Slashdot Mirror
Everything Microsoft
As you might expect, the whole freakin' internet is abuzz with news about Microsoft. Now personally I'm pretty sick of reading about it, so I've decided to combine a bunch of relevant stories and post 'em
quickie style now:
Yahoo is running a story about the
Wave of Lawsuits following Jacksons ruling.
The Drudge Report is saying the prosecution won't settle unless Microsoft is broken up.
Byte has Jerry Pournelle's take (he's against it).
The NY Times has story talking about a breakup, as well as a forced source code release.
I, too, am heartily sick of all the pseudo-reportage and punditry that's abound over the last week.
It all boils down to the same thing.
The judge is {right|wrong}
This isn't over.
Nobody knows what microsoft or the DoJ will do next.
Print this comment out, and the next time you're tempted to read some cogno-intellectual claptrap masquerading as insight, just glue it to the monitor.
I wouldn't break up MicroSoft. I wouldn't impose restrictions and stuff on the way they do business.
I would just make MicroSoft change the name of the company. I would make them call it "The Monkey Pumping Software Prostitution Company." Then ban the use of "MS" or "MicroSoft."
I wish this was a fairy tale but that is precisely what happened at my last job. A brilliant programmer was reprimanded by management because he couldn't make a NT/Access-based application work with the UNIX/Informix Sgi server. He quit. Then I had the pleasure of having to deal with management spending $50,000 on a BETA NT-based media search engine and was told to "make it work" with the UNIX/sgi web servers. The software was buggy and futile and was not designed to do what we wanted it to nevermind how inefficient it is to have a search engine outside of the database from which the web sites were driven. I told my manager that and he told me that wasn't acceptable and I had to make it work or he would look bad and get in trouble for pushing for the software purchase. I wasted more time on it as people continued to scream at me for a functional search engine that didn't crash. I ended up building a search engine into the Informix database on my own that worked great and then got reprimanded by my manager for not keeping him in the loop. Needless to say, I don't work there anymore, the NT-based search engine is no longer being used and my database search engine is still online.
Moral: non-tech people should not be making tech purchasing decisions.
- tokengeekgrrl
The pedigree of honey
Does not concern the bee;
A clover, any time, to him
Is aristocracy.
Under current laws, MS certainly has a monopoly and has abused that monopoly power. I do not feel there is any argument left to that.
Where there still is potential for argument is: Are these current laws fair and right?
It is obvious that the Microsoft case is vastly different than the Standard Oil and AT&T anti-trust cases.
The market is vastly different, and changing so rapidly. As someone worded earlier, the punishment has to be dealt soon, because in 5 years, Microsoft may no longer have a true monopoly. Well, isn't this a stronger case to leave this market alone... and that it will eventually situate itself for the better?
Close to the same thing happened with IBM. The trial of IBM lasted for over a decade!! In the end, what they were fighting about was next to a moot point and the case was essentially thrown out by Reagan. Why was the case a moot point? Well, because of a pesky little company by the name of Microsoft to name a big reason.
It can be argued that this is merely the cycle of business. IBM is still doing well, but they do not have the absolute control they were feared to have in the (then) future.
I would argue that Microsoft actually has made a good case that competition has been rearing its ugly head in recent times. Do we need the government to essentially "bust the kneecaps" of Microsoft, or can we sit back and see what becomes of this competition without the government's intervention?
Personally, I am in favor of breaking up the company. I think that this will benefit every party involved (except for the zealots that want to see the company ran out of business). But, I am not sure if the laws (and again, current laws certainly do) *should* mandate that Microsoft needs to be punished.
I think break up isn't such a great idea, or perhaps I should say break up along product lines. Microsoft is guilty of preventing other people from developing products or technologies that hurt their products. If we break MS by product lines, NOTHING will change. Each will still use predetory practices with it's OWN little slice of monopoly (Office App monopoly, OS monopoly, etc.). Breaking MS up by product lines is just breaking a monopoly into its composite monopolies. That won't work.
/wants/ it because to succeed, one has to integrate and assimilate into the OS monopoly MS has. When the monopoly goes, nobody will give a damn about MS code.
/behavior/ that needs to be remedied. I'm not sure how to do about this though.
I think source code release isn't such a great idea either. Who the hell wants their crappy source? The only reason anybody
Somehow Microsoft needs to be forced from conducting itself in a predatory way...from using its monopolies to force OEMS to do things, from unfairly entering other markets, etc. It's the
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Lets define a few things...
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FACT n 1: a piece of information about circumstances that exist or events that have occurred; "first you must collect all the facts of the case" 2: a statement or assertion of verified information about something that is the case or has happened; "he supported his argument with an impressive array of facts" 3: an event known to have happened or something known to have existed; "your fears have no basis in fact" "how much of the story is fact and how much fiction is hard to tell" 4: a concept whose truth can be proved; "scientific hypotheses are not facts"
(from ftp://clarity.princeton.edu/pub/wordnet/wn1.6unix
The term "Finding of Fact" (FoF) means that what is stated is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth (so help it....).
This means a few things.
#1. Microsoft can not argue the facts (i.e. continue to plead the case). They have been stated and found. These facts are admissable in higher courts of law. Any judgements will be based off of the facts given and maybe some additional facts if a higher judge is feeling nice. Microsoft may only appeal the decision the judge makes (calling it unfair), they cannot change the facts.
the FoF is to the Ken Star report as (I predict) the ruling will be to the impeachment decision. The appeals will act just like the Senate. If the appeal is worthy, then Microsoft will be known as the monopoly that got away, just like Clinton is known as the guy who got impeached but got away with it. If Microsoft does not escape the appeals process, then whatever...
So what does this ramble say?
If you disagree with the verdict, you are wrong. There has been no verdict! You can speculate now, you can dream, but there are no more arguements to make until a verdict is rendered. Period.
So, hypothosize as to whether Microsoft will be broken up, think about whether they should be fined or slaped or chained in a basement. Regardless - these are the facts, these cannot be disagreed with.
You say you want a revolution?
This company proceeded to "enjoy" a tight working relationship with Microsoft for nearly half a decade. During this time, Microsoft stole source code (and settled out of court), threatened to withdraw support, threatened lawsuits (they said they were going to sue us for a trademark their own lawyers had helped us get a year earlier) and in one amusing incident, Bill Gates himself screamed at our CEO and COO like a 12-year-old having a tantrum.
Better products? Yeah, right. To wit:
- If [OS/2] had been "absolutely, positively 100% Windows compatible, only better!", [IBM] would have won.
Uh huh. It must be Linux's "absolutely, positively 100% Windows" compatability that's driving its current popularity. Right?Microsoft have been found to be felons in a court of law. I don't have any pity when the government "seize[s] the assets" of criminals.
Hoo, boy, did he miss the point. The FoF was not complaining about how Microsoft got its OS monopoly. It was complaining about how Microsoft used it. Pournelle hardly touches on the latter point in his column; I wonder if, at the time he wrote the column, he had even read past paragraph 61.
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Pournelle argues MS became a monopoly by being making better business decision than IBM and Apple. Well, duh - that's not the point. The point is, NOW they are a monopoly, and there're are laws governing how monopolies operate. Question - did they break those laws?
Innovation.
Incorporating software that mimics what third party software does into the OS is NOT innovative. innovation is what we call it when someone develops something new. Making it easier for a consumer to have a calculator on the system is not new, it's a marketing strategy and a way of shutting out a competitor. It's a fine tactic, even legal, unless you're a monopoly.
And it does hurt consumers in the long run, because no competition is possible in these areas, thus little reason to improve these systems. Do remember the browser wars? Do you remember how FAST the browsers were improving? How fast are they improving now? Oh, and BTW, how do you like that crappy little calculator that does come with windows? I use it all the time, but I sure wish there was an exponential function, etc, etc.
This is not innovation, and it is clearly using their monopoly in one area to dominate another area (a clear violation of the anti-trust laws if I understand them correctly).
To summarize, I think Pournelle's full of crap.
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
Innovation seems to be the tricky word in use in both your column, and the FoF as a whole. Is "Innovation" adding something new to the market? Or just adding something "new" to Windows, which isn't new to the world.
MS's "innovations" to Windows or its applications have almost always (especially with each product's 3.0 and higher versions) been clones of software that is already out there, or purchased from the companies that really did the development and research. Yes, the "Browser" was an "innovation" to "Windows", as was peer to peer networking, secure server to client file/print services , PPP dialing software, but they were all hardly "innovations" to the market as a whole. Some things are things perhaps the OS should handle, some not.
I personally can't think of anything that is in Windows or any other MS product that someone else didn't come up with the idea for in the first place. Only the "innovation" of integration so tight you have to buy them all to get just one thing is MS's style (and they even stole _THAT_ from IBM's mainframe world).
Now does this harm "customers"? perhaps not. It does harm ME because I generally don't use MS products because they are often just plain bad (my opinion, of course). I use Linux not because its better NOW (in many cases, Linux tools aren't), but because they can and will improve, and I have the ability through the source codes to improve them myself. I trust linux because I can find out what went wrong. Albeit i'm the exception. It harms me when services that people provide can only be utilized by software that only runs on Windows platforms, especially if that software is made by Microsoft (meaning a port to my choice of OS is completely out of the question).
E.g., the MS streaming media software. Many music groups I like have chosen MS's products for their streaming media (concerts, or studio demos, etc). I will never hear or see what they are like. MS will NEVER develop clients for non-windows systems, with exception to the Mac. Even if they do build a mac version, it will always be a generation behind in quality and robustness (compare Office 98's lack of improvement for the Mac, compared to the progress in Office 2000 for Wintel).
So I have to make the choice. Do without things I would really like to have (although, admittedly, i don't _need_ them), or buy an MS operating system so that I can run the MS applications (which I may also have to buy) because MS has the (root of it all) monopoly on so many oft-used file formats and network streams?
Right now, I sadly choose to live without; I make my complaints known to each company that chooses to disregard my opinions as a member of their buying public and restrict me from enjoying their product because I choose to exercise a little more control over what software I trust on my system. That's a big thing to me -- I don't TRUST MS products to do what they should and not what they shouldn't.
In the future, I may have to choose the (non-)alternative. I may have to use a product I don't trust, and face the consequences when it does the wrong thing.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
You obviously haven't read the FOF.
IBM OS/2 tried VERY HARD to support Win32. It simply couldn't support all of the thousands of APIs (some of them undocumented) which are in Windows (see the WINE project's ever Alpha product for more info on this).
Apple does not have a monopoly. Period.
Netscape's browser was infinitely better than Windows' browser (IE 1.0, 2.0, 3.0) was at the time. MS specifically refused to give Netscape key APIs so that Netscape could run efficiently on Windows since Netscape gave a potentially platform-independent way of developing software.
MS IE succeeded mostly because MS forced OEMs to install IE with Windows, sometimes exclusively. It was carefully devised to keep people from needing to download another browser. MS eventually made it very difficult and, later, impossible to remove the browser completely from Windows.
Seizing the assets of private citizens? Since when did corporations become citizens? How exactly will breaking up MS put money into the hands of the government?
Your comment is the most disturbing thing...
AT&T, during the time that it was a monopoly, was trying to wire all of the US into a common telephone system. Once they achieved that, they were itching to branch out into other services, but they didn't want to get into antitrust trouble for doing so. By the time they settled with the DOJ, they practically wanted to be broken up, because every Baby Bell could sell products and services that a monopolistic AT&T couldn't get away with.
I don't know about Standard Oil. In the long run, certainly, the post-split companies have done very well, but how well would Standard Oil have done, by comparison (in terms of cumulative stock growth and dividends), if it had never been split up?
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[The most disturbing thing] to me, is how eager many people (particularly here on Slashdot) are to see the government seize the assets of private citizens (aka "breaking them up").
Yes, this would be the first time in the history of the United States that the government has ever seized the assets of a private citizen.
The only reason Microsoft has achieved dominance is through the incompetence of its competitors.
To a certain extent, this is true, but it really isn't the point, is it? The question here is not how Microsoft achieved dominance, it's what they've done with that dominance.
Bill Gates has sworn up and down that the consumer has never been hurt by Microsoft. Yet when somebody like Intel comes up with a cool project that Microsoft views as a threat to its bottom line, Microsoft holds a financial gun to Intel's head and leverages its desktop monopoly to threaten them into submission. How is this good for the consumer?
Since its assumption as the King of Desktops, Microsoft has launched numerous systematic campaigns to either buy out or eliminate altogether any technologies that it felt threatened by. Now you listen to the polls, and you hear people say "Leave 'em alone, DOJ! I'm fat and happy and content with my Microsoft software, and plus I got some of their stock in my portfolio, so stop going after them!"
But it's hard to judge consumer harm when the technologies that we're talking about are really nothing more than potential technologies that were denied entry into the market by a ruthless monopolist. These technologies were not "voted down" by the market for being inferior. Microsoft simply threatened them out of existence, and that's wrong. Sure, people may be happy with their computers and their software. But the point is, if Microsoft had placed the welfare of the industry ahead of their own welfare, we might be even happier. We don't know. We just don't know.
Look, don't get me wrong; I'm not all that fired up about seeing government intervention in the technology sector either. But if there was ever a case where it was warranted, this is it.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
I have to say, even if the target is M$, I find stupid lawsuits really galling. The ad agency probably bought, what, a dozen licenses? Which means M$'s monopolistic practices cost them about $500. It's barely worth going to small claims court, and they are probably suing for several million. *sigh*
Ok, win95/NT/Office97 licenses cost the company I work for around 5000$, Win95 regularly crashes on our accounting and human resources people destroying critical data or requiring us to restore it from a backup. This takes up their time and my time. The total cost of ownership to this company from Microsoft products is probably around 10K a year. Not including licensing. I'd say that a lawsuit is perfectly in order.
Kintanon
PS. Anyone interesting in joining my class action against MS contact sleffer@home.com
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Possible solution:
The desktop PC needs a standard API, both into and
out of the operating system. Hardware vendors should be on the OS to hardware level and software vendores on the OS to application level.
With a standard OS interface anyone is free to develop the OS. Anyone is free to develop the applications and anyone is free to develop the hardware.
Establish a desktop PC API standard. Any Microsoft OS must conform to the API. All inter-application communication must be through the OS API or through open file or data formats.
Microsoft must get their OS and applications certified by the independent PC API standard body.
Microsoft is free to "innovate" applications but must publish all their file and data formats. Publication does not hurt innovation.
Microsoft is free to "innovate" with the OS but is required to be certified to the OS API standard. Thus any "innovations" must be made part of the OS API standard before they can be incorporated into the OS. (Come on Microsoft lets see your superior programming skills provide superior implementations of open standards.)
What made the PC so popular was the open hardware standard. Making the OS an open standard should lead to another boom in software (like before Microsoft started down the Windows one true way monopoly path).
In addition there can be no sales tying of hardware to OS or OS to application.
Bundling of applications is allowed but any individually available part of a bundle must communicate with the rest using open standards.
What this does not fix is the possibility of a bare bones OS and a super desktop application incorporating everything from Windows, VB, Office, IE with nothing available separatly.
Anyone got ideas on how to fix it or is this ok.