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Interview: Antitrust Experts Respond re MS
1) by Robotech_Master, adding to c+era's original question...
What are the chances of Microsoft being forced to open the
entire source code to Windows, not just its APIs? Some
articles I've read/listened to bandied that about as a
possible solution.
What sort of software license would an "opened Windows" be most likely to employ?
What would the short- and long-term effects of such a release be? (Other than a sudden dreadful attrition of open source programmers as about half of those who take a look at the Windows source code die laughing. :)
Don Weightman responds:
As the questioner says, the details are critical. Rather than pure open
source, think of a scenario where the source code is published on the Net,
but without permission to re-publish or use it. Instead the idea would be
to have the global community of programmers do a massively distributed peer
review to find the bugs and traps and propose fixes. (Also see my answer to question # 12.)
David Niemi responds:
The chances of Microsoft being forced to open the source code to MS
Windows are slim to none -- because it is a novel and drastic approach,
and because it is already being trumpeted by Microsoft's political
allies as "government seizure of Microsoft's intellectual property".
Code licensed from other companies which has been incorporated into MS
Windows would also be very problematic and would be hard to solve
without Microsoft's cooperation (and Microsoft can be expected to fight
such a remedy tooth and nail).
Richard Hawkins responds:
This would amount to a "taking" by the government, which is not
possible without compensating Microsoft for the value of the source
code. While some level of punishment will occur, this is capital
punishment, and I don't see any court upholding such an action. In the
past when monopolists have been forced to give up entire divisions,
they've still been paid for them.
John Lederer responds:
I think it unlikely that the source code would be opened, if by that you
mean free use of the cource code. I could conceive of it being required
to be public in the sense that one could read but not copy, as part of a
larger remedy.
I think several of these questions reach the most difficult part of the Microsoft case -- what's the remedy?
Splitting the company into say, three companies, "The Micromicrettes" or "The Baby Bills", ends the monopoly. However, it invites the development of incompatibilites and does little to prevent any of the Baby Bills from using some of Microsft's nasty techniques to make sure that no other company beyond the Bills can compete.
Making the source code true open source is both drastic and a seeming taking of property. However, splitting the company vertically and requiring the baby Bills to publish source code and/or API's might be a solution. It dioes not "take" the property which is still copyrighted, but it does provide a means for the Baby Bills to provide compatibility and for other operating systems to develop that can use the established base of applications.
Something along that line, along with a judicially imposed requirement of same terms and prices to OEMs and a prohibition on concerted action by the Bills, would be my suggestion. Frankly, I don't have the slightest idea what the court will do.
The Court cannot throw anybody in jail or impose any fines -- this is a civil action for injunctive relief not a criminal action.
2) by Greyfox
I'm curious about the potential for legal action outside
the DOJ's case now that it's been found that Microsoft is in
fact a monopoly and has used their position to stamp out
competition.
If I spent my time and money to become certified in a product competing with Microsoft (Say, A Novell or OS/2 Certified Engineer) and that product was subsequently stomped into the ground by Microsoft, could I justifiably sue Microsoft for making that investment of time and money worthless?
On a slightly related note, if I owned stock in one of their competitors who was eliminated through their dirty tricks, could I sue them for that?
Richard Hawkins responds:
While I won't absolutely rule it out, I would expect that the harm you
suffer is both too remotely linked to microsoft, and too difficult to
quantify, to maintain an action.
John Lederer responds:
Generally federal antitrust law disfavors actions by those who are not
direct customers or are not competitively injured. However, states have
their own antitrust laws, and some states, notably farm states, have
broader provisions.
3) by Myddrin
I've read in many places that the FoF is hard to overturn.
Reading the FoF it seems to me that if you accept it as
fact, then you have to conclude that MS broke the law and
should be punished (harshly).
Assuming the FoF is unappealable then, where is the opening for Microsoft to appeal the decision? I.E. Assuming the FoF is untouchable how could MS "win on appeal" as we keep hearing from various tech analysts?
Don Weightman responds:
Two possible courts here. If the trial judge and the Supreme Court agree,
then either party can
go straight to the top, rather than intermediate appeals court. If I were
DOJ, I'd rather be in front of the Supreme Court, I think - if only because
MS won in the lower appeals court, last visit, and so you think MS would
rather be _there_.
Except the odds and strategy change if the remedy starts looking radical - this Supreme Court is pretty protective of property rights. For the most part, though, in contrast to, say, abortion rights or something, Capital P Politics count less in antitrust - it's seldom a matter of a straightforward read of a case result from the political affiliation of the judges.
Richard Hawkins responds:
Conclusions of law are easily appealable; the higher court
automatically substitutes its own judgment on the law. Factual
findings, however, whether by judge or jury, are almost impossible to
appeal. The trier of fact (here, the judge) actually sees the evidence
and hears the witnesses, observes body language, nervousness, etc. To
disturb a factual finding, the higher court pretty much has to find
that no reasonable person could have reached that conclusion from the
evidence presented. If it could have gone either way, the finding
won't be disturbed, even if the appellate court disagrees.
The findings are tailored to the "elements" that must be proven. In a murder case, you might have findings that the defendant took the life of the victim, that the defendant acted with criminal negligence. These meet the requirements for manslaughter. Change the intent from criminal negligence to a reckless disregard for human life, and these findings would support a legal conclusion of murder. Add premeditation and intent to kill to the factual findings, and you have capital murder.
Judge Jackson's findings are set up similarly, but instead of the elements of murder they represent elements for antitrust law. And they satisfy the requirements for finding monopoly power, abuse of the power, etc. For that matter, of the laundry list of illegal acts by monopolists, I can't think of any that aren't covered in the findings. I could teach most of a course in antitrust law from these findings.
The bottom line is that the rest of the case is really about *what* remedies will be implemented, rather than *whether* they will be implemented--and this includes appellate review.
John Lederer responds:
I think the findings of fact will hold up on appeal -- the barrier to
overturning a finding of fact is quite broad. I also suspect that the
conclusions of law will be upheld unless the appellate court is bound
and determined to reverse and willing to indulge in some pretty dodgy
reasoning. However, I think the potential for an appellate court
messing around with the remedy is quite strong.
4) by chromatic
From a legal standpoint, can Microsoft point to such
developments as the Sun/AOL/Netscape deal and the mainstream
attention devoted to Linux and the BSDs and say, "Things
move too fast and we're struggling to catch up" and avoid or
beg down punishment?
David Niemi responds:
Microsoft has tried like crazy in the courtroom and in the political
arena to claim that MS Windows is beset by competitors, but their
credibility is hurt by the fact that they tell business and stock
analysts just the opposite.
What really matters is whether anyone else has enough market power in the relevant market (Intel-compatible personal computer operating systems) to deny Microsoft monopoly power; mere existence of a potential competitor is not enough. Competitors in related markets like servers and browsers (or in specialized niches) clearly haven't prevented Microsoft from keeping the price of MS Windows high, nor have they prevented it from imposing increasingly less favorable licensing terms on its customers.
Microsoft keeps saying that real competition in the relevant market is "right around the corner", but this is only idle, self-serving speculation, considering that they have dominated this market since the mid-1980s. It will take Linux several years to introduce meaningful competition in the desktop operating system market even if Microsoft is forced to abandon its anticompetitive tactics. No other operating system even aspires to being a direct competitor at present.
Richard Hawkins responds:
Avoid, no. Beg down, yes. The remedies are supposed to punish as
appropriate, but are also supposed to solve the problem. If the market is now
competitive, there is no need to now break up MS. However, this issue
was addressed in the findings; the time for this argument (which
Microsoft made) has passed, and they lost the argument.
Nonetheless, it's still possible (though highly unlikely) that the judge fines Microsoft $1 and lets them go on their way. The USFL won its antitrust suit against the NFL, and was awarded one dollar in damages--but it was tripled. :)
5) by jabbo
Let's say that George W. Bush gets elected, and as I have
been told he is wont to do, embraces a laissez-faire,
hands-off style of conservatism which places a more
conservative judge on the Supreme Court (assuming one or
more of the present justices were to die or step down).
Let's assume further that these judges feel that Microsoft
has done nothing so wrong as to merit real punitive action.
What is to stop such a bench from favoring Microsoft and their beyond-hardball tactics? Are Judge Jackson's Findings of Fact so unassailable that, by the rules of the game (as it were), their content cannot be ignored or overruled even by a higher court? (from the paucity of cases that I have read in classes, it seems that the Supreme Court justices can do just about anything short of striking down an existing law) Moreover, if justice is actually meted out, is it possible for Microsoft to simply buy enough senators/congressmen that new laws protecting their investments in the role of Digital Media Broker To The World will favor MS or the Baby Bills?
In short, Can this finding be made to stick, even with all of Microsoft's money aligned against it, and even in light of a potentially conservative government coming to the fore?
Richard Hawkins responds:
There's a common misconception about the current makeup of the US
Supreme Court, namely that it has two wings, conservative and liberal.
At the moment, it has three: conservative, (modern) liberal, and
classic liberal, with the third wing consisting of Scalia, Thomas, and
Kennedy (on his good days). Kennedy bolts the the conservative block
quite frequently, and Scalia's knee tends to jerk there when police
safety is involved. Thomas remains there consistently. This block
votes most often with the conservatives, but at rather predictable
times votes with the liberal block. These tend to be cases involving
the reach of state power---the liberals and conservatives disagree
over *what* to do with the government authority, while the classic
liberals tend to distrust *all* government actions.
The type of judge you describe would fall into the third (classic liberal) block. Shifting my emphasis from lawyer to professor of economics, laissez-faire approaches do *not* tolerate monopolies, but instead find them repugnant. Monopolists interfere with the cherished operation of the market, and need to be slapped down. I don't see such appointments as helping microsft; they'd be better with *either* conservative or liberal judges.
Anyway, assuming some kind of warm disposition towards Microsoft, it would still be difficult for the court to overturn the findings of fact--see the answers to 3). However, the court could come to a legal conclusion calling for a far milder penalty.
John Lederer responds:
I would be less concerned about judges appointed than I would about who
gets appointed in the Department of Justice. However, 19 state attorney
generals will presumably not change at the same time, and they will have
a significant effect on the plaintiffs' positions.
6) by dieMSdie
Many people seem to be considering the breakup of Microsoft
into 2 or more separate companies as the most likely outcome
of all this. However, would that really do us any good?
Let's say you broke them up into an OS division and an APPS
division. What is to stop the OS folks from sharing their
secret API's with the APPS company? Would we not just be
right back where we are now? What would all of you recommend
as a solution that would allow MS to survive, but not as a
predator that destroys all competition and stifles true
innovation?
David Niemi responds:
Breaking apart operating systems, apps, and online services (vertical
divestiture) would do *a lot* of good. It is much easier to detect and
prosecute price-fixing and collusion between separate companies than it
is to detect internal conflicts of interest inside a single company.
The different companies would then be required to separately reporting
profit and loss to their shareholders, and it would be next to
impossible for them to justify helping the other parts of the former
Microsoft at their own expense (whereas today, that happens all the
time).
Richard Hawkins responds:
No argument here, but a bit more.
"There is no honor among thieves." Why would these companies help each other? That means giving up their own advantage, and after a split there would be no reason to do so. The OS division ends up with just as much reason to help netscape as the former microsoft division.
David Niemi adds...
Vertical divestiture would be immediately painful, and would not
immediately create competition. But in the long run it would be one of
the most effective ways of leveling the playing field without the use of
intrusive restrictions on the new parts of Microsoft and their "freedom
to innovate".
And Richard Hawkins says...
I don't agree with this part. Vertical divestiture would leave the
underlying windows monopoly intact, and not solve the problems. The
case was *not* about including IE with windows; it was about the
actions taken to protect the windows monopoly from other competition.
I agree that intrusive restrictions are unlikely to work. I would prefer some type of horizontal split, but will leave that for 12)
John Lederer responds:
I strongly feel that the operating systems and applications need to be
broken apart. However the government(s) in this case deliberately
decided to drop the charges that Microsoft was monopolizing
applications. Regrettably, I think that weakens a bit the rationale for
separating the two. One is left with the application contributing to
the operating system monopoly rather than the stronger, and unbrought,
case that the operating system and its sales methods cause a monopoly
in applications.
However, the court may suggest as a remedy most anything. There is case
law that where a monopoly is "structural and pervasive", the remedy
ought to also be structural.
Don Weightman responds:
This remedy, standing alone, leaves the "OS market power" intact - what you
can do when you control Windows. There's a danger of bad habits moving into
the successor organization, and the temptation to exploit that good old
Windows monopoly would be strong. So maybe you need disinfectant.
One trick would be to require disclosure of current API's, and predisclosure of new ones doesn't really address Microsoft's talent for strategic conduct, and would still require some kind of ongoing supervision from the legal system.
What I like better is "condemning the asset" and having a forced judicial sale. The successor - "Washed Windows"? - would then publish the source code, as I discussed responding to #1, and sell "clean" Windows, with a must-carry-customer-choice condition for browsers. You'd maximize interoperability and end-user freedom, ant the expense of a design freeze and loss of innovation at the OS level - except for competitors. To be blunt about it, I'm beginning to think that "Windows innovation" is an oxymoron - or else code for "try and stop us from bundling another application into Windows and killing another market". Which is what a remedy is supposed to prevent.
So you divest and disinfect Windows, and you probably lose OS innovation. The hope would be that innovation would happen, on the Net (and in application layers we can't even imagine) without entrepreneurs having to look over their shoulders at where and how Microsoft might be coming after them using Windows as an invasion beachhead. Or those who want to, can innovate on top of what would be - on my assumption - a stable platform. Stable not just for the PC, but for the PC-as-gateway-to-the-Net. Not such a bad result, as I see it.
As to business applications (Office & its competitors): assuming -- and it's a very big assumption -- that you can deal with enduring market power back in the OS market, then wouldn't vertical divestiture solve the problem? I'm assuming here that, even though the Microsoft applications have a big installed base, once separated from the bottleneck, Word and company would have to compete on the merits.
7) by Otter
One of the most startling things about this trial was how
utterly inept Microsoft's defense seemed. Who do you think
is at fault there -- Sullivan & Cromwell, MS leadership or
both? I find it hard to believe that such a prestigious firm
could keep botching things so badly, especially when the
media
were full of stories ridiculing them. My guess is that MS
wanted the defense to go a certain way (give no ground on
any front) and the lawyers felt obliged to go along. What do
you think?
Don Weightman responds:
Probably this was mostly a case of the lawyers being losing control of
their case to the client. I haven't checked the credentials of the counsel
who actually went into the trial, but, it turns out, perhaps surprisingly,
that even senior attorneys in large firms like the one representing
Microsoft tend not to have a lot of experience in actually trying cases
with witnesses and stuff, and maybe inexperience was part of the problem here
John Lederer responds:
I don't know what actually happened between Microsft and its lawyers. I
assume that Microsoft's lawyers advised their client that the case was a loser at the
trial level because the evidence against them was so strong. They
may have well decided that it was still worth fighting as part of a
larger picture.
The trial may represent the effort at a best defense in the face of damning facts. However, they certainly seemed to muff a lot of details -- the video presentation, Gates' deposition, their economic expert, etc.
8) by Effugas
Is it a) Legally possible and b) Remotely conceivable that
Microsoft and the U.S. Government will come to a settlement
that will insulate Microsoft from any and all lawsuits based
upon their abuses over the last ten years?
David Niemi responds:
The DOJ does not have the authority to grant Microsoft immunity from
other prosecutions or private lawsuits. Congress could conceivably
craft
legislation to accomplish something along these lines -- quite a scary
thought!
Richard Hawkins responds:
Congress couldn't do that without paying everyone -- there is a property
right in the right to litigate, and this would be a taking in violation
of the Fifth Amendment. However, it's conceivable that Congress might
set damages by statute (the prohibition on ex post facto laws applies
to criminal cases, not determinations of what civil law means), but
this would guarantee years of constitutional litigation.
John Lederer responds:
Seems pretty unlikely to me that Congress would do anything. They
generally are pretty resistant to picking up hot potatoes.
9) by heretic
My understanding is that will next be a verdict followed by
the remedy phase.
What are the applicable statutes that apply to Microsoft's behavior? Is it limited to the Sherman Act and the Consent Decree, or is there a boatload of other law that has to be taken into account?
Regarding the remedy phase, I presume that that the DOJ and the state attorneys general will have some recommmendations. Is the judge limited to the scope of these recommendations, or is he free to devise whatever remedy he sees fit? If the judge does have a free hand, what are the limitations to his remedies?
Richard Hawkins responds:
It's largely the Sherman & Clayton acts here. I don't think that the
prior consent decree is really at issue; the judge wasn't bothered by
the inclusion of windows, but by the acts taken to prevent disabling IE
as the default choice by OEM's, to enable netscape, etc.
There are very few limits on the remedies available. Most of the damaged parties aren't involved, and there are no findings as to the amount of damages other than that the $89 upgrade price was at least $40 greater than the competitive price (Windows98), and that damages to Netscape exceeded $100M, meaning that we can't expect large damage awards. A fine is certainly possible, but it's the other remedies that are most important.
The DOJ will certainly have recommendations, but the judge can come to his own conclusions, or ask for input elsewhere.
What limitations there are will come down to the constitutional prohibitions on taking (he can't simply seize microsoft assets), and whether the remedy solves the underlying monopoly problem.
10) by bhurt
What are the chances that the Supreme Court will decline to
hear the appeal? And what justifications are they likely use
should they decline the appeal? I remember hearing that the
Supreme Court prefers to only hear cases with constitutional
implications. Could the Supreme Court refuse the appeal
based simply on that (and a full schedule)?
David Niemi responds:
Market analysts and pundits have already concluded that the appeals
process will take many years without having any idea what ruling would
actually be appealed or why. They also forget to mention that an appeal
has to have some legal basis other than merely that Microsoft didn't
like the outcome. The Supreme Court will usually refuse to hear a case
if it believes that existing case law clearly covered all of the key
issues -- imposing a heavy burden on Microsoft to come up with very
strong legal arguments indeed.
Richard Hawkins responds:
I would expect to see the Supreme Court take this directly. If Judge
Jackson rules by mid-year (briefs are all due by January), the case
could conceivably be heard in the October term (recall that this case
can bypass the appellate courts).
I think that the mixing of intellectual property law and antitrust law will be enough to get this case heard; it will significantly affect the economy, and there don't seem to be any cases with similar issues on the horizon.
Finally, they don't need any justification to refuse to hear cases. Cases are *not* heard unless four of the judges vote to hear them.
John Lederer responds:
The Supreme Court need not give any reason for refusing to hear an
appeal. The Court of Appeals which would hear the appeal if the Supreme
Court decides not to hear it, or if the parties don't seek the route
directly to the Supreme Court, must hear the appeal.
The Supreme Court dislikes the statutes that gives one a direct right of appeal to the Supreme Court, and generally are predisposed not to hear those cases if there is an intermediate appellate possibility. However, it seems to me that Microsft is such a big player in the economy that they are likely to hear it. A summary affirmance would not surpise me as a result -- despite all the screaming and yelling about novelty, new government intrusion, etc. etc., this really is not a legally groundbreaking case, save possibly on the remedies.
11) by JordanH
In your experience in various courtrooms, did Judge Jackson
exercise unusual restraint in not sanctioning or making a
finding of contempt for the apparently faked videotaped
demonstration?
There are a number of clear misrepresentations made in the video, including a Microsoft executive saying "We have not made any other changes to this computer or Windows 98, except to run Dr. Felten's program." Microsoft later admitted that this was not true.
As Judge Jackson did not mention this apparent falsification of evidence in the Finding of Fact, is it unlikely that this incident will be used to prejudge Microsoft in appeals?
Don Weightman responds:
When you
prepare a witness you're supposed to leave no question that Extremely Bad
Things Will Happen If the Judge Thinks You're Getting Cute. Either this
wasn't made clear enough to the witnesses or the advice was ignored. In
either case both lawyers and client got what they deserved: a very angry
judge.
Richard Hawkins responds:
The first rule of litigation is not to get the
judge angry at you. Perjury and otherwise falsifying evidence tends to
have this effect.
On the other hand, I generally find courts too slow to find contempt and issue sanctions for frivolous cases; this is the single biggest issue I'd focus on in reforming litigation.
John Lederer responds:
Judges very rarely impose sanctions during the course of a trial. the
damage to Microsft was huge -- not on that single piece of evidence, but
because they lost credibility. Credibility in the case is the single
largest asset a trial lawyer can have. My impression, from afar, is
that this is the point where the judge decided that the Microsft case was BS
and that led directly to the findings of fact reiterating the
government's case.
Microsoft's lawyers' response on the [Gates] tape seemed to reflect Microsoft's usual tactics when tough questions are asked of it about things like the NSA key, the DRDOS error message in the Windows beta,or the use of DOS in Windows 95. They give a flurry of beta explanations, searching for one that will hold up, They never give a a clear "here is what happened, here is how we screwed up, we apologize". The result is a loss of credibility whether in the computer community or at trial.
12) by ClarkEvans
This is the first time where breakup of a monopoly based
soley on intellectual property may occur. For monopolies
past, breakup involved splitting the properties along
physical boundaries. It is clear that the definition of this
breakup will be along intellectual boundries instead.
However, this leads to one question.
In the past, the assets were exclusive; thus only one group could control each asset after the breakup. Could the non-exclusive nature of information change the method of breakup?
In particular, it has been argued that the public of the United States (and the world at large) has already paid for Windows 98 far more than they would have otherwise; all in told billions of dollars more than they would have. So, due to the non-exclusive nature of the operating system; is putting the operating system code in the public domain a possible solution? After all, it is the abuse of the very intent of copyright law (to promote the arts and sciences by providing, for a limited time, exclusive rights) by interfering with the advancement of the arts and sciences which has been proven. Would it not make sense to simply revoke the copyright?
David Niemi responds:
I think involuntary breakup of Microsoft into parallel entities, each
with access to the same source code base, is technically unworkable and
is the result of too many literal comparisons with the 1980s AT&T/Baby
Bell consent decree. Any breakup of Microsoft needs to be along
existing internal boundaries for it to be practical and sustainable.
For example, online services (MSN, Hotmail, etc.) have absolutely
nothing legitimate to do with Microsoft's software business and would be
relatively easy to separate from it.
Richard Hawkins responds:
I really have to disagree here. My preference would be both the
horizontal and vertical splits, but I see the horizontal as more
important.
There are certainly issues to solve in creating multiple companies out of the OS division, but I don't see them as being insurmountable. Even if they are, forcing three or four unlimited licenses of the source code could provide the needed competition. That is, leave the MS OS division in place, but auction off (with MS keeping the proceeds) rights to use the code. The winners could then do whatever they want with it, most notably modify it and sell a competing OS that can run programs written for the Windows API. While it would be possible for one of the licensees to put it under some sort of open source license, this would require handling license issues with licensors of included technology, and does not seem to be a likely reason for someone to spend hundreds of millions of dollars.
Another possibility is absolute and full disclosure of all API functions. This would make it possible (at least conceivably) for another vendor to make a product that would run the applications. However, to be effective, the API's would have to be disclosed well before new versions would be released, and would be difficult to enforce--this would require *proving* that the API doesn't do what it says it does, which would be difficult without an entire working alternative OS that runs the API.
David Niemi continues...
Making MS Windows public domain would be a very drastic step and would
provide a lot of ammunition for politicians to step in and interfere
with the case.
Richard Hawkins replies...
It would also be illegal :) See my other answers. No matter how bad
they may be, it's illegal to take the property from them.
David Niemi continues...
It would be more prudent to make a legal conclusion and a more modest
remedy which can withstand appeal, and let consumers file class action
lawsuits afterwards if they believe they have a case.
RW:
Richard Hawkins adds...
I'm surprised that there have been so few suits so far. Expect them.
David Niemi says...
There are many problems with abuse of copyrights and patents these
days, but this case is not the right place to try to solve them.
Richard Hawkins adds...
Yes; don't expect anything novel in areas outside of antitrust. Also,
revoking the copyright isn't realistic. There's no real way to do
this, it would be a taking, and really wouldn't accomplish anything:
all it would mean would be that those portions of the binary owned by
microsoft could be copied freely; it wouldn't make the source code
available so that changes could be made, and it wouldn't allow the
copying of the licensed code within windows.
Don Weightman responds:
So maybe we'd need to have an auction. (I like the idea of a Dutch auction
for three to five buyers.) But auctioning off the source code without more
doesn't really get at all the sources of Microsoft control, like the
knowledge inside employees' heads of how all that code fits together, what
the interconnection and interoperability kinks are, and where the bodies
are buried. So if you had a spinoff of employees, as well as the code
asset, this would look like divestiture; see my answer to #6.
-----
A "Bonus Question Series" Richard Hawkins wanted to answer...
John Murdoch asks:
Which Victim Does the Anti Trust Act Protect?
The original Anti Trust Acts were developed to protect small farmers and businesses from predatory actions by trusts -- Standard Oil regulating who got railroad tank cars, for instance, so small oil producers couldn't compete.
Richard Hawkins responds:
There was also concern about consumers. Modern law (after Bork &
Posner started pointing out how silly the law had become) only worries
about the effect on consumers. As an example, the government filed
suit in Brown Shoe when Kinney, a retailer, and Brown, a manufacturor,
wanted to merge. Neither had more than 5% of their respective markets,
but the government sued as this would allow the combined entity to sell
a product of comparable value at a lower price than their competitors.
Oh, horror. I'm glad that the government was there to protect us from
low prices on quality goods. The merger was blocked. Bork cites this
case as a leading candidate for the worst antitrust decision of all
time. Today, the outcome would have been different--the lower prices
would mean that the merger was pro-competitive, and the effects on
competitors be damned.
John Murdoch:
Can Microsoft argue that Judge Jackson is misapplying the law?
Richard Hawkins:
Certainly not. The judge hasn't applied *any* law yet; so far he has
merely determined what happened.
John Murdoch:
Jerry Pournelle cogently points out that Microsoft's presence in any market
category has consistently driven prices lower. He particularly points out
that Microsoft has been remarkably aggressive in providing tools and support to
developers -- handing out developer tools for free to anybody who even looked like a programmer.
Microsoft has spent zillions of dollars providing tools and support to tens of thousands of small businesses through their ISV and Microsoft Certified Solution Provider program. Other vendors that have emulated those programs don't provide nearly as much, and charge much, much more for their programs.
Richard Hawkins:
Jerry Pournelle is one of my favorite authors, particularly his "Fall
of the West" type work from the 70's, and his editing of anthologies.
His descriptions of working with DOS and later Windows hardware were in
part responsible for my buying Macintoshes again rather than switching
more than once.
Here, Jerry completely misses the point. He is describing how Microsoft obtained the Windows monopoly. In fact, obtaining a monopoly through vigorous competition is quite legal, and these actions would fall into that category. The problem is, that this has exactly nothing to do with the current case.
---------- Next week: KDE Developers
If MS was to put all it's code out there for all to see, don't you think that they would have a higher competitive rate with LINUX? If you look at the possibilities (Which are just endless) think of this one. LINUX / Windows combination to form a master system, created by some script kiddie, to make a stronger OS and then we're in the same boat all over again.
We're all already dead, we're just waiting for the Government to tell us it's okay to be buried.
Call me a capitalist swine, but, owning stock in the evil empire, the 5 baby bills would be the most profitable by far. It also might go a long way to getting MS-Office into Linux -- the major reason people claim stay with Windows. I know that there are plenty of alternatives, I have used some, but for mass adoption it will take more of a push. Look at the humble PC; it was nothing until Big Blue said it was OK for business to use.
Thankyou for a very informative article - it was nice to see some sensible legal opinion on the MS case as well as possible implications. This article would get a 5 (Interesting) if I were a moderator
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
What concerns me is, if/when Microsoft appeals, they argue that same thing for Judge Jackson. That he was dozing so often in the trial that he could not possibly form any valid conclusion, or even find reasonable facts.
Microsoft aren't known for arguing the details, when going for the throat would be easier.
BTW, I'm glad Microsoft won't be forced to release the source. Can you imagine what it would look like? UGH! And people thought Netscape's Mozilla looked bad, at the start! Windows 9x would contravene all sorts of health and safety regulations, not to mention the Geneva Convention on cruel and unusual punishment.
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)
If (and that's a huge IF) M$ code was to be opened, it would suffer from the same maladies that plague Mozilla... Only more so.
Namely, the pre-release size of it. NT2k is gauged at what? 40 million lines of source? How many Linux hackers would be willing to drop their passion and actively work on poring over that much code?? Once their curiosity was satisfied, most would just smile, nod, and go back to coding for Linux.
Sure, some would persist, a small enclave would make the betterment of the WinAPI and WinOS into a crusade, but for the most part, it's not happening. How many people would be willing to scale a poorly designed, but built sky-scraper in an attempt to fix the bugs?
Add to that the very M$ condition of there being a lot of licensed code (which would not be part of the disclosure) without which the rest is useless, and the release of Windows source to the public is a non-possibility.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
I would love to see windows source code, AND see MS broken up into seperate companies. I would REALLY like tosee the undocumented API's that Windows has inside.
:wq
I don't feel that breaking MS into 3-5 pieces would be sufficient. More than ten would be necessary. They are so totally dominant in the market that even if they were broken up into 10 pieces, each piece would be larger than all of the competitors. A more reasonable choice would be to break them all up into pieces no larger than Apple. (And remember, Apple does hardware as well as software.) To me this sounds more like 20 pieces.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
...that one of the remedies for the ibm monopoly was outside monitoring/review/approval of many internal corporate decisions. not by the government, but by reps from peer companies.
for example, people from sun, sgi, apple, corel, redhat, caldera, FSF...the list goes on...could form a review/approval/veto board of all internal decisions/memorandum/projects made by MSFT until such time that the DOJ is satisfied that they are no longer a monopoly.
this would tend to compensate for the massive war chest that MS has accumulated, and uses to buy companies that innovate, or pay people like anders helsborg(sp) $6,000,000 to leave borland, etc
It seems clear to me that most legal scholars fail to understand the fundemental drivers of the software industry. I guess being a 'legal scholar' tends to focus one on the legal issues (Duh). Unfortunately the practical issues of either a breakup or of licensing Windows are very scary. The 'experts' answering here in /. do seem to understand that. Still many others in the legal world seem to miss the point entirely.
For example, in an Infoworld article published on the nineth, one such expert by the name of Horvath was quoted as wanting to force the licensing of Windows so that different companys could create competing versions. He claims the following result:
When I read something like the above I immediately realize the person making these statements doesn't understand how things really work at all. The actual result would be a fracturing of the API's (Application Programmer Interfaces) where non-compatible versions of Windows would proliferate accross the landscape. This would be followed by a shakeout as one version becomes dominant and gains the largest amount of marketshare.
This would happen because the software industry tends towards standards, and the company that owns the standards (or seems to) owns the marketplace. So, if you are a windows licensee that wants to own the market, the first thing you do is something Microsoft calls 'Embrace and Extend'. This is where you create a version of the operating system that is compatible with the standard, but which has unique enhancements only your version supplies. You do this because you know your competitors are also doing it. This has always happened, it will always happen...
Usually the winner at this game is the one most willing to court the software developers (people like me). Because it is our work (applications) that makes an operating system something people want. Because we are the ones who recommend the Client and Server platforms our companies use. Because without us there would be no software industry. And, most importantly, because we tend to move as a herd towards the one platform that guarentees us the most potential users.
I remember the bad old days of the early 1980's very well. At least 15 competing PC platforms (some little more than toys) and no standards at all. The reason the IBM PC platform running DOS and then Windows became the primary developement platforms is not because they were the best. It was because they were good enough, because they were correctly marketed to programmers and because there was a network effect that brought in more developers as the number of users grew.
My point is this: The software industry will always tend towards a single OS with the vendor of that OS owning an effective monopoly. However this doesn't mean the vendor of that OS can rest on their laurels, as the other constant of the software industry is change. The reason Microsoft was dominant for so long is simple; they understood these facts.
I do not think you can 'end' the Microsoft monopoly by breaking up the company or doing anything that allows the API's to remain closed. However, as was pointed out by several of the /. legal experts above, opening the source is an unlikly remedy because of the licensing issues it raises and the fact it would represent a 'taking' by the government.
So, how about something completly different? How about finding a way to get Microsoft to fund the development of competing Open Source operating systems? I am not certain what form this would take, but I do think it is the only real answer here other than goverment oversight of all Microsoft contracts. Everything else we might do will, because of the natural forces of the software market, tend to the same situation we have now. Personally I would rather the natural monopoly was in the hands of an Open Source group of one kind or another...
Jack
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
Thanks to the respondents, and to those who offered the fine selection of questions.
I also like the quotables embedded in the responses, such as:
I could teach most of a course in antitrust law from these findings. -- Hawkins, re the coverage of the FoF.
They give a flurry of beta explanations, searching for one that will hold up -- Lederer, re Micorsoft's habitual behavior when caught with their pants down.
Also, Hawkins' characterization of the political topography of the current Supreme Court was entertaining, and presumably informative.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
MS would be worth more AFTER the split than it's worth now.
I realize it's too late to ask the lawyers this,
but I recently read on another news site that
Microsoft is encouraging it's employees to
contribute to the Microsoft PAC (Political Action
Comittee). What impact can that PAC have on
the case at this point, what impact can that PAC
have in politics in general, and how common is it
for large companies to have PACs?
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
The Standard Oil company was broken up by the US Government into several pieces (i.e. Exxon ...) Before the breakup, many people were doomsayers and the stand oil stock was killed. after the break up, however, people discovered that their was a ton of "hidden" assets in the huge corporate infrastructure that the standard had built over the years and this was a case in which the sum of the parts is greater than the whole (i.e. emergent properties). In my opinion, if the government were to breakup microsoft in a few "baby bells," then microsoft's stock should be higher as a result of the invariable discovery of assets that were before heavily discounted such as microsoft's internet properties. what do you guys think?
Please visit http://www.freedonation.com and save a life for free every day!
To whomever picks interviewees: it's stating the obvious, but the quality of this one was on a different planet from the one with that self-professed "security expert" kid.
Favorite quote:
> $89 upgrade price was at least $40 greater than
> the competitive price (Windows98)
so let me get this right,
$49(upgrade) + $40(IE) == Windows98
Looks like IE wasn't free at all.
damn.
People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is putting up with all the idiots in the world.-Calvin
My question was rated 5 (insightful) and I really hoped it was selected.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I voted for the most malicious and draconian punishment of all because they didn't list my favorites.
1: All prices on dominant products must be subject to volume discounts only. I.e. The company that buys 100,000 copies cannot pay less than the company that buys 200,000 regardless of other arrangements.
2 : Limit the right of MS to terminate windows licenses. I.e. They can tell you to stop printing Windows CDs, manuals and Hard drives ( what the big goys do ). They should only be allowed to do that for delinquent customers. ( Just like the power companies and phone companies of today ).
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Even if Judge Jackson took a cat nap or two, he still had access to the court transcripts and all of the exhibits presented. Just think of it as reviewing someone else's notes before the big final.
--
QDMerge 0.4!
how to invest, a novice's guide
Richard Hawkins response included: "There is no honor among thieves." Why would these companies help each other?
Surely the answer to this is that they would have a common set of shareholders? Bill Gates and co. could set the individual companies' policies to cooperate with each other - to the shareholders' mutual financial gain. And why not?
Any settlement would surely have address this somehow. Would the existing MSFT shareholders have to decide which new Baby-Bill they get shares in? (If I had any MSFT shares (and I don't) I don't think I'd be happy to get them exchanged for shares in the Online Services company.)
Any other ideas?
Regards, Ralph.
What a great read. The answers were to the point and cogent. Great Job! I was intrigued tho' by the persistent questions about freeing up the Windows source ... I'm glad the panel kept hammering home the point that it will never happen and skirts some serious legal issues. I think everyone here should know better than to think the MS code would ever be public. That would bother me seriously since that is the goverment taking property (intellectual, or actual it doesn't matter to me). The way I see if MS wants to open source some things to save it's butt, then okay, but it has to be their choice ... your source (no matter who you are) should never be forced public.
I love it how we are so quick to criticize our government when they even slightly encroach on our privacy, yet we are adimate 'big brother' fans when it comes to breaking up the competition.
Slightly hypocritical if you ask me.
victory over MS by means of the intervention does not equal victory by means of a better product.
As I write this , "Let CmdrTaco and Hemos run Microsoft" has 29% while "Break Microsoft into 3-5 'Baby Bills'" has only 27%.
I think it really shows you something when the joke choice gets more votes than any other choice..
Namely, it's not at all obvious to most people what should be done (if anything).
This is a really really complicated situation.
And, in that vane, I argue that if history has taught us anything, monopoly situations are so complex that anything we do to punish Microsoft will likely have more unexpected results than expected ones.
I thus argue that instead of risking the danger of the punishment backfiring (as I think is likely), we should just let them be.. They won't last for ever anyway.
Regarding the latter, our panel of experts seems to suggest that it is a separate issue that could be left to tort cases, and I suspect that it will turn out so in the ordinary course of things. Perhaps this will be the thing that forces Micorsoft to settle: however much a settlement hurts, it may be a relatively minor one-time pain in comparison to the deluge of lawsuits that will undoubtedly follow if they draw the case out to its bitter end and thus (as I understand it) let the FoF become part of the official outcome of the case. [Regarding that last matter, perhaps we could ask the panel a follow-up question to get a clarification of what the FoF "means" if MS settles before a judgement is issued.]
As for my "break up the party" part of the remedy, I wholeheartedly agree that a "vertical" breakup won't do a darn thing to destroy the monopoly: whoever ends up with the critical resource would be the 300 pound gorilla with the stranglehold on the banana supply, and thus would soon become the next 900 pound gorilla.
One thing that really needs to be done, IMO, is surely outside the court's power. That is, we need laws mandating that all documents (wp docs, web pages, sound/video bites, etc.) produced by public employes (Federal, state, local, whatever) must conform 100% to a format that is:
This would, IMO, do more than anything else to break up the party. No more "I have to run Windows because I have to run Word because I have to be able to read/write documents using whatever feature of the week my clients are using." This may not be a sufficient condition for protection from future situations like we have now, but it is surely a necessary condition for it. We've got to recognize that electronic documents are a vital part of our national infrastructure, and keep them from being subject to the whims of whatever robber baron can get control over them.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I was under the impression that MS released the documentation for most of their APIs already. Unless they're hiding a good deal of functionality in secret APIs, the only way to encourage interoperability is for them to publish the detais for all their proprietary communications protocols and file formats.
Am I missing something here with this constant talk about "publishing APIs"?
The last thing the Linux/*BSD communities should want is for Windows source code to become available. Snide, if accurate, comments regarding the source code quality aside , one of the major (if not the major) advantages Open Source OSes like Linux and *BSD is that the source code is available. The GPL and BSD licenses offer other advantages as well, but I fear if the Windows source became available, subject to peer review and contributed fixes, etc. we might actually lose one of our strategic advantages, one which allows the free OSes to outperform (both speed and stability wise -- contrived benchmarks aside) their M$ equivelents. This is not to say the Free OSes don't have other advantages (licensing, etc.), but it would be unfortunate to lose any advantage we have, especially when taking on Goliath.
Of course, there is a (strong) likelihood the hypotheticly "free" Windows source would meet the same fate as the Netscape source -- being scrapped in favor of a rewrite from the ground up.
Fortunately, it looks as though making the source code available is unlikely to happen. This is actually very good news for the emerging Free OSes IMHO.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
"Shifting my emphasis from lawyer to professor of economics, laissez-faire approaches do *not* tolerate monopolies, but instead find them repugnant."
:D
good god. how do people tolerate being in school for this long?
I keep hearing about "hidden API's" but I have yet to see a concrete example of one. Can anyone site one? Or all they all conjecture?
The panel all seems to agree that opening the Microsoft source would amount to taking property without compensation - a violation of the fifth amendment in the US.
Although forcing some GPL style license on Microsoft would clearly deny Microsoft the value of its intellectual property, would forcing Microsoft to publish its Windows source for the purpose of review by developers necessarily, but forbidding people to recompile and sell it, necessarily violate the Fifth Amendment?
I suppose the logical answer is that it is if the Supreme Court says so.
Still, in light of recent events, particularly the Kevin Mitnick trial, it doesn't seem all that unlikely. It would address one of the most potent means Microsoft has for extending its monopoly - the ability to hide API's from the developer community.
Mitnick was charged with stealing source code to Solaris, which Sun valued at some $80 million. However, it seems that figure raised a few eyebrows at the SEC, which demanded to know why such a large loss had not been reported to stock holders. Cleraly, Sun had not lost $80 million in revenue due to Mitnick's access to Sun's intellectual property and in the future I imagine companies will have to be more realistic in assigning value to intellectual property in these hacker trials.
It seems reasonable to think that Microsoft could be required to release those portions of the Windows source containing public API's, while denying access to other parts of the code. Or alternatively, Microsoft could be required to license its source to developers at a fixed (presumably fairly large) price for the purpose of analysing API's. Either way, the public would not have free access to a useable version of the Windows source code and Microsoft would no longer be able to hide its API's.
These kinds of terms all have precedents outside of the software business - laws fix what must be included in various kinds of contracts without violating the fifth amendment, and have been known to require businesses to make public disclosures of various kinds, even when those disclosures might reduce the value of some of their property.
Any comments?
A friend just called me, telling me that I'd been singled out for a reply by Richard Hawkins on SlashDot. Cool! Finish my lunch, hit SlashDot, read the comments...
It's really nice to see my question get answered--and I really enjoyed reading the comments (particularly from Hawkins and Lederer) to all of the questions. But I'm sorry that Prof. Hawkins didn't address the main point of my post:
Antitrust laws were passed to protect small businesses, as well as the consumer. Microsoft is directly responsible for the creation and growth of literally thousands of small ISVs and consulting firms (like mine). The ONLY firm that is portrayed as a "victim" in the Findings is Netscape--which sold for a mere $4.5 billion, despite having never (I think--not sure) earned a profit.
The "remedies" that people are talking about won't actually help any consumer. There is some fanciful notion that some consumer somewhere is harmed by the pricing of Windows--but breaking up Microsoft will cause immediate, permanent damage to lots of small businesses across America. We can compete with Andersen, DeLoitte, Cambridge and the rest because a Microsoft-centric solution will work: the OS, the DBMS, the programming tools, the Office app all work together. Break up Microsoft, and that level of integration disappears--and with it goes my competitive advantage over the big guys. Break up Microsoft, and I become the victim.
So what I really want to ask is--why the hell is the Justice Department looking out for the billionare owners of Netscape, and screwing the likes of me?
After that, what is to prevent the MS version of Windows from coming up with more secret APIs and the MS App guys "reverse engineering" (yeah, right), or discovering top secret documents in a dumpster, so they can use these APIs in the next version of Word? We will be right back where we are today.
People need to exchange documents, and without applying the Rube Goldberg techniques us geeks are so fond of. Especially with people from outside companies, so forget the "everyone can use WordPerfect or GNUmeric" argument. From my perspective, this need is what keeps people running Windows -- enhanced probability of easy file exchange. My proposed solution to this is an above-board, "free" disclosure of file formats. And not just from M$ either. Perhaps embed the data storage in the OS via free plugins.
At the risk of my kharma points, I take a turn toward the off-topic at this point. Who the hell are these app vendors to lock me into using their application to view my own data. Proprietary file formats got to go.
After reading this article, I definitely think the way to stop Microsoft and future Microsofts is to open up the API.
An open freely available universal API would give the consumer real choice in which operating system to use. Every OS could run any application. A consumer would choose their OS and then be able to choose their applications independently. I would no longer have to use win32 just because the applications I need to do my work only run on win32.
As most of the Win32 API can be found just by installing the Win32 SDK, the real issues here are change control and ownership. An independent board should carefully control all changes made to the API. Benefits and consequences should be weighed and voted on before any change is published. The API should be owned by the public and not by any company. Even the company/agency that controls change should not be the owner.
I believe that there should be an independent computer API company/agency created. Microsoft probably should fund it as part of their fine from the anti-trust trial. The new API could be based on Win32 (God forbid :) or it could be entirely new. A system like what NT is using now, internal API with Win32/Posix translation layer, could be used as an implementation model. The real problem with an entirely new API will be transitioning exiting Win32 applications and development houses. Another part of the MS equation could be a translation layer from Microsoft for Win32 to the Universal API.
Finally, the wine project has been moving toward providing this utopia, but one of my big concerns about wine is that once wine achieves complete compatibility, Microsoft will introduce some new piece and we'll be right back where we started. For example, wine was making very good headway on 16 bit apps just as Windows 95 was released, and although I don't think MS would change their API again (at least not until IA-64) they could introduce a new common control or some other important piece.
The Linux community is the champion of Open (and often free) computer systems. Instead of focusing on how to punish Microsoft, let's use this to create something good.
I have to take issue with a couple things in the FoF.
After reading some of it, I found that Jackson claimed that the pricing of win98 upgrade at $89 instead of $49 was a violation of antitrust. $49 being the break even point. And? What, they can't sell their product for a profit? They're supposed to just give it away? This strikes me as extremely anti-capitalist and very dangerous. I don't want to get melodramatic, but should I start waving the ole hammer & sickle now?
Was Microsoft legally required to make sure that windows would run on competitors versions of DOS? Microsoft didn't have a monopoly on gui os's at the time did they? Couldn't DrDOS make their own stinkin' gui? Why does microsoft have to help a competitor compete?
While I agree that Microsoft has engaged in some anti-competitive behavior, a lot of the FoF seemed to be a rant against profit and capitalism. Capitalism is not a dirty word people. I don't know about you, but I think most companies are out to make profits. When the govt steps in and says, "No, you can't sell your product for what the market will bear, you have to sell it for less or we're taking you to court", you enter a slippery slope that leads to..and please don't flame me..communism.
To quote one of my favorite movies...
"I can no longer sit back and allow the communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."
-General Jack D. Ripper
Could this happen?
-=-=-=-=-
-=-=-=-=-
My mom's going to kick you in the face!
As was noted in The Economist (August 07th issue), and elsewhere, Microsoft has a great deal of undisclosed financial liability, including US$60 billion (yes, with a "B") worth of options debt to their employees that is coming due in the next few years. Were it not for the penchant of humans to live in denial for extended periods of time, the stock would be valued significantly lower, not higher.
Breaking up M$ might make them more valuable than they already are, by diluting the pryamid and allowing them to benefit from the "Baby Bell" phenominon, but it is unlikely that such benefits will come anywhere close to equalling the liability Microsoft has already taken on. In addition, such a breakup will not shield their "offspring" companies from lawsuits (both pending and yet to be filed), many of which, given the Findings of Fact, stand a good chance of going against Microsoft (or its predicessors).
Additional references here, here, and here.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
A lot of the responses talked about the idea of multiple resultant entities of any punishment having access to the Windows Source code, to do with as they pleased, either through government intervention, i.e. a direct breakup, or a forced auction to provide for competition. While the government legally cannot simply take the code and make it public (I agree with that much), would there be anything to stop one of these Mini-Bills with posession of the source to simply GPL it?
Would there be any path for someone like the FSF to acquire the code with intent to GPL it? For instance, via government subsidy in any possible auction? I think that's unlikely of course as it would constitute government endorsement of open source, but one can dream.
I wonder, on a more personal level, if the amount of venom possesed by the open source community towards windows would be reduced signifigantly at that point. I would be a good measure of seeing how much is abhorrence at MS business practices and how much is pure bigotry. I for one think that there are technical gems to be found in the windows source code.
Brad
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
ARGH!
...predicessors...
Of course, I meant successors. Short night -- I need some coffee (and a proof reader).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I see the only real solution as establishing a standards board, which would establish standard OS APIs. While Microsoft may be forced to comply with this process, other OSs (Linux, MacOS, OS/2, Unix, etc) would voluntarily join this board. Standards would be developed via a discussion process, similar to the way internet protocol standards are established. This would have very positive results for the consumer. Multiple OSs would share the same APIs, and therefore be able to run the same software. I'm sure Mac and Linux users would love this. OS freedom, without being tied to a specific OS because it's the only one to run certain apps effectively. The downside is that it may slow development, however that hasn't proved true in the internet arena.
The pricing seems to be fairly irrelivant to
the main point. Personally, I don't think
prices make a monopoly. However, WRT Windows and
DrDOS, the point isn't that they didn't try for
compatibility, the point is that they specifically
aimed against compatibility. There's a world of
difference... And yes, Windows was very dominant
when the thing happened with DrDOS.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
In many of the answers many respondants suggest something alon the lines of: "Richard Hawkins replies... It would also be illegal :) See my other answers. No matter how bad they may be, it's illegal to take the property from them." This is of course ridiculous. Fines for violations take property (ie money) and of course RICO and many new drug laws take property of the accused prior to a guilty verdict! The judge is going to have a very wide discretion to fashion any punishment, including taking of property! Afterall, the prohibition is no taking WITHOUT DUE PROCESS. The antitrust trial and inevitable appeals are all the process that is due under the constitution.....GET REAL!
Here! Here! And for those of us who are in the know, and think money is the main means to everything else, a little chaos in the industry would be clear path to make more dough :^D
Not much impact on this case. The only opportunity for political influence on this case is indirectly through pressure on the anitrust divison of DOJ.
:), and to limit contributions to "natural persons"--no PAC's, no corporations, no unions, etc.
As for their influence in general, answers vary wildly.
My own idea of campaign finance reform is to remove all limits on contributions to candidates, require disclosure by name and amount of all contributors over $1000 (or $100. whatever
The problem is that as a company eating from the
hand of Microsoft, you can't really do much
innovation on your own, or you'll be stomped flat.
Consulting firms can survive without Microsoft.
What exactly do you get from them that you can't
do without? Microsoft-centric solutions work, but
so do non Microsoft-centric solutions.
tal
Research, IBM, Quarterdeck, Apple, most
Unix vendors, Borland, Intuit, most ISPs, numerous
hardware manufacturers, etc.
You're essentially complaining because your cut of
the goods Microsoft is getting from destroying the
industry as a whole might disappear.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
All they can really hope to do is attract the
hardcore geeks if they're not the dominant
product.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Let's let Microsoft's competitors listen in on all strategic planning and sabatoge any decision/directions they want to make/take until they are run out of business.
I don't think so. Don't make it so easy to appeal that the decision of the court will never be enforced. Remember this decision isn't supposed to satisfy long held bitterness and hatred against Microsoft it's supposed to benefit the consumer at large.
One of the questions involved what would happen if conservatives took over, and tried to stop the punishment of Microsoft.
I just wanted to point out that all conservative capitolists that I know would love to see Microsoft appropriently punished.
True capitolist do prefer the government to keep its hands off, but we also realize that since the government is already so involved, it has to fix things like this. It is generally thought that if government has absolutly no intervention in capitolist that problems like this won't even form. And when I say no intervention, I mean NO intervention, that included copywrite, patent, and contract recongition. If two people can't even expect a court to uphold their contracts, all capitolism would be done on a complete honor system, and such an entity as Microsoft could never form. The only problem, is we will never know if true capitolism would would or not, or if it could have even dealt with the modern problems of technology
You're buying into the idea that multiple competing flavours of the operating system is bad. This 'fracturing' of the Unix market has lead to an extremely competitive and fast moving market.
Sure the vendors innovate to try to get the edge on the competition, but they can't stray too far from 'standard' Unix. Features that really take off are eventually adopted by all players and become part of the 'standard'.
The standards themselves are a combination of 'de-facto' standards and industry standards controlled by a standards body. In a competitive environment, you can expect industry associations to start setting 'Windows' standards with input from the various players.
Everybody does "Embrace and Extend". If the extension is bogus, it will generally die off. If the extension is useful, it will give the innovator a competitive advantage for a year or so. Microsoft's monopoly allows them to "Embrace, Extend, and Destroy" - basically they break their implementation of the standard at an appropriate time in order screw the other people who have adopted it. That's only possible as long as one party dominates the market.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
if MS holds out thru the appeal process it will just strengthen them to screw everybody some more, if they don't it will just open the door for the govt to muck arround in the software busisness. Perhaps someday people will realise that the problem isn't Microsoft - but the average Joe's belief in copyrights being brought to it's logical conclusion. PS. You think this is bad, just wait for the problems caused by software patents.
I am so sorry! What will you ever do? Maybe your mommy will try to help comfort you. /.ers to perhaps help you answer it!
Do you realize that maybe there were a lot of questions asked, and it was a really popular topic, and the question just didn't get answered!?!? Instead of whining about it, why not ask other
Or maybe you should ask one of your teachers at middle school tomorrow why you never get picked and all the other boys do... >:(
the constitution clearly states that copyrights are a short term incentive only. Since MS obviously isn't using it for that means, I would think that would obligate the Govt not to uphold it's copyrights as they are not true property.
I think they should be required to sell Windows for the same wholesale (for quantities of 1000 or more, say) price to anyone and should not be allowed to have separate OEM and boxed versions or special OEM license terms. The OS and computer should be distinct products.
These guys were great. Thank you.
this is one of the coolest things slashdot has ever done.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned anywhere as a solution is to make Microsoft provide free (or limited) support for their products, and to have them be held responsible for failures.
Right now, Gateway, Dell, and others are the people you call if you have a Windows problem. Shouldn't you call Microsoft?
If the OS crashes and ruins files, hardware, etc. because of a failure in the OS, not the apps, difficult, but not impossible to prove, shouldn't Microsoft have some responsibility? Right now, the EULA frees them from that.
It's not a total, immediate, solution, but something, IMHO, that ought to be considered. Who knows, the quality might go up.
As others have pointed out, making Baby Bills out of one big Bill could make that one Bill even richer than he already is. I don't think that breaking up M$ a la AT&T is thus a wise idea. Besides, how will we break up the company. Obviously, a distinction can be made between hardware and software, but M$ has done a good job of bringing together their software under 1 umbrella, for the most part. Take a look at the IE4/5 / Windows integration. So much for breaking off Internet products. But the kicker comes with the Office Suite. Will the office software company remove calls to undocumented API's? Will the OS company remove the API's to break the Office Suite? No and No. In fact what would likely happen, and be quite under the table, is
that the various Baby Bills would end up conspiring in such a way that we'd have an effective monopoly. We'd break up the company to the public, but behind the curtains, it'd be one company.
Of course, something has to be done to stop M$'s anti-competitive practices. The best solution I've come across involves doing all of 2 things to M$. First, they must document all of their undocumented API's to the world outside of the Micro$oft compound. Second, they must eliminate all preferential OEM licensing on the OS and other software.
Before I get flamed, lets take a look at my solution:
1. M$ has a collection of undocumented API's that they use internally. We all know it. As a result of this, they have an unfair advantage in the applications market. In other words, M$ Office can use these like crazy, while potential competitors are left out in the cold on them. It should be obvious how this is anti-competitive (and thus illegal for a monopoly).
2) OEM Licensing. AFAIK, M$ licenses Windows 95/98 to OEM's who commit to install it on almost all of the PC's they ship at a very low cost (probably a few bucks a copy, or some other obscenely low number). On the other hand, the local PC shop who perhaps installs Linux on a quarter of the PC's they ship, because they cater to personal rather than corporate desires, must pay a significantly higher cost, all because they ship a smaller percentage of PC's without Win 9x. I have no problems with volume pricing; volume pricing is a Good Thing(TM). But, when you're charging by the percentage, rather than the true volume, this is wrong. OK, wrong is such a strong word. How about anti-comptetive. Regardless, it is a Bad Thing(TM).
Anyone else see this same thing?
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
Simply look through the Windows DLLs with a dumper-type tool (PEDUMP by Matt Pietrek works fine). Nearly all Windows system DLLs contain API entry points exported without a name attached, and of these nearly all of them are not documented by Microsoft documentation. And yes, Microsoft apps do call them.
:) These interfaces are the heart of the IE "integration", and other apps (Mozilla) could "integrate" equally well using them. Third parties could also write credible Explorer desktop replacements (I don't consider LiteStep "credible", sorry ;).
Want more? Download the latest WINE source and check out dlls/comctl32/comctl32undoc.c, or nearly all of dlls/shell32/*.c
Microsoft is hurting every other OS and middleware vendor. Netscape is -not- the only company mentioned in a victim role.
Intel with NSP. Sun with Java. IBM with OS/2.
Microsoft didn't hurt only their competitors, but their allies.
HP, Dell, and Compaq were all put out with the restrictions Microsoft put on the desktop. HP complained about the money they were losing since being forced to have a 'conforming' (and hence, less user-friendly) desktop. HP got compensated for their loss.
Worried about the 'little' company? What about all the OEMs around the country that -could- make more money by offering a larger variety of machines - except they'd immediately lose it to Microsoft penalties. Or who lost their investment into customizing the boot process and desktop, and being less important than HP -didn't- get compensated for their losses by MS.
All of this is apparent if you read the findings of fact.
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
I admit, your points are well taken.
"If we break them up we will quash OS innovation." This is directly out of the mouths of Microsoft It's self! One of the biggest lies microsoft has fed america and the world as a whole is that they innovate the OS. What about Linux? What about BeOS? what about the 10,000 other innovations that are NON-microsoft? those dont count? EVERY innovation in Operating systems DID NOT come from microsoft. They came out of our universities and college students that use their minds creatively.
I will guarentee, that innovation will continue if they quash microsoft out of existance! (Hypothetically: put it out of business completely) Microsoft is far from an idea generator or an innovation feeding system. They have at EVERY turn went out of their way to either destroy competition or they buy it. (GEOS anybody?) How many dollars has Microsoft given to the FSF? how about to Debian? Gimp? If they are for innovation they sure have no clue how to feed innovators.
Why lump all the MS OS'es into the same company, just because they (purportedly) support the same Win32 API's? In that regard, MS has struggled mightily over the last several years to try to merge their code base onto the NT/2000 kernel, and has failed to the extent that they are still extending Win98 into the new "Millennium" (heh) in order to keep DOS/games compatibility for the home market - something most business buyers could care less about. However, I think one of the main vicious circles of MS's monopoly power is the effect of having consumer mindshare - folks want what they have at home (Win95/98) at work (NT4/2000) & vice-versa. Note this is really only similar GUI look-and-feel and binary app compatibility - if a Corel-type Linux distro with fully working 32-bit WINE could sufficiently clone Windows, as might happen if the "hidden" API's were disclosed or disappeared, then a REAL MS-killer might finally be out there. If we split up the consumer (98/Millennium/MS Works?), business desktop (NT/2000/Office), business server (NT Enterprise/Clusters/SQL/Exchange/Backoffice) and embedded (CE/Pocket apps/????) markets into different "Baby Bills", along with an MSN/other online services spinoff since that is totally unrelated, doesn't that reduce the monopoly power a lot more, without massive disruptions in the MS business model? Basically this just puts each existing MS division into its own company, with some minimal regulatory & competitive oversight. Plus - the incentive is then to have at least publishable API's since they would have to in order to interoperate and gain other customers/market share. In other words, split up the MS OSes and Win32 API among 3-4+ companies, and no more closed-code incestuous optimizations should happen. Or is this too likely to fracture the APIs as a "horizontal" solution? (And probably the CE company would quickly die, unless the new settop boxes really take off, but good riddance if they can't compete on the merits with Palm, Sega, Nintendo etc.).
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
After taking all this in, and absorbing the ideas presented here, I honestly feel a synthesis of ides like what follows is not only what would be best, but what probably will happen:
First of all, break the OS from Office.
Secondly, force them to open the API, form an industry standards organization around it that includes many members of other OS companies, and make the MS OS group stick with those standards for at least one to two years so they see the competition.
This will do a few things: suddenly the office group will have to work a bit harder to keep their software in sync with the standards organizations, which would keep them busy enough to introduce a few more competitors in the arena which they could compete with. The OS group would have to work much harder on opening the API and then making their OS conform with the standard, leaving quite a bit of time for others to rise in this area, especially those poised to do so (WINE, OS/2, etc).
The downside being that they both would end up in a non-innovation mode for a few years while they regroup. But they would catch up because they would have reasons to run much faster than they have before, and to be bug-free more than they have been in the past.
-Adam
Aesop: The fox, chided for failing to catch a rabbit, said
"I was only running for my dinner. The hare was running for his life."
Let me make a couple of comments and suggestions regarding addressing the problem rather than focusing on penalties (which, most likely, will amount to Microsoft paying a stiff fine).
As the experts say the odds of opening up the source are essentially nonexistant. That does amount to the taking of Microsoft's intellectual property and even if it didn't it wouldn't be a good solution for the consumer except where code may improve by peer review. Most likely the result would be a great many code forks and that would be bad for everyone involved.
The idea of breaking Microsoft up into a number of Baby Bills, each with the same rights and equal resources, would be even worse. You would immediately see code forks and in the end you'd probably have one company win and the others fail -- accomplishing nothing but a lot of confusion in the interim.
As I see it there are two things we need to do in order to protect the consumer from monopolistic practices while simultaneously protecting Microsoft's right to do business.
First, we must separate the OS monopoly from the applications division. A lot of people suggest that this would help eliminate private use of APIs but, speaking as a professional developer with a long history of working with Microsoft code, I don't see that Microsoft has gained any make-or-brake capability through the use of private APIs -- at least not since way back in the MS-DOS days. If anything their dependency on such techniques has opened them up to ridicule and limited their implementation approaches. No Microsoft product has won in the market as a result of utilizing private APIs; rather, they won through the use of bundling agreements.
The rationale for breaking them up is to provide a disincentive to product packaging (bundling) as a way of putting competitors out of business.
The problem we have now is that Microsoft's OS and applications divisions operate out of the same revenue pool. This allows Microsoft to sacrifice applications revenue in the short term in order to gain long-term applications market share. They can afford to do this because their monopoly product provides a huge, uninterruptable cash flow. They have wielded this power repeatedly to build market share for new products, including but not limited to Windows itself, Office, and IIS. (Notice that I'm not including Internet Explorer. More on that in a minute.)
Separating the two in this way makes any deal to package software with the OS a licensing decision that will affect the bottom line of both companies right from the start. This is how it is for everyone else already.
The second thing we have to do is eliminate the ability for Microsoft to use pricing and/or availability of the monopoly product as a bargaining lever. This means establishing some sort of price control. I don't believe we should go so far as to totally regulate pricing; Microsoft is correct in that they will have competition in the future (particularly since PCs will shortly have to compete with simpler and cheaper devices) and they need to be able to respond to that. But they don't need the ability to be able to charge Gateway one price and Dell another simply because one company kowtows to the company's plans and the other doesn't. Allow Microsoft to set the price of the OS product but enforce equivalency amongst all buyers and do not allow Microsoft to deny the sale of the product to anyone. This would make it very difficult for Microsoft to use monopoly power as a bargaining device.
Microsoft is also correct in saying that they cannot give up their right to add features to their product. This does in effect put the government in the operating systems design position and I think it's safe to say that that won't do anyone any good.
The typical argument that I see against allowing them to add features is that they use that as a way to destroy competition (particularly Netscape). Well, there's some truth to that, but there's also a lot of truth to the proposition that adding Internet Explorer to the basic Windows package was very good for consumers and very good for the market as a whole (sorry Netscape). In fact, by the time they added IE virtually all of their competition had already been shipping a web browser. It's hard to see why they shouldn't have been allowed to do the same thing.
To put it another way: How many of us lament the death of the TCP/IP add-on companies that resulted from bundling TCP/IP with Windows? I sure don't -- that made the rocket-like growth of the Internet possible.
There do need to be some limits, however.
First and foremost anything they bundle with the OS cannot be separated out again and sold as a separate product. This makes it impossible for Microsoft to use short-term bundling as a way of putting a competitor out of business but allows them the ability to add stuff for competitive reasons.
Secondly products bundled with the monopoly product cannot interact in a proprietary way with outside applications. This makes it impossible for them to build features into IE that will help sell IIS or MSN, for instance.
Lastly, the monopoly product company must be prevented from entering into exclusive distribution agreements of any kind.
A remedy along these lines accomplishes the goal of introducing a number of checks on the ability for Microsoft to leverage their monopoly as a club and it does so without eliminating their right to extend their OS product. It ought to be palatable to both sides and, to cut to the chase, do what needs to be done.
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
Publish ALL of the Windows API's AND all of the native Windows protocols now and in the future. That way, the source itself is not as important - things like Samba and Wine could run on whatever platform you want, be able to exactly imitate Windows, and Windows apps would be cross platform. And, conceivably no one would ever have to buy a Windows licence from M$ again :) Bye, bye, economic monopoly.
...that anyone would seriously suggest such an idea. What would happen if all these companies simply refused to approve any of Microsoft's choices? Or what if they forced them to make bad decisions, or to steer clear of markets that their competitors were going after?
The point is that even if you accept the premises of antitrust law and the FoF, the punishment should still be proportional to the crime. This proposal would literally cripple Microsoft, and might end up destroying it. To impose that kind of punishment for a set of vague "anticompetitive practices" is absurd.
It sounds to me like this poster is more interested in bringing Microsoft down than in punishing them for specific crimes. Even under antitrust law, the crime is abuse of a monopoly, not having one. Forcing Microsoft into a permanent competitive disadvantage is wrong by any standards.
That movie was making fun of guys like you. Please note that the only alternative to capitalism is NOT communism. There are dozens of other systems. Plus, some of us capitalists believe for capitalism to work correctly, it MUST be regulated. Then there are the classic liberals, as one of the gentlemen were discussing. These guys are Laissez-Faire capitalists who believe that government SHOULD break up monopolies and monitor monopolistic practices. This is NOT fair capitalism. Would you call Teddy Roosevelt a commie? How about Taft? Those guys were true classic liberals, and they broke up more monopolies than any modern liberal or conservative.
Create an independent standards organization to control the window's API (like ANSI, the IETF, etc). This way, competing companies have open access to the API specification, and can easily create a product that still runs ALL windows applications.
You could set it up like Sun's Java standards - that is, to extend the standard, you have to submit it to them first, where they can choose to approve it.
This doesn't, however, solve the problem of 'extend and extinguish,' because M$ could still try to extend the API JUST like they did with Java, but I would surmise that lawsuits-a-plenty would ensue if they attempted to do so.
This could also mean easily implementing windows compatibility in Linux (the WINE project wouldn't have to reverse engineer anything anymore).
What do you think about this solution?
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
72656B636148206C72655020726568746F6E41207473754A
ratio 1:1500. 1 firm like yours for every 1500 already screwed MS customers. And many of those firms will not get screwed by this, they are smart/flexible enough to not be tied to one product. If they are, they will eventually go out of business anyway. You are only screwed if you wish to know only one thing- windows. Which, btw, is a very short sighted act. If you get screwed by M getting broken up it's your own fault for not being flexible.
I know that this will probably get moderated down, but it's the truth. People, don't be a ZD brand computer expert... you'll get screwed by it.
-----
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Our 'government' does not act as an entity in national matters, but rather as a collection of differently acting parts. And even parts of parts act differently from each other. When people see one agency or one wing of an agency do or say something stupid they label it "f*cking gov't again". I see it as "f*cking moron(s) again". The government is as much good as bad. Do you think they put drunk drivers in jail because they're evil and like the company?
-----
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
One thing that seems to have been ignored is the scope of M$'s monopoly - it's OS software for (and this is the key bit) x86 processors. This is a line of chips that is (arguably) nearing the end of it's life. Is there time enough for any proposed remedy to work before x86 dies? If I wanted to be a big OS company in an M$-free world, I'd write fresh code for Merced, not try to patch up and open source x86 OS. Maybe a nice remedy would be to prohibit M$ from writing for merced? Windows would die a natural death, new OSes would stand a chance of running a nice clean optimised kernel, and no x86 apps would be ported to the new chips? - Andy R.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I believe Microsoft's punishment should be that Bill Gates should be forced to follow through with that wonderful chain letter I have received 125,349,423,239,279 times and annoyed countless friends and family with. Chain letters are my passion... everyone loves me.
...he would give $1,000 to everyone on the list using his brand new beta tracker ;)
What was it?
Well, I am still waiting for my checks
MS controls the mindshare of the public. They control it via their o/s and it's desktop. They maintain this control by making their products in such a way as to make it next to impossible for competitors to work with them, but at the same time, making it impossible for their competitors to survive without them. In the mean time, they work to eliminate their competition. This sounds very much like a hybrid biological virus of some sort and it is pretty frightening. But you know what, I still don't see this as being the core of the problem.
The core is that we, the public, tend to bend over and take their shiny, infectious suppositories right up our poop chutes without ever blinking. Then go back to chewing our cud. And we don't take it from just MS, but from any number of sources, all of the time.
"Mmmmm... what? you say soylent green is people? oh well, it tastes great, can I have some more please?"
It's all in the marketing. The government cannot put a stop to the mouth-pieces of corporate entities without risking devolvement into a police state so therefore we are subject to the fickle winds of the uneducated marketplace. So what if they tear MS to shreds, a void will open up in the mindshare of the populace and there will simply be a need to fill that void. The success of a product has nothing to do with it's merits, but in how well it fills the void and consumes the mindshare of market. He who shouts loudest, longest, and simplest to understand, shall always win; make it shiny, tasty, and shaped to fill that void, and no matter if it's all hollow and does nothing good, it will appear to be good and therefore will be good.
Does this presume to much about idiocy of the population? I don't think so. Taken as individuals, there is a great range in ignorance, but when taken as a whole, we are not much more than a big cow that is poked and prodded in directions no one as an educated individual would take. All of the dissenters can't help but be caught up in the cows movements otherwise they risk being left by themselves. So maybe /.'s are a bunch of dissenters, and we might be very educated and intelligent, but we can't help but be carried along by the fickle tides; this could possibly be why so many of us on here are so bloody mad all the time.
So what's my point? Well, this case, though about MS and monopolies and such, serves to highlight a much greater problem with the way we do business and the way we as social organisms on a macro scale are doomed to repeat the same mistakes we presume to solve with this anti-trust case. This case will cure a symptom, but the problem of mass ignorance and our inability to remedy it will remain. We can't shut up the liers and snake oil sellers, and we can't force the populace to become educated overnight.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Jumping to Conclusions.
Microsoft have been found to use their monopoly position in the market to damage *competition*. You are not a competitor.
Look, you're quite happy to follow along and sweep up the crumbs that MS leave over. Anyone who doesn't choose this course is destroyed by MS.
The damage is to Microsoft's competition by way of their monopoly position in the market. That's the bit that's illegal.
As to collateral damage when MS are made to remedy their actions, who can tell? You might find that your business picks up. You might be put out of business by Linux. Who knows.
At least those who follow Linux rather than MS might now not have to face up to the market domination that MS uses to force it's technology into a leading position.
Deleted
Your argument seems to be that Microsoft is so large, we dare not touch them with those pesky "laws" because who knows what might happen. And if their dominance subsides someday, then we should hand the reins of government over to AT&T, or Time-Warner, or Disney, because they also are so big that messing with them might destroy the economy.
I think it's a really bad idea to establish that companies over a certain size should be exempt from prosecution. With merger-mania still in full swing, particularly in telecom, there will be more of these above-the-law megacorps around. And they have more than just economic power - who do you think paid for the Telecommunications Reform Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act?
If the law can't be exercised for fear of upsetting the status quo, we're doomed.
By the way, Microsoft almost certainly did break the law, and not the one most people are talking about. While there is a lot of hand-wringing over whether MS abused monopoly power in violation of section 2 of the Sherman Act, this article points out that meeting with Netscape to try to carve up the browser market is an extremely clear violation of section 1 of the act. Oops.
I'm not sure, maybe it's just me, but hear me out here.
Everyone is talking about splitting up Windows (various verions of Windows) and splitting up Microsoft themselves, but maybe I'm of the the few people who have been around this land of computers to realize where this could be heading.
There usedt to be a dozen different hardware platforms, and each was totally incompatible with the other. Life was hell. Sure, you may argue that 90% of us are on the Intel platform now, and to hell with the rest of them (just kidding.) but how about the TRS-80.. There was TRS-DOS, and NEWDOW, and SmartDOS, and they each had thier own little tricks, and still there were various versions of everything. It stunk.
Then the world mostly settled on the IBM, and mostly on MSDOS/Windows after a dozen years. As life gets simpler, and little apps become more easy to find becuase developers don't have to spread thier talent, life is easier.
I for one, don't want to see everything split again. Win2002 doesn't come with defrager again, because that's an app, and I have to purchase that seperate. Oh, that's a cool utility, but it don't work on my flavor of windows, it's for A-Windows, and I run B-Windows.
Talk all you want about standards, and about choice. We made the choice 15 years ago. Why do we have to make it again.
Fine the company, slap some restrictions on them, and let's get on with life.
--knick
..there is no evil empire, get over it..
I like your idea on first glance, but it has some problems. I agree something must be done, but what is the solution is very debatable.
;-p ), etc? Plus, there are some corporate "rights" to free speech (fewer than real people, but out there nevertheless), and freedom of assembly (what about non-profit "voter's clubs" (e.g. League of Women Voters), current-day PACs, or the membership of the political parties themselves?) which might run afoul of that restriction - I think that's part of what allows attack ads funded by PACs in the first place.
1. Whatever the threshold is (10000, 1000 or 100) there will be many politicians tempted to abuse it by getting donations just under the threshold, many times over, from the same people or groups. This is similar to having dead people vote in corrupt party primaries, etc. Of course, that means we would need more teeth in election commissions - tough to get in the current corrupt system.
2. How do you ensure the contributor is a "natural person?" Driver's license, SSN, voter registration (sounds like the best alternative - although some people might consider a hefty campaign contribution far more effective than one measly vote
3. How does this control unions or corp's who merely "facilitate" their members/employees making individual contributions? E.g. all the union rank and file are "encouraged" to contribute to Democrat X, and since nobody knows anything but their names and the amounts (maybe not even that much if they are under the reporting threshold) there is no way to tell who really "bought" Dem X - the union. (Substitute corporation, employees and Republican Y for other side of the coin - equal time eh?). Who would bother to track down 10000's of 100-dollar donations from Joe Average people to find out what axes they have to grind? And who would want that invasion of privacy?
4. BillG could surely afford a senator or two (at least for the next few years). No campaign spending limits essentially means creeping plutocracy, as the rich get richer & more in control, and the rest get poorer & more apathetic about politics. Of course, cynical people (like me) think that's what we have always had anyway, more or less, with some "democracy" sugar coating to appease the masses.
Lawyers, guns and money will get you real power and influence every time. The more you have of the last two, the less you need the first. (FYI: IAAL [I am a lawyer] although I am currently non-practicing).
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
You don't have to be a direct M$ stockholder to agree with the above post. Most of our 401K and mutual funds hold a fair number of M$ shares, so it's in everyone's best interest for them not to tank after whatever corrective action happens. A Microsoft Apps company wouldn't be able to ignore the steadily rising volume of Linux machines, and they would surely deliver Office for Linux. I don't care much for Windows of any variety, but Word and Excel are amazing programs (some would say amazingly elephantine) that I would love to run under Linux.
I think i'd add:
Do not allow bundling of a product which has a direct (non bundled) competitor in the market, unless that competing product is *also* being bundled with a *competing operating system*.
This would allow them to bundle stuff if the competition are doing it, but they won't be able to use bundling as a weapon against their competition.
Deleted
I don't believe MS can be trusted to play by the rules, old or new. If the new rules are vertical split, horizontal split or reveal APIs, MS can still cheat. And MS will cheat if given a chance to do so. Therefore, the govt. should accurately audit the activities of MS or Baby Bills, if splitting will be the solution.
The only way MS could be unable to cheat is if the source code of Windows* is revealed. But that solution, I learn now, seems unlikely. Too bad.
Sigged!
Without wanting to seem overly simplistic, when Mitnick "stole" the Solaris source code from Sun, Sun really didn't "lose" the source itself; instead, it lost its right to be the only people who could do something with/to the source.
Granted, Sun set the value of its own loss, but it seems ludicrous that Solaris would be worth $80M, unless Sun itself were to lose the ability to develop on their own platform. Mitnick didn't accomplish that with his hack.
Also it's not like Sun couldn't change its Source to Solaris (and therefore cheapen, if not make obsolete Mitnick's hack).
What Mitnick did amounts to forcing Sun to share a secret with him. What the open-sourcing of MS Windows would do amounts to forcing MS to share its API with the public computing community. It's not like DoJ would go in and remove boxen, file cabinets and employees from Redmond.
Applied to the Microsoft anti-trust decision, isn't it then a different kind of "taking" to open the source than it would be to remove the Windows meme from the hands and minds of anyone associated with profit-taking at Microsoft (even if such a thing could be done)?
IANAL, but I wouldn't mind hearing one of that excellent panel speak to this issue.
_____
_____
The antidote to bad speech is not censorship, but more speech.
I challenge the notion that requiring a company to open the source code is the same as the taking of property.
Instead, it is merely the removal of copyright restrictions. Actually, it's not even that, because they copyrights can remain. The only difference is that the status of the work would change from unpublished to published. Thus, arguably, no rights would be taken from Microsoft.
Copyright law still protects the authors of published works---books, music, art, etc. You don't see too many of these people worried that their copyrighted works are published.
The rights covered under copyright don't have a direct basis in the U.S. constitution, do they? Property is something you can hold; when you take property from someone, it means that some material thing is taken. Making a copy of something doesn't leave the owner with anything less.
People should learn to distinguish between ``property'' and ``copyright''.
A case could be made that Microsoft has taken more than enough money from people to justify handing over a copy of their source code to these licensees. It could also be argued that so many people are dependent on Microsoft's buggy products that not having access to the source code is dampening productivity and harming the economy.
It should be made illegal for an individual or organization to make another individual or organization depend on software that cannot easily be modified. There needs to be a trade law to ban the sale of software without accompanying source code. If someone wishes to keep software proprietary, the only way to do that should be to keep it unpublished in either form---in other words, don't give a copy to anyone outside of the organization, not in binary or source form.
Or how about this: copyright laws should be changed to accomodate the notion that if the binary code of some program is published, then the source code is considered published, and any licensing terms applying to the binary code should automatically apply to all other forms in which that work appears, including the source code. Thus if a company's source code leaked out, it would automatically be considered licensed to all existing license holders who previously received binaries only.
The purpose of writing in a high level language and translating to machine language is to enable complex software to be developed and maintained, and to be executed efficiently. High level languages were designed to make it convenient to program computers and advance the state of software development, not to gouge customers. The ability to do that is just an accidental side effect which needs to be stomped out.
Whatever representation of the program that is produced by the developers *is* that program. If I write some program in C and call it Foo, and then give you a compiled version, I am not giving you Foo. I'm giving you a shadow cast by Foo in the light of a particular compiler.
Richard Hawkins discusses the importance of
documenting APIs, which is fine, but it is much
more important to document Network Protocols;
i.e. the actual bits that allow a program on
one machine to interact with a progran on
another.
Obscure, difficult-to-reverse-engineer
network protocols were called for in the
Halloween document and it will help competition
if the information is made public. Microsoft
would get to profit from their innovations while
competitors worked to make their products
compatible; but couldn't block out competition
the way they do with DNS, Front Page
extensions, and others.
Consider, for instance, disk file compression. No other OS that I'm aware of bundles that capability, but clearly it is a benefit to consumers that Microsoft did it.
Granted, it sucked to be Stacker when they started bundling it -- but it was good for the market.
What's important is that Microsoft make the decision to include a new capability on the grounds of a competitive OS feature, not as a means of wiping out an application competitor.
I think simply restricting their ability to unbundle does the trick; they can't decide to gouge the consumer for the feature when the other guy is gone.
Furthermore your approach would be virtually meaningless nowadays. Could Microsoft bundle Office? I dare say they could -- StarOffice is bundled with Red Hat. Could they bundle SQL server? Certainly, there are several databases bundled with various Linux distributions. Could they bundle development environments? Again, yes.
When it comes right down to it one or another OS bundles pretty much any kind of application or service you care to pick.
jim
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
dude, if Rob anh Hemos owned Microsoft... now THAT would rule. No, I think we should just let Willy G be sued by everyone. Then they'll go outta business. YAY!
If you think you know what the hell is really going on you're probably full of shit.
If you think you know what the hell is really going on you're probably full of shit.
jdube is who I am.
A worse flaw still, however, is that there are a number of situations in a technologically advanced society that logically require centralization, if not a monopoly.
Most of these we accept as a matter of course. The military (these days), police, emergency services, power, water, sewage, etc. etc.
Now, look at the infamous monopolies of recent years...
- Railroads
- Telephones
And not least, certainly,- Operating systems
Why is it that in many countries the "phone company" is actually run by the government? Simple - what's the sense in having a dozen competing phone companies? The infratructure would be horrendous. (Correction - IS horrendous).If you think about communication as a problem to be solved, you take just one, well-made, system, build it, and everybody uses it. The alternative is an absurd level of redundancy, as every competitor lays their own underground cables, hoists their own telephone poles, and negotiates with your landlord... or, they "cooperate" by leasing each other their cables and facilities. PS, if you think two companies locked in mortal combat "cooperate" effectively, you're one of those charter school kids, aren't you?
To make matters worse, capitalism invariably leads to bad software, and worse software standards.
Hello? tag?
Software development is fundamentelly at odds with commercial enterprise - good software, much like good healthcare and good education, is just not profitable in our economy. And the punchline is that bad software is.
I would hate to be in Jackson's shoes right now. There's nothing the courts can do that will really solve the problem. You've got to have a standard - just as people have to agree on the width of the railroad tracks and the frequencies of the touch tones - otherwise chaos. But as long as some private individual can own and capitalize on that standard, you've got a microsoft in the making. It's no secret there are a thousand niche-microsofts right now... heck, Sun Microsystems is one of them!
What the world needs is an operating system open standard. Or at least some rules to play by. A government-mandated operating system API. Ugh. The irony... I shudder at the thought of depending on federal bureaucrat managing anything more complicated than endorsing a check. Can you imagine the software version of the FCC? Or perhaps the closest match is a kind of architectural standards board...
I wonder which is worse - the stifling effect of a "standard" hardware architecture, a "standard" hardware driver, a "commodity" network protocol, or the stifling effect of Microsoft - with no incentive for and, in fact, many incentives against, ever making any real innovations... coupled with the dread they inspire in anyone who would consider presenting a product, even one vastly superior, to the marketplace.
In the end, I suppose there is no answer really beyond blunt force - something to make the would be monopolists of the future show some forbearance about their dealings with potential competitors - giving them a little push to encourage them to play by the rules of the game. Unfortunately commercial software development is about money, and not software, so I don't know if that's really realistic or not. All this makes the vast body of open source operating system work take on a whole new meaning... It may be our only hope for a truly elegant, robust solution.
We're on the road to Tycho.
Right on!
Performance standards are a great idea. The technology is mature enough to handle this. Want money for the effort? Let MS and everyone else bid for the right to make the first document performance standard. What, the Post Office won't pay for a dancing paperclip link? Too bad, it gets hacked out. Then, game over, all software sold to the state must respect that standard. No more stupid Office games.
I work for a state agency, and I'm sick of seeing people waste time reformating their documents that blow up every freaking software, "update" or even just moving from one printer to another. The costs are real, it's time to end them.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Sentance them to a code freeze and 20 years of debugging!
Several times in this discussion, it has been stated that it would be illegal for the government to force Microsoft to make their Windows source code open. The rationale behind these statements is that it would amount to the government illegally taking property in violation of the Fifth Amendment. I would argue that such takings are already a fact of life, particularly out here in the Far Western states. The takings involved are private real property--real estate-- under the guise of the protection of species or of "green spaces" or some other noble ideal. If the government can declare actual, physical property to be protected in some manner, such that the owner is prevented from making any use of that property, and can do so without compensating the owner, that's illegal taking. It goes on all the time out here. That being the case, I see no reason to believe that some rationale can't be contrived to allow the government to illegally take Microsoft's illectual property in the form of its Windows source code and put it in the open-source arena. And it can be done in such a way that it will appear as if no taking is in fact occurring.
As mentioned by one of the responders, I'm very surprised there haven't been more legal suites brought against Microsoft from the consumers. Remember the Windows refund fiasco and how only a few users were able to get their money back? Isn't this a clear case of their monoply hurting consumers? Shouldn't it be possible to use these findings to pressure them into refunding people for unused copies of Windows? I wonder if now Micorosft would be more willing to negotiate then to brush off people like they did previously.
OS Baby Bill - what would prevent them to keep their monopoly or do a new Office-like suit that get bundled as part of the OS like IE is? Hell they probably could do a much nicer office suit if they started from scratch. And it would be forced down your throat with a Windows upgrade... and then why buy another office product?
Back to square 1.
Office Baby Bill - what prevent them to make an Office platform? It could run apps written in VBA and integrate all kind of services (IE/OE/Exchange integrated/bundled if they are not already) They could port the whole Office platform to other OSes and once they have the monopoly of Office product on a given platform they can start the same kind of levrage they do on Apple (DO this or we bail Office out of your OS/hardware.) Hell they could do what Netscape planned to do with their stuff, take over the whole screen and serve as an interface to the unterlying system. We would still have a nasty monopoly.
I am missing something?
Can different divisions of Microsoft face real competition without an OS monopoly? It took many years and releases for most MS products to become even moderately useful. Can you honestly see MS developers going toe to toe with real software developers on equal ground? I do see their mouse and keyboard divisions as doing rather well though :P
I think this point actually exposes much about the problem with forcing an open policy. It is an all or nothing affair. It would be impossible to enforce without dumping the entire binary build process into an encyclopedia.
A more pragmatic approach, such as large fines and divestiture would be warranted.
Here's a proposal, which I'll call the "Shattered Shards Proposal." Perhaps the auction scenario should be applied, but at an even finer grained level than OS/APPS/NET/MEDIA. After all, these things are so intertwined within MS, presumably on the protocol and binary levels, it would be negligent for each baby to not collaborate.
A "shatter" approach would be nice (as opposed to the often recommended "crack" approach). It would possibly even force (in the survival sense) of each shard to fully document and publish (licensed however which way it finds necessary) the interfaces to what it knows and can contribute, at least so far as it is required to further interoperate with other shards.
This doesn't guarantee open source. It doesn't guarantee survival of every shard. But it does reinstate competition and consumer benefit because now each and every bloated part is exposed. What a shard needs are the I/O interfaces to survive. A massive, distributed, anti-cruft movement would occur, and the Windows consumer base would remain largely intact and benefit from streamlining and distributed quality control. The reason it would remain intact is because each shard is so exposed, it will be forced to cooperate with the others to survive. This emergent behavior is similar to what is often demonstrated in game theory. It would also allow more cross-pollination with other OSes.
Shards would become larger as you move out on the spectrum away from the OS, the fundamental basis of the Monopoly. OS shatters the most, then APPS, then NET, then MEDIA.
The "core" Microsoft company could be reduced to coordination priviledges, and stock holders would see their stock divided into a Microsoft portfolio. Market demands would further ensure proper future innovation, and all current Microsoft shareholders would benefit and cringe alike as different parts of their portfolio prospered and plummeted. The net effect would be a truly progressive opporunity.
It would be an absolutely amazing phenomenon to see. Does anyone else see possibilities with this? BTW, I've never invested in Microsoft. I think this is a win-win situation, though. Those who lose out the most are the execs who wielded the most control, and effected the most harm. Their empire would be "shattered".
Previous selelments with exploding pick up trucks etc. indicate the following remedy:
All Windoze owners get a $0.25 coupon on their purchase of W2k, valid only for 30 days after the official October 6th, 1999 release date. Same for office users.
FART!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
They were planning on buying out microsoft anyway... (see various geeks in space episodes)
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
but there are just a couple basic things that I would like required of MS:
1.) That PC manufacturers be able to ship new PCs with ANY OS they choose, or none (note for e.g. what happened to Dell-Belgium when they tried to sell PCs with no OS).
2.) That any changes they make to standard protocols (or any kind of standard) be made public so that other companies can adopt them if they choose (e.g. their proprietary XML extensions).
One of the biggest reasons Netscape crashes so much, IMHO, is that it keeps coming across MS specific content in pages which it doesn't know how to interpret, or interprets wrong.
There are, of course, other issues, but the above seem most important to me.
The thing that keeps people coming back is the monopoly of the API and standards. So lets have M$ pay to put the API and standards on 2 competing OS's. Such as Linux and Free BSD? Make them responsible to make Direct X technology standards work with other OS's. Make this for say 5 years. At thank point the Entry for new apps and cross platform API's is solved. They have to give everyone what they fought to stop with thier monopoly. Make API source open, and have then guarantee it works 99% as fast and bug free on all OS's or it doesn't go into windows.
Also setup perhaps a consortium to regulate/look at all API's.
And lastly force them break up horizontally, APPS, GAMES, OS, INTERNET, etc... This will solve most of the problems we currently have and allow them to maintain thier Windows ownership. We still need to have other regulation on thier purchasing of new technologies and thier contracts, that should go on for the next 10 years minimum. M$ pays for all burden to regulate themselves of course like every other company that has done this.
Later
They would also be subject to the equal-access laws. If Compaq decides that their customers would rather use Netscape instead of IE, MS would be required to provide Compaq with equal access to the Windows desktop.
Judge Jackson today appointed another judge as a "private" mediator to help settle this thing. More here.
The primary goal of antitrust law is to encourage competition by preventing monopolies from utilizing monopoly power to squash competition. By splitting microsoft up into multiple entities with equal access to microsoft's intellectual property, you create competition. You immediately curtail the ability of any of the companies to utilize monopoly market power to prevent competition. The concern about fractured APIs has a software solution. The virtual machine. The poster is correct in his description of how developers will behave; most will develop for the largest audience. This means that no matter what kind of structural remedy is imposed, the network effect exhibited by the software market will eventually re-establish monopoly. Unless you destroy the tie between the operating system (which can be controlled by one vendor) and the APIs (which cause the applications barrier to entry). Virtual machines allow OS agnostic software development. OS agnostic applications translates into vigorous OS competition. It would also increase competition among hardware vendors. The tradeoff, at least initially is performance. But that's always been the tradeoff when a major shift in the application platform has occured. Think of the initial switch from commandline utilities to mouse driven guis that happened with the PC. How many of you can honestly say that there weren't many, MANY things you could do faster with a commandline than you can with the GUI world of today? But the world made the switch because the improved user experience was worth it.
Even if nobody gets access to source code, and there's no serious damages, this is the structure we need, based on the following facts:
- Windows 9* is junky, but insanely prevalent
- Windows 9* runs on older computers and runs more games and software than NT/W2K
- NT/W2K is not as junky as 9*, but is a lot more expensive and is geared (supposedly) for big iron, or at least as near big iron as PCs ever get
- NT/W2K is much less cooperative about running on junky hardware, and won't run anywhere near as much software, particularly games, particularly legacy games that make assumptions about having direct access to hardware
See the pattern here? It may or may not be difficult to compete with W2K in the server market, what with PHBs getting sold on creative benchmarking- but it would not be hard for a 'W95 forever!' sort of product to do great against it in the consumer market, merrily thriving in a chaos of confusion and muddled old junky hardware. At the same time, W95 is junky enough that it's reasonable for other consumer OSes to arise as alternatives (Macintosh is definitely best positioned, but why shouldn't there be others, ones that run on PC hardware?). On the flip side, W95 couldn't possibly compete with W2K on the server side- but without the money from a locked-in _consumer_ monopoly to prop it up, the Windows Server company would have to really work hard to avoid being overcome by Solaris on the high end, Linux on the low end, BSD all over, etc etc. And the best part is: by being redefined as specifically a server OS, NT would suddenly not have to incorporate all sorts of gamer junk and bloat itself with consumer crud in efforts to eventually take over from 95/98: it'd be able to start competing more _effectively_, albeit at a higher price than its already high price- but it might actually become fairly _good_ and worthy of respect if it's not being molded into the next consumer OS.Seriously: the _most_ important split anyone could structurally make would be consumer/professional, on the OS itself. Yes, the Windows 95 legacy is garbage: but THAT is what the monopoly is mostly built of, and a company made to do specifically maintenance of the Windows 95/98/Millenium legacy would be a heck of a profitable operation. Lots of old and current PCs would remain in service running it for years- it'd never get stable or reliable, but so what? Gradually alternatives would arise without obliterating 9* as a nice standardised consumer platform. Hell, Microsoft's _current_ plans, to eventually transition all Windows users to W2K someday, would cause more damage to the industry than this.
First, much-discussed above, is make the OS API's open, and available in a timely way. MS of course claims the API's are already open, so I think a key issue for the open-source community is to arrive at proposals as to what would need to be done to achieve and enforce this. The suggestions of some kind of auditing by a committee of individuals formed from competitors who would have access to the internals might be one way. But anyhow, it needs discussion.
Second, and hardly discussed so far, is how to prevent the OS division -- even if it is separated from the other divisions -- from embrace and extend. Putting the web browser "in the operating system" is only the latest of a long chain of practices that kill creative software development and give MS control of standards by taking whatever cool things the software development community has created and putting them in the operating system. Voice recognition will soon be another example, if MS has its way.
So, suppose there's a separate OS division, not allowed to make 'applications', and forced to have open API's. Do all that, and you still haven't stopped embrace and extend. What can be added to the remedy to address this? I could imagine forbidding the OS division from incorpating functionality that already exists in the applications market, where 'exists' is defined somehow e.g. in terms of a some significant number of copies distributed and/or $$ in sales, and again perhaps enforcement by some outside auditing committee ...
I don't know what a practical, enforcable remedy is, but I think discussing this and coming up with good proposals will be important.
The strength of the Open Source movement is in the acceptance of published "standards" such as HTTP, TCP/IP, DNS. Microsoft is moving to DNS in Win2000, instead of NetBios names. As of now, there are still no accepted universal format for documents that are shared. Except HTML. The MS Office thing will sort itself out just as how MS went their own way with NetBios and are now coming back to DNS. Several changes are making them move into accepted standards. what we really need is for all of the office suite companies involved in Linux/Open Source to publish their code for document formatting. Then KOffice can share docs with Gnome Office, which can share docs with Word Perfect(hint, hint Corel) and vice versa. This would be a great move for everyone involved. Personally, I don't open MS documents when I get them. I reply to the sender and ask for it in an acceptable format for me to use(cvs for Excel, txt or HTML for Word .docs). And explain to them that not everyone uses MS products. So no one should use that as his sole excuse for keeping Windows 9*/NT. The only that keeps me using it is Outlook. And that is because the POP server isn't enabled in Exchange.
Damnit, they already work 20 hours a day! How on Earth could you do that to them!
What we need are a bunch of clones! "CmdTco #4452 here, MS needs more Hemoses. The NT code keeps making them commit suicide."
:-)
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
One more thought, that should have been in the original post: the OS division surely should be able to add open API's for new functionality, be it web browsing or voice recognition. But the software that utilizes those API's shouldn't be part of the operating system, at least if there's a prior market for such software functionality.
Are you guys nuts? It doesn't take food, clothing
or house. Computer is NOT a vitally needed thing.
No one dies without it. And no one is forced to
buy Windoze under the gun. You voted with your $$$
for it, now you find yourselves screwed. There ya go!
Competition to Windoze is not `around the corner'
You just have to stop viewing netporn and dload BSD or Linux. Ahh, you are imdecile and can't figure `cp' or `cat'?
There ya go! Feel BSD/Linux immature? Go buy Sun. Get a Cray. Got no money? There ya go! You spent it on Muzzdie.
Make your tiny brain work again! What remedy will _existing_ Windows users benefit from?
Just one- leave M$ alone. Want a competition? Become it. Go and tell everyone how good our OSs are, not how bad Muzzdie is! Explain and convince, don't rant and flame and they will come. Swapping one Bill to another won't make John happy. Unless he's another Bill.
KuroiNeko
Slashdot needs to grow beyond Linux, not only because not every uses Linux, but also because if Rob et al concentrated on articles like this one, Slashdot would really stand out among other news sites.
I mean, look at some of the stuff posted recently: Suse and VA Linux Partnership - New ATi 3D Chip - HowTo on booting Linux on iMac DV's. This stuff is just so mundane, and it makes Slashdot look like any of the other thousand Linux advocacy sites that all say the same things.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
^_^
accadacca
Maybe not the best example considering MS stole compression from STAC. One of the few times MS actually got stung in a settlement.
heh heh
-- We are Linux. Resistance is measured in Ohms.
If you take the Findings as true, there is a good argument that microsoft used its monopoly power to extort concessions from intel and compaq and attempted to extort netscape out of the windows market. If they used a telephone in furtherance of this illegal conspiracy to extort they fall under RICO which would allow the siezure of those items used in or gained from the crimes, including microsoft's precious code, which the gov't could own and license to all who will pay a modest royalty.
Now I've had time to think about it, I don't think it goes far enough. Microsoft is not a progressive company. Sure they like to bundle stuff and give things away until they have a market stranglehold, but technically, they are not innovative or progressive.
Wow, what an understatement! I completely disagree here; Stacker was the market. There was nothing until Stacker! If there is any company which has a grievance against MS, it's Stacker. We'll never know what other innovations they might have come up with.
AIX includes filesystem compression, as does Linux. It's of extremely limited use though, especially on a server system, as the CPU requirement is extremely high and you never know *exactly* how much space you have left. You say it was to the benefit of the consumer, but poor quality software and the unjudicious use of disk compression could cause devastation.
The power that Microsoft has been abusing with their monopoly position is the network effect that their application bundling and integration provides. If they continue to be allowed to bundle applications together (And I include the individual MS Office applications here), the network effect will persist and so will their market abuse.
The only way to prevent this effect is to break this hard relationship between the applications. Excel is sold by one complany, Word by another, Outlook by another, Windows by another.
Each application would then have to stand up to real market competition on it's own. Now, there is no reason that the individual applications could not still integrate well with each other, but there would also be no reason that other software houses like borland, lotus, corel could not also integrate their applications with the individual MS office applications. This would also encourage open standards for application communication. It would also mean that I could purchase a word processor without also paying for a spreadsheet, email client, drawing package and slide viewer.
Star Office isn't bundled with Red Hat. The SQL databases bundled with the various Linux distributions are not in competition with SQL server. If it was Oracle, Informix, DB2 and I'd agree with you, but not PostgreSQL and MySQL. Perhaps I should qualify my previous statement with "significant competition".
I agree, and if Microsoft ever actually managed to innovate a real new operating system feature (far fetched I know), there would be no competition and they'd be free to include the feature. Otherwise they would have to sell the feature as a distinct product which would have to stand up against the competing product. Something like Beowulf might have been an example of such an operating system innovation.
I don't actually see them unbundling anything... Ever... Even after they've destroyed the market. They just seem to keep on adding bloat and gouging more for the larger package. Which makes an unbundling restriction a bit pointless.
Three steps:
:-)
1. As Scott McNealy says, no buying other companies, technology, etc.
2. All sales of any and every kind must be done to a published schedule, and all sales published.
3. All software which is sold as an OS must function as a standalone OS, and must be simultaneously released as source code. M$ retains the copyright, but it must be available for media cost, or free download. No one else can sell executables based on it, or modified copies.
(1) prevents them threatening to buy an enemy's enemy, and forces them to actually innovate for a change.
(2) prevents those sweetheart bribery deals and co-marketing bribes.
(3) truly opens up the API. No more guessing about secret code. It would be nice to insist on releasing source in advance, but that would lock in bugs which are found during the advance period. It also would slow down innovation drastically, and (1) is meant to force innovation.
(3) also encourages them to stop their fake integration
I realize there is a problem with third party code. Perhaps M$ could be fined enough to cover licensing costs.
I believe this would not amount to a "taking" of their intellectual property, because the code is still owned by them. No one could run modified binaries unless they had a proper license in the firts place. There would be no increase in piracy; pirates want binaries not source.
--
Infuriate left and right
It is amusing, people who scream "guvmint stay out" when a big greedy corporation defrauds millions of people, yet scream just as loud when a petty thief innovates his way into their house to steal a TV. The fact is, M$ has been a persistent monopoly abuser, they have broken the law, and they deserve to be slapped around as much as possible.
Similar amusing are those who say "Look how much M$ has given us, leave them alone". Gee, if Henry Ford had driven General Motors out of business, would they be proudly proclaiming how great he was for giving us black model Ts? The point is, M$ has stomped all over true innovation. We would be much further along if not held back by M$ crap and the pointless upgrade shuffle to boost their revenues.
--
Infuriate left and right
After all, a contract is by definition a 2 way binding agreement. I can't send you a letter with a $100 bill in it and write on it by opening this you are legally obligated to send me $200. Why should MS have an exception with their ULA?
Since it has been found that Microsoft has a monopoly on Windows, one can argue that the EULA is not a voluntary contract. Any involuntary contract is not valid.
Any time now, I expect a class action lawyer slime to nail Microsoft on that principle, making them liable for all of the bugs and security problems that their EULA supposedly protects them from.
The only good weather is bad weather.
In fact, Microsoft has slowly changed the meaning of "Operating System" to be "Any bag of software that happens to have a kernel hidden somewhere within it."
Only a marketeer consider any bag of software containing a kernel to be an OS.
By confusing the meaning of the term "Operating System,"Microsoft is able to mislabel some of their monopolistic practices as "innovating" what should be application into the operating system.
An OS is fundamentally a facility which provides applications programs access to common resources via an API. Good software practice keeps the API relatively simple. Additional layers of functionality are then built *on top of the API* - not inside of the OS. Microsoft, on the other hand, defines the "operating system" as whatever ships under the operating system license.
If we deconstruct a Windows system, we find:
I just hope the world gets over the intentionally muddled definition of an "Operating System" that Microsoft puts forth.
The only good weather is bad weather.
Multiple competing versions of windows wouldn't be competing to try and define the defacto standard API. What they would be aiming for is to be the one that would run the most legacy apps.
The thing is, there is just so much software out there written to the various versions of the win32 API that any new windows OS would die a very quick death if they tried to introduce incompatibilities with that API. People don't want to have to buy new versions of their old software just because they upgraded their OS - if one of the competitors fixed things so that they had to, then that version would be spurned like the plague.
To put it another way, the environment where the different windows versions would be competing isn't in the API space, it's in the application space. Given that the vast majority of that application space is already written to a particular set of APIs, there would be absolutely nothing to be gained by trying to compete in the API space - you'd be forced to establish an essentially completely new API, which is where Judge Jackson's "Applications barrier to entry" comes in.
If this was a normal case of OS competition then yes, things would probably pan out the way that you think, but it wouldn't be normal. New windows versions would be competing to make money from an established set of applications, rather than from an entirely new platform, and so incompatibilities that broke those applications would be suicidal. And if the applications work, who cares about anything else?
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
I'm not saying they should be exempt from laws just for being big. If MS breaks a specific law that also applies to smaller companies, sure, I think they should be punished. If MS perpetrates fraud, etc., yeah, they should be punished.
:P
But that's NOT the point of monopoly law. Monopoly law by definition ONLY applies to large companies (which shows I'm not saying big companies shouldn't be punished like little ones since I'm talking about something that only applies to big companies in the first place).
And actually, I'm not entirely against monopoly laws, either. I think MS should be prevented from doing Bad Things with their power. However, I think we should enforce those laws through things like fines, which would make it uneconomical to do Bad Things.. the best way to tell a corporation what to do. After all, this works (to some extent) with environmental protection fines.
I do NOT, however, think we should directly interfere with the business model because we know so little about it that we could cause lots of weird collateral damage.
Yes, fining them could do collateral damage too, but the effects of a company losing money are much better known than the effects of a company being split up or forced to open their code.
Sorry I forgot to mention I think fines are okay in my original post.
One of the remedies that could be applied in the case of MS which I haven't seen mentioned is that which was visited on IBM i.e. the unbundling of software and hardware. This allowed the plug-compatable players to enter IBM's mainframe market.
In much the same way, the PC market is really a bundled hardware/software market - it is practically impossible to buy a PC or laptop from a high street computer re-seller without Windows installed, and M$'s OEM contracts lock out other O/S vendors.
What if M$ was forbidden to OEM the O/S and must supply ALL the software as a retail item, so that either the retailer or consumer was responsible for loading the O/S and applications.
A couple of things might happen - all those people who claim Linux is too hard to install might just find for the average Joe, Windows is no easier. Also, with the unbundling of the hw/sw, users might begin to choose Linux+StarOffice etc for maybe $50 or $500 for the full M$ equivalent.
I'm sure these experts, who have provided us with such an excellent article, are correct...but I just don't understand the distinction:
Why is it so impossible to "take somebody's property no matter how bad they are", and yet "civil forfeiture" such a popular weapon in the drug war? You can lose your house and car if you grow dope in the backyard as they are "tools of the crime" or some such, and all your money that a dog claims to smell drugs on.
In this case, the Windows code is the whole of the asset of the OS monopoly that made the "crime" possible! You can take away a guy's gun (his property) if he won't stop shooting people with it....
As a devout computer user/coder/digital artist, but particularly a mac user since the 512k, I have taken flak after flak from PC/Linux/UNIX users for years for my mac loyalty. (No flames, but also keep reading, I have some valid points!) I believe that this antitrust trial is the turnaround for Apple to be placed on top-of the INTERNET( the future and arguably the point of computing). Let me explain....Notice that Apple is keeping very quiet on this M&%$ antitrust issue. There are no Steve Jobs "MS slamming" comments or interviews. Interesting... But wait there's more. Also remember when Apple was doing "badly" a few years ago and the stock was down to ~16 dollars a share and all of the news media was saying Apple was dead and macs sucked (No flames, attempts at reinforcing a "possible" truth, etc.) and "don't buy macs", etc. crap. Indeed, the popular Media mis/disinformation campaign was in full swing(Maybe most of you don't actually remember that.:->) Well what happened, but Microsoft came and out of a gesture of "good faith" to Apple, helped the "ailing" company via a one time purchase of 150 million in non voting Apple stock (even though Apple at the time had healthy cash reserves of something like a billion dollars or so and was IN NO DANGER OF DYING!!. For more information, please consult Eric Yang's Macevolution site ). All of the sudden, Apple was okay again. Public perception of Apple changed. In other words, Apples MIND share increased in terms of the general public (well, most of em.) See this article for more info, or this article from the Macweek news archives for a refresher or look at Eric Yang's detailed financial models here. Apple's view in the popular media changed, the stock went up, IMAC's came out, not to mention the G4 ( a supercomputer-yes!-who cares about the athlon, Celeron, crapalon, etc.). And now, Apple's stock is projected to get to 115$ a share (Whether you like it or not, your cousin is buying an Imac and so is your mom, talk about market share-oh and it can run LINUX and you can run Windoze 98 and apps via virtual PC!). This is part of MS's plan. They knew this finding of fact would happen- they're guilty as hell and always have been! Microsoft is one of the smartest and most devious companies. That's why they invested in Apple during the time when the Government was starting this whole antitrust effort. Coincidence. NO! The only way to explain MS inept legal defense is that they knew they could't win, so why really try? Microsoft versus the Government, yeah like who would really win?! That's smart-that's reality. What do rats do when the ship is sinking but jump off and find a smaller piece of wood to ride on. Enter Apple-the Imac-not to mention the Quicktime API (THE FUTURE OF THE WEB, A/V/databasehooks/flash/interactivity/Java version. Imagine a whole interface that does all you would want to do in a NC java enabled box for 100 bucks-nuff said--bring on the flames!!). Also remember that according to Steve Jobs, this is the year of Desktop Video which in Apple products is built upon Quicktime! Like Microsoft really could attempt to change the Internet with it's crap ass methodology as opposed to open sourcing, and UNIX(Think, free, extensible-you guys already do). What is the line from "Blade Runner" about the coding of DNA and once it's been sequenced any changes give rise to revertant colonies or a virus like "...rats leaving a sinking ship"? The government can't change Microsoft's ways with this suit. Their gonna get the belt. MS is dead, "...they burned twice as bright and so last half as long" (love that Blade Runner!). All they can do is try and be part of the next wave and still make some money in some form, but Open Source has and will more thoroughly defeat them. Well, to badly misquote Blade Runner again, Microsoft "...wants more life, fucker!". And Apple is the way to do it. In terms of mind share, Apple and the Mac platform are it. I have been able to run any program I needed on my Mac due to the FACT that I can use UNIX, macOS apps, LINUX apps, or Windoze apps via virtual PC on any new mac. This is clearly documented everywhere. What it is is the most advanced computing technology. This technology speaks more "languages" if you will. It is more versatile a platform. Look and see, don't be in denial PC and LINUX users! SO in other words maybe we're finally getting everything that we want-run any app on your desktop-and that desktop happens to be Apple products. Who is the winner? Apple. I am right. You'll see. Now bring on the flames....
They're all the same. They are methods of communication. All communication to an outside world should be based on some form of standard.
^H is backspace. ^M is carriage return. You meant to use ^H.
Actually, I'm inclinded to agree that something close to natural monopoly would apply. However, without distortion of the market, it is a *contestable* natural monopoly. Indeed, microsoft replaced the prior incumbent (Digital Research).
Natural monopoly, however, does not give the incumbent the right to use the monopoly power to inhibit challengers. Netscape was the challenger, and the incumbent used the current monopoly's power to prevent challenge. Preventing the contest was even the motivation for the MS actions.
>After that, what is to prevent the MS version of >Windows from coming up with more secret APIs and
>the MS App guys "reverse engineering" (yeah,
>right), or discovering top secret documents in a
>dumpster, so they can use these APIs in the next
>version of Word?
Quite simply, it wouldn't be an auction and then everyone sent their separate ways, but the terms of the order would include mandatory cross licencsing from (and maybe too) ms for a term of years, and/or a mechanism for agreement/coordination of the API for some years to come.
I'm sinning myself too, but it's late out here....
Many people talking about splitting up Microsoft seem to forget the mainpoint about this.
The main point is that Microsoft (operating systems division) is trying to maintain their monopoly. They didn't mind fighting the browser war for this. If they'd just let Java happen, by now everybody would've been running Java word processors on any platform they'd like on their PC, not neccesarily MS Windows.
That's what Microsoft succesfully prevented in the browser wars. It is about cost-of-entry into the PC operating systems market.
This is just one of the "bad" things that microsoft did to keep their market share. A ruling in this case should prevent MANY of those "bad" things from happening again. Splitting microsoft up doesn't help enough, IMHO.
Roger.
"What FUD. None of these jokers are active lawyers. What "credentials" do they have. Oh yeah, one guy is a sysadmin who has "followed MS anti trust trial since 1997."
FUD FUD FUD."
Why was this marked down???? These people have ZERO CREDENTIALS at all! This is the worst kind of "journalism".
I'm surprised that so many people have asserted that forcing the revelation of a document's contents is taking somebody's property. The government does this all the time without any compensation. A whole host of court records are public, as are a whole bunch of other things.
Anyone remember the recent impeachment trial? The government revealed the contents of the Linda Tripp Tapes without any compensation to either Linda Tripp or Monica Lewinsky. That was not a criminal matter. The two ladies certainly held the copyright to those tapes and we all know that many a tabloid T.V. show would have paid big bucks for the exclusive right to air those tapes. So, that copyright certainly was worth money. But it isn't property by any stretch of the imagination and so it doesn't fall under the constitutional prohibition against taking property without compensation.
We all should remember not to use misleading phrases like "intellectual property."
If any remedy is implemented that results in multiple companies selling different implementations of Windows, one of two situations will result:
1) Windows will truly and forevermore be locked in as THE personal computer operating system. Your choices will go from (Windows, Linux, Mac) to (Windows A, Windows B, Windows C). If the "alternative" to Windows is also Windows, Linux loses most of its appeal. VERY, VERY BAD.
2) All the standardization that has been painfully established to date will be shattered by the
creation of mutually incompatible versions of Windows, such that no single compiled app will run on more than 30% of PCs. WORSE.
I'm all for reining in MS, but let's not even think about splitting up their OS division into multiple competitive entities or licensing the source code. Much better to leave the OS company as one single entity so that Linux won't get squeezed out.