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.

Comments

If I were the DoJ

[Kismet]

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."

Microsoft monopoly = business stupidity

[tokengeekgrrl]

Or atleast that is what my experience has been. The people controlling the money, aka non-tech saavy management, fall for the marketing line, buy up Microsoft NT serves and various third-party applications that are buggy and completely incompatible with everything else, hand it off to the IT dept and say "make it work or else." When a tech tries to explain why it won't work, management can't relate because they don't really understand how any of it works in the first place and run back to the marketing people who tells management everything they want to hear so management comes down on the techie for not being competent.

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.

Yes, it is a monopoly...

[Rabbins]

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.

Re:Yes, it is a monopoly...

[zantispam]

"It is obvious that the Microsoft case is vastly different than the Standard Oil and AT&T anti-trust cases."


To a point, I agree. However, when you look at how much businesses rely on MS products in the US alone, and compare the cases on purely econimical terms, you would notice that they really aren't that different from each other. If any one of these companies were to fall off of the face of the planet at the height of their power, I believe that there would be a severe econimic problem (for a while, anyway).


"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."


Maybe. But as someone else pointed out, one of the reasons Compaq has been allowing an alternate OS onto some of their machines is because MS cannot afford to enfore predatory business practices while they are under such scrutiny. I think that if the Government just keeps the Microsoft case in the open for five years, that will be enough to break the monopoly and restore a sembalance of competition. In that respect, the government wouldn't actually do anything and the market would correct itself. Too bad it takes Uncle Sam playing nanny...


"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."


IBM is also a completely different company now. This is what I would like to see happen to MS (that, and forcing them to open up their `standards'). In five years' time, the company would be a leaner, better company releasing better products that compete well in the market on their technical merits.

Just something to keep in mind...

Re:The most disturbing thing...

[Blakes 7]

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...