windows.'The shock waves seemed to spread in concentric circles Friday, starting with media, moving through the computing industry, then onto Wall Street and, over the weekend, through countless Net chat rooms, mailing lists and messaging system conferences.
"Judge Wakes Up the Blasé Investors Who Shrugged Off the Antitrust Case," headlined the Sunday New York Times.
Judge Jackson's Second Finding Of Fact: 'It is Microsoft's corporate practice to pressure other firms to halt software development that either shows the potential to weaken the applications barrier to entry or competes directly with Microsoft's most cherished sofware products.'The irony is that even before the Judge's ruling -- in which he officially found that MS had engaged in a longstanding bullying campaign to screw consumers, monopolize the software market, discourage competitors and slow new-product innovation - we were already entering the Post-Microsoft Era.
Bill Gates was slow to spot the Web explosion in the mid-90s. Even when he did, Microsoft's efforts to compete in the Web media, communications, electronic, portal and e-commerce fields have generally failed.
To be sure, Microsoft is a vast, enormously powerful company with staggering reserves, and notions that it will perish or disintegrate are silly. But the most exciting, significant and profitable evolutions of the Web have been happening at a distance from the company for some time. Microsoft no longer dominates business computing, and is much less feared and respected that it was even a year ago.
Although Microsoft seemed - arrogantly and unaccountably - to almost brush off the Justice Department's suit (the Judge openly sneered at Gates' testimony, and the company rejected a number of settlement opportunities and was almost brazenly contemptuous and dishonest in its versions of events), it seems fitting that this unspeakably rich and powerful corporation has finally been taken down by the one monopolistic entity left that's more powerful than it is - the United States government.
Whether it's a good or bad thing that federal intervention rather than the marketplace brought this about will be the subject of ferocious debate on the Net for a long while. Maybe this evokes the old adage: Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.
"There's no question that this lawsuit greatly influenced the company's behavior in the past year or so," a Silicon Valley writer close to Microsoft officials told me Saturday night. "They probably would have bought Amazon or eBay by now, if they weren't distracted or afraid of calling attention to their size or power. Microsoft was slow to get the impact of the Web - this is where all the real action is now - and in this world, if you're taken out of things for a year or so, that's like a generation in the off-line business world. It will be a long time before Microsoft can get aggressive about competing again, especially if they are, as they seem, so determined to fight. In the meantime, they're still making cheap and derivative products that cost pennies and sell for many dollars. That will be their fate for awhile, and they'll do well at it."
Microsoft will be preoccupied for a bit. The Judge's findings were not a final decision in the case. He hasn't yet decided whether Microsoft broke the law, or decided on any possible remedies or punishments (which could range from a forced break-up, a la AT&T, to fines or rebates to wronged competitors or consumers). There are sure to be a raft of lawsuits if the Judge follows through on his initial instincts and declares that the company broke anti-trust laws). Nineteen states joined in the federal government's suit against Microsoft, all of them drooling over a potentially favorable verdict.
Judge Jackson's findings were an astonishing series of declarations that made it clear that he didn't believe a word Microsoft's executives and lawyers had been telling him for nearly a year.
The government's version of events, he said - that Microsoft sought to monopolize markets, destroy competitors, put consumers at an unfair advantage - were true, almost in their entirety. There was not one finding that Microsoft could point to as favorable or hopeful to their case.
This brutal declaration was so completely at odds with mainstream journalism's long-running adoration of the man and his company that media consumers, politicians and investors have every right to be puzzled at the disparity between the Gates they've been reading about and seeing on TV and the man Judge Jackson has dramatically re-defined.
Thebitterness and elation expressed by Microsoft's competitors was almost unnerving. Fear and resentment towards Microsoft has been building and festering for so long the bloodlust was almost mob-like. [Cnet.com this weekend demonstrated its growing primacy in technology news related to the Net, the Web and computing in general. Its coverage of the Microsoft ruling was quick, thorough and knowing.]
Saturday, Reuters reported that Net chat rooms from Yahoo to TheStreet.com were teeming with analysis and discussion about the ruling, little of it sympathetic to Microsoft.
"Hallelujah!," exulted Ransome Love, chief executive of Linux operating system-seller Caldera.
As exciting as it was to see a federal judge smack Microsoft around, it's also tantalizing to wonder what might have happened if nature had been permitted to take its own course. Even though Judge Jackson's findings read at times like an open-source manifesto, OS advocates seemed a bit stung that Judge Jackson dissed the movement, saying he didn't consider Linux a serious competitive threat to Microsoft.
As happy as they were with his opinions, OS champions were also clearly disappointed that they weren't the ones who get to bring Microsoft to its knees without federal judicial help, something they're confident they would eventually have done.
Net libertarians also worried that the ruling legitimized the idea that the government needs to step in and regulate the Internet. History suggests they have good for concern. Judge Jackson's ruling was, in fact, by far the most significant and far-reaching intrusion into Net commerce by a federal authority, and represents a landmark judicial effort to begin writing Net law.
That could have lots of implications. Judge Jackson wasn't just curbing the power of a company, he was also seeking to redefine anti-trust law as it applies to commerce online.
And he was definitely plowing new ground. Traditionally, companies have gotten into anti-trust trouble when their monopolies become so vast they monopolize products and goods, prevent competition and innovation, and unfairly control and drive up the price consumers pay for those products. That was the rationale behind one of the first landmark anti-trust rulings, the one that broke up Standard Oil, and behind the decision that dispersed AT&T.
Net commerce works in very different ways, yet anti-trust law hasn't evolved. Microsoft didn't become a monopoly by jacking up prices, but by using practically the opposite tactic - in effect giving products away to obtain staggering market share. Gate's big idea was to make sure his company's software and operating systems were distributed so freely and aggressively they were on every desktop.
Once there, Microsoft could sell ancillary products forever, and play their primacy off against consumers as well as other companies. You can't buy Microsoft Word any longer, for example, without buying Microsoft Office. As Microsoft's operating systems controlled more than 90 per cent of the world's PCs, the company made billions by charging for related, bundled, updated or connected products. Judge Jackson is suggesting that this tactic - unique to the Net - may be monopolistic, thus illegal.
In addition, Microsoft protected this market share, according to Judge Jackson's findings, by ruthlessly buying, bullying or stamping out competitors and potential competitors. That's also against the law when done on so grand a scale.
This could conceivably be written off as old-fashioned, bare-knuckles competiveness. That the company refused to acknowledge such practices, and repeatedly misled a federal judge about them in a trial court, takes the case into another realm. In a way, this rattles investigators and regulators more than the accusations of monopolistic practices. It speaks not only to a manner of doing business, but to a willful refusal to accept responsibility or accept any authority but that of Bill Gates.
Judge Jackson's Third Finding of Fact: 'Through its conduct toward Netscape, I.B.M., Compaq, Intel and others, Microsoft has demonstrated that it will use its prodigious market power and immense profits to harm any firm that insists on pursuing initiatives that could intensify competition against one of Microsoft's core products. Microsoft's past success in hurting such companies and stifling innovation deters investment in technologies and business that exhibit the potential to threaten Microsoft.'Still, it would be premature to do too much gloating. Concerns about whether the marketplace should ultimately have been permitted to make its own findings of fact are troubling.
If the explosive growth of networked computing - the rise of the PC, the Net, the Web, e-commerce - has proven anything about government, it's that real innovation takes place far from regulators, bureaucrats, lawyers and politicians. The Internet was initially sparked by government-funded research, but began to take off once government got out of the picture.
When it comes to the Net, Congress mostly seems to legislate lunacy. It has never shown the slightest inclination to intelligently consider the many serious policy issues raised by the rapid growth of the network, instead passing block-headed decency acts and fussing about sex online.
It's hard not to notice that the computing and software industries, the Net and the Web, all began growing so explosively at a time when Wall Street, government and journalism were paying almost no attention.
The Web's stunning take-off in the past few years is almost a textbook case of how a creative environment can flourish when it's left alone. Innovators, programmers and entrepreneurs were free to think outside the regulatory, cultural and commercial boxes that dominate American business and culture. Judge Jackson's ruling may mark the end of that period as well as the beginning of the Post-Microsoft Era.
Even though the judge dismissed them as still-marginal, powerful and resilient techno-movements like Linux and open source ("I think he underestimates the competitive threat of Linux," OS advocate Eric Raymond told Salon Friday) were already nibbling away at the monolith from one end.
Raymond may be right.
This year Compaq, Dell and HP all started shipping computers with Linux instead of Windows NT. International Data Corp. estimated Linux's server market share at 17.2 per cent this year, about half that for Windows NT. This year, a number of prestigious companies, colleges and universities, along with Southwestern Bell's network-monitoring center in Kansas City, switched to Linux, which Business Week earlier this year called "Microsoft's Vietnam."
Culturally, the Web has roared past Redmond. So-called "dot.com" ads flood commercial TV. Mp3s transformed the way music is distributed and sold in America. Ebay has legitimized the notion of global shopping and retailing. George Lucas's "Phantom Menace" was initially marketed and promoted on the Net. "The Blair Witch Project" showed that the Web can now, under certain circumstances, make a movie a hit. Earlier this year, online "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" fans rebelled over the WB's post-Columbine decision to delay the show's season finale. The video and transcript was all soon over the Web. These events all heralded the fusion of the Web with the entertainment industry. In fact, entertainment has become the primary consumer use on the Net, followed by e-trading, e-commerce, sports and sex.
Microsoft is not at the center of any of these critical evolutions. Of all the countless sound bites, opinions, and interpretations pouring online and off in the media all weekend, one stood out. It was from Tim O'Reilly, the CEO of computer book publisher O'Reilly & Associates, who said: "The frontier of innovation has moved beyond the sphere that Microsoft controls. I think there is more competition for Microsoft than there has ever been."
One of the many questions journalism ought to be asking in the wake of the Microsoft shock is how it managed to award Bill Gates so much space, print and videotape - he was on the cover of almost every news and business magazine in America, usually multiple times - and completely misrepresent his essential character, goals and philosophy.
More significantly, how did so many journalists miss the brutally, perhaps illegally competitive nature of his company?
Bill Gates had some prescient, even brilliant ideas about controlling the computer desktop. But was he ever really a visionary?
This is, after all, a man who never once mentioned the Internet in his first best-seller, "The Road Ahead," and who concluded his latest best-selling book, Business@The Speed Of Thought with this soulless admonition: "The next steps, which can happen project by project, are to connect these knowledge systems with existing business operations systems, to build new business systems on the new architecture, and, over time, to replace older business systems."
Now it's Jackson's ruling that's a sure bet to grace the covers of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News&World Report, as well as a host of business and computing trade publications.
In public this weekend, Gates was conciliatory and statesman-like. In private, he was reported to be enraged and defiant. That might be expected from a man who's spent untold millions building a vast, digitally-controlled mansion and who acquired many of the personal notes, diaries and sketches of both Leonardo DaVinci and Napoleon.
Microsoft will almost surely continue to make billions peddling cheap, generally mediocre software products for many times what it's worth to people who now have little choice but to buy and use it.
But all this proves is that in this sphere, it's possible to be enormously rich and successful and still rapidly become marginal, even insignificant. This seems to be Microsoft's curious fate.
If Gates stood for anything the past few years, it may be the looming confrontation between individualism and corporatism so perfectly embodied by the past and present history of the Net.
The Net was founded by individualists - hackers, scientists, engineers, gurus, hippies, academics, teenaged oddballs and social innovators. Increasingly, they find themselves - as so many Americans do - at odds with vast, predatory, innately greedy corporations, with Microsoft by far the most enduring and visible symbol.
It's not that such companies are evil - corporations can't be evil any more than they can be moral. It's that they inevitably, as the writer John Raulston Saul once put it in his book "The Unconscious Civilization," cause us to deny and undermine the legitimacy of the individual as a free and dignified citizen in a given sphere, time or place. The pervasive effects of corporatism on the individual, warns Saul, are passivity and conformity in those areas which matter and non-conformism in those which don't.
Microsoft and its founder have stood not for innovation, but for the acquisition of other's innovations; not for the free dissemination of information but for domination of the market for information that's disseminated. Meanwhile, millions of computer users have struggled through mediocre and buggy software, paying significant sums for simple programs they may or may not need while being deprived of the incalculable benefits that might have come from silenced, bought out or intimidated innovators whose ideas never came to light.
Those traits aren't unique to Microsoft. Corporatism is perhaps the dominant and most noxious ideology of our time. Confrontations between individualism and corporatism may well be the primary political struggles of the 21st century.
This conflict now moves onto the Net.
Corporatism online comes into almost head-on collision with the individualistic traditions that comprise the Net's most enduring tradition, from its earliest hackers to the programmers patching together the open source and free software movements.
It's hard to feel much sympathy for a man as arrogant or rich as Bill Gates, but one can't spend the last few days, poring through newspapers, trawling through websites and watching almost dependably mindless TV talk shows without thinking there's something tragic about Gates, Microsoft and the fading Microsoft Era.
Reading and re-reading Judge Jackson's blistering indictment of the world's biggest corporation, it's impossible not to wonder what might have happened if a corporation like Microsoft had been free to transcend itself, to really step outside the conventional corporate box.
As it stands, Gates' legacy has just been written by Judge Jackson, but it could have been radically different. Think of the software a company with $22 billion in the bank (Gates himself has close to $50 billion, at least as of this morning) might have created, the advances it could have made in information technology.
Imagine the computers it could have given away, the schools it could have equipped, the tech support it could have provided to the millions of newcomers struggling to get connected, the innovations it could have funded, the programming codes it could have shared, the small, struggling entrepeneurs it could have fostered rather than squash.
In this sense, Gates becomes an almost Shakespearean figure and, indirectly at least, a tragic one.
Cheers - To the fall of Microsloth.
but, this is the Supreme Court, so Microshaft can't appeal right? Who'd they appeal too? If some shocking evidance was found ("Win98 is based on the MacOS, so apple has the monopolly!") could they appeal?
when Push Comes to Shove
Why is m$ stock going up?
Friday afternoon it was down ~4. Now its down ~2 and has been climbing all day. Anybody got an explanation?
-cpd
apple's 1984 commercial? judge jackson as the hammer throwing east german athlete? hmm.
(note this an observation, not a message of system advocacy. so cheese it.)
-- the opinions stated above aren't those of my employer. in fact, they're probably not even my own. you know what, ju
I dislike Microsoft as much as the next user but do we really need rulings like this? Aren't Linux and the other open OS's rising on their own merits? I suspect that regardless of Microsoft's practices a year from now just about anywhere you go when you buy a computer you will be asked what OS('s) would you like with it.
Well, the predicted crash never really happened- as of 11:00 MSFT was down only $2. The real winner today is RHAT which is up $17. Sweet!
Let's face it, there's still an awfully long road ahead for the DOJ and for linux as well. The news was more or less a buying opportunity for investors who managed to snatch up some discount shares when the stock bottomed out at -$6.
The war's not over!
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
Here's one netizen who doesn't believe that Microsoft is "predatory, ruthless, monopolistic, and greedy." They certainly are greedy, (as are all businesses) but they acquired their position by developing products their customers want and marketing them effectively. They are in essence being punished for their success, for being "too competitive, and making "too much" money. Microsoft has done nothing that other companies don't do on a daily basis. They're just better at it than other companies.
I think that consumers have benefited a great deal from Microsoft's products, and it sickens me that the government would bring them down to please the whiny mediocrities at Netscape and Sun.
Sorry, had to get that off my chest. Flame away.
This is just a finding of fact and does really mean anything right now. By the time we actually get to the damage stage and what should be done it is very possible Microsoft won't be dependant on Windows at all. As far as their investors go, they knew what Microsoft was/is and their stock price won't be affected that much in the long term as long as they continue to make a profit and keep the shareholders happy.
This is really a non-event. The only people who didn't see this coming were the ones that don't know anything about Microsoft beside their product came preloaded on their machine.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" -- Albert Einstein
No, this is not a new era for mankind. I still got out of the right side of my bed and put my pants on one leg at a time this morning. My computer still ran linux, and a couple hundred million other computers still run windows, just like they did last friday. They still work with the same functionality(or lack thereof) as they did last friday. When Joe Consumer walks into COMPSUPERSTOREGALORE next weekend, they are still going to be presented with a variety of wintel options. This is a step, but this is not a revolution.
-Matt Jankowski
Jackson does mention Linux and BeOS as competition, but states that they (we) have the same issues of breaking into the market as any other OS vendor. The biggest issue is the "chicken and the egg" problem, where an OS isn't "worthy" until it gets the apps. It doesn't get the apps unless it's "worthy". MS has gone out of their way to perpetuate this view. Yes, it's changing because of Linux and Be, but it's taken 7+ years to get to this point. Any commercial organization spending this much time and money to develop an OS would have been bankrupt long ago. And *that* is the point that Judge Jackson is making.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
The goal of capitolism is to make as MUCH money as possible. Microsoft just happens to have this knack.
Luckily we live in a "free" society and you dont have to buy MS products if you dont want to.
Most of the industry has decided that WinNT/98 is what they'll do because of the installed base. Why do car makers make cars powered by gasoline and not natural gas?
This MS fiasco is going to be great for stock, just look what happend with AT&T and Standard OIL. wish i had some now.
as Jon pointed out, the mainstream oftentimes portrays Bill Gates as the hero of the new computing era, whereas people on the net more or less portray him as satan himself. My Dad knows who Bill Gates is, but he doesn't know what he does... for him, Bill Gates is one successfull software-dude...
:-)
It is wonderful that Judge Jackson has finally pointed out to the mainstream how Bill Gates runs his company and how he achieved his wealth.
I don't want to interpret this as a new era, but it certainly means a great boost for the linux and mac communities.
Katz is right, the 'off-line' people, who are not techies at heart, have admired Microsoft for a long time. They seem (those I know at least) stunned at the ruling that Microsoft has an OS monopoly.
But the vast majority of these people have never used, (and many have never even seen) a non-Microsoft OS. That just floors me.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
You have no idea how wrong you are. Nothing can keep Microsoft from being the #1 software company for decades to come - you Linuxlusers may be all happy now, but you will find that nothing will change because of this lawsuit. OK so maybe Microsoft is forced to change its practices. Well they've changed them so much already that would change nothing. OK so maybe Microsoft is lots of $$$. Well, with Bill being good for $50 billion or so, they can afford it. 90% of the websurfing world will still be using Windows, Internet Explorer and Office when this is all over. Microsoft doesn't need dirty tricks to prosper.
This isn't the supreme court. It's district court. The appeal is first taken to a three judge panel, then the full district court, and only then to the supreme court.
Microsoft also can ask for the law to change, legitimizing their practices through the political process.
The appeals process is premature, there first has to be a final judgement rendered (which should be this spring). Only then can an appeal be drafted.
TML
I sure as hell know that I benefited when they removed the OS/2 support from their C compiler and simultaneously refused to support all older versions of their C compiler.
I know that it certainly benefited my company in its quest to maintain a suite of OS/2 applications to be suddenly left with only an unsupported compiler, with no warning.
I'd continue on to describe the benefits I've personally felt as a consumer, but I don't the time...
The cake is a pie
Microsoft's stock is down only about 4% right now.
Though anyone who competes with Microsoft is doing quite nicely today:
Redhat
Be Inc.
Oracle
Sun Microsystems
AOL
The thing is, this is not really bad news for Microsoft... kinda like Clinton being impeached, we have no idea what is really going to happen.
As for the fat, greedy shareholders of Microsft... they are going to be just fine. In fact, they would be wise to actually HOPE Microsoft is broken up. That would give them holdings in 4 or 5 extremely profitable companies, as opposed to only one.
For instance, holder's of AT&T have done incredibly well since the breakup in 1984.
It is a great thing to let these companies flourish autonomously... the best companies in the world today are extremely de-centralized. General Electric for example.
There was a time, a few decades ago, when the only telephone service in America was AT&T, except for a few, rural phone corporations.
If you wanted a second phone, you could go to only one place, a Bell/AT&T shop, and pay an arm and a leg for a phone. True, the phone was so overengineered that it could survive being run over by tank, but it was very pricey.
Long distance was pricey.
Second phone lines were presumably pricey.
My parents were hackers, in a weird sort of way. Their biggest find at a garage sale was a telephone. Telephones were rare at garage sales, and much cheaper than buying one from AT&T.
They used their garage sale phones to wire every room of the house, but these were not AT&T authorized extensions, and the phones were not authorized phones, so if a repairman came over, we had to disconnect and hide the extensions.
Substitute Miscrosoft for AT&T, and phones for applications, and you can see what might happen.
In the future, you might get asked to switch word processors, this new competitor's word processor is 100% compatible, and cheaper too.
Operating systems might drop to commodity prices, except for the worthy free ones.
New ideas for computers might pop up and proliferate.
Exciting times,
George
I relly fail to see how this ruling will change anything. The best punsihment for microsoft is t have this trial go on into eternity, so they can't get up to their old tricks again.
I kinda wonder if the judge type up his big fat report on a Linux box. The way the media describes him makes him sound almost like a Microsoft basher himself. Then again, he probably had it typed up in MS Word. That actually would be a bit more ironic and funnier.
_________________________
Words of Wisdom:
_________________________
Words of Wisdom:
Never pet a burning dog.
This is really having very little effect on MS stock. Aside from an initial fall of about $5 due to overseas (and after hours) trading it's not being dumped in any spectacular way - much to my surprise.
:-)
However if you think carefully about this, it's not too surprising. Fund managers aren't about to dump and run from one of their major holdings and major earners until something more happens. To them this is still just a minor blip.
The last thing people want is a panic on MS stock. The reason being that MS stock is often part of a larger fund, and to see that price go down sees the price of the fund go down. Analysts know this, and aren't about to create a frenzy.
I think also it's hard to see a negative outcome for Microsoft from this. We can only look at previous similar cases such as Bell (split up, but still getting bigger and stronger), IBM (punished, but still getting bigger and stronger), AT&T, etc. None of these companies have truly suffered at the hands of the monopoly police that would mean time to dump the stock. This is probably good news - stability in the stock market is good.
I think the truly beneficial outcome of all this is to wipe away the squeaky clean image of MS from the American (and a lot of the rest of the world) householder's viewpoint. And to finally give the players a chance.
Now we've just got to wait for someone to post how Red Hat are going to take their position
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Sorry, Jon, but Microsoft didn't become a monopoly by giving software away. It became a monopoly by making shrewd deals with computer manufacturers -- the same ones the Judge discussed as being rather unethical.
Unless you're talking about becoming a monopoly in the web browsing market (not the case), the web server market (not the case), the music software playing market (not the case), you're wrong. Microsoft has a monopoly in approximately none of the markets in which it has given away software. (Not that it hasn't tried....) Perhaps if Microsoft were truly innovative, things would be different.
Remember Windows refund day? There's the monopoly product.
--
QDMerge 0.4!
how to invest, a novice's guide
I've been reading that Microsoft might be broken into different companies, with one company doing OS work, another doing Office products, and another doing Internet work. My question is whether the Office and Internet companies could continue to create software using the undocumented API's that they are aware of in the OS.
If Microsoft is broken up, I think they should be forced to release all the undocumented API information that is being used by their products, or force the new companies to use only documented API's.
This could allow others to write more competetive office and internet server packages on the microsoft OS platform. (Not that I want the microsoft OS to be used, but competetion there would help!).
Microsoft is not "just doing what everyone else does", as anyone who had read the finding of fact can easily see. In an environment where the cost of every other component of the computer has dropped by a factor of three or so, Microsoft software has held steady in price. In an open and competitive market, this is clearly an impossibility. As for being punished for being "too successful", that's even more laughable. Do you see breakup talk regarding GE, or Disney, who both bring in more revenue than Microsoft? Of course not, because they don't behave the same way that Microsoft does.
Honestly!
*sigh*
:-).
Once again, Jon, you're trying to whip up emotion out of nothing. This is not the end of the "War of the Geeks", where 'our boys' win out over the Evil Empire. Those of us who hate Microsoft have really gained very little from this. It's not V-Day!
Microsoft isn't falling like the Nazi's, they are slowly (very slowly) becoming irrelevant like the Roman Empire as it declined. If you want to write a stirring story, portray the 'Geeks' as the barbarian raiders
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
One of the biggest problems with the mainstream press is its habit of analysing everything to death the instant anything interesting happens. Those analyses invariably look silly a month or a year later, because they are always made too quickly, before things really settle. That's exactly what is happening here.
It is far, far too early to call this a "Post-Microsoft Era", either in referring to the trial or the effects of Linux. In regards to the trial, the true effects won't really be known for years, or even decades. It is silly to try to pretend that we know what this will mean for the future. We can't. We can just sit along and watch, and perhaps nudge our little part of it in the direction we want it to go.
In regards to Linux, there are a number of huge hurdles to overcome before it can really be a threat to Windows in the desktop market. (And most of them are not technical.) This ruling probably helps, but who can really say at this point?
The cake is a pie
According to quicken as of 11:00am EST MS is only -2 13/16 points down, and slowly rising. This is not surprising to me, since a lot of people believe that MS has the resources to fight/appeal against the ruling. It now goes to the Supreme Court where they are more "business" friendly. MS will survive, the only thing that could really damage them is a break up. I doubt that will happen, and actually don't really want it to. Although I think that MS should separate their OS from their apps, things are changing so drastically, I don't think it will help. I really don't want the government to punish MS too badly. I like the idea of a long fight, because this gives the opportunity for competitors to get back to where they belong. MS will be too scared to attack in full force because of the law suit, and that is where I want them to be. Let MS fight only with quality (hee hee) products, and not with shady deals.
Side note: Another thing that the Net has changed and wasn't mentioned is politics. Just look at Jesse Ventura, who ran his campaign only through the web. And he won!!!
Steven Rostedt
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
I wasn't even aware Microsoft was gone!
POST-microsoft era? What a laugh.
I don't think you people realize just how much money Microsoft has. When you have that much money, then the rumors of your demise are sure to be greatly exaggerated.
Let's suppose that MSFT is forced to stop using it's Win32 monopoly as an unfair advantage. What would they do? If I were MSFT, I'd work hard to create a brand new monopoly. Perhaps my low flying sattelites would give me a wireless bandwidth monopoly. Perhaps my WinCE platform would give me a monopoly on embedded systems. Or perhaps I'd finish kicking the pants off Netscape and build myself a healthy browser monopoly.
Think they would need the unfair advantage of a Win32 monopoly to do this? Wrong. When you're sitting on the worlds biggest pile of money, you can buy your way into just about anything you like. MSFT could afford to give all these things away for years and years and years, until there was nobody else left, just on the basis of the money they have.
But, even if they failed to do that, would we then be living in a post Microsoft era?
Nope. The first thing they'd do is release Office-2013 for Linux. It would be a hugely successful product, and they'd take home pots of money from selling it. Corel/StarOffice/Applix would still get crushed by the huge Microsoft marketting machine, able to bring more resources (ie: Money) to the battle than everyone else combined.
Also notice that I said Office-2013--let's be realistic, that's about how long it's going to take for this decision to have ANY practical effect. It will be 2010 before this thing gets out of appeals, and Microsoft will be given a couple of years to implement the decision at that point.
We won't be living in the post Microsoft era until that enormous fortune is somewhat diminished.
Unfortunately, the MS trial focuses on the wrong issues. MS lies to their developers (this is the entire win32 API... honest!) and they use unpublished OS tricks to improve their own applications performance. They change their products to intentionally break competitors products. They make their cross-platform products crippled for non-MS operating systems while promising comparable performance.
In short, MS is guilty of massive, systemic fraud along a wide range of issues and across a long time span.
MS shouldn't be the target of an anti-trust prosecution. They should be the target of a criminal RICO fraud prosecution.
TML
IBM is oding fairly, too!
In other words, all the "nasty" gusy who were more or less anti-MS.
Sigged!
Partially, and partially _because_ of MS's bloat and attempt to monopolize everything.
But the preloads of Linux, the media attention? Wouldn't have happened without the DoJ trial.
Notice that the Dell and Compaq preloads happened under a week after testimony what happened if OEM's preloaded other than Windows?
I suspect that regardless of Microsoft's practices a year from now just about anywhere you go when you buy a computer you will be asked what OS('s) would you like with it.
Why? How? That wasn't about to change. Why would someone support a 2-5% OS, and incur 100% increase in their 95% OS?
Yes, we needed this ruling. Other companies did. Microsoft did. They've been believing their own PR - and now perhaps they'll start actually TRYING to make better products.
Internet Explorer 5 is one of the few products that has advantages (still arguable) over the competition. Has file/print sharing been improved? Not really. What about stablity? Not really. Clustering? Nope.
In fact, a lot of things about Windows have gotten far far worse.
And as of 2 weeks ago -OEM's were not allowed to give you Windows, period. Only in a format that would ONLY install on your system.
Many many better products have hit the road and been run over by the OEM preloads and secret contracts. Now - these are in the open, we've got a federal judge's ruling, and things (may) change.
Perhaps Linux (or something else) would have supplanted Windows - that's unknown. But in the desktop arena, it wasn't making that progress (yet).
And as things stand, if everyone who buys a machine next year from an OEM installs another OS - Windows records 50% of the sold/installed OSes.
Lets not forget OS/2 has stomped Windows into the ground in terms of *sales* (not preloads). I imagine Linux is passing OS/2, or has. Certainly in terms of installs, (not preloads, or re-installs of preloads).
Yes, we needed this. Despite the strength's of any of the competition.
Addison
IBM is oding fairly, too!
In other words, all the "nasty" gusy who were more or less anti-MS.
Sigged!
I'm not a Katz-basher, but I have to disagree with the premise of this article. Calling this the "Post-Microsoft era" is probably a bit on the premature side. Gates is a very smart man (in a very evil-overlordish way) and I seriously doubt that this is going to mark an end of some sort for M$. Somehow Gates doesn't strike me as the type of person (unfortunate as it may be) that will just curl up and die when he loses his big marketing club that he can beat everyone over the head with.
OTOH, hopefully this will set him back somewhat, and wake people up to the (better) alternatives that are out there. At the very worst, it won't have an effect one way or another, and any benefit to the OpenSource/Linux/BSD movement is better than none.
----
Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
- Dave
IMO none of the big guys would be selling systems with linux pre-installed if it hadn't been for the lawsuit. It provided the large OEMs enough protection from M$'s standard business practices to allow them some freedom to innovate.
Recall that that M$ threatened to withhold Windows from Compaq when Compaq was considering pre-installing Netscape. Do you suppose that M$ would have permitted Compaq to offer systems with linux when they wouldn't even allow them to ship a competing application?
If nothing else, the suit has accomplished this.
On this theory of better value via breakup isn't MS guilty of corporate malfeasance by not breaking up MS? The board of directors of MS is charged with maximizing shareholder value, not building a monolithic empire. If shareholders would get a better deal if MS broke up, the board is legally obligated to break up.
TML
At least he got his Columbine reference in there. I liked it better when he was writing columns he said point-blank he was not knowledgeable about, like that made-up "the dog ate my Linux box" story instead of these long winded rehashes of a topic he (incorrectly) THINKS he has a clue about.
MS is not being punished for "making too much money". Nor are they being "punished for their success". Actually, no punishment has been meted out yet. Being a monopoly isn't illegal. Using a monopoly position to crush competition is illegal. This is the law that MS violated. This is what they will be punished for.
What's really scary is I've seen two people on here already defending Microsloth with hatred and virol. Sad.
This changes nothing except a few opinions in the media. now they get a big new story to report.
I don't think Linux was gaining as fast as Katz and Raymond hope. Both seem to hav his naieve idea that the "market" (spoken in tones that bring to mind worship) would have eventually evened things out is naieve and down right stupid. This is a corporation that _Controls_ the market. That's what a monopoly is.
Um, according to the fortune 500 index, last I heard General Motors was the largest with revenues of ~$161 billion.
Microsoft rated 109 in the Fortune 500 index making ~$14 billion.
They may be the largest computer software corporation tho.
penguinicide... when jumping out a window just won't do.
With the US government in a much greater position to leverage a settlement out of microsoft, what do you think will come of the settlement and/or ruling? If microsoft has some small bit of intelligence in the area of politics, though none has been seen yet, they will go for a settlement.
I doubt that the government will want and try to split up Microsoft, just because they are (sarcasm) a shining example of the US economy. I do see, however, the following:
1. Huge fine. It's something that microsoft has in bushels, so it wouldn't hurt them too much. Maybe something on the order of a half to a full billion.
2. Stop the OEM contracts. Either stop microsoft from using price leverage, or allow no difference in the price for selling copies with or without a certain product.
3. Stop putting IE with windows. This was the straw that broke the camels back. A link can be put up to download IE, but the web browser installed can be left to the manufacter.
As for the breaking up of microsoft, I can only see this happening if ms is stupid enough to appeal and go on to the court. This gives us a 60% chance of this happening, so it's possible.
In a way, it would be worse if microsoft was split up. The smaller companies would stand a better chance of survivng if any other part fell. If microsoft fell together, it might sell of its parts, giving them a greater chance of being bought by someone who might open source them, or at least release API's.
Saw it written and I saw it say, pink moon is on its way. None of you will stand so tall, pink moon is gonna get ye al
A little reminder in time line for those gov't-bashing libertarians who believe that Linux's and OSS can overthrow MS by themselves and therefore are a proof that 'gov't' intervention is useless in this case ... ...
When did the Microsoft trial began? About a year ago, isn't it? And since when did Linux start to become mainstream? About the same time, isn't it?
I can't claim that it would'nt have happened otherwise, but no one can claim the opposite either
Okay, I have problems with antitrust law-- I don't consider them right. But I also won't hold up Bill Gates as a visionary who creates "trailblazing" operating systems (http://microsoft.aynrand.org -- ugh!). But I'm going to put aside the moral and political issues for the moment and say this:
I really wanted to see Linux kick Microsoft's ass. I wanted to see Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and other open source alternatives (even GNU/Hurd) take the place of Windows. And I think it would have happened.
Let's take a look at the following: Western Union was in the business of communications. Messages were telegraphs sent via morse code over copper wires. Along came this goldurned telephone thingy-- it couldn't *possibly* compete with telegraphs! It was an interesting toy, but it had no practical value, and nobody wanted to use it. But telephones are now so commonplace that you have very few situations in which you need to use Western Union. So now WU isn't so big. Why? Because they forgot-- they were in the communications industry, not the telegraph industry. They forgot what business they were in.
Or how about railroads? They're still a big method of transportation. It's still profitable to be in the railroad biz. But not as profitable as it used to be. Why? Because the railroad companies thought that they were in the railroad business-- not the transportation industry. Along came trucks. Trucks were extremely regulated in the beginning, due in part to the legislation and lobbying done by the railroads. But trucking won out-- it's a more common mode of transportation today. The railroads lost because they forgot what business they were in.
Now look at Microsoft. They're in the software business, right? Well, that's the business they *could* be in. But they're in the Windows business, not software. And this Linux thing, this Open Source stuff-- it's the equivalent of trucking to railroads, of telephones to telegraphs. While railroads and telegraphs are still used to a small extent today, telephones and trucks are more common.
Microsoft was on its way to doing massive damage to itself. It wasn't going to go away completely, but damned if it wasn't going to suffer like every other company that forgets its origins.
But now, if the appeals exhaust and the DoJ has its way, Microsoft is going to be dismantled by the government. And that's a lot less exciting to watch. It's like watching all sorts of character development in a tragedy-- you know the hero's tragic flaw, and you *see* how his downfall will come-- only to have the hero killed by a bit player. It really *sucks*.
Oh well... enough of my ranting. I'm not trying to advocate a political, social, or economic viewpoint here, I'm just saying that I'm going to be much less amused at Microsoft's slow death because of this. Such is life, I suppose...
Just my $0.02
On CNBC, they showed MS with two "strong buy"s and four "buy" recommendations right around when trading started. Who knows why, but that might've either helped or have been a good indicator of what was going on.
And it was also said this morning that any money that companies will get from MS will take 5-6 years to get. While the govt. and competition wait around trying to do something, Microsoft is still moving and profiting.
On CNBC, they showed MS with two "strong buy"s and four "buy" recommendations right around when trading started. Who knows why, but that might've either helped or have been a good indicator of what was going on. Well, okay, I know why.. because they knew it wouldn't fall too hard and they don't think anything will happen to MS, just like the Clinton impeachment analogy.
And it was also said this morning that any money that companies will get from MS will take 5-6 years to get. While the govt. and competition wait around trying to do something, Microsoft is still moving and profiting.
Well, that's certainly your choice. However, the trial, and the Findings of Fact would greatly damage that opinion of most people who hadn't made up their mind.
Its very obvious that Microsoft has been EXACTLY predatory (and by definition has a monopoly), and greedy. They doubled the price of Windows 98 - because they could. And even most Microsoft _defenders_ admit that they're "ruthless" and say that its the American way...
So the best you can really argue is predatory. Again, read the memoes from Microsoft. Welding on Internet Explorer (IE is a trademark not owned by Microsoft, and they promised not to use it) _because_ even when it was included and free - people weren't using it.
They are in essence being punished for their success
They've not been "Punished" at _all_.
This was the findings of fact. Any punishment will be a seperate phase - or in another trial, such as Caldera. And their success is not at issue - their illegal use of a monopoly is.
And they may be punished for that - they did break the law.
I think that consumers have benefited a great deal from Microsoft's products,
As is your right - and further, not even the point at hand. They may have. They've also been damaged by the lack of competition.
and it sickens me that the government would bring them down to please the whiny mediocrities at Netscape and Sun.
The "government brought them down" because they broke the law. And violated a court order.
And Sun's court case is in civil - not antitrust.
Would you like to explain why they shouldn't be prosecuted for breaking the law?
Many criminals are successful - do we only prosecute the unsuccessful ones?
Read the FoF. Much of Microsoft's recent "success" was in violation of the law.
Addison
I think Linux is marginal on the *desktop*. I think it is going to continue to be marginal on the desktop until there are developers that create world class apps for things as varied as basic accounting stuff (we all like to get paid, right? :)), personal tax software, geneology, hobby specific software (things like PC Stitch), and of course, games.
:) and a bunch of stuff I work on I wouldn't touch if I wasn't paid to do so.) Until we start seeing more basic, mundane programs such as Star Office, Linux just isn't going to be a real option for most users (and this assumes that the stuff is given away for free -- if developers charge for it the barriers for Linux get even higher).
My point is that there is a wide variety of necessary and/or desired software out there that people look for that isn't cool for programmers to be working on. Stuff that you have to _pay_ programmers to develop. (I'm a programmer myself
Ultimately if people want to marginalize Microsoft they are going to have to fulfill *all* of the functions and services Microsoft provides, better, cheaper, and faster.
"All the darkness in the world can not quench the light of one small candle."
(Microsoft, together with Bill Gates, probably has more money than the net worth of Nintendo, Sony, the US Internet backbone, Netscape, Yahoo and the Bell companies, combined.)
Can you imagine what life would be like, without regulation, and the only TV stations with licences are all Microsoft-run, the only pre-packaged food you can buy was all Microsoft-made, and could only be cooked in a Microsoft oven, the only software you could buy was all Microsoft-made, and the only Internet ISPs and backbones were all Microsoft-run?
That's the soft of world we would have had, had there been nothing to slow Microsoft down. Before castigating the Government, Katz should remember that Microsoft was trying to run it's own global satellite telephone service, involving 1000 low-orbit satellites. With so many satellites, travelling so low in orbit and so close together, Microsoft would have basically controlled all space operations, globally, because they could control where and when it would be safe to launch.
As you might gather, I'm no libertarian. I don't believe in letting someone wield god-like power on the hope (and prayer) that they'll be a benevolent God. Doubly so, when they've shown no signs of being a benevolent mortal.
On the flip side, I agree that this wasn't unexpected to a lot of people. The idea of Microsoft being a monopoly is "old news" to a lot of people who have been on the Internet for a while.
Last, but not least, Judge Jackson did NOT "diss" Linux, BeOS or other OS'. He made it clear that he did NOT see them as competition on the desktop, which they aren't, and only a fool would think otherwise.
If ESR takes insult from the Judge's words, that is his problem, and has nothing to do with either what was said or implied. What was said was that Linux is not a desktop OS. It's not, it's a server OS, and most of it's sales have been in the server market, displacing both low-end Unix systems and Windows NT. BeOS is also not a general-purpose desktop OS, although it could be. Be, Inc, have chosen to constrain it. Stupidly, IMHO, but there you go. It ain't a rival for Windows 2000, however you cut it.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Here's the annoying thing about Microsoft appealing (and the annoying thing about our judicial system in general):
:)
The ruling took place in a Federal District Court. If Microsoft were to appeal (which is pretty much guaranteed at this point), it would go to the District Appellate court, who then decides if the case has enough power to be appealed to the next level court. I forget what it's called, but there is one other, higher-level federal court before the Supreme Court that Microsoft could appeal to.
But the pain of the matter is this: Microsft (and their billion-dollar lawyers) could drag this case on for AT LEAST another eight months. Minimum. Truthfully, I wouldn't be suprised if it takes at least another year. The time it takes for preparation for an appealate hearing takes months. If the Appellate court allows them to appeal, that's another year, and who knows how long from there.
Of course, by that time, the case would become meaningless, since Linux would take over the desktop world by then!
IBM did pretty poorly in the late 80s after their bout with the US. Stock prices slumped pretty seriously. It's just now that they're really recovering.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
I would like to momentarily set aside the emotional baggage that is so unavoidably attached to the topic of Microsoft monopolistic tendencies and propose some likely results from this lawsuit.
I will not argue that Microsoft's practices were predatory. They were. I also won't argue that Microsoft is a monopoly. They are.
That said, consider the results of a Microsoft breakup. The likely scenario bandied about by financial analysts it that Microsoft could be divided into 3 or more separate companies. A typical breakout is: 1. Operating System Software 2. Application Software 3. Network Software systems. Even if the company is divided this way, Windows will still be the default operating system on > 90% of consumer systems sold. Breaking the company up won't change that and the separate company will likely have to charge MORE not LESS for the operating system to compensate for the fact that: 1. OS's are their only source of revenue and 2. They will continue to lose a greater portion of the server OS market to Linux and Sun. End result, higher OS prices rather than lower. Thanks, DOJ.
Now consider the application software business. For consumer software, simple business practice would indicate that developers would develop for OS's for which there was the greatest potential for sales. Still Windows. Think about it, IBM wouldn't port DB2 to Linux until they had a viable market in the Linux community. Most developers will hold their nose and continue to develop for Windows simply because it has the largest installed user base to which to market their product.
The monopolistic damage has already been done. Sure they're a monopoly. We just better start asking ourselves if cutting them into pieces won't just create three angry snakes to battle instead of one slightly crippled one. Lets cripple the beast, not dismember it.
I just hope everyone starts to analyze rather than emotionalize (is that a word?) this issue.
Dave
You're making one HUGE mistake in evaluating his ruling. It is NOT illegal to have a monopoly. It is NOT illegal to compete as disgustingly as you can to get that monopoly. Once you have a monopoly, you can even charge high prices. However, you CANNOT act terribly competitively once you get that monopoly.
You cannot use your status as a monopoly to kill competition. That is what the law says, and that is what he found that Microsoft did (so his finding of fact is a pretty safe guess). You cannot use a monopoly to try to establish another monopoly.
Basically, under Anti-trust law, your monopoly may be a cash cow, but you can't do much with it, because anti-trust law serves to protect competitors that will help customers.
Microsoft was allowed to release Internet Explorer. They could probably give it away free, although that might have been considered dumping (but dumping requires P MC, not P AC, so unless you can prove a marginal cost for distributing another version of i.e., you can't prove dumping. Basically, according to economics, there are times you should take a loss on a product, but you should never set production so that you are losing money on a particular unit, just overall, i.e., high fixed costs) but probably not.
Had Microsoft included IE on Windows and Office CDs, they probably would have been okay, although it would have violated anti-trust laws. However, by requiring customers to install IE, it potentially hurt them, because they lost an option and got nothing.
Companies are welcome to bundle, but once you have a monopoly, you play by different rules.
Imagine a small tow, with a few market, and only 2 roads in. Imaging that both roads are owned by he owner of the market and they are toll roads. If he jacked up the cost of bringing food in for suppliers going anywhere but his store, that would be antitrust violations, because it would prevent the market from competing assuming there were sufficient barriers to entry to build another road.
However, if two market owners each owned a road, they could be as disgusting as they want as long as they didn't collaborate. Customers would be better served with a dozen suppliers, but there will be competition, because each owner will try to undercut the other. If the owners collaborate to rip off the customers, then that would be illegal collusions.
If the market owner owned all the roads and charged rediculous tolls, he would be entitled to that. As long as he didn't use his monopoly to try to steal another monopoly (the grocery markets), he can profit from his monopoly. If he threatens unions or businesses that are trying to build a third road that he will starve them out while they try to build it, that would be erecting a barrier to entry to protect his monopoly. If he sat there as a fat cat making profits, and when the new toll road owners tried to make the same profits dropped prices to compete, then the market would be working as it should. If he dropped his road maintenance to a loss to drive out competition (so he could jack his prices up), he would then be breaking the law.
You can compete as much as you want. However, as a monopolist, you can not use that monopoly as unfair leverage. You can profit all you want, but you have to fight competition when it arrives fairly. You can't use your existing monopoly to destroy others.
Alex
At The Register, there is an interesting article: Judge: Linux can't break Windows monopoly. See also, What will happen if Microsoft finally loses?, Judge's ruling opens way for Caldera Win95 suit, Caldera judge finds MS 'grossly misprepresented' facts.
At Reuters Business News, there is this report: Silicon Valley Cheers Microsoft Ruling, I liked the quote from a Sun lawyer "The aura that surrounded Microsoft as this all powerful, inexorable force that always won has now been significantly diminished,"
On Sun's website, on Friday, they put up this page: Sun Responds to Department of Justice vs Microsoft Case, where they give their own ideas about what to do to MS:
Ok.. Facts are nice and all but let's see some other "HARD FACTS". MS has LITERALLY enough money to buy the whole US 2 times over. Even if they are fined astronomical amounts of money they will just go about it like "business as usual". No matter how much they are asked to pay they will make it back in no less than 1 year. Breaking it up? Laughable idea. We will have MULTIPLE companies that will be exercising illegal tactics then. And what will breaking up MS achieve ? NOTHING. It is Allready hard enough to keep an eye on ONE microsoft. Imagine 3-4 of em! And i wonder what gave the silly idea that the "children companies" will be in a worse position? They will be in essence one company again fighting on different fronts. They will STILL have the API's they will need to tie the producst even tighter together , they will STILL have all the money in the world they would need. AND on top of that we will have MULTIPLE comapanies trying to "embrace" the current standards. We will have multiple companies that will be bullying up to the OEM's. We will have multiple companies that will be pushing their way on top and there will be nothing to stop them.... Not even the great DOJ will be able to go against multiple companies of that magnitude anymore. Leave em be and put watchdogs over them. Everytime they cross the line bring them down. Do not let them practise illegal tactics anymore. Make em pay a reasonable fine so that the gov can afford to pay some watchdogs to monitor MS closely. That is the only real solution i see. As much i dislike MS i can't see any other solution than that. Making them pay some money will not achieve anything. Breaking them up will even make things worse.
We're more or less civilized nowadays, so we can't expropriate Microsoft and destroy them.
We can break 'em up, but that's not going to make their OS into any less of a monopoly.
We can slap 'em with fines and distribute the results to their competitors. I don't know how much good that will do; most of the affected companies are actually not doing that badly. Netscape is part of prospering AOL; Sun is, well, Sun; Oracle is, well, Larry Ellison; etc.
The best solution I see is a breakup, but look what that did to AT&T. The original AT&T is being re-formed pretty darn quick nowadays. So was all that antitrust effort for naught?
In the end, the only way to end Microsoft's dominance is to consciously choose to use non-MS products - which is not something antitrust law can control.
I don't see any type of penalty that would actually make a difference in the way the world worked today.
Thoughts?
D
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In terms of market cap (# stocks X stock price) MSFT is the largest, at about 450B (that's Billion) dollars US.
GM has a market cap of 45B, and GE (former market cap leader) is 440B.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
AAPL is at all-time highs, too. It hit 91 before subsiding to 90 1/4...
Note what's happening: Microsoft isn't really being hurt, but it's competition is doing better. Funny how that's what antitrust law is intended to do. And institutional investors recognize that.
--
Make mine methylphenidate.
to be superior you have to have something inferior, that something doesn't exist. If the goal for any business is to hurt consumers (read the FoF if you don't agree) than M$ is a great company.
+&x
But there was no intrusion at all into "net commerce". Not only is the case not about net commerce, but a finding of fact isn't by itself going to do anything. Similarly, this has NOTHING to do with "net law".
Again, online commerce isn't the issue.
With "facts" like these, we don't need BillGatus of Borg to tell us his version.
No, no, no...it's nothing to do with Net law, it's Antitrust law. Katz misses again. At least he got in a Columbine reference out of an otherwise dry subject.
Author wrote: Gate's big idea was to make sure his company's software and operating systems were distributed so freely and aggressively they were on every desktop. Once there, Microsoft could sell ancillary products forever, and play their primacy off against consumers as well as other companies. You can't buy Microsoft Word any longer, for example, without buying Microsoft Office. --end quote-- However, it seems that you can buy Word by itself (although, I am not sure why you would want to). See http://www.cdw.com/shop/search/results.asp?class=W P&mfg=MAE&mfg=MAL&mfg=MIC&mfg=MOL&mfg=MP P Oh yeah, and for those of you who are so puzzled as to why the stock isn't nosediving, ask your stockbroker what would have happened to your holdings had you had some Ma Bell stock right before it was broken up. How much stock would you have right now in the baby bells? The answer might surprise you. Good investing opportunity.
Just what part of this case really has to do with the Net? This is about business and industry, not IP stacks and HTML tags.
Yes, MS did have an underhand strategy wrt the Net with Internet Destroyer, but that's not where JJ is aiming at. It's the predatory practices MS have used in the marketplace, not cyberspace - it's the fact they were aiming the gun, not what bullet they used. The effect would be the same if MS were in the market of toilet roll holders; holding down your competitors whilst screwing your customers.
"Microsoft will be preoccupied for a bit. The Judge's findings were not a final decision in the case."
Finally, some sense. A pity that few on the Net seem to have realised this, and far fewer on
"[This is]
No, it isn't. I still arrived at work this morning, booted my NT4.0 workstation, fired up MS Exchange, and connected to my NT Server. Where's the difference? And according to my trader associates, the stock price shuffle on MSFT is just "noise" at the minute (although they are expecting some profitablility in convertible bonds if MS are broken up in the future).
After this morning's Y2K strategy meeting, I had a hard time putting a Linux and Apache Webserver (powered by Cobalt!) business case together for my clients who wish for a Web presence - "but we already run NT - it will cost too much to switch operating systems". Other OS's need to up their marketing games in a big way for the next couple of months.
What Katzs' article neatly sidesteps (in spite of it's title) is an attempt to predict what will happen over the next 6 months.
Seeing as he doesn't appear have the balls, here's my musings:
MS will be given a severe beating on their corporate bottoms. On bare skin. I don't think they will be forced to split up, but an enforced code of practice will be placed on them. And rigourously applied - non conformance may result in an order to cease trading.
*BSD will fail to capitalise on this.
RedHat, Caldera and Be should gear up their publicity machines if they want to make any inroads into MS territory. Now is the time to get those prime time ads into corporate consciousness.
MS will essentially be in hiatus until settlement is reached. Expect a lot of noise in the boardroom, sackings et al.
Apple still have Bill lodged firmly up them. Steve Jobs can either play nice with MS, and "help" them just like MS "helped" Apple. Or they can try to sever most ties with MS, and sink or swim on their own merit.
It will be at least 3 years before any effect of the DOJ's ruling will be felt.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
"Microsoft's efforts to compete in the Web media, communications, electronic, portal and e-commerce fields have generally failed. "
Well let's see. Second most popular web server (netcraft stats), most popular browser, most popular HTML authoring package, very popular server-side scripting technology (ASP). Plus most popular web-email site, competent ISP (MSN), very successful news portal (ZDnet).
Sure, all of it on the back of an OS monopoly and much if it pretty dodgy in its own right, but hardly what you'd call a general failure...
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First, the trial itself was the big deal. Since the trial, more and more attention has been payed to non-windows alternatives. Just before the trial, we saw Microsoft doing what it does best- double time. They marginalized Word Perfect, OS/2, and were starting to marginalize Unix as a server platform. They even started to marginalize Netscape (and I write of their success from an I.E. 5.0 browser, based on Spyglass Mosaic and bought lock, stock, and barrel by Microsoft's treasure.) There was no question AOL and other media companies were the next to feel Microsoft's expanding wrath.
Now, since the trial, you can buy Linux systems at Best Buy for $30 to $199 AND you can still download it for free from the internet. AOL is as strong as ever, and has added the mortally wounded Netscape company to it's fold. IBM seems to be making a comeback, and WordPerfect has been resurected as a Linux Suite! These were all due to the trial itself. So the trial was good.
But is the ruling good? It is and isn't. First, it's good that the present trends of the resurection of good old technologies can continue. But it will be bad if Microsoft is punished too severely. They always have made the products the people wanted and will continue to do so with their long-awaited and expensive Windows 2000. Still, perhaps we can look at this as an important lesson, you can buy the market, but you can't buy the government.
But with linux resurected and innovation safely out of Microsoft's grasp, I got what I wanted from the trial. And now, that it is at this stage, I wish it would stop. So I'd recomend not punishing Microsoft. We've drawn blood, we've kicked them when they were down, and we've shown them we can write better software than they can buy. Leave them alone. If they come after us again, let them have another trial and all the punishment they deserve.
-Benjamin Shniper
I could write a very angry letter right now about Mr. Jon Katz, but I decided instead merely to express some constructive criticism. First and foremost, Mr. Katz has neither honor nor integrity, nor even knows what those words mean. I am not mistaken when I say that the world is suffering from his lack of faith in a transcendental truth. Just because bloodthirsty Stalinism exists and has for a long time, there is no reason for us to accept it from Mr. Katz. There's more to this letter than inflammatory rhetoric. As a general rule, he considers it fair game to take rights away from individuals on the basis of prejudice, myth, irrational belief, inaccurate information, and outright falsehood. I had thought the world was free of what I call moonstruck purveyors of malice and hatred. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that Mr. Katz wants to paint pictures of indecent worlds inhabited by stuck-up lame-brained politicos.
Whenever someone tells him not to suppress controversy and debate, Mr. Katz gets all teary-eyed. My, my; how sad. My heart bleeds for him, it really does. Even though supposedly distancing himself from obtuse jackanapes, he has really not changed his spots at all.
Odious leeches are sharply focused on an immediate goal: to spew forth ignorance and prejudice. If he has any children, I recommend that Mr. Katz teach them about love, trust, cooperation, community, reason, negotiation, and compromise rather than violence, paranoia, and fear. This makes the issue an even greater tragedy. This is well illustrated in what remains one of the most divisive issues of our day: tribalism. Mr. Katz expresses only the noblest intentions, singing praises to the value of community even as he enacts policies that resolve a moral failure with an immoral solution. It's not necessary to go into too long of a description about how he plans to pull the levers of fetishism and oil the gears of cannibalism by the next full moon. Suffice it to say that I do not appreciate being labeled. No one does. Nevertheless, he has no right to be here.
How many of Mr. Katz's cronies are content to sit around doing absolutely nothing to contribute to the world around them? I'd hazard to guess that the number is pretty high. To add another dimension to this argument, let me mention that it's quite sad that Mr. Katz chooses to squander his talent on this sort of grumpy antiheroism. Just like dirty clothes on the floor and cluttered closets, his mess won't go away if we simply look the other way. While I know very little about obstreperous huns, his philippics are based on a technique I'm sure you've heard of. It's called "lying". Shame on Mr. Katz for thinking that people like you and me are disorganized!
It is not my goal to sensationalize all of the issues, but the opposite. To most people, the list of his mischievous campaigns reads like a comic strip, but Mr. Katz's zingers are actually taken seriously by his lackeys. Mr. Katz's half-measures are mired in shameless acrimonious propagandism. We don't have to stand for this! Yes, I realize that that is no excuse for audacious election-year also-rans, but for the sake of brevity I've had to express myself in simplified terms. Plan to join Mr. Katz's camp? Be sure to check your conscience at the door. My argument gets a little complicated here.
By the way, obstinate misoneism enthusiasts can't even agree among themselves as to how abominable Mr. Katz is. Whenever a will-o'-the-wisp of animalism, however unreal, turns up anywhere, he is off at a trot. If Mr. Katz wants to foment randy forms of political tyranny, fine. Just don't make me fall into the trap of thinking there's no difference between normal people like you and me and appalling twits while he's at it. The documentation of this matter is abundant and conclusive. The sun has never shone on a more gruesome and batty person than Jon Katz -- an instructive warning for the future.
Although he babbles on and on about anti-intellectualism, Mr. Katz has no more conception of it than most other ignominious voluptuaries. If I am doomed to cower before the emotions and accusations of others, then he will obviously convict me without trial, jury, or reading one complete paragraph of this letter in the immediate years ahead. How can we expect to stop defending the stolid status quo and, instead, implement a bold, new agenda for change if we walk right into his trap? Worse yet, he wants to make our lives an endless treadmill of government interferences while providing few real benefits to our health and happiness. Although this has been overlooked or ignored by the established scientific community, Mr. Katz's henchmen operate secretly so as not to excite suspicion. However much Mr. Katz may deny it, implying that human life is expendable is no different from implying that "the norm" shouldn't have to worry about how the exceptions feel. Both statements are ludicrous.
I hope I don't need to remind you that I proudly adopt this stand, but it's still true, and we must do something about it. In case you hadn't noticed, a large percentage of his assistants can be termed rabid. I will certainly not bow to coercion, intimidation, or the threat of violence. I wish I could say this nicely, but I don't have much tolerance for scornful dolts: Mr. Katz's helpers care more about speaking, acting, and even thinking like Mr. Katz than they care about what makes sense. When I say that even those few who benefit from his refrains fail to recognize their current manifestation as a socially-inept form of Maoism, I consider this to mean that we live in a deeply troubled society.
Violence, mayhem, and insanity are the inevitable consequences of Mr. Katz's intimations. Mr. Katz uses deception to trick people into voting against things that they, in fact, support. This is not to say that nothing appears more plausible at first sight, nor more ill-founded and malodorous upon closer inspection, than his announcements. It is merely to point out that he and empty-headed oafs are cut from the same cloth. It's not just the lunatic fringe that's in Mr. Katz's corner; a number of previously-respectable people have recently begun backing him. The facts as I see them simply do not support the false, but widely-accepted, notion that a book of Mr. Katz's writings would be a good addition to the Bible.
Whenever I ponder over the meanings and implications of Mr. Katz's fastidious silly litanies, I feel little peace. Now, more than ever, we must see through the haze of fanaticism. As a consistently mortified observer of Mr. Katz's stratagems, I can't help but work together towards a shared vision. Mr. Katz's schemes, when taken as a whole, are peevish. For the record, there is every indication that another point worth thinking about is that Mr. Katz frequently engages in violent fantasies involving the worst classes of demonic liars and cheats there are. Okay, there's no reason for me to be hidebound, so I'll leave you with this concept: With Mr. Jon Katz's memoranda, simple credos like "check your sources" and "argue the other side of the question" have gone out the window.
This expression is to express my profound satisfaction over the situation.
Since the day I wanted to get into programming I hated Microsoft. I backed off because I could not find a programming tool adapted well enough to their Win95 without paying a lot.
Now, the most popular american judge on the planet said something like "Bill Gates' company is a grouping of son of ****"
I love it! I love it!
Does JonKatz *really* make his trade as a writer? What a bunch of tripe. I see a number of facts that seem questionable. For example, "In private, he [Bill Gates] was reported to be enraged and defiant." He was? The WSJ didn't report this. The NYT didn't? Who got this scoop. Jon's writing is crap. He mentions at several points that the Judge rejected virtually all of MS's arguments. He provides no analysis of whether that is justified. Rather, he jumps at the opportunity to accept the findings wholesale (he quickly leaps in to describe MSFT with adjectives "brazenly", "ruthlessly", etc), using this decision as an opportunity to reaffirm his predisposition to stand opposed to one of the hardest-working companies in the business world. Katz can suck me.
I couldn't help but notice that the Findings of Fact (FoF) weren't posted in M$ Word, only in PDF and WordPerfect *L* I heard from another source that JJ is a Mac user actually, and I got the impression - both from the trial and from the FoF - that he wasn't too well aquainted with Linux.
Wood Shavings!
- Godai
I can see that. Like Hamlet, Billy is consumed by his need for the throne. He snags the GUI from Apple. (Not to mix metaphors, but somebody else had a not so happy tale involving apples and witches.) He kills and guts the more rightful contenders to the throne. All the while the ghost of IBM is haunting him :)
Now I am alone.
O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
And still sell the OS that shows up on the radar as the universal worst? (Win98). Even if you want to talk about NT, its still poor on the everyday server task list.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
It might look good in a conspiracy theory but hidden api's are nothing a developer should rely on. If microsoft says this is the API we support there is nothing you can do about it. Most of the time functions are hidden because their implementations might change, become obsolete or cause stability problems later on. This prevents losers like netscape from saying "you removed this api" because you didn't want my application to work in this or that version of the operating system. ALWAYS STICK TO DOCUMENTED FUNCTIONS. you can do anything with the documented apis
Obviously there is a large group of users who will pay for Linux, so why did it take programmers working in their spare time for free?
Ever consider that maybee in a free market a developer might have the right to charge money for his or her work?
There is a company who would take that right away from you, and its name is Microsoft. The only way to beat them is to work for free.
Wow this is so well written and right on ... I mean fascinating and I appreciate your putting in perspective the way the marketplace has changed while the court has been hearing these arguments ... it is true there's more competition to the giant than the judge recognized, BUT if the buyers don't know much about how to use and integrate the alternatives, how competitive can the alternatives be ... so the judge is right and wrong on that ... ... bringing in Linux and StarOffice to try to change what we do with Windows/MSOffice locking up and crashing and never really delivering before a new bad edition arrives for all those dollars and buy a new machine ... MS has had a lock on businesses for the most part ... some offices are lucky enough to have a Linux expert around who is catching the wave of the StarOffice release ... but that's still a pretty small part of the market ... whew ... great article ... great writing and perceiving ... thanx
his explanation of the disincentives to switch explains exactly the situation where I work
I note that Katz has mentioned that Judge Jackson's Findings of Fact don't rate Linux as a viable competitor. This is of course going to spark a bit of discussion - so I'd like to point out a couple of things.
Firstly, Judge Jackson is really only considering the next few years in this. Any further is just too far into the future to speculate on whether a monopoly would still be able to exist.
More interestingly, I'd like to point out that he's not evalutating Microsoft's position in the server market - he's looking at the desktop market - Windows 95/98 (not NT), the bundling of IE, the forced preloading of Windows by OEMs. This case is about the consumer market. In fact, I read a survey recently which stated that Linux has 17% of the server market - only half as much as NT, and certainly looks like competition to me.
So, when put in context, is the statement that Linux poses no threat to MS's monopoly at all surprising? Most would agree that Linux isn't ready to dominate the desktop market yet - the interface, whether you hide it behind KDE, GNOME, or whatever, is still a touch rough around the edge's for the average user's liking - not to mention the lack of a wide range of apps for Linux. Linus himself has said that Linux won't be ready to challenge the desktop market for at least another three years.
Finally, I heartily recommend The Register as a site with excellent coverage of the MS vs. DoJ trial - and the MS vs. Caldera trial.
(IANAL, etc...)
If I were a microsoft shareholder, what would concern me more were if The recent allegations of financial fraud were true. Most of Bill's wealth is in stock options. If MS became a nickel stock overnight... that alone would send brokers jumping out of their windows (no pun intended).
You're right that MSFT is barely moving (-3 7/8 at this time). But the stock is incredibly active, with 76,450,096 shares sold as of noon EST. (Next most traded stock was Amazon, with 16,855,600).
MSFT stock is being dumped. It's being dumped with prejudice and as fast as possible. However, it's being bought up as fast as it's being sold...probably by investors who now consider it a buying opportunity. They're probably right.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Ma Bell could be broken up because its infrastructure allowed for geographical separation. MS is a _different_ animal. MS does not have regional stores to sell its software, and, in general, transportation cost does not really matter in softwareland.
Holger
Point 1 - This isn't the post-anything; no verdict or penalties have been rendered, MS stock is not dropping as expected.
... as long as we're okay with not being able to read online-newspapers, participate in online-auctions, or view online streaming videos...
:)
Point 2 - MS hasn't lost anything except that Dell and Compaq, etc, are willing to risk distributing Linux boxes. MS still holds dominant & growing shares of IE, which, if unrestrained, they can leverage into making the web into a network of proprietary MS protocols. We Linux users can still use our Linux boxes in such a world,
Point 3 - If you were the press, would you want to risk a lawsuit for libel from the worlds biggest corporation? It's no wonder the mainstream press has been slanted. (Well, that, and mainstream American culture glorifies greed and wealth over any other aspiration. Gates is certainly successful on -that- account.)
In counterpoint to my own points - a guilty verdict is certain, given this finding of fact, and MS -will- be restrained in some way or another. Eventually. After the appeals process has been muddled through. What form of penalties and controls there will be, and what effect they will have, remains to be seen.
In any case, at best, this is the pre-possibly-post-Microsoft era, for whatever that's worth.
Oh, and go Mozilla, 'architecturally complete' M11 due out early this week. Features and stability work in coming months.
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
Please pretty please with sugar on top. STOP.
You know, every time I've gone to Thanksgiving, I get in a massive argument with my extended family over whether or not Microsoft is a good investment. They keep talking about how Microsoft "can do no wrong," and I keep talking about all the crap that they have pulled to stay on top of the pile.
I can't wait for Thanksgiving this year - the "I told you so" is going to be CLASSIC!
InThane
This is such a different world, and it's because of one of the things MS tried to argue: The internet.
[As an aside, I think MS's arguments about the internet in relation to what's below are bogus because the internet simply wasn't positioned to affect MS's position at the time the case is looking at]
Comparison's to other companies are interesting, but mostly irrelevant because of the internet. Before the advent of the internet it was fairly similar: The barrier to entry into the market was huge - you had to setup distribution channels, box manufacturers, disk duplication services, etc. This is similar in many ways to competing with AT&T - they had the infrastructure and you didn't.
With the internet it's different. With a couple of million bucks of VC funding you can now become a killer company from nothing. Look at Netscape. That sort of growth simply wouldn't have been possible if they had to distribute their software through the normal methods. And many more companies are coming up using this same method of deployment.
In short, the "exciting times" aren't here because MS gets slapped wrists - they're here because we can choose fantastic products quickly and easily over the internet. The slapped wrists is required though simply to stop MS from buying out that small company and stomping all over them.
In all honesty I think MS are probably more afraid of people moving to Linux than anything else right now - I really don't think they know how to fight that one. Even PHB's are figuring out that Linux is fast, stable and cheap, and ignoring the FUD factory.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
So a hundred people have pointed out already that the finding of fact doesn't mean anything, so I'll leave it alone.
First, regardless of your current opinion of Microsoft, you've got to give them props. They may have pushed their little bundling/packaged deals for $profit$, but they did force the computing world to a new plane. How many years after the mac came out, did it take for intel boxes to get a decent user friendly interface? What about the concept of the office suite? OLE? (Hey, i'm talking 'bout mainstream stuff here, things my mom uses. Me? I use Xemacs for like, everything.) A lot of tech has come out of microsoft that people praise everday.
Second, out of conflict comes change. Better yet, out of conflict comes evolution. And because of this, we are living in very exciting times. Microsoft has done a lot to create the current computing industry, and built up a large control in the process. Now is the time when the next phase comes along, where the next batch of little organisms come along and start to grow and evolve as well. Linux is now widely known becuase it is the young scrapper OS. The place where new and exciting things happen daily. Netscape, AOL, ASP's. The growth of application service providers will be very interesting to watch.
Because of the microsoft conflict, there has also been a return to standards based architectures. This is a good thing.
Think of it as a classic fairy tale story. The good king comes into power, build some roads, passes some good laws, but over time he is corrupted. Then along comes the Hero(s) to end his rule and bring back happiness and prosperity to the kingdom. The trick is going to be figuring out who the heros are.
"You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2
"It was like trying to herd cats..." - Robert A. Heinlein
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
Ever since I saw the Judge's findings I heard this awful ticking in my head. There was no mystery about what it was... it was my brain counting down the seconds to another Katz editorial. Something potentially big just happened in the world of geekdom. Katz must post or risk looking lax in his duties!
And here it is in all its splendor. I don't even have to go further than the title to see the latest Katz buzzword: The Post-Microsoft Era. A conjectural leap that I dare say could put Katz into orbit if it were expressed in physical terms.
Earth to Katz... come in, Katz...
Katz, I moderate your post as redundant *grin*. We already had a perfectly good post on this topic that simply stated the facts and let the Slashdot public at each other's throats. Why wasn't this posted there? I just can't see how this particular bout of literary spewage can accomplish anything other than re-starting the same old arguments without actually adding anything.
Moderate me for Katz-bashing if you must, folks. I realize I could've skipped over this article and been better off. Only problem is, I used to like Katz's stuff up until the last few months. The optimist in me keeps hoping for what I used to see.
At least I didn't see the word "meme" anywhere this time around. :)
LouZiffer
I read /. daily, filtering out the highly biased crap to get to the good stuff. One minute everyone is bitching that Microsoft is dumping their software for cheap to kill competitors and the next minute people are WHINING that Microsoft is charging too much. Whatever. I've spent more on BeOS, new versions and BeOS apps than I have on Windows and Windows apps. I'm not complaining one bit, just stating the fact. As usual, the Post-Microsoft era feature presents so many conflicting views that one can't help but see that you just don't know what you're talking about.
Depending on the government to handle Microsoft is the wimps way out. Depending on quality, good business strategies and time would be the respectable method. Provide a truly competitive alternative to the masses before you bitch about losing. Linux may one day be that alternative, but at the rate Linux is moving you can't expect that day to be tomorrow.
In (ahem) brief: Investors have been expecting the judge to rule against Microsoft for months. Therefore, before the judge issued the FoF, the MSFT stock price already took the effect of a negative ruling into account.
Remember, a company's day-to-day stock prices are not based on what it "realistically" (in some ideal universe of rational omniscient analysts) is worth, or what it "should" (according to someone's moral standards) be worth -- they're based on what the investors think it's worth.
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
MS already cheats on API, what makes you think they won't cheat even more when the judge order them to do so? if we have the source code we can at lest figure out which part they are cheating.
If the industry won;t regulate itself, the government will. It's what we elect presidents and congressional representatives and governors for.
Microsoft represents a complete breakdown of a civil society in the computer industry. More to the point, Microsoft, as a company with monopolistic power, acts as a government agency, dictating to US citizens what technology they are allowed to use. Buying a product is not casting a vote...I refuse to be ruled by a corporation.
Since Microsoft refused to limit and regulate itself, it called down the whirlwind of government intervention. It could have been the most successful software company on earth -and- encourage competition and new technologies, but it instead decided it wanted to act as a quasi-government, a dictatorship no less. We are taxed without any representation, and our choices regarding computer technology are made for us. This is the Microsoft vision.
The government has a different one, and as I actually got to participate in deciding who's in charge up there, I can't help but to agree.
That, and Pennfield-Jackson -gets- it. He's not some clueless hick obsessed with stamping out pay-porn sites.
SoupIsGood Food
Agree! that's why I suggest 200 billion dollars in fine and settlement. Forget about breaking em up.
End of story.
CAPITOLISM IS THE ART OF SHOUTING ON USENEW
Although it is good to see the DOJ showing a little chutzpah in this siutation there is cause for greater alarm in the industry.
Whatever happens to Microsoft a precedent has been set for the governement to heavily regulate the computer industry. Now any large company can come under scrutiny. See AOL,DELL,Gateway, Amazon, and a host of others.
We will see a plethora of whiny lawsuits from companies for trivial issues. But hey, the government has said that is ok.
This really signals the true end of the so called cyber frontier. The wild wooly days are long gone and now we all must move on.
The rule of thumb is vampires can't come in unless you invite them. Well the gate is open kiddies, get the wooden stakes, and pray.
And in defense of MS. Katz wrote:"Imagine the computers it could have given away, the schools it could have equipped, the tech support it could have provided to the millions of newcomers struggling to get connected, the innovations it could have funded, the programming codes it could have shared, the small, struggling entrepeneurs it could have fostered rather than squash."
Did not Bill drop 200 million on public libraries? And start a billion dollar scholarship fund for computer science students? Pretty damn decent of him.
We want facts and a non bias opinion. Not sensationalized rumors shown as news. your favorite shmonkey
I believe you have misinterpreted what Microsoft has been doing. The only times Microsoft has given products away has been to get rid of competition. This is a classic monopoly strategy. To go back to the days of Standard Oil, Standard oil was big enough it could totally undersell the competition in one region and still make profit because it was more than balanced by its monopoly position elsewhere - where it could sell at a much higher price - and with the expectation that it would soon be the sole provider for the new region.
In the Microsoft case, this would be Microsoft's giving away of IE (in the days before it was "integrated" into the OS) to drive Netscape out of the market. Microsoft could survive because of its monopoly position in a different market, operating systems.
As another way to see this, the cost of Microsoft's software over time has increased, unlike every other component of a personal computer. Microsoft has not been giving away "freely" its two key products, Windows and Office.
Another finding of fact was that Microsoft has been using its monopoly position to tie one product to another. As you point out, you cannot get Word without Office. As Judge Jackson points out, MS used various tieing agreements to bully its own way. Again, this is another very classic monopoly power.
Neither of these monopoly tactics are affected by any fundamental change in how net commerce works.
Indeed, anti-trust almost doesn't cover most of what goes on in net commerce, because there is no (purely) net commerce company which is close to having a true monopoly position. Yes, there are companies which have a large market share, but the barriers to entry are still rather low, and none of them have the ability to exert behaviours of monopolies.
Microsoft didn't become a monopoly by giving software away.
Microsoft didn't become a monopoly by adhering to any one strategy. And in some instances they do give software away. Not source code, and not to just anyone (they hand out lots of freebies to developers at seminars and such) but they do give software away. It's another shrewd business practice, and it's not illegal or even ethically questionable.
However...they're not particularly innovative, and their claim that this finding will stifle innovation is ludicrous on the face of it. Most of Microsoft's "innovations" seem to be someone else's innovations that Microsoft bought out from under the innovators. And what they couldn't buy and assimilate, they attempted to stifle. And that is ethically questionable, and probably illegal as well.
After listening to Trent Lott this weekend, it seems to me that the right wing will begin to exert a lot of pressure to end this thing without drastic measures. Because of this, I do not foresee a break up, nor do I think that's what should be done. The government should make sure that Microsoft follows the law and allows for open competition, no more, no less. Of course, Microsoft should be penalized by fines or other sanctions, but primarily should be forced to abide by existing regulations.
Like it or not, Microsoft has had the primary role in bringing computers to the home (i.e. to my dad), and therefore has been a major figure that allows /. and the 'net to be where they are today. Let's see if they can survive in a truly open market, one that I see has changed much for the better since the initial justice department suit was filed.
MS is worth more than 400 billion, I believe a HUGE fine/settlement to them would be AT LEAST 50 billion dollars transfered to the govn't or the consumers directly.
People, this is the market of capitalism, only capitalist method can fix things like this. If Microsoft will be fined half of its worth, 200 billion dollars, then it will not have any money power to buy out technology, people, and bully like they do.
If MS doubles the price of Windows2000 as a result, more people will start considering alternative OSes.
That's what i call a huge fine. 1/400 of Microsoft is NOTHING.
People are hailing this ruling as a revolution, as the great changing of the operating system guard, whereas, in my opinion it is simply the natural progression of the industry. Until a few years ago computing was a highly specialized industry, and putting out an OS was a guinely and justifiably difficult undertaking, and, it so happens, a company called Microsoft was the only one with the expertise and the corporate werewithall to generate a mainstream consumer OS.
But that was a few years ago, and the times they are a-changin'. Now that computers are taught in school from an eary age, any individual, any small business that is intelligent and motivated enough can produce their own operating system, and the market is becoming a capitalistic one, finally. BeOS, Linux, even Solaris are all examples of the industrial leap from a specialized industry to a democratic, capitalist market. The judge's ruling didn't put any nails in the coffin of the software giant, it simply justified something which the industry has known all along - someday, there will be honest competition.
Cheers to a new era.
- Dave "It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy" - Steve Jobs
Reparative - repairing the damage. To the extent it's possible to determine the damage of course. This would also include the cancelation of benefits that Microsoft obtained by breaking the law - in other words, the confiscation of illegally obtained profits. Damages and illegal profits taken together are likely to amount to a very large amount - think in the order of $100 billion. Given Microsoft's current market capitalization in the order of $500 billion and other factors, this huge amount isn't out of the ballpark.
Punitive - there must be a punitive component in the remedies so that there is no mistaking the message: breaking the law is not something that will result in the mere confiscation of profits. If this were true, then there would be no reason not to break the law - if you win, you win big, but if you lose you just have to give back the profits and try again. To send this message clearly, the punitive component of the remedies should equal the reparative component. Think another $100 billion.
Corrective - There is one corrective measure that makes all others pale by comparison: force the source code of Windows (98 and NT) into the public domain. Most of Microsoft's illegal pressure tactics have involved playing games with the secret details of Windows software. The only way to end these games is to make the source code public. Does anybody object to the idea that it should be licensed under GPL? So that not only will it enter the public domain, but it will stay there.
Naturally, other questions have to be addressed, such as "what about Microsoft's abuse of its monopoly position in office suites?" "What about the bartering of favors from online service providers in return for advantages that Microsoft can grant based on its monopoly position?" etc. etc. But let's not lose sight of the most important remedy: the source code must become public property.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Yes, and *THEN* jack up the prices and gouge hell of the consumer.
You bet it's monopolistic but I don't think it's any thing new. Walmart has been going into small towns, opening a store, selling stuff at a loss to undercut competitors and drive them out of business, then closing the store because it isn't "profitable", forcing consumers to drive to a nearby town to shop and pay higher prices at the new Walmart "superstore". Walmart ain't the first to do this either.
The same way they missed the "brutally, perhaps illegally competitive nature" of General Electric. They still kiss Jack Welch's ass. They love him. He's one of the biggest SOB's in the business. Suits lionize that kind of bravado, until, of course, their icons lose. Oh, then they are a loser and the journalist is "wise" because he knew it all along. Journalists are a fickle lot.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
But I think Katz is way off the mark in trying to cast this as a case of the Government regulating the internet.
History suggests they have good for concern. Judge Jackson's ruling was, in fact, by far the most significant and far-reaching intrusion into Net commerce by a federal authority, and represents a landmark judicial effort to begin writing Net law.
How is this ruling a "significant and far reaching intrusion into Net commerce?" Is Miscrosoft Windows sold or distributed primarily over the internet? No. Are the competitors that MS is accused of crushing primarily Internet companies? No. In fact, this ruling has little or nothing to do with MS's forays into online commerce and content, and is explicitly about Microsoft's poor treatment of competing software development companies, who sell products (shrink-wrapped, in stores) that compete in MS's core markets.
Judge Jackson wasn't just curbing the power of a company, he was also seeking to redefine anti-trust law as it applies to commerce online.
Now we have an exploration of the "implications" of the foregoing totally unsupported (and mystifying, to say the least) claim. What does this finding of fact have to do with online commerce? Other than superficial things like "Well, I can download Netscape..." This case is about standard, old fashioned monopolistic behavior. I'm puzzled as to why Katz seems to think it has much at all to do with the internet.
And he was definitely plowing new ground. Traditionally, companies have gotten into anti-trust trouble when their monopolies become so vast they monopolize products and goods, prevent competition and innovation, and unfairly control and drive up the price consumers pay for those products. That was the rationale behind one of the first landmark anti-trust rulings, the one that broke up Standard Oil, and behind the decision that dispersed AT&T.
In fact, Jackson explicitly does not plow new ground, and, as would be clear to anyone who read and understood the finding of fact, took great pains to emphasize that this case is an anti-trust case which clearly and indisputably falls within the established bounds of US anti-trust law. Point by point, he lays out the ways in which Microsoft has engaged in typical, standard, monopolistic behavior; i.e. consumer harm through price-fixing, "bundling", market leveraging, and anti-competetive practices. The finding of fact is very clear and very readable, and, I thought, tried hard to avoid accusations of "Extending" or "redefining" anti-trust law in any way. But over and over, I see commentators talking about how the new tech economy is a totally mystifying and inexplicable market, and how anti-trust law does not apply the same way, and so Jackson must be "extending" or "redifining" that law. This is simply not true, and points out the ignorance of these commentators.
Microsoft didn't become a monopoly by jacking up prices, but by using practically the opposite tactic - in effect giving products away to obtain staggering market share. Gate's big idea was to make sure his company's software and operating systems were distributed so freely and aggressively they were on every desktop.
Jackson's finding also takes pains to point out that this is not true. When is the last time you got a Windows OS "upgrade" for free? He clearly explains that Microsoft unnecessariuly raised prices of it's OS (pricing Windows 98, for example, far higher than it's own internal economists stated would be profitable), in order to increase funds to support it's undercutting of prices in other markets, such as web browsers. To give away IE for free, MS leveraged it's monopoly stranglehold on the desktop OS for easy cash flow. This is classic monopoly behavior-- once you have a monopoly in one market, you can fix prices at whatever point they need to be in order to allow you to give away a product in another market and force competitors out of business. There's nothing new about this, as Jackson makes clear.
The rest of the article, the analysis of Gates himself, and MS's legacy, I think is pretty much on target. But the part in the middle, that brainlessly spews the offliner's party line about this case being about the internet, and about tech commerce being unique and brand new and incomprehensible, just underlines Katz's fundamental lack of understanding of the technology. The only reason people think the high-tech market is different is because when they turn on their desktop, what happens is, for them, "indistinguishable from magic." Technologists might as well be shamans, for all they know, coaxing spirits to live inside beige boxes and animate flickering screens.
But anyone who grasps the technology, also understands that this market is fundamentally no different from other markets, and the same laws apply to Bill Gates that applied to Standdrd Oil, and to Bell Telephone.
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Morning gray ignites a twisted mass of colors shapes and sounds
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
So what do we do when Linux dominates or has a "monopoly" on the desktop? Who does the DOJ go after? Do we outlaw OSS? Incarcerate Linus (ala ALCOA executives circa 1947)? The notion that a bureaucrat is going to tell us how we develop, package or market software scares me.
Here we see Microsoft, arguably rutheless when it comes to licensing, inept when it comes to implementation, yet still dominating the PC market for a desktop OS? Did Microsoft steal, break contracts, defraud or otherwise force itself into this dominating position? No, it did not. It may have used aggressive licensing (OEM), it may have beat down competitors by releasing free software (Netscape), it may have actually gotten it's act together for DTP (MS Office, MSVC). It did NOT, however, actually hold a gun to someone's head and say "run our software".
I am a Linux advocate, been running it since SLS and pl89. I prefer a free and open environment to work. A government that dictates how successful I (or any of us) may be before we are punished with antitrust regulation is antithetical to how we as developers operate, and I would have hoped to see more DOJ bashing rather than MS bashing happening in forums such as SlashDot.
We are libertarian-minded people by nature: leave us free to scratch whatever itches we have, and we will leave others alone to pursue their own goals. Lets leave Microsoft alone to build the kind of garbage they want to build. Leave Joe-Sixpack alone to buy that garbage until we develop more interesting trash for him to play with.
Lets not confuse COERCIVE monopolies with MARKET monopolies. When we gain our market share of %90+, we should not be punished for doing a good job (which is what antitrust is all about, really).
Who here really believes that Sun, IBM and Microsoft won't be litigating against OSS projects if we start taking THEIR market share?!
The key is to remember how he defined the market. JJ defined the relevant market as Wintel desktops. Not servers, not middleware, no netboxes, just desktop PC OSes.
So given that narrow range, you should - if you're honest - see why JJ'd dismiss OSS and Linux. Linux is not a desktop, not yet. It's still quite a ways off from being a viable Windows competitor, above and beyond the Application Barrier problem. JJ was right to dismiss Linux in this context.
I particularly liked JJ's M$ rebuttal that binding IE to the OS did not benefit the many Windows users who are not netizens - it was certainly something I had not even thought of, and in retrospect it's glaringly absent from the argument Microsoft put forth! I followed the trial pretty closely so I don't think I missed the DOJ mentioning this fact. If that's true, I tip my hat to JJ for spotting that omission.
Furthermore, I've been interested to read what people have thought would happen to the M$ stock. There seems to be a few history buffs on the thread who have seen AT&T and Standard Oil's respective stocks rise quite profitably after their breakups. While I'm certainly not an economist, and I don't know a lot about those two anti-trust cases - save that they were concerning monopolies - I have a question for those knowledgeable in such matters.
Namely, when AT&T and Standard Oil were slapped down by Big Brother, were there a number of smaller companies wronged by the giants, or were they simply obstructing entrants into their respective fields? I ask because if not Microsoft's situations might be a tad different. Microsoft might well do fine - their stock included - if they were broken up, but what effect might pending lawsuits have? This verdict seems to offer up a crowbar to Netscape, Sun, AOL, and a host of others who've suffered at Microsoft's hands as a means of breaking open the Microsoft coffers and looting them.
If Microsoft ultimately loses - and it looks bad for them now - will we be seeing more DR-DOS-type lawsuits? If so, how will this affect Microsoft's stock, and are there any precendents for this?
At any rate, I think we should all feel quite vinidicated. It's always nice when a bully gets a dressing down. Whether or not we've entered the Post-Microsoft Era remains to be seen IMO, but at the very least it should be an interesting ride from here on in.
Wood Shavings!
- Godai
It's Federal Court...one level down....
this means Microsoft gets one appeal...
Who am I?
Why am here?
Where is the chocolate?
What is your Slash Rating?
Net libertarians also worried that the ruling legitimized the idea that the government needs to step in and regulate the Internet. History suggests they have good for concern. Judge Jackson's ruling was, in fact, by far the most significant and far-reaching intrusion into Net commerce by a federal authority, and represents a landmark judicial effort to begin writing Net law.
I'm afraid these un-named "net libertarians" (who are they?) have it about 100% backwards. First, the MS case is not primarily about e-commerce. It's about old-fashioned markets. How many copies of Windows are sold online? Second, there's little or nothing in the decision relevant to regulation of the Internet except in the sense that businesses located in the US that happen to do Internet-related work are of course subject to the same (antitrust, and other) laws as everyone else. This was already pretty clear -- just as making phone calls doesn't allow you to contract out of local law, so too with a modem. (Yes, you can do regulatory arbitrage but that takes more than one jurisdiction.)
What this case shows is that it is not really that difficult to apply traditional anti-trust principles to the software business. Which is at best a small part of the e-commerce business.
Attention "net libertarians": Want to worry about global Internet goverance? You will get more traction (although the jury is still out) by worrying about ICANN instead. Now that's a real potential (so far) for regulation of the Internet on a global basis.
The MS opinion, for all its vices or virtues, is not about "net law". It's not about the Internet. It's about old-fashined strong-armed marketing and anti-competitive behavior with (alleged) domestic, territorial, effects. And it's not the first time someone sold (gave away) well below cost to hurt a rival, either.
A. Michael Froomkin,
U. Miami School of Law,POB 248087
Coral Gables, FL 33124,USA
I have a blog.
Seriously, if Katz can prompt responses like this, he must be hitting some raw nerves.
That is an incredible observation
I do believe that you have summed up this entire affair!
some karma... and kinda lukewarm about it.
Most of the people who view this site are very technically smart. This unfortunally seperates most from reality.
Reality Check
People like microsoft,people like microsoft products.
I don't most tech's don't but the people I work with and take classes with do. It's pretty simple to use,easier to set up then ANY other OS(i'm a mac user) doesn't crash much under "normal" use
they also play the same games as any other business
everyone tries to use their status to disuade competators from installing competing products sometimes sweeting the deal. Comanies buy other companies with cool/threatening technology.
Microsoft is to big to play those games the same way.
Microsoft will continue to dominate.Big smart corporations were burned by micrsoft when it was smaller then them. ahem IBM cough. Microsoft is smart,resourceful and powerful.
The ruling against microsoft will be minimal. It won't be broken up or even severly restricted. Judge Jackson doesn't like them the court case was sloppy and poorly excuted but he seems to be reasonible. Microsoft will be restriced from certain pratices. That's it. The OS won't be open sourced, no notice to stop bundling explorer, still gonna make office. With some cash on top.
Hopefully apple is next
The best thing they could do as regulation would be to simply break up the company.
Instead of creating all these ambiguous restrictions that Sun proposes. Lawyers always find ways around such things.
Breaking up the company is the best solution for all involved. The increased competition has worked wonders every time a monopoly has been broken up.
maybe they own shares in m$
He just doesn't get it.
....
http://www.byte.com/column/BYT19991108S0001
Every account i've seen so far praises the judge for clearly seeing and understanding the issues. Then there's Jerry
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Katz writes:
Net commerce works in very different ways, yet anti-trust law hasn't evolved. Microsoft didn't become a monopoly by jacking up prices, but by using practically the opposite tactic - in effect giving products away to obtain staggering market share. Gate's big idea was to make sure his company's software and operating systems were distributed so freely and aggressively they were on every desktop.
NO! Companies have NEVER become monopolies by jacking up prices. The Net hasn't changed the laws of supply and demand. Companies jack up prices after they have a monopoly (which is illegal). And Jackson found that M$ did just that. Nothing new there. Companies have always become monopolies by undercutting competition (which isn't illegal). They have also always leveraged monopolies in one area to gain monopolies in others (which IS illegal). How do you leverage a monopoly? In pretty much all the ways Microsoft has used: lowering prices to kill competition (Netscape), strongarming distributors to protect and extend monopolies (Dell, Gateway, IBM, Intel, etc.), threatening other companies to gain concessions (Apple), paying companies with money and concessions (AOL, Dell, etc.) to stifle new competition (Netscape, Real, Intel).
This IS NOT NEW.
This IS NOT "NET LAW."
This is classic antitrust. The parallels to Standard Oil are amazing. Read the Pulitzer Prize-winning Prize by Daniel Yergin for a great account of the history of Standard Oil and the full sweep of the Petroleum Age.
Katz is right that the average Joe thinks M$ is cool. But he's wrong when he thinks this is all about online commerce. Jackson's findings of fact demonstrate quite clearly that new distribution models like downloading, pre-installations, and CD's are perfectly understandable in traditional terms, and aren't "unique to the Net," as Katz claims.
Here's a clue for Jonathan: Judge Jackson isn't "definitely plowing new ground." New industries, from oil to railroads to telephony to automobiles to radio to television exploded from the gates "far from regulators, bureaucrats, lawyers and politicians" -- which was good but not surprising -- but when the dust settled, the new industries were part of the same old capitalism engine, and benefited from regulation and oversight. Henry Ford himself admitted that government regulation was the only reason cars got safer in the first 20 years of the automotive revolution.
I must have missed the point at which this happened: "it's possible to be enormously rich and successful and still rapidly become marginal, even insignificant. This seems to be Microsoft's curious fate." Funny how M$ doesn't seem too marginal; they're pretty safely the dominant force on the desktop for the foreseeable future.
Finally, the rise of the PC and the rise of networked computing are surprisingly disconnected. You should check out Nerds 2.0.1, a pretty good (and thus one of the best available) history of the Internet, drawn from interviews for the PBS special of the same name, to see what I mean. Basically, the PC is a 80's phenomenon, and networked computing a 90's phenomenon. There's a lot more in the article to take issue with (the Blair Witch Project a Net phenomenon? The BWP marketed the website, not the other way around).
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Make mine methylphenidate.
Slashdotters should not be upset that the Judge does not think Linux & friends constitute viable competition. End user features and apps are still not there, and are taking a long time being fulfilled. After all these years, the Linux GUI is still a mess. The font system is still a duct-taped collection consisting of X native fonts, FreeType, Ghostscript and WordPerfect/Applixware/StarOffice's engine with no central configuration or core collection of good scalable fonts. It is hard to cut and paste anything beyond raw text clippings. Office type software? Forget it. Linux is still mostly missing the boat with the "application platform of the future", lacking a decent web browser. After a year of furious development, Mozilla is still unusable. If not for the bloated, buggy, closed-source monster known as Netscape, much of the web would be hostile territory for Linux folks. We would not be able to shop, access your stock/bank account and other end-user web applications that Windows people take for granted. The main problem is that open source software platforms is still very much promise-ware, if anything is promised at all. Some, like Mozilla, have promising technology, but the key word is still "promise". Many projects have stalled -- remember kpilot? -- and may never reach their target. A decent web browser? Wait. Quicktime? Wait. Something comparable to MS Office? Wait. A decent PalmPilot desktop? Wait. A recent Java port? Wait. Full USB support? Wait. A fix for the font mess? Silence. A lot of games? Wait for a trickle. Clipboard handling of graphics and rich text? Silence. Anti-aliased fonts? Wait. An MS Outlook type app? Wait. A full-featured IDE or CASE tool? Wait. Quicken? Silence. Voice recognition? Silence. Linux and other open source platforms have a lot of good stuff. As long as they fit our needs, we will use them happily. It would be a serious delusion, however, to assume that such platforms would be viable alternatives to Windows in the near future. The most common end user needs are simply not met. The standard "please wait -- maybe forever", "well, *I* don't need no such steenkin' feature", or "go write your own, whiner" responses of the open source world are less than useful to the typical Windows user. The question of whether we want such end users in Linux/BSD-space I will leave to others to answer. But it is clear that many Windows users currently have nowhere to go in Open Source Land. And by the time the gaps are filled, they may be off chasing some other technology trend.
Who knows I might actually be able to get Visual Studio 7 & SQL Server 8 for my SuSE box. No more windows only development tools... It's a great day to be a coder. :)
Bad Command Or File Name
Katz wrote:
Microsoft's fat stockholders won't have a happy day today
and
This will not be a happy day for Microsoft or its many fat and happy stockholders.
What he may fail to realize is that it's not just fat-cats who own MS stock. There are a helluva lot of mutual funds that have earnings linked to the DJIA. And, IIRC, MS is now a part of that. Any decline in MS stock will affect far more than just "fat and happy stockholders". It will also affect Joe and Jane Sixpack, if they have money in a mutual fund and are counting on it as retirement income, or to pay Junior's college tuition.
Of course this does not mean MS should be forgiven all its sins "for the good of the common people" any more than they should be forgiven for the good of the fatcats. But it does affect common people, and that should not be glossed over.
If the finding is correct, and MS really has been stifling competition (I think that's pretty obvious) then all the innovators who had been held back by the mighty Beast from Redmond will now be freed to innovate and compete, and any impact on the DOW, NASDAQ, etc. will be temporary. Let's hope so anyway.
I'll be quick: I have no doubts that Linux has been "allowed" to succeed as well as it has precisely because Microsoft wishes to spawn a competitor simultaneously as weak as possible yet strong enough to demonopolize the market.
This is the same reason why MS gave so much money to Apple, and everybody knows it in the Apple world.
Technological superiority is often not sufficient to drive technological progress. Yet Linux has gone far on its technical strengths. One wonders how much press Linux would have earned had Microsoft been willing or able to exert its full anti-competitive potential against it. The trial was dragged out long enough such that Microsoft believed it could create a nominally, minimally competitive market; the concept of making an "intrinsically unprofitable"(by their thinking) operating system their prime competitor was--is--their plan.
After all, they reason, Linux supporters can't simultaneously claim MS is both a monopoly with no credible competitors and a company under seige by the mighty penguin.
Judge Jackson couldn't make this claim, which is where the Open Source "dis" derived from. I will claim both, on the grounds that the only reason Linux has been able to place Microsoft under seige is the fact that federal anti-trust pressures have prevented MS from using their covert and illegal tactics against Linux. Linux alone, without the Federal Government laying down a competitive framework for Microsoft to operate within, could never be a credible competitor to Microsoft. Nothing and nobody could ever be.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Katz is still correct that the findings of fact came from nowhere in terms of media coverage. The media generally doesn't portray Mr. Bill as the nasty software slumlord that many Slashdotters think he is.
"Down with the monopoly that screws the competition." then.... "But don't forget, Linux is a major competitor." Those two, while not mutually exclusive, only overlap in the smallest of ways.
I essentially parroted your response in a similar vein a few responses below. I think the worst crime is that Katz is a literate individual with a clear writing style and writes blitheringly wrong statements, mixed in with some good points.
I strongly get the impression Katz didn't really read the findings. If he did, then he really missed the point--maybe he has no historical knowledge of antitrust. Whatever the case, some major blunders. At least he didn't start a land war in Asia.
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Make mine methylphenidate.
All in all the events of the past few days (the obvious and not-so-obvious statements pouring out of the wood-work) seem to
reinforce the perception that Bill Gates is and has been clearly out of touch with how Microsoft has achieved its position in the
marketplace. And as has been said before . . . perception is reality. Where I think Jon Katz misses the point, on an otherwise
well-thought-out analysis of "Bill's World", is that the general/investing public has been somewhat blind to this perception/reality.
One need only look at Microsoft's stock today, as of 11:46 E.T. it was at 87 5/8 off only about 3 15/16. This tells me that the FoF
was, for the most part, no surprise to investors, they had already factored in this "news" well before it was released. However,
much like Bill Gates and Company may have viewed reality through their own set of shades, so has the public at large. I think by
and large Joe Public "knew" the truth (take a look at the recent CNN opinion polls on Microsoft) but chose to color that perception
with another "reality", be it through their own world-view or that of the Microsoft PR apparatus. As far many people's view that
this is about the Government taking an active role in regulating the internet or denying Microsoft or anyone else for that matter, the
right to compete in a certain manner, they're right. Get used to it, because for better or worse this and any other national or local
government is going to weigh in on how we choose to deliver goods and services to this new and somewhat bewildering market: 1)
Is it fair and does it serve the public good?
I have great faith in fools. Self confidence, my friends call it.
As to where we could have gone, my question is where could we have been had MS not stunted the industry's growth. We saw some amazing innovations in various competitors to the PC Platform. Would we have seamless voice and video over the net today, if it were not for the Wintel alliance's steadfast refusal to evolve because of "Backward compatability issues?" And did anyone else see the irony of the company that brought us the API of the week club trying to stay backward compatable with all their eight bit legacy code from a decade ago?
The Wintel PC makers and the software people became complacent, each for different reasons. The industry needed a good shaking up and this should do just the trick. Does anyone NOT believe that Billy Borg's gonna get his Billion Dollar Behind spanked until it is red and sore? Even if nothing is done to punish Microsoft in this case, the lawsuits that are now going to come down on them now will leave them reeling for years to come.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What Microsoft really has a monopoly in is the implementation of the Win32 API's and the Microsoft Office file formats.
The best outcome of the trial would be to force them to publish complete, accurate specifications for all the Win32 API's and the MS Office file formats.
Then, the WINE project would be able to make much faster progress to making a real Windows competitor. And StarOffice, KOffice, etc. would be able to read and write MS Office documents.
At that point, it would become feasible to switch to Linux/BSD/BeOs and still be interoperable with the rest of the business world. Then, Microsoft would have to compete on the quality, features, and price of their software.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
The orginal consent decree prohibited Microsoft from per processor licensing. As such it hasn't been an issue since.
Have you heard of the Iridium system? Bill Gates is one of their heads and even before their system go live, they are already trying to extinguish possible future competition. The trend of embrace and extinguish -- the ameba strategy -- is all over.
Most economists agree that space technology is a vast, profitable, and unconquered market. The vilans are already putting their tentacles there.
Let's not be too distracted by the present ocurrings. These people are intelligent, predators, and machiavelic. They will do everything in their power to keep themselves in power. If they loose an empire, they might be able to build another one.
Now if this is the definition of a monopoly, we may be in trouble. There are a LOT of companies that can fit into this definition. By these standards, Apple has a monopoly. There share of Apple computers is large (every Apple shipped ships with the MacOS, much like people complain about PC's shipping with Windows). They also share the same cost of entry safety as MS (even moreso really, since they make the computer and the OS). And there is no commerically viable alternative (Linux is even less prevalent among Mac users than PC users).
Seems to me while everyone is cheering, we should stop and look at exactly what they are saying.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Does anyone else find it completely assinine of the Dow Jones to add in Microsoft when it's a distinct possibility that Microsoft may not exist 5 years from now because it might get broken into tiny pieces?
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
I think Linux wasn't considered a viable competitor in the decision because Linux isn't a company. Linux can't be boxed into simple ideas of "product" or "someone's intellectual property". I suspect that for these reasons people will continue to miss-understand it for a while to come. How do you compare what is really a movement to one single company or product?
Also, as a replacement OS for Windows, there is still a long road to go in order for Linux to steal the market that Windows enjoys.
In my opinion, there should never have been a Microsoft in the first place. Somebody should have slapped their hands a long time ago when they started cutting all those side deals with pc manufacturers.
If you fall asleep at the wheel, don't be surprised if you find yourself in the ditch while your rivals are busily speeding down the road without you.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Can anybody really honestly see the day when Linux is on everybody's desktop? I reckon the product that will eventually replace Windows has not yet been written. Much though I like Linux, FreeBSD, etc., for their philosophy, I feel that your man in the street is still better off with a buggy but unmysterious system than with a superior but esoteric and incomplete one. So keep your (red) hat on for the moment. Microsoft has a defective but very saleable product. Be realistic (and sad).
Adam:What kept you?
God:Rome wasn't built in a day
For all of you that have read "All Tomorrow's Parties?" (It's William Gibson's new novel.) Does this remind you it just a bit?
When I read that Bill Gates respectfully disagreed with the court It immedaitely made me think of Cody Harwood. Anyone else think Harwood was a spoof of Gates? B ->C & G ->H. Hhmmm.
If Gibson did have Gates in mind that would be a riot and visionary to say the least. Nothing lasts forever.
Who is Laney I wonder?
nothing excels in every environment
Because I think that law should be repealed. I see no reason why companies should be subject to a different set of rules when they achieve 90% market share.
Well, let me give you some reasons then.
The way capitalism is supposed to work is that normal companies, because they have to compete for a limited amount of market, must offer advantages to potential customers in the form of new products, improved products, cheaper products, or some other consumer-benifiting effect. In response, the other companies in that market space will develop better, cheaper, more reliable etc. products. This continues, the companies survive and make money, and the consumer benefits with cheaper, better products.
When one company achieves a very high market share, then things are different. They have options open to them that are not available to smaller companies with less market share. They can do things like predatory pricing -- using their huge resources to sell products at a loss, preventing smaller companies from competing. They can create a barrier of entry -- if a competitor's products have to be compatible with the monopolies (because most people use them), all the monopoly has to do is constantly change the specification, so no competitors can keep up. They can prevent resellers from selling the competitors' products by threatening them with increased prices for the monopoly's products. They can buy up companies with promising competing technologies and bury them. Once these barriers are set up and predatory pricing has taken its toll, they can charge arbitrarily high prices for their products, without fear that consumers will change to alternatives because - due to the monopoly's practices - there aren't any.
Note that none of these practices have any beneficial effect on the consumer, and will in fact hurt them, normally in the short run and always in the long run. All of these are practices are discussed in the Finding of Fact.
The fact is that capitalism generally works in the favor of consumers except in certain cases of which monopolies are one. They are a bug in the system that results in benefit only to the monopoly.
Nevertheless, being a monopoly isn't illegal. Performing abuses of monopoly power -- abuses that no one but a monopoly could get away with in a competitive market -- is where the law draws the line and decides to fix the bug. Whether MS is guilty or not is of course a matter for the courts to decide.
Of course, you may not think that the result of capitalism should be benefit to consumers. If that is the case, then I'm afraid we don't have any common ground to work with, and I'll just have to settle with being glad the judicial system doesn't agree with you.
The enemies of Democracy are
Your overconfidence will be your downfall.
I expected a sharper drop, but it makes sense- things are not _physical_ enough for the beleaugered company yet.
It's now open season for class action lawsuits that can draw on the findings of fact for evidence- these will be slamdunks and should be considered as part of the punitive damages from the ruling. Expect _many_ of these.
When MS's once-unassailable cash reserves are obliterated fighting these suits and losing constantly (FoF counts as evidence and is pretty bulletproof), _then_ you will see their stock price go to a quarter of what it is (since it's already split so much. The way lawyers are these days, it'll be kind of like the stories of pirahnas skeletonizing a cow in 30 seconds.
I expected the stock to drop much more sharply this morning, but it looks like people haven't truly thought it through. MS's valuation _cannot_ be remotely comparable to when it was a monopoly unrestrictedly destroying the industry. That should be obvious. It's probably the hordes of class action suits (everybody and his brother will want to be in on that action) which will take it down the most. MS depends utterly on having those cash reserves. A penniless MS is beneath contempt...
This, in my opinion, is what it would take to force Microsoft to be a force of good (or, at least, a force of better) instead of a force of evil. I'm not much of a lawyer, so much of what I suggest probably is not justifiable given the facts of the case. Still, there is talk of a settlement, and if it looked like this, I'd be happy. I don't know the legal-eze of this, so I'm just talking intent here.
1) Microsoft can no longer create both operating systems and applications (including web browsers). The intent here is to force Microsoft to spin either its application or OS divisions into a separate company. I don't care if they both use the name Microsoft, as long as they are separate legally.
2) Microsoft's applications (including web browsers) cannot use _any_ knowledge about Microsoft's operating systems that is not publicly available. This would allow MS to, say, build a browser that can plug into the OS, but it also would allow someone else to plug in their own browser instead. To make this clear, I don't care if the app company and the OS company collaborate, as long as results of such collaboration are accessible to everyone. It could be argued that this would not be enforceable, but I'd wager that attempts to dodge this would be detected by competitors or anti-MS watchdogs, and they would either alert authorities or sue.
Preferably, this point would contain language to make violations of this point a criminal act, and thus settled in criminal court.
3) Any non-public APIs used by existing Microsoft applications (including web browsers) must be publicly disclosed immediately. This would probably be very damaging to MS (at least in the development community), because they do a lot of unpublished, internal stuff in their applications, especially Office. (An example to those of you who know Win32 programming: most of the controls used in Office are not HWNDs, which means they don't even use their own published APIs to, say, create a button. Try using Spy on a Word dialog to see what I mean.)
Microsoft would probably whine about these, but I don't think any of them would really cause too much trouble for them in the long run. It would, however, open up their system slightly, and I think would generate cleaner products, for both them and other Win32 developers.
None of these address Microsoft's strategy of buying competition and so on, so there is probably a need to address that kind of thing. I don't care as much about that practice, though, so I'll leave that as an exercise to others.
>>As it stands, Gates' legacy has just been written by Judge Jackson, but it could have been radically different. Think of the software a company with $22 billion in the bank (Gates himself has close to $50 billion, at least as of this morning) might have created, the advances it could have made in information technology. Imagine the computers it could have given away, the schools it could have equipped, the tech support it could have provided to the millions of newcomers struggling to get connected, the innovations it could have funded, the programming codes it could have shared, the small, struggling entrepeneurs it could have fostered rather than squash. These 2 paragraphs interest me a great deal. As many celebrities get "Public Service" instead of stiff jail penalties, why not choose that route if MS is found guility. Instead of stiff fines or penalties paid to the gov't/"competitors", require that they build and equip schools with computers (with Linux as the desktop OS) or fund research in some area like Open Source development. Kind of a wishy washy thing to wish for, but it seems that it would be far more productive than some sort of lump sum penalty paid into the bottomless pit that is the government...
Show me what you want, and I'll show you how to get along without it...
Is this Jon Katz in a wig and false bosoms? o_O
;) *
*coins revolutionary new term- Katzroturf
"The ultimate result is that some innovations that would truly benefit consumers never occur for the sole reason that they do not coincide with Microsoft's self-interest."
It reminds us what this case is about: M$ vs. the freedom to innovate. There seems to be a typo on M$'s page, where they accidently put DOJ instead.
Judge Jackson's disregard of Linux's viability in toppling Microsoft brings up an extremely important question: Is Linux really able to bring down Microsoft?
/are/ those programs in the first place? Further, not every program is listed on Freshmeat. How is our friend, Joe User, to know what GNU and FSF is? How does Joe User figure out what the difference between X Windows and X11 is? Joe, of course, can read the documentation, but Joe has no clue where to begin. Linux does have plenty of documentation, but it is focused for those who know how to use Linux already.
/could/ buy a fifty dollar manual on "How to Use Linux and the Advanced POSIX Environment" by F. Amos Hacker, but he wouldn't understand a word. Joe could also read "Linux for Dummies" but he still has to pay for this. And books like "Linux for Dummies" don't really put Joe in a great deal of control. He learns the basics, but now what?
Judge Jackson is probably right in that Linux at this time does not have the capability to replace Microsoft. I don't see Linux or any other UN*X stealing Microsoft's market share, except in the server catagory. Why the exception? UN*X does very well as servers; this is well known.
Most Linux users, however, will also recognize that Linux and other Unices are not very user friendly. And unfortunately for Linux, the vast majority of computers are not servers. They are also not operated by knowledgeable, eager to learn users. Joe User wants a computer that is easy to use, operates on a DWIM basis, and generally make life easy for him. Linux does not operate this way. One of the most frequent complains I hear concerning Linux is the difficulty in installing it. If new users cannot get past installing Linux, what happens when they try to configure their systems?
Besides not being easy to use, Linux lacks a central repository for information. Freshmeat and others provide a way to find and download the latest patches, yes; but what
Joe
Judge Jackson was right, Linux cannot yet compete against Microsoft. Linux is esoteric and difficult. Those who learn to use it love it, as I have. I may not be the greatest Linux user around. I am still unable to use Linux for day-to-day things, but I like it far more than Windows or MacOS. It's fast and powerful. It doesn't crash. Yeay.
Those three points, fast, crashproof, and powerful, are expounded upon far too frequently. If you have a car with a single, paddingless seat and a door that sticks, does it matter if the car pushes three hundred without breaking a sweat? If it can turn on a dime without flipping at two-fifty, does it matter when the interior sucks? Who wants to use such a car if getting in and out is difficult and sitting down causes bruises? "Oh yes," the common explanation is, "you can add padding to the interior! You can grease the door! If you expand the car, you can add another seat and door! This is wonderful!"
At this point, Joe User excuses himself to go play Quake on his Windows box. Unless Linux adds those features that draw people to learn Windows, no one will ever use Linux at home. Some hard-core Linux gurus might wince at a bit of babying, but we have to make it available for those less inclined to learn what "shutdown -h now" means. "But why can't I just turn it off?" the old DOS user whines. The Windows user merely glances at such a "stupid exercise in difficulty" and goes back to Start menu, as Joe User did.
If Linux is to ever compete on the desktop against Microsoft, 1) simple, free as water documentation must be made available, 2) things must be made more plain, less confusing, and 3) someone, somewhere, needs to start reviewing software, making it so that Joe User can decided what the difference between GNOME and KDE is.
Quick note before I end this: I don't mean get rid of the command line, or anything so extreme. Somewhere, an option for idiot_mode needs to be available, where Joe User can easily get to that simple documentation when he gets confused. CTRL+[some key] would be nice.
"Ok, Joe here's your computer. Just press CTRL and Key X if you get lost." "But what if..." "Just try it Joe." Joe diligently presses CTRL+Key X and exclaims, "Oh! I see now...so if I do this..." And off Joe goes. Without this, Joe would stare at the prompt, begin whining he doesn't get it, and run back to the Start menu he already knows.
People don't like change. Linux needs to make change easy, especially with all the attention it has been receiving lately.
If BillG had donated just one-tenth of what he spent on lawyers to BillC's legal defense fund, all of this could have been avoided!
Net commerce works in very different ways, yet anti-trust law hasn't evolved. Microsoft didn't become a monopoly by jacking up prices, but by using practically the opposite tactic - in effect giving products away to obtain staggering market share.
Lowering prices to get rid of competitors and become or maintain a monopoly status is as old as the railroads. Let's not confuse tactics performed in preservation of a monopoly with tactics performed when that monopoly is secure.
And I've seen enough of the argument elsewhere to guess what's in the rest of it. But it is not so much the specific facts that I dispute as it is the principle of antitrust law.
Even if I grant that MS is a bully, that their software is mediocre, and that they used their OS dominance to "leverage" an advantage in the browser market, that does not change the issue. My position is not that these things did not happen. My position is that these things should be legal, and that Microsoft has every right to do them.
Obviously, the Judge is not going to make a ruling that says "microsoft is successful and that's why I'm punishing them." But that is in a sense what this is about. It's about whether a company that has earned a dominant position through relentless improvement of its product and aggressive (and perhaps sleazy) marketing has a right to reap the benefits of that success.
Regardless of how "innovative" Microsoft is or is not, the fact is that Microsoft has produced a large number of very useful and popular products. If they engaged in specific acts of code stealing, I fully support their being prosecuted for it. But if they simply took a hot new concept and made a better implementation of it than the original, or they integrate it into an existing product making it more convenient to the user, that should not be a crime.
So they are not being punished for being successful as such, but they *are* being punished for trying to make use of that success to gain further success. In that sense, they *are* being punished for their success: actions that would be perfectly legal if done by a normal company are illegal if done by MS, because MS is a "monopoly."
I have no doubt that they have violated antitrust law, but it is the principle behind that law that I question. In general I do think that the law should be enforced, but that does not mean that I will cheer when someone is railroaded due to an unjust law.
Wasn't there recently an article on Slashdot about an accountant/analyst who apparently discovered MS was using a dangerous pyramid-type scheme to inflate its stock? He suggested people sell their stock asap, before it works its way into the retirement system, etc....where it could do major damage if it collapses.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Seems almost everyone in Slashdot is excited about Microsoft getting slammed. Honestly, I find it a good step toward restoring competition in the desktop OS space. However, MS is not in and of itself evil. It has provided products that most people find useful and productive. The software's ubiquity means almost everyone can share information. And the stuff is relatively cheap., MS's sin lies in using its monopolistic power to gain marketshare, not the superiority of its products. The obvious stated, I think the breaking up of Microsoft would be good for Windows, if not necessarily for Bill Gates. Windows would be forced to be more stable and scalable. The price will probably increase, but then perhaps its true cost would be reflected,, not a monopolistically-maintained one. As Windows improved, maybe LiNUX and UNIX would be forced to become more user friendly, that is, if they really wanted the desktop marketplace. Government intervention bad? It's only as bad as the one's forcing it's hand. Anti-trust guidelines are fairly strict and well-established. This government has determined that open, competitive markets are in society's best interest. And these are not irresponsible Congressmen/women making up rules as they go along; they represent constituencies, who are prodding them to take actions. Some, like the representatives from Washington State, are almost certainly recipients of big $$ from MS, but others arent'. Not all are corrupt, but not all are innocent (as usual the truth is in between). BTW, if Congress is pushing for decency regulations, that partially reflects what the constituents want, and that's fine, if not small-minded. This tension between the decency-rabid and the Net-anarchists who say any law is bad law is healthy, and the majority will weigh in somewhere in the middle. If the 2 extremes are distressed by the result, that only shows how fair it may be. Just a few thoughts...
Like many other entertainment companies, "The Mouse" is quite a bit more obnoxious and ruthless than anything depicted in the findings of "fact". By their standards, Microsoft is a pushover.
on friday be closed at 3.8, its up over 8 now.
Is that it's not possible for an OEM to make money unless they can put Windows on their computers. What does that tell you about what consumers want? If there are all these people who want other OS's, why haven't any of the major computer companies told Microsoft to go and screw themselves, taken the higher rate, and made up the extra money by selling lots of Linux-preinstalled OS's. The reason is simple: there are still very few people who want to but computers with only Linux or Be on them. As the Judge ruled, Linux is a fringe operating system.
The fact that no company has decided to take that higher price for Windows, pass it on to consumers, and sell cheaper machines with an alternative OS tells me that there aren't very many people who want those other OS's. If a grocery store won't stock a food that only 3 people buy, are those 3 people being "forced" to buy the more popular brand? No, there is simply no one willing to sell it to them.
All the remedies, from requiring MS to publish more business info to breakup sound like they will provide business opportunities for everyone. Even Bill will probably greatly increase his net worth.
I am a capitalist to the core and very much believe in survival of the fittest. It's completely inappropriate for the government to get involved in this in any way. Other countries are laughing at us for penalizing our successful companies when most governments promote their successful companies.
/. crowd hates Microsoft, I have also noted that the majority of them are anti-government as well. It must be killing them that they have to rely on an intrusive government action to fight their battles for them...
In the case of AT&T, it was appropriate as the government had effectively granted them the monopoly in the first place. In this case, Microsoft has earned it's monopoly. You can cry about unfair business practices, etc, etc, but to me it sounds like little more the crying over spilled milk from a loser. Personally, I think they should be allowed to use their monopoly in operating systems any way they can.
The big problem you have is that the computer industry learned long ago that it needs to standardize on things in order to progress. There was NOTHING worse than when an application developer had to write their software for both OS/2 and Windows. The small software developer didn't stand a chance as they could only afford to support one. Same thing with word processors; Word Perfect lost it's monopoly overnight mainly because the world can only tolerate one standard. I switched to Word not because I thought it was better, but because I needed to exchange documents with other users who were using Word. Word Perfect at one time enjoyed this same luxury, whereby people used their product cause they were the pseudo standard.
As far as Linux is concerned, it will either 1) always be a tiny operating system (market share wise) or 2) will catch on and everybody will switch to it. There is no inbetween ground in the computer industry. The industry could not possibly survive with Linux and Windows both holding a 50% market share. The fact that Microsoft holds a monopoly in operating systems is more due to this effect than it is to the superiority of their product. This is no doubt why Linux advocates are pissed. That said, this does not mean that they are breaking the law, they are simply the beneficiaries of the nature of the business.
Another issue, Judge Jackson has long been seen as anti-microsoft since his original ruling against Microsoft in a previous action. His ruling clearly showed his bias. I'm a little shocked Microsoft did not petition for a change of venue (or similar) when he was assigned to this latest DOJ case. Anyways, his original ruling (the one where he ruled that MS couldn't ship IE with Windows) was overturned on appeal. Even if the judge does find against MS and imposes sanctions, it is likely that the appeals court (same one that overturned the original injunction btw) would overturn it as well.
Quite frankly, as much as the
1) The company does need to be broken up! The logical lines would seemingly be, OS, applications, services, games, and commerce. Whereby, the GUI and IE would fall under applications, while IIS would fall under commerce. You get the idea.
2) All API's must be published. Any sharing of API information between the newly created entities must be publicly published.
3) All file formats must be publicly published (Excel to Access).
3) IE must be removed from the OS and distributed independently of any MS (or partner) product.
4) IE (or equevilent product) must be sold at a premium price of $40-60 per license for the the next two years. There after, they should be prohibited from saling it for anything less than the lowest priced commercial offering for the following two years. At that point, they should be on a competitive field.
5) They should be prohibited from acquiring any new entities for the next four years.
6) Prohibit software donation of any type to government or education facilities.
7) Prohibit the pre-announcement of any product prior to 30-days of it's release. This should include all alpha, beta, and public betas. In the event that the release is missed, impose fines of $1M per day that the product is late, perhaps doubling every 30-days. Perhaps, a sliding scale can be applied to prevent the fine from being looked at as a simple cost of doing business.
Guess what. OS/2 was exactly this OS a few years back- a better Windows than Windows (TM). Ran DOS and Windows software beautifully + all its own native, more advanced stuff.
Too bad that nobody every bothered to write more advanced stuff. After all, you had all the Windows world available... OS/2, despite being a damn sight better than Win3.1 never went anywhere. I switched to NT when it became obvious that all I was using OS/2 for was to multitask Windows apps- why not just use Windows for that?
You don't want to compete with MS here. Running their software is only a trip to obscurity-land.
Eric
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
That proves nothing. Just try to buy a Mac w/o an OS or with Linux. Each manufacturer, seeking to maximize his/her profits, configures their machine as they like. In this case, consumers by and large greatly prefer Windows, many warts and all, to alternatives. If the manufacturer saw an opportunity to make a bundle selling something else, or by providing a choice of OSs, they would. But they don't. Are you suggesting every single large PC manufacturer is a lemming or can't take advantage of Linux (for example) for some reason because Microsoft is twisting their arm, and are therefore missing out on big profits selling something else?
The fine judge ignored Linux as a desktop OS and thereby concluded Microsoft has a monopoly on Intel OSe; but really he defined the market as Windows-compatible OSs. Well duh, Microsoft has a monopoly on Windows OSs by virtue of its own labors.
Hymn: We Don't Like Microsoft
Oh, spread the news far and wide
the sun has bought news of cheer!
it's really about free speech,
but today's the day of free beer.
Oh Microsoft, Oh Microsoft,
your glory days are past
long have we dreamed of this day
and this day is here at last!
Microsoft shall burn in flames
and light the Redmond sky.
Oh, Bill Gates shall once again
get his face a creamed with pie.
Oh Microsoft, Oh Microsoft,
your glory days are past
long have we dreamed of this day
and this day is here at last!
Vict'ry shall now be ours -
in the hands of righteous geeks.
Proudly now we parade forth
along the penguin lined streets.
Oh Microsoft, Oh Microsoft,
your glory days are past
long have we dreamed of this day
and this day is here at last!
No longer will we endure
the hated blue screen of death
with hobnailed boots we shall stomp
Microsoft's last dying breath!
Oh Microsoft, Oh Microsoft,
your glory days are past
long have we dreamed of this day
and this day is here at last!
Let's not underestimate the overwhelming power of having 90% of the market. Although I'd expect most Slashdot readers to be willing to work through arcane installation procedures and to do so whenever a new version of something comes out, there are a staggering number of computer users who wouldn't. They're not likely to suddenly reformat their hard drives because a judge said MS was a monopoly. Perhaps they never will. The new ground to be won, if there is any, won't be won with the PC users that exist today. And even when users have a choice, they'll need a compelling reason to choose an alternative. In other words, we need to 1) make Linux a viable alternative to Windows (not just "it's not Microsoft" and 2) make sure the users of tomorrow know it. Let's not squander the opportunity.
Nice posting, Jon. Dan Gillmor's Saturday column on the Findings of Fact is great: http://www.mercurycenter.com/business/microsoft/tr ial/breaking/docs/dgms110699.htm
What was that about how this was new, exclsive to the net sort of abuse of power, Jon? Horsefeathers! And the bundling is unique? Gee, IBM's lawyers who had some discussions with the governement about bundling their OS with the hardware - this was a couple decades ago, Jon, I imagine that's why you never heard of it - would beg to differ.
And so, sophistically, on and so forth. It's scary sometimes how confidently you write your misinformation. How lucky you are to have found Slashdot, where your ability to form complete sentences that sound good is cherished by those less able.
The above mentioned difficulty happened in 1988. Before then, OS/2 was a joint Microsoft/IBM project. When they had their little tiff, and Microsoft bailed, they dropped their OS/2 support. This was quite problematic being that the prior version of their compiler was the "official" OS/2 compiler, and the only one available.
IBM did eventually support it, but they didn't get their compiler out for a year or so. Not surprising since the Microsoft compiler was originally the "Official" one. Now this would have been ok, had Microsoft not dropped all support for the prior version of the compiler, leaving those consumers, like my former company, who had been following the Microsoft line by using the OS that they said was the future (OS/2), totally out in the cold.
This was not about "Supporting a competitor's product". This is about refusing to support your own product for marketting reasons.
Good for the consumer my ass.
The cake is a pie
I'd have to say that your irrelevant quotes are not just grammatically incorrect, but rather telling - "Free". Your choice of metaphor - gasoline and natural gas - is of course perfect for proving the opposite of your point. Microsoft has used the "installed base" to manufacture a monopoly out of thin air - a monopoly on gasoline, in this case. Much like standard oil. So your comment that the goal of "capitolism [sic]" is to make as much money as possible stands out as particularly ignorant. That is not the goal of capitalism. The goal is to bring the greatest benefit to consumers by encouraging the reward of success. But when the market fails to sustain the balance of factors which promote competition, the government is obliged to step in and correct the market.
Microsoft products are designed from the inside out to restrict the choices of the individual and to keep other companies from competing. What you promote is not capitalism, as noted above, but corporatism. The human instinct to kiss ass is behind it. It explains why the press can send themselves into a tizzy over any murder that can be described in a sentence with the work "Internet", and yet fail to report critically on Gates, ever. Ultimately, the corporatism of major news outlets has left them with a decade-long failure to notice or report on the darker side of Microsoft's success. Long live Slashdot! This is an excellent description of why the DOJ has gotten involved. This is not capitalism except as understood by La Cosa Nostra I believe this to be true. I wouldn't be worried about a robot-takeover, Matrix/Terminator style, except corporations have such disregard for inidviduals and the liberties of citizens that it's politically possible, if not technically. Otherwise, I expect that people will someday look back at us with the same pity we feel for medieval peasants, bound to the land as we are to our employers.Congratulations. This is the best article I've yet to see on Slashdot, and the best article on the Microsoft case I've seen.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Microsoft has no such hardware ties.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
And he was definitely plowing new ground. Traditionally, companies have gotten into anti-trust trouble when their monopolies become so vast they monopolize products and goods, prevent competition and innovation, and unfairly control and drive up the price consumers pay for those products. That was the rationale behind one of the first landmark anti-trust rulings, the one that broke up Standard Oil, and behind the decision that dispersed AT&T.
Jon, before you lecture on the Standard Oil case (the archetypal antitrust example, to be sure) it's a good idea to learn a little bit about it.
Standard Oil did not jack up prices. Instead, like Microsoft, they used their monopoly power to guard and extend their monopoly. Under Standard Oil, prices actually fell as Rockefeller shared the economies of scale. (OK, so maybe he was a bit more public-spirited than Bill.) It was, however, impossible to survive as an independent oil company because Standard controlled the infrastructure and the channels and exerted pressure on equipment manufacturers while engaging in predatory pricing to make the independents unprofitable.
Sound familiar? Judge Jackson is on very familiar and well-tested legal ground here.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I think you'll find that you're in the minority on this one...
First of all, the US is NOT a free market. It tries to be one in many areas, but where the free market treads on the toes of the individual, the free market looses.
So you end up with things like government subsidies for businesses that aren't necessarily profitable, but are still useful to the general public at some level that a free market could not sustain. Minimum wage and child labor laws also prop up the economy to protect the individual.
Just as anti-trust laws protect the individual from the abuses of the "mighty".
You're arguing that might makes right. I have a gun and you don't, so give me your money. And that's okay, because I went through all the trouble to obtain a gun.
I have a monopoly and you don't, so you'll buy my product, like it or not. And that's okay because I went through all the trouble of establishing a monopoly.
Monopoly X (Microsoft in this case) has achieved a level of power such that they can use their success in some area to prop up ventures that would fail if they were not connected to (that's "tied to") a monopoly. These ventures by themselves might fail in a "free market" (or even in what passes for one around here).
In other words applying the morals you display to relasionships between people is obviously WRONG. But it's okay when those idividuals are companies, and damn the little people that get screwed along the way?
Pardon me for jumping to a conclusion here, but you strike me as a selfish bastard.
--Mark Storer
mark.a.storer@gte.net
You know, the strangest thing about this case is that it's not about money. The only person who's going to be happy about a $ 10 rebate for Microsoft products is the pirate, and he's not going to be entitled to it.
:-(
$ 10 is hardly even enough for a half decent lunch here in LA.
D
----
Nope, but I can easily see the day when Linux is *under* everyone's desktop. Or, at least a goodly sized chunk of consumers.
If MS was forced to standardize and document the Windows APIs for competitors to copy, you'd suddenly be able to port to Linux very easily. And, now that nobody looks for a C:> who will care what's it's running on? Only techies, and the techies will appreciate that it's a stable *nix instead of a kludge.
I'd love the day when you could get the same apps on Be, MacOS, Linux, and even Windows. (and BSD, etc...)
Subject says it all. Good job.
I do not think Microsoft is a monopoly, unless you define the market as "Windows Compatible OSs" as the judge has all but done. Any other market, e.g. Intel OSs, is not a monopoly because Microsoft cannot forclose distribution nor can it raise prices with impunity.
Absolutely Microsoft acquired their position by developing what customers want. I do not work there any more but I did once and you have never seen a more focused and dedicated set of product development groups. Endless customer surveys, focus groups, meticulous analysis of product reviews, resolution to win the next review by adding any missing capability.
It is easy to look at Microsoft's commanding presence now but the years 87-95 were what set the plate for its success now and you cannot argue they acquired their success by anticompetitive actions, rather by fantastically competitive actions. In fact, most of the alleged issues that are whined about endlessly (stac, the alleged DRDOS warning in some beta version of Windows 3, etc.) have contributed approximately zero to the success of Windows and Office. Those products are a success because (many warts and all) they please consumers much better than every alternative.
-- ex-softie
Now, when people have complained about Microsoft's practices, the standard reason given to explain them was that they were just trying to maximize profits. If the above premise is true (and I personaly suspect it is), then the profit motive is just an excuse - and given that the people in Microsoft are far from dumb, they know this very well.
So the question is - why? Why should microsoft engage in practices which are either barely legal or outright illegal, and also reduce the company's worth?
Disregarding for the moment theories like "Gates is an agent from alien civilization whose purpose is to destroy human information technology", or "Gates is the antichrist" (tempting as such theories might be
Power. It isn't money. At these scales, money is just an integer in the bank. But power... The ability to control... That is something some people just can't get enough of.
Of course, the power seeker is typically convinced he "knows best" and that it is "for the good of everyone". There has been more then hints that this is Gate's view of the situation. Actually, it is often that such power seekers do much good on the way. Even Microsoft did (gasp!). The problem is such people never know when to quit; they fight to hold to their power, causing great harm in the process (which Microsoft certainly did). The total balance is often negative.
So, overall, we are not in such a bad shape. First, Gates/Microsoft's type of power seeking is subject to checks and balances - as is demonstrated by the finding of facts and hopefully by the final ruling. So it will take five to ten more years to make Microsoft completey irrelevant, like IBM is today. So what?
You could complain about the cost to humanity - the immense amount of talent which was wasted on obfuscating computer technology on the one hand and de-obfuscating it on the other; the amount of progress we could have made if Microsoft hasn't been there to hinder us; the health effects of the increased blood pressure of people programming windows (definitely worth a study
But, overall, it really is peanuts compared to other frivolities humanty is addicted to. Consider the complexity of the IRS tax laws - that's a worse waste of talent, since we'll never be able to get rid of it. And, to be very blatant, we all know the costs of the last time someone seriously decided to rule the world - the hard way.
No, Microsoft is really mild by comparison. Wait ten years. Regardless of the courts, windows PCs will join the mainframe in the hall of fame and in fossilized large corporations. "The best revenge one can have on his enemies is to outlive them.".
What I'm worried about is who the next contender to "world domination" would be. Nature hates a vacuum, and power attracts people like nothing else on earth.
I just hope it will be in some other field. Maybe nano tech, or genetic engineering, or zero-g manufacturing, or anything but computers, please! This way we'd be left alone to enjoy ourselves for a change. We've been through a decade of Microsoft domination. We deserve a break.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Amusingly enough, the MS homepage cites the paragraph from the Findings where the Judge talks about how they built a pretty good browser as vindication of all of their behavior. But, this is spurious - SO also performed a useful service, as their pipelines were much more efficient than previous methods of transport (in barrels, on some motorized vehicle). That's a lesson: You can't become a monopoly without doing something useful first. So, when people tell you M$ isn't a monopoly, or is at least good for consumers, because their software isn't overly pricey and standardization on them has helped consumers, they're wrong. Monopolies do harm not by providing no consumer benefit ever, but by limiting consumer benefit, esp. once established.
When Jackson refers to network effects (everyone else uses it, so I have to also), that's just like Standard Oil: by their very existence they make competition impractical, and therefore must be dealt with (broken up, etc.) in order to prevent continued harm to consumers.
So, I guess the moral is: the more things change...
(Yes, I'm a software developer, but I've also done my history reading...)
Nothing too exciting is going to come out of this whole Microsoft monopoly decision. Most likely, the government will tell them to stop doing certain practices. What real impact will come out of this? Not too much. People aren't going to flock to Linux or the G4 or any other kind of OS. Windows 2000 will still come out late and the average consumer will still buy it. Why? Because it's still the easiest product for the end user to operate.
Sure, people made a lot of money by investing in M$. The problem is, they did it quite unethically. I was arguing on ethical grounds that it was wrong to invest in them. They thought that Bill Gates Could Do No Wrong.
THAT'S what I've got them over the barrel on. Unfortunately, they're going to start ribbing me about the passage of the Voter Suicide Act, er, I-695.
Bleah.
InThane
As one of my computer science profs pointed out this morning, doing to MS what they did to IBM a while back (breaking the company into several smaller companies) allows MS to employ far more aggressive marketing techniques as several companies rather than as one.
This could be a dangerous thing to Linux and other OSes due to the lack of the monopoly it currently has.
A hundred billion dollar fine would be far more appropriate.
dragontails
flying.dragon@usask.ca
I agree with you almost wholeheartedly. Yes, I certainly think that a healthy part of Windows' code bloat is due to compatibility code; but from what I've been able to see as a developer, supporting IE and Office hasn't been the major problem on that score. There's an amazing array of compatibility hacks in Windows, designed to support old behaviors for the sake of all sorts of old applications written in the Windows 3.0 days. The dismally low Windows resource limits are there because of a design decision made back in the Dawn of Time, when the thought of using four whole bytes for a resource handle was unthinkable. And MacOS is just as bad if not worse, with patches on top of patches for the sake of pre-MultiFinder apps.
It's the age-old tradeoff; people want Neat New Stuff, but they also want the old stuff to work. You can only make real architectural progress if you're willing and able to shake off the baggage of the past; and in order to do that successfully, one of three things has to happen. You need to offer some new benefit that's so compelling that users are willing to sacrifice heavily to get it; or you need to find a way to coexist seamlessly with the old OS--which usually means waiting until software and hardware has advanced to the point where you can afford to throw the old behaviors into an emulator or "compatibility box" and isolate them from the rest of the OS.
Apple tried to take that leap with Copland and then Rhapsody, by running old MacOS programs under emulation; but it largely failed. Emulating the old OS is a very important step, but deploying the new OS is only worthwhile if there's applications for it; and with Apple's small market share, most developers weren't willing to retool their existing Mac apps, let alone develop new ones. Perhaps the iMac will change that; but for now, Rhapsody is still only a niche market of a niche market, for running Mac servers. (The server market has always been something of a special case; when you're deploying a server, you don't care about whether or not it can run Word--you just want high performance from the few server applications you'll actually run.)
Linux has straddled the two strategies. The people who run Linux standalone do so because the performance and stability improvements (and perhaps the philosophical improvements) make the smaller application pool worthwhile. And for the people who still need their Windows apps, there's always WINE or dual-booting--not exactly seamless, but close enough for many purposes.
Microsoft hasn't been able to take that step forward; they know that a huge part of their Windows customer base is only there for the sake of compatibility with existing apps. Even if Windows were cut loose from the other Microsoft apps, I don't think that the situation would improve that much unless the developer was willing to take that fundamental leap and cut the old compatibility ties. (And if you're willing to do that, then why stick with Windows? :) )
[need to cite the source?]
I'd like to begin with saying that I dislike Micro$oft's products and policy as much as any of you. Although I have not yet grown to Linux, I am already weary of Microsoft's merchandise. They have been going for the last three years down the road that condemns innovative program design. For example, Office 2000 did not take any special features since '97 -just an extra 200MB in installation. Who suffers? The user - a.k.a me & you.
Yet I don't think that there is any grounds to hate Microsoft personally. I have nothing against its employees. Bill Gates even used to be cool once [a long-long time ago].
The point is not to hate Microsoft. It is to beat it. For instance, I admit that I use Office 97 and Visual C. It's not because I like M$ - it's simply because I've got no choice. So what is to be done? Make the next version of Linux more convenient to desktop use - you're close to it. Release an appropriate answer to Office 2000. Write a C compiler that I could use myself to write programs for X. That is the right answer to B. Gates. Your call.
LINSUX, well sucks You will all fall under the bootof the Great God Bill Gates, stop resisting the pain will only last a few years of your life. Give in to your hate and come over to the DARKSIDE, you have no idea the power of MICROSOFT.
TRW is preparing a lawsuit against Microsoft for the losses they have suffered due to downtime.
The argument goes like this: Due to Microsoft's monopoly position, TRW has not had a free choice of OS vendor. TRW has suffered from a lot of desktop outages while using Windows. This has cost TRW a lot of money. While TRW has been losing money due to Microsoft's monopoly, Microsoft has been using money from the monopoly to fuel illegal actions. This money would, if there had been normal competition going on, been pushed into Windows stabilization.
Assuming that the claim is true (and the guy that told me this has proven quite reliable), it has a number of interesting sides:
All in all, I think Microsoft has a large chance of losing this one -- TRW will play the ball as far as they can, and they're not known for starting a play without being ahead.
-- Brent
This all but makes up for the article about lame-game The War In Heaven.
Looks like its from the Automatic complaint generator. Thanks to jwz's links page.
"There is a fine line between genius and insanity--I have erased this line."
More people are MSFT shareholders than realize it. Almost anyone owning an equity mutual fund, or an S&P 500 index fund, will have a, perhaps small, chunk of MSFT. And yes, I suppose many of those investors are happy, but "fat". Anyone buying MSFT this morning made a nice profit on the day...
Maybe it's just me, but the smug, self-righteous snobbery of Mr. Katz makes so many far right Republicans seem warm and fuzzy. Perhaps, on some distant future day, Mr. Katz can get past the ad hominem attacks on people and focus on the subject at hand.
slashdot.com All the news that isn't.
Apple copied the GUI developed by Xerox at PARC
No, Apple licensed some technology from Xerox. Licensing is a concept you seem to be unfamiliar with due to your years as an M$ lapdog. This is the concept that when some person or company has a new technology they invented that you want to use, you pay them for the privilege. This is to be contrasted with M$'s policy of copying it and fighting the inevitable lawsuits. Or pretending to want to license it and then outright stealing it.
Microsoft hired Simonyi, the person at Xerox PARC, who developed the GUI that Apple copied
I know nothing about this person, but Apple's GUI was nothing like the one developed by Xerox, hence it couldn't have been copied.
Microsoft most certainly did NOT steal the GUI from Apple
What they did was threaten them with dropping all support for the Macintosh versions of their software if Apple didn't license their (not Xerox's) technology to M$.
Apple, being an extremely innovative company, still managed to remain years ahead of M$ in ease of use, functionality, security, stability, and appearance. When M$ released the first version of Windows which was even marginally useful in 1995, 11 years after the debut of the Macintosh, it looked as close to the Mac UI as it was possible for M$ to make it without most of the actual functionality.
I guess your definition of stealing is different than mine. People are welcome to have differing opinions, but you'll forgive me if I don't allow you near my property.
It could be said that Apple stole the GUI from Xerox, and Microsoft acquired it by hiring away it's developer.
Yes, it could, but it would be a lie.
---CONFLICT!!---
Okay, so let's say the Judge rules that MS has used it's Monopoly power for illegal, anticompetive ends and then M$ is somehow no longer made nearly the power it is now, by breakup or something similar. How would this be good? Increased government regulation in this arena can have no positive outcomes. The government is like anti-Midas: anything it touches turns to shit. Do you honestly think Linux would have grown to the power it is today without Microsoft? Let's say windows only had a 35% desktop market share, and the rest of the market was split up between Be, MacOS, some Unix derivatives, and some other new crappy windows-like operating systems. I do not believe that the OSS community would have had the motivation to come together and produce something like GNU/Linux without something like M$ to push against. I firmly believe a lot of OSS hacking is done for it's "fuck M$" value. Look at Applix, pride of those who would have Linux replace windows 9X on my mom's desktop. Without MS Office in it's gilded place, would OSS really have done this on its own? No, OSS would have told my mom to learn vi. Microsoft's position effectively functioned as a highly competitive one for OSS. M$ provided the benchmark and the motivation for OSS to exist. This is nothing new: AT%T's Unix, and effectively, highend OS, monopoly of times long since passed spurned the writing of Andrew S. Tannenbaum's "Operating Systems: Design and Implementation," which an article posted on slashdot only last thursday cites as the beginning of the OSS movement in general. All of this came from being disgruntled with a corporation on power, which is a form of competition. This probably wouldn't have happened without this impetus of dissatisfaction. If I was Jon Katz and Wired was paying me to write this response, I'd feel compelled to call it something like, "New Competition in the Connected Era". If the government artifically reduces M$ ability to compete, by breaking it up or draining it's coffers with class-action rebates, how will this help the cause of increasing software quality? It won't make Linux run better. It won't make anyone go out and write better code. The quality of software will be furthered by old fashioned competition. People switched to Linux when it got better than Windows. How will M$ having less money or power make Linux get better? It will mean the Fed will need more money, departments, committees bureas, and red tape to "protect" the rest of the high-tech industry from the de-fanged M$. It will slow the entire process of innovation down. M$ should have been defeated in the market arena. It was inevitable. It's almost laughable how out of touch there strategy appears to be now. Some things should have been regulated by the Fed: namely, M$ violation of their contract with Sun regarding the Java standard. That is illegal. That will harm the consumer and slow the advance of technological innovation, but if the Fed was to force M$ to comply with the contract, the bricks of the M$ wall would continue to fall as they have been. They are already losing it: WinCE is a laughable in the PDA market compared to PalmOS, and will likely never really compete against things like Jini. Pervasive tiny connectivity is one of the Next Big Things, and /. head can tell you that. M$ is nowhere. They are still not realizing that "The Network Is the Computer" as Sun puts it. You know how many IT depts are gonna jump on 0 admin thin clients? Prolly lots. IT is really just a process of trying to minimize headaches, and the thinner the clients, the less headaches you have. Also, they have approximately 0 wireless strategy at this point. The next big thing is the total of these: de-power the desktop (making it impossible to run a million licensed copies of lard-ass Word all over your company), simplify it, connect your small devices like phones and organizers, and maintain pervasive, wireless, two way connectivity. After that, increase the bandwidth and decrease the size. THis is the clear path. Linux is moving towards it as a community, Sun, Handspring, and others are as corporations, /. is as a geek guild, M$ is in the dark! Who needs the Fed to take out their fangs when they are about to be trampled in the stampede anyway? jeb.
The definition of a monopoly is control of the supply. Monopolies are deemed bad because they can charge whatever they want. The consumer suffers because he has just two options, pay the price or do without.
Microsoft does not control the supply of software. It does not have the only operating system. It does not employ all of the programmers. On the contrary, Microsoft has lots of competition.
Microsoft has managed to attact the vast majority of consumers. This judge (and Katz) has decided that consumers are making the wrong choice and and is trying to "help" them by attacking their OS supplier of choice.
This attack is based on misusing the term monopoly, and panders to peoples fear of monopolies. This judge would have us believe that a large number of us picking one supplier is a monopoly.
This is an attack against freedom by elitist sobs who feel they know whats best for us and are going to force their solutions down our throat.
Even if Microsoft were a monopoly, the US government has a terrible record of dealing with them. The price of oil and gas skyrocketted after Standard Oil was broken up. The phone system's service level has not faired well since the breakup of AT&T.
Most monopolies form because of government protections, and the best way to fight them is for government to stop meddling.
Microsoft is extremely aggressive, and their goals are not always in line with their consumers. But consumers are capable of dealing with that. Many do by buying Apple, Linux, et. al.
I'm not saying that Microsoft has crossed lines it shouldn't have. If it broke laws, punish it as presribed by those laws. But if you give the government the power to punish Microsoft for crossing lines that are not against the law, then you are giving the government arbitrary authority, and that is the keystone of totalitarianism.
For everyone posting their anecdotal MS horror stories, you're not alone. MS has disapponted me several times. But then so has car rental agencies, restaurants, numerous other companies, and even some friends. Get over it. Remember that you chose them, and you have the freedom to change that choice. If Katz and his ilk get their way, you wont get these choices anymore. They will have been made for you.
stories, and predictably Katz is cheering him on. The definition of a monopoly is control of the supply. Monopolies are deemed bad because they can charge whatever they want. The consumer suffers because he has just two options, pay the price or do without.
Microsoft does not control the supply of software. It does not have the only operating system. It does not employ all of the programmers. On the contrary, Microsoft has lots of competition.
Microsoft has managed to attract the vast majority of consumers. This judge (and Katz) has decided that consumers are making the wrong choice and and is trying to "help" them by attacking their OS supplier of choice.
This attack is based on misusing the term monopoly, and panders to peoples fear of monopolies. This judge would have us believe that a large number of us picking one supplier is a monopoly.
This is an attack against freedom by elitist sobs who feel they know whats best for us and are going to force their solutions down our throat.
Even if Microsoft were a monopoly, the US government has a terrible record of dealing with them. The price of oil and gas skyrocketted after Standard Oil was broken up. The phone system's service level has not faired well since the breakup of AT&T.
Most monopolies form because of government protections, and the best way to fight them is for government to stop meddling.
Microsoft is extremely aggressive, and their goals are not always in line with their consumers. But consumers are capable of dealing with that. Many do by buying Apple, Linux, et. al.
I'm not saying that Microsoft has crossed lines it shouldn't have. If it broke laws, punish it as presribed by those laws. But if you give the government the power to punish Microsoft for crossing lines that are not against the law, then you are giving the government arbitrary authority, and that is the keystone of totalitarianism.
For everyone posting their anecdotal MS horror stories, you're not alone. MS has disapponted me several times. But then so has car rental agencies, restaurants, numerous other companies, and even some friends. Get over it. Remember that you chose them, and you have the freedom to change that choice. If Katz and his ilk get their way, you wont get these choices anymore. They will have been made for you.
IBM was never punished. After 13 years of legal proceedings, the case was dismissed in 1982.
They weren't broken up though. The statement was that those companies that were broken up have done quite well afterwards. IBM suffered for other reasons, as well as because of the spotlight on their business practices.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
MSFT shareholders, fat and non-fat alike, were not very unhappy today, as Mr. Katz delightfully predicted. MSFT stock is down a grand 1.77 percent. As the previous post pointed out, anyone who had bought MSFT this morning actually made a profit.
Zigbee Central: A Zigbee weblog
stories, and predictably Katz is cheering him on. The definition of a monopoly is control of the supply. Monopolies are deemed bad because they can charge whatever they want. The consumer suffers because he has just two options, pay the price or do without.
Microsoft does not control the supply of software. It does not have the only operating system. It does not employ all of the programmers. On the contrary, Microsoft has lots of competition.
Microsoft has managed to attract the vast majority of consumers. This judge (and Katz) has decided that consumers are making the wrong choice and and is trying to "help" them by attacking their OS supplier of choice.
This attack is based on misusing the term monopoly, and panders to peoples fear of monopolies. This judge would have us believe that a large number of us picking one supplier is a monopoly.
This is an attack against freedom by elitist sobs who feel they know whats best for us and are going to force their solutions down our throat.
Even if Microsoft were a monopoly, the US government has a terrible record of dealing with them. The price of oil and gas skyrocketted after Standard Oil was broken up. The phone system's service level has not faired well since the breakup of AT&T.
Most monopolies form because of government protections, and the best way to fight them is for government to stop meddling.
Microsoft is extremely aggressive, and their goals are not always in line with their consumers. But consumers are capable of dealing with that. Many do by buying Apple, Linux, et. al.
I'm not saying that Microsoft has crossed lines it shouldn't have. If it broke laws, punish it as presribed by those laws. But if you give the government the power to punish Microsoft for crossing lines that are not against the law, then you are giving the government arbitrary authority, and no one will be safe. It is the keystone of totalitarianism.
For everyone posting their anecdotal MS horror stories, you're not alone. MS has disapponted me several times. But then so has car rental agencies, restaurants, numerous other companies, and even some friends. Get over it. Remember that you chose them, and you have the freedom to change that choice. If Katz and his ilk get their way, you wont get these choices anymore. They will have been made for you.
Once again we find Jon "lets all sink to sameness" Katz taking up over hyped chatter and crafting it for his own crusade to battle excellence.
If you look back over all the Katz articles you will find nearly no new information. The only thing Katz adds is his own little spin towards the the Dumbing Down of Computers.
After years of trials one , ONE , judge comes out with a FINDINGS paper that hits in all the right places. This is news? This changes anything?
For all of the Bigoted statements Katz says perhaps his most amazingly inane statement is that NO ONE HAS A CHOICE, that MS was forced on us by Republicans and Evil Priests. Jon has once again strippied his readers of free will and in his good intention righting og this seeks to bring in a ruling power to hold us up.
Thanks Jon, but I can make a choice all by myself. So can the million sof users who use computers. It may not be the choice you think is right, but it is my choie to make.
Jon says that MS got into the net game late and fumbled. Well lets see, IE came on like ganga busters from its early days as Blackbird and kicked the shit out of NS. Netscape tried to sell a free browser and the PEOPLE handed them thier ass.
If you follow Jons logic any company that comes into a market and does well needs to be taken control of by the goverment. Gee Jon, thanks for trying to revive the Dead Soviet System here at home. It didnt work there and it sure as hell wont work here.
Competition is what breeds innovation. Look back into history Jon, and I mean more than 3 weeks ago, and you will see that clearly. What your seeking to do here is level off the edge and legisalte the field such that nothing out side of your mindset could be or should be done.
Thank god you dont realy code or programm or sys admin. You would be the clod who is unable to do anything creative and try to hold back those who can with standards, committes and the other tools of the bland and creative chalanged.
We live in a time of rapid change. We live in a time where the sharpest minds and the quickest hands can shape the future. If your only "talent" is to hamstring others thru legislation of luditism then you will eventualy be put tossed tot he wayside.
I look forward to your next installment of the
Bland Crusade.
And now A song for you to whitle with.
"
Oh slashdoters jump and shout with glee
and bill gates on the moon
I wonder if they really see
that bill gates on the moon
Netscape tried to sell a free browser
and bill gates on the moon
Scot mcnealy got java, but he aint getting any prouder
and bill gates on the moon
Everyones got to slay a goat, its true
and bill gates on the moon
and when the goats run out, they start with you
and bill gates on the moon
The try to legisalte thier own mindsets
and bill gates on the moon
its a pity thier applications aint ready yet
and bill gates on the moon
I wonder will they ever learn
that bill gates on the moon
you cant claim victory if the markets burned
and bill gates on the moon
Now its comming close to the end
and bill gates on the moon
when there are 5 micrsofts, what ya goona do then
fly MSnasa and visit bill gates on the moon "
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
There's an assumption in your argument -- that the open nature of the Internet isn't a transient condition but a permanent one. Lets hope that happens, but ...
Its entirely possible that the Internet a decade from now feels more like cable TV economics today -- or of Southern Pacific in its heyday. One where content (in the cable TV case) or goods (in the SP case) are subservient to the transit holder. All it takes is one backbone provide breaking from the pack, just like MSFT broke from the pack of PC software companies in the early years of that business.
Go to www.dowjones.com and observe what's been happening. MSFT has taken at least 3 major hits, which look to be MAJOR selloffs, but then they bounce back to nearly exactly where they were. I suspect that either MS is buying back its own stock (hey, they have the money to do it), or the stock market specialists are buying up the slack to keep the dow (of which MSFT is now a part) itself from sliding. It's been a VERY volatile day in any event.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
The internet doesn't add to the failure of M$, just because it's a new playing field. M$ will very soon completely control the browser market. If M$ controls the major way that people access the Internet, M$ controls the Internet. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-346022.html
Last time I checked, the US government was not the only government around, so they are not a 'monopoly'. Is this just some typical American thought that the USA is the only existing country in the world or something?
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
I am not usually one to complain about this type of thing but will the whining ever stop? And I mean not just from the pro-MS camp but also from the anti-one. The pro-MS people need to face up to the fact that was already known which is that MS did some pretty nasty stuff. They need to grow up and deal with it. "Innovate" my butt. Specific groups at MS do really cool innovative stuff but the company as a whole doesn't and it squashes whatever those groups may do. On the same hand the anti-MS people need to face up to two other things 1) The bulk of the population could care less. They like (or love) MS products are going to keep using them, this ruling means nothing to them. 2) Microsoft isn't going away anytime soon. The "victory" on Friday may actually be a defeat. As analysis of the findings continue many pundits are begining to believe that they may have gone to far, MS may have SERIOUS and valid reasons for an appeal to any ruling. The previous appeals court threw out Jackson's last ruling almost outright. I think everyone needs to chill out, ignore this for a few weeks and go about thier business. After things have settled out they should come back and look at it...
So money cures all ills? It's legal to do illegal things, as long as there's enough money involved?
The DOJ is *not* imposing restrictions on what software can and can't do, and how (within the bounds of legality) software can and can't be written, marketted, licensed, or sold. The DOJ is regulating simply one thing: the pracitices of a company that has a unique stranglehold on the PC desktop (the only desktop that currently counts).
*IF* and only *IF* Linux is installed on virtually every computer, and *IFF* a linux company tries to push another product down the public's throat based on the Linux monopoly, will the DOJ intervene.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: It's not illegal to have a monopoly; it's illegal to use your monopoly power to do something you couldn't achieve without the monopoly. In Microsoft's case, it's drive Netscape out of business, as well as a ton of other, littler companies and products (such as Digital Research's DOS).
If you have a bully on the schoolyard, should it be legal for the bully to steal your lunch money, or chase you off the swing? Hell no! And it shouldn't work in business, either.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I'm getting so sick and tired of all this "oooh they have hidden APIs shit". Yes they do have undocumented API calls, these calls are calls that aren't documented cause they aren't needed. They's OS specific stuff which only the OS manufactuerer needs to know. Look at all the software out there for windows. Not bad for an OS with ALL THE APIs LOCKED UP BY THE EVIL BILL GATES is it? PULEEEASE. Symantec, Mijenix, NT Internals etc get by very well, doing some very cool stuff with windows.
// array to receive the process identifiers // size of the array // receives the number of bytes returned
oh and by the way.
EnumProcesses
The EnumProcesses function retrieves the process identifier for each process object in the system.
BOOL EnumProcesses(
DWORD * lpidProcess,
DWORD cb,
DWORD * cbNeeded
);
Parameters
lpidProcess
Pointer to an array that receives the list of process identifiers.
cb
Specifies the size, in bytes, of the lpidProcess array.
cbNeeded
Receives the number of bytes returned in the lpidProcess array.
Return Value
If the function succeeds, the return value is nonzero.
If the function fails, the return value is zero. To get extended error information, call GetLastError.
Remarks
It is a good idea to give EnumProcesses a large array of DWORD values, because it is hard to predict how many processes there will be at the time you call EnumProcesses. To determine how many processes were enumerated by the call to EnumProcesses, divide the resulting value in the cbNeeded parameter by sizeof(DWORD).
To obtain process handles for the processes whose identifiers you have just obtained, call the OpenProcess function.
See Also
Process Status Helper Overview, PSAPI Functions, OpenProcess
First, nothing is known about the real figures for OS usage, especially outside the United States where MS never has been so highly regarded and where almost all copies of MS products in use are bootleg copies. It could well be that in many parts of the world MS is already passee, in that more people are buying Linux for new installations (not to mention free downloads) than Windows for *desktop*, not server, systems at home and in small business and governemnt offices. Granted, it could well by that there are currently more copies of Windows already installed even in countries where Linux is outselling Windows, but that will not last long. This ruling will hurt Microsoft badly because it will encourage hardware manufacturers and sellers to better support Linux (which is already better supported than Windows on more platforms) and to preinstall Linux. Many are already considering preinstallation of Linux or another non-MS operating system. The America consumer, outside the American nerd community, which actually is quite large and includes millions of programmers and sympathetic types, will be the last to catch the wave. Just because the majority of American computer users are using a Windows web browser and/or AOL with Windows at this time does not mean that 90% of the world is doing that, even today. You might be surprised. But, because the computer press is centered on the American consumer, we get that impression. Remember, the great unwashed masses in the rest of the world vastly outnumber the affluent American consumer, by billions. By and large they are more literate, and more capable of using Linux effectively, and cost is important to less affluent people. At this time most Microsoft software used outside the U.S. is illegal, pirated software. People do not respect themselves for using pirated goods, and the tidal wave of new users turning to open source as a soultion that offers good softwae and self respect and the respect of peers can't be beat, especially when it is free. You forget that when the U.S. government rules against Microsoft, it joins dozens or hundreds of other governments around the world which have ruled against "foreign" closed source software for critical applications, and have also mandatated use of open source software in the schools. When governments promote and sponser open source in this way, it is unbeatable so long as it is not interpreted by the masses as "government control" and it isn't, because open source software is free for businesses to use as well, and can be tailored to specific business needs more easily than closed source software, especially unstable closed source software like Windows. Finally, the increasing trend toward *very* cheap internet-capable computers (almost everything on one chip) with an operating system installed in ROM almost requires the use of Linux or related free software and will be very attractive as a solution not only for new users in the third world but for American consumers who are just tired of messing with all the paraphenelia associate with a PC and want a platform for internet browsing, email and light word processing. That's most consumers. This leaves only games and multi-media applications. Currently Windows has a huge margin in this area but that is also changing. Most serious gamers hate Windows, and would much prefer to use a more "sexy" and capable system, like they once used the Amiga. As developers lose interest in Windows, more games and serious multi-media apps will be available for open source systems and some already are. So, who will be using Windows in a few years? Only some corporations that feel they have an investment in Windows apps and can't afford to change (they think) and some home users who have been very lucky in their experience with Windows not crashing so much and don't plan on buying any new software for a few years. But that's a definite minority, not 90% as you claim.
For the first time in a very long time Apple's stock has risen clear above that of M$.
I see that the wacko libertarian (excuse the redundancy) contingent has jumped in again, sometimes attacking Katz, but mostly being short-sighted, as usual. In any event, there seems to be a kind of indignance that the government, and not a (presumably extant) perfect market is going to take action against Microsoft. I am always happy to educate wacko Libs, so here goes.
The source code to MS products (and not just Windows or IE) needs to be let out, maybe only to a select group of reviewers. This should be done so that the deliberate incompatibilities can be exposed, to strengthen the DOJ case; and the copyright violations (including of the GPL) be prosecuted. Eric Raymond should really leave his wacko libertarian views out when he talks about "open" source, and leave the government, who happen to be the people who fought the case against MS (not Mr. Raymond, and not the Linux community), to pursue remedies they see fit. They've comported themselves well so far, and Joe Klein is still saying the sensible things.
Furthermore, the attact on predatory practices can be fought on two fronts. The government can pursue its remedies, the Linux people can continue their good work, which, without the stated intent of, is improving MS products and presenting better alternatives.
The wacko Libs should go to the mountains and only come back after the government (being the people) solve their problems. Then they will have a value to society, that of novelty.
As we can see, this decision will not halt Micor$oft's decision to make reaction grave for anyone anyhow. Never forget that they have tremendous power to thwart whatever ridicule which may arise in the weeks ahead. Without a doubt will we see some of Microsoft's most furiuous and feverish acts becoming relevant to our waking lives. This is not becaue they have any gobbs (or some indecent amount thereof) of cash, but rather the absolute power that they have established and even _today_ holster over the minds of many civilians (people with the **REAL** power).
That became relevant to me the other day after having talked to many subjects who casually come into my electronic/computer/software store in Boston, MA. It seems as if people absolutely adhore the idea that Microsoft "is way ahead of the rest of the industry", but they werent aware of the facts that tell the tale of a "successful" business. It seems almost likely that Microsoft will just come off bearing the "I'm too good for my own good" seal.
It would truley become(and always has been) the duty of the more enlightened community (ala Linux/Unix) to reveal where the road which lays beneath the [masses] ideally leads.\
"all that, and Microsoft couldn't put a dash of style into it's software!"
my $.0010y
The way things are emerging there could be quite a mixed outcome to all this. M$ might be broken up, but with what result? It might end up strengthening the Win32 platform rather than weakening it and Bill Gates and his shareholders could stand to make even more money.
The effects almost seem contradictory. On the one hand there will be more freedom for competitors to innovate, but on the other there is a very rich war chest hanging there to compete in a genuinely innovative way as well.
One thing appears certain thought, that hanging onto M$ coatails won't be the sure ride to riches it has been.
The implications for Linux? Well it may make life harder as the hated over-priced opposition is gone (or at least weakened) so imperitive to have to compete with free software as the only way to get around M$ diminishes and so the IBM's, Oracles, SGI's of this world may re-think their support of Linux.
We are destined to live in interesting times....
Yeah sure it's true all this groovy stuff is happening on the 'Net and Redmond missed out on it ... but uhhhh 99.99% of people who take part in the groovy 'Net revolution do so using M$ Windows95/98 and probably 50% of those use IE ...
so let's keep some perspective ...
Jon makes many good points in his news articles, and on the whole I find them incredibly intelligent and well-written. But this time, I find fault in what he says - not factually, but conceptually.
Let me explain.
Jon makes it seem like Microsoft is dead. Far from it. Microsoft hasn't died yet. You haven't even seen what Jackson will do to them. For all you know, Microsoft might be slapped with minor fines and let to do their work. This is reminiscent of the trust-busting efforts of the beginning of this century, but discussing that would necessitate an entirely different post :).
Plus, the verdict won't occur for a long time yet. At least a few months. Until then, Microsoft - for all we know - could do some drastic business/marketing move - like *snicker* releasing Windows 2000.
And how does this "move onto the Net?" It was never on the Net in the first place! This is a SOFTWARE ISSUE, not a connectivity issue. If this were AOL involved in piracy problems, I could see this clearer. IE is software that's related to the internet. But it's software, not something that has to become an internet-based issue.
I love reading comments on /. because they're incredibly insightful (no ref. intended) and they let you get an interesting perspective on the issue that you'd never seen before. But with articles like this, I really disagree with some of the views.
Mr. Katz attempts to accelerate the future, to make it seem like we're entering the future faster than we should be. The future is progressing along as it always would have. Don't try to rush it - with patience comes triumph.
-- BlueCalx | http://nickd.org/
What if the code were opened??? Then what? That wouldnt mean that Microsoft gets any less popular. It could very well be the *BEST* thing ever to happen in Redmond. It would mean that they would ride the wave of the Open Source Movement. Forget the money, lies, and ridicule. Mabey this is Microsofts' only chance of getting their code out to the public, because in order to do so manually would require many years of settlements and company shifts (since they even sell it).
- The Pitcher is always in midfield. Get it?
The whole basis of the case here is FUD, pure and simple.
The Goverment wants to scare teh shit out of the consumers and it has chosen MS as the FUDGoat.
By using the stadard tactics of FUD. they paint MS as the sole eveil controller of all OS software. they paint the industry as being simply pupets of Bills Borg collective. If you buy into this and you use and INTEL box then YOU TOO are a defensless victim who needs the gov's help.
If you buy this, if you cheer this on, then you are the Problem not not , very much not, part of the solution.
If MS is a bad company, DONT USE THEM.
I lived thru the begining of all this in the 70's and 80's. MS was just another player, one of many. They got the foothold they did becuase the other players fucked up in some way or another.
Unix couldnt get it, and still really hasnt, got it togther enough to make the average user feel safe.
Apple tossed the game becuase steve job's ego was bruised.
Atari was managed by clowns in small cars.
Xerox as been dodging sucess for decades. they are good at making great ideas and then letting them out like gas after a heavy mexican meal
There were others, but they all blew it. MS got where it is today because it was in a field of worse loosers than they were.
Same for Word Processors. Have you ever truly gone back and looked at what the choices were back in the late 80's? Word Perfect (how has has more owners than amiga), WordStar, XYwrite, DisplayWrite(from IBM no less). There was a WIDE field and MS came out on top beacuse the rest of them could not get it togther.
Like I said, I lived and worked thru the whole bloody battle. Every user was screamning and yelling for ONE THING over all else...MAKE IT EASY AND CHEAP. They where willing to get behind the first company that made a suite of programs that would wrap up all the taks they were doing. I mean lets face it , it was a mess back then. Spell checkers were seperate TSRs, you needed to jump from one program to another to get the simplest of tasks done.
The first thing that came out that was even closer was Ashton Tates FrameWork. Great product that was another victim of Ashton tates blunderings.
Lotus tried and fialed so horribly it sent the company back to 123 so fast it left a vacuum.
MS was one of several compies to starting bundling.
But somewhere down the road enough consumers decided on a product, and it was MS.
Operating system wise its basicaly the same story. Only now a days there are more user freindly OS's around than ever. And this was all BEFORE the findings form the Gov. Thats right, Linux and BSD were all popular INSPITE Of MS. they made a growing base of users and admins happy becuase it worked for them.
Thats how the market works. Even with MS and all its money moving to get folks to use thier stuff other things flourish. Given time and enough consumer education the shift could have been a natural one. Instead we are left looking like children unable to fend for themsleves.
The gang of people call ing for the gov to stomp on MS need to be educated that the GOV is not the tool for this. It is the market place, the source of MS's power. MS will not be daunted by the gov, it hold the gov in low regard. MS knows the secret, that if it pleases the customer it will previal.
So now we may have 5 or six MS's. That will be pleasent. You couldnt handle one on your own, so now you want the gov to make it 5. Good thinking.
So maybe they will hamper MS practices. Well they might, a bit, but you folks should know how currupt the regualtions of a large gov is. In the end its about Money and Power. Do you think that MS will be worried about that in this market, with its base?
Do you think thats air your breathing?
The only way to stomp on MS is to kill them at thier source. No market, no money no power.
Clip this and read it back to yourself in two years. Odds are all the folks who called for GOV action on MS will be singing differnt tunes.
You can find me laughing my ass off back at the MediaWhore studios think about how a lot of SlashDotters Got Taken in By The FUD.
---
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
*Warning*: Semi OT, and meant as tongue in cheek.
"We here at Microsoft were the first companies to
give away cars. True, we're the sole supplier of maintenance and gas for said vehicles, but the cars themselves are free. Thanks to use, whole generations of drivers are on the road, enjoying themselves. It's practically charity.
It's a lot like our free housing project. You come to us, and we give you a house FOR FREE! Imagine that! And, while our utility rates are a tad high, the house itself is free. Now, while you can get free housing from those "Freedom to choose" people, I swear to you as god is my witness that they use rotten wood in the construction, And just try and get utilities for them. Totally untrustworthy.
As a side note, if you do sign up for one of our houses, we reserve the right to come push the big red "DO NOT PRESS OR HOUSE WILL SELF-DESTRUCT" button if we see or hear of you bringing bakes goods, tools, or wood supplies to those free house people. They are not to be tollerated."
Or, from Neal Stephenson's little essay:
"The group giving away the free tanks only stays alive because it is staffed by volunteers, who are lined up at the edge of the street with bullhorns, trying to draw customers' attention to this incredible situation. A typical conversation goes something like this:
Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"
Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"
Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"
Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."
Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"
Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!""
---
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Since some of you are taking the stance that APPLE is a more worthy company...lets take a look at....
The Body Count---
How many compnies are daed becuase APPLE decided they were too much compitition?
Openess---
Apple is so open it used to take Auto Mechanic tools to crack open the case.
Biz Practices---
Apple Gold Dealer scandles, the Lisa debacle, The Evangilists BLACK LISTing of compies that would not conform to APPLE standards, The Dealer lock out of Apple Computers.
Make M$ give IE away for free forever and release the source
Hardly big hit to MS stockholders. I think the market has decided that:
1. It won't necessarily be the end of MS for being a good company to invest in.
2. Its not clear all the bad things that could happen to MS will happen.
It's 1989 want to buy OS2 instead of Windows 3.1 along with your computer? Try to find an OEM that offers it. If you think the decision by OEM's to not offer OS/2 was based on merit and/or IBM's missteps but was uncolored by MS tactics you are sorrly fooling yourself. To get where they are basically committed fraud in order to destroy DrDOS, OS2 and a number of ISV products. It *DOESN'T MATTER* if those companies screwed up big time into the bargain. It's not against the law (well certain kinds of mismanagement in publically traded companies are illegal but ...) WHAT MATTERS is what MS did *ILLEGALLY* to "compete" against them.
Uhmm it's absolutely *clear* that they intimidated OEM's into buying their product and then used *that* as a lever against ISV's on the Windows platform (their competitors). That alone is bad enough. But other "innovations" (err crushing and then buying) that MS has engineered have had the effect of rendering the software industry moribund. Why do you think GNU and teenaged KDE/GNOME coderz are attracting so much attention? Doesn't that very hype tell you a bit about the sad state of commercial software development?
Even sticking strictly to the MS application space we'd be a lot better off if MS hadn't bought Citrix (after crushing it for a while it must've been a relief for Citrix execs to go home millionaires), and hadn't bought all the database, HTML authoring, and IDE development companies, in other words hadn't use their nearly total MONOPOLY POWER and questionable business tactics to simply squash innovation and competition.
Leaving aside VNC and X window system (which made a similar breakthrough a long time ago), Citix WinFrame was going to let people run Windows apps remotely from *DOS sessions* (without Windows installed). Running Windows apps remotely is *INNOVATION*, running them remotely from very small realtime OSes like QNX (1.4 megs for an OS web server and browser not bad) is also good. Has it been a good thing that Citrix was so mistreated (at first) and then simply bought by MS? Where's all the great products?
I could go on. But the points raised by the judgement have *NOTHING* to do with whether you like Windows or consumers like Windows or not. I mean what choice do most of them have on the desktop? They might have used MaOS 8 years ago in junior high or something ...
Besides Apache and perl have done a lot for consumers too (being crucial to the early development of the WWW) - only most of them know nothing about it. Jeez most of them use Unix everyday in some fashion or another and know nothing about it. Please, tell me, just WTF does ANY part of the statement "consumers have benefitted from MS products" have to with this judgement and MS's MONOPOLISTIC BUSINESS PRACTICES ???
BTW Netscape may be "mediocre" (it may come from being portable I don't know) and java too - but if Sun 64 way RISC servers are "mediocre" ... uhh ... well we're in different universes.
Moderators! Bump the parent post up! Really good discussion on Hidden API's!!
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Sorry, I'm a Canadian trial lawyer, but I just had to post that a finding of fact in itself is neither a judgment nor a trial, although it can expedite both. There has been no determination of the law, much less liability nor penalty, only the facts upon which the preceding would be based. Until that's been done, the finding of fact is only determinative of what the above would rely upon. BTW, if I get a vote, I say breakup into no less than four Baby Bills (OS, languages, Net and desktop applications).
...the microsofties still contend they are above the law. Even Judge Jackson works within the law -- but Microsoft and that horrid governor of Washington still whine that they are somehow exempt from the laws the rest of us obey.
the sickest thing about all this is the blind worship of a foolish leader.
imagine how much good microsoft could have done if they had been a team player instead of thugs and gangsters -- many more people would have made important tech decisions, betters products for all.
but no, they had to strongarm the industry, and their major shareholders and corporate people never had the guts to look billgatus in the eye and say : "Are you sure this is the best way to run a business? A large number of consumers are ridiculing us, and the government is threatening lawsuits".
So, they push the envelope even harder? I remember they're marketing dept. issung a statement that "100% market share was the goal". And billgatus said his personal goal was "...every time anyone uses a piece of electronic equipment, a fraction of a cent goes directly to microsoft".
Disgusting. Consumers and businesses need to respect each other; the free market is not working when you don't have that.
Now we get to live in a world of incompatibility and more crappy operating systems. My one and only hope is that they make microsoft publish its source code. The first time I heard Gateway is going to try to make its own operating system I shuddered. Also, doesn't this say to America "hey, if you succeed, we'll sue ya for anti-trust!"
You know, the stupid thing is that Microsoft only lost $1 dollar today in stock trading. All the posturing by Katz about how much Microsoft will suffer at the stocks turned out to be nothing more than wishful thinking.
You say this like its a bad thing. So because MS doesn't control both the hardware and the OS, then it must be a monopoly?
Hey, congrats, Mr Katz.
You finally managed to get rid of those bloody irritating M$ "Smart Quotes"
No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.
On November 1, Microsoft and Intel were added to the Dow 30 Industrials, the most popular barometer of American (and thereby global) stock activity.
A severe drop in Microsoft could send the Dow plummeting. This would definitely not be good news for anyone (except of course those waiting to buy). Looks like the Dow boys picked the wrong time to add at least one of those two companies to the list...
Something to think about.
Wtf, who is "shocked" about this? You've never read an anti-MS mainstream article??? What planet are you from Katz?
BTW, what a huge drop for MS stock. Right. Whatever.
Fun stuff to read, and appropriately sarcasto-flamey and all that, but
I know nothing about this person
you've spent too much time reading about "evil Microsoft deeds" and not enough about the history of GUIs.
Presto
nm
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
The effect on others' software will be marginal at best, however there will be completely different, and much more important result -- WINE will be able to make an exact copy of that API and provide the environment that can run all software, including Microsoft applications, on other systems -- basically the same thing, Interix tried to pull in the opposite direction. This means, application developers will not be confined to Windows while users will be able to run their old software at the same system, new one will be created for. In few years Windows (and whatever baby bill will inherit it, unless they will start doing something decent) will be dead as a doornail for no other reason than its own technological inferiority.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Microsoft and a lot of techies treat
politics like it's some failed
paradigm, some odd beast which
demeans them when they even think
about it.
This is not to say that Microsoft's
troubles are not well deserved, but
the fact that they acted as if the
Feds were people who didn't matter,
has screwed them.
They never cultivated the allies they
needed in DC, and when they
had to act, they moved crudely and
thuggishly, things style sensitive
Washington never appreciates.
Their rivals did. They had enough
people in their pockets or willing
to listen to them that MS was in
trouble.
Orrin Hatch, chairmman of
the Senate Judiciary Committee
had spent years listening
to Novell's problems with MS.
When he got Bill in front of his
committee, he grilled him like
bacon.
Now people have called the people
who pushed the government on
MS whiners and crybabies.
Which just means they need to start
teaching civics again.
When companies kept finding their
way blocked to the marketplace
by Microsoft's flagrant illegalities,
they did what all smart people do
when faced with a crook, they called
the cops.
Gary Reback had to work like a civil
rights lawyer in 1960's Mississippi,
getting secret depositions, always
wondering when Sheriff Bill and his
deputies would ruin one of his
clients.
His work clearly influenced how
DOJ made their case and how
they saw Microsoft in action.
This is not how we want American business
to run. Everyone should have some
access to the market. The problem was
that one company defined that market
in their best interest.
Gates is upset, but if he doesn't
settle, Microsoft will be buried
in lawsuits. The victims can sue,
the European Community has already
been in tight communication with
the DOJ.
The company was so bereft of political
sense that they went after the judge
and then the Anti-trust division,
WHILE the case was being litigated.
They acted as if they had no idea
that people in Washington would
be a wee bit upset by this. That
there are rules in politics and
trying to strongarm someone
who has you in court is not
smart.
They made a lot of enemies by
doing that, and it hurt them
in making their case before
Congress. You can imagine the
questioning Gates will get when
they get him before Congress again.
The fact is that unless Microsoft
is challenged, Linux will never
get a chance to fully grow.
Jackson was correct to downplay
Linux as a threat in 1999. He
had no legal choice. But he's
also right.
Bill Gates could dominate the
Linux market within a year.
MS Linux with Office 2K
would crush the opposition.
Companies would install MS
Linux on their machines
and run MS endorsed Linux
programs.
They can outmarket Red Hat
any day. And when MS starts
tossing around options and
money, a lot of people
who have to feed their kids
and Quake habit will join
right up.
Microsoft has already proven
that the best OS doesn't win.
Now, if you want to make
sure your interests are protected
and your industry can grow, you
need to take some of that Red
Hat IPO cash and invest in
a few politicians, form a pac
and cover your rears against
Microsoft and other people.
Now, you all can whine about the
corruption of politics and all that
crap, but the reality is that
politics is how America is
run and you have to play the
game to win
This is business, and your
futures. You want to protect
them, you better make sure
you have friendly ears on
Capital Hill.
This is not to say that Microsoft
could have fended off a lawsuit,
but look at what the gun industry
has gotten away with and how
they spend their money.
You register to vote, support
candidates who can support
your issues. Which means
giving them money.
Taudry and sad? Sure. But
like flu shots, burned out
hard drives and Windows,
some burdens must be born.
Net commerce works in very different ways, yet anti-trust law hasn't evolved. Microsoft didn't become a monopoly by jacking up prices, but by using practically the opposite tactic - in effect giving products away to obtain staggering market share. Gate's big idea was to make sure his company's software and operating systems were distributed so freely and aggressively they were on every desktop.
And this is different than the Linux tactic how?
I think it's funny the way people perceive Microsoft just because Bill Gates is the wealthiest man alive. Big deal. Microsoft is a puny company when compared with other companies like AT&T, IBM, etc. Microsoft is not an "enormous" company like the article says. For everyone out there complaining about Microsoft, got the brains to try other products? It's all about supply and demand, and obviously Microsoft supplies what the consumers demand, so what's the problem?
You know, 95% of the computers out there are from OEMs -- and because M$ has been bribing, threatening, and nearly dismanteling companies for not having Windoze pre-installed, this is thier primary lock. I hope the DOJ not only breaks them up, but also makes them stop it with the OEMs...and beleve me, Compaq, IBM, Gateway, etc. will be more than happy to pre-install Linux as both workstations & servers! :)
Comment? E-mail
While there has been much fuss about the finding that Microsoft is a monopoly (duh), and the government has been loudly promising punishment, I think there is a critical issue being ignored: Is Windows an example of a natural monopoly?
A natural monopoly is one where the economics of a situation, independent of the behavior of the players, forces evolution into a monopoly situation. Ultimately this is because competition in those areas is extremely inefficient economically. Examples include water distribution in a city, wired-line telephone service, and (to a lesser extent) cable TV.
Natural monopolies are usually heavily regulated because they develop the characteristics of monopoly: predatory, anti-innovation, over-priced and under-efficient, and slow to change.
The history of computer operating systems seems to support the idea that they are also natural monopolies. In the last 35 years (my period of experience in the field), I know of almost no cases where, for one kind of hardware, there were more than one operating system that ran a large number of applications. MSDOS, and later Windoze, are just the latest example: if you want a diversity of PC applications, other than a few specialty ones, you need a Wintel system. If you want to make money selling software, and you are not selling a niche product, you will no doubt develop it first for Windoze. It may never be worth your while (as a business) to port it to LinBeBSSolix - even if that would be far more satisfying.
This sort of consideration leads to a positive feedback effect. The application developer targets his limited development resources to the platform with the largest potential customer base. As many application developers do this, the "favored platform" nature of the OS increases. Thus even without predatory practices, Microsoft or some company like them would most likely become the operating system monopoly.
Historically, this was also true of IBM DOS and later IBM OS-360 and later MVS. If you had a mainframe application need, you had to buy that operating sytem (even if you could buy the machine from Hitachi or someone else) to run it on. And this was for the same reason: OS-360 became the leader, and (on mainframes) it still is - 30 years later!
The feedback effect to select a single platform is powerful. It may also be beneficial - for the most part it is more efficient for the world to focus on the development of applications for one platform. Of course, it tends to limit innovation, especially with Microsoft's practice of bundling their own applications to their monopoly system, and copying (or sometimes buying) superior 3rd party technology when it comes along.
If, in fact, OS's are natural monopolies (and they have been and will be for a while), then one should consider "common carrier" or "utility" types of regulation for them. I would like to see Microsoft split into multiple companies - one for Windwos/DOS, and others for applications, service businesses, etc. Besides, based on history (Standard Oil is a good example), it will make my Microsoft stock go way up (although that is a mere side effect).
The only good weather is bad weather.
This forum is sheer beauty. Free public debate and rabid self-edifacation will cure any social ill eventually, provided all adhere to it. This comment is not so much in regard to the article presented, as to the resulting intense debate. Having read most of the posts I have formed a much more structured opinion about my own stance on the topic. This is the beauty of the networked society: Everyone has a printing press. All hail information communism! Let us all strive to be Grecian Philosopher Kings...
Judge Jackson has proven that he is no fool. He knows very well that Linux is, in fact, a very big *potential* competitor to Microsoft.
And that's why he *had* to play down Linux's influence. If he had admitted the truth, it would have weakened his position (that MS is a monopoly), and perhaps left some "wiggle room" for MS on appeal. "See! Even the *judge* admits that Linux is a threat! How can poor widdle old warm-and-fuzzy Microsoft be a monopoly if we have real competition?"
So I'm not wondering at all about why he *appeared* to disregard the Linux angle. If he had admitted it, he would have given strength to MS's case. And if you read his wording very carefully, you'll see that he doesn't come even close to saying "Linux means nothing and will never amount to anything." He uses a lot of phrases like "TO DATE..[developers haven't shown as much interest]", and "BY ITSELF [Linux won't win the war". Pay close attention to his modifiers and you'll see that he is just basically saying that "Linux isn't quite there YET, and probably won't be a serious competitor to MS *on its own*."
So Jackson is smart enough to see where Linux will be in the future. But since, despite its success, it still isn't cracking seriously into MS's market share, he probably figured that it was pointless to give them ammunition.
Um, Katz, that's how monopolies generally get established. Y'know, seize the market by dropping prices through the floor, then jack them up only after all competition has been crushed. Attempting to establish a monopoly by raising prices, um, it wouldn't work. I mean, duh.
--
"HORSE."
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot
No, I'm not saying because MS doesn't have the hardware market it's a monopoly. I'm saying your analogy is a bad one and that your argument for buying an OS-less is Mac is unfounded. Simply because it's the OS that makes a Mac a Mac. Kinda why they call it MacOS, no? Apple makes both the hardware and the software. If MS were to make the hardware and Windows ran only on the machines they built, they still might be a monopoly, but they'd be damn hard-pressed to edge out the competition and other OSs the way they have.
Isn't it a bit too early to say the MS era is over? After all, there is a long road ahead, even for MS.
What is interesting to me, however, is what happens if MS does lose. Furthermore, what happens if it goes bankrupt becuase of punishing compensation lawsuites from dozens, if not hundreds, of allegably offended parties?
The last version of WordPerfect for Mac is 3.5 as far as I know (not that it lacks any of the functionality an average human needs), and the only Linux version I've ever heard of was 8.
Introduction to Public Choice Theory
Also,
Public Choice and Bureaucracy
Actually we DO only prosecute unsuccessful criminals. The successful ones get away with it!
- Read fiction at www.espressostories.com
At the time I worked for the Pacific Stock Exchange on their options trading floor, and it always seemed fishy that whenever big takeover news broke, the DL trader had been trading big in that company days/hours/minutes before Reuters carried the news. The market makers in the pits HATED trading with DL because they knew they were about to get screwed, and sometimes an Exchange official had to compel market makers to make a trade with DL under Exhchange rules.
Just the same, during this period Milken (very young and very rich)and DL were lionized in the press. When the government finally exposed the scandal, it was old news to anyone who worked in the industry.
Perhaps it's instructive ten years later, although Milken is still a wealthy man, he's not a "player" in his industry, and Drexel, Lambert is long gone as a securities firm.
The bundled cartridges *aren't* "free," their price is just subsumed by the package price. And the damned OS isn't free, either. (A point you seemed to grasp just a couple lines earlier when you lament "paying more" for your beloved Windoze.) Here's a hint: what you pay for M$ software is a more-or-less direct function of what M$ charges the reseller, so go bitch to the boys in Redmond about their 25-plus percent margin in an industry typified by low single-digit margins. Or just go back to your game console.
It seems like there is possibility that Microsoft dominance might be comming to an end some time. I hope that they require Microsoft to Open Source all of its applications and past and future versions of its OS. Hopefully we won't deal with another "Microsoft" in the future. And maybe someone will get interested in Intel and its policies too. I guess there is many companies in other industries that make Microsoft look tame in comparison. There always is hope though...
This space intentionally left blank.
As Katz notes (in a rather disingenuous aside), there is a real gulf between the tech-heads who populate slashdot.org and have the nous to use an OS like linux, and the rest of the world (Yeah I use linux, but I also use Win98 ...) Why was the iMac such a success? Because it was a return to the attitude pioneered by Apple and stolen by MS, that most PC users don't want to know what goes on inside the box ("out of the box and onto the net in 10 minutes", if you'd like to recall the advertising). Same goes for Win9x ... Who really wants to learn about dmas, irqs, scripts and all the rest to simply play games, engage in correspondence, etc etc? Most people don't ... and linux has still a way to go before the average home PC user can move across. (Admittedly, it has made some giant leaps and bounds in the last year in this general direction). The odd thing is that the whole debate seems to conflate this part of the world (the home PC user) with the world of IT users where MS has never really been a competitor and possibly never will be. And one last comment ... this won't deal a coup de grace: think only of MS's serious attempts to move beyond the world of PC's into consumer electronics - the real game may not be PC OS's, servers or anything of the like, but the very basic user interface on consumer items ... WinCE.
John Katz has it wrong on one point. Anti-trust laws are primarily to protect those who would compete in the market, and only secondarily the consumer. He cites the break-up of Standard Oil as protecting the consumer from higher prices; but Standard Oil was actually lowering prices as it gobbled up its competitors. It was this that caused Congress to pass the anti-trust laws.