I didn't try to register, but using the test drive feature seems to work. It seemed functional, with the exception of applying the distortion filters. (Safari 3.1 and OS X 10.5.2)
So this is an article that doesn't give any answers to the question it poses and references a study presented at blackhat, but which has not yet been published and in fact whose presentation is not even online yet.
Can't we at least wait until we have some sort of data to discuss before embarking on half-assed arguments about how relevant the data is and if the methodology is credible?
Note the difference between Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader.
A note for clarification: Adobe Reader used to be named Acrobat Reader, so users mistaking one for the other have been understandably mislead by Adobe's own marketing in the past.
This is really cool that competition has provoked a response from the browsers to be compliant, but until IE is compliant, does it make a lick of difference?
It might actually make a difference for when IE is complaint, depending upon what the EU decides with regard to Opera's antirust complaint against Microsoft. I also like to think that with Firefox, Safari, Opera, Opera Mobile, Safari Mobile, and the other embedded browsers the market for Web browsers might be slowly leaving Microsoft behind... maybe enough so that in the EU or somewhere where companies feel antitrust law will actually be enforced, OEMs might ship with another browser installed.
Interesting. You must take great care then, between your daemon and OS improvements, not to mix ANY source code between the linux code base and your proprietary daemon in order to avoid triggering the distribution sharing clauses of GPL. If you slip up even once then you have to release the full version on demand as of the date that the distribution occurred (at least theoretically). Surely that is a risk?
I've never known that to be a problem. How much code does one reuse between a daemon and an OS? Anyway, the risk is only one way. You can't copy any code from the Linux code base, but there is no problem with inserting our code into both the daemon and Linux, since nothing prevents code from being licensed as GPL and a closed license simultaneously. (Although if that was an issue it would be best to comment it well so that if anyone accused you of transferring code the other way you could prove the provenance.) Perhaps you overestimate the risks. IBM and many others been applying this type of business model since forever.
We already know why IE7 is behind but what makes Firefox lag behind Safari and Opera with this?
I'd be more likely to guess this has something to do with the code base and the number of different contributors. Opera has one group contributing. Webkit has about four big contributors. Gecko has a whole lot of different people contributing, even individuals. I've also heard the code for Gecko is a lot more convoluted, whereas the more recently engineered Webkit is fairly clean and straightforward.
Does it all come down to browser share = slow progress?
I doubt it, although the more versions of each platform supported adds to the time for each QA cycle.
Or could it be that Opera and Safari are putting other projects behind to pass the Acid3 test?
I don't know about Opera, but I know there are dedicated teams specifically targeting Acid3 for Webkit and Gecko.
". Now, if our hypothetical firm is going to expend effort (i.e. paid developer time) to improve an open source product then isn't it more likely that they are going to attempt to add or improve features that have more to do with their core competency and not ancillary bug fixes or improvements?
No. That's the whole point of using OSS for areas outside of core competency (areas where you are primarily a software user, rather than a developer). If your core competency is specialized software development then you only want to open source it if your customers force you to. OSS benefits the user, so you open software you primarily use, not that you try to sell.
In GPL for example, the act of distribution triggers the share and share alike clause, so unless you use the improvements only internally or perhaps as part of a Software as a Service (SAS) model how can you keep your "secret sauce" secret?
Linux is GPL'd. Literally thousands of companies sell products that run Linux as well as some closed and proprietary software on top of it. Those companies contribute to OSS with their fixes and improvements to Linux. This allows them to undercut companies still using VxWorks or Windows, or some other, proprietary software only available from one vendor who can gouge them so long as the short term costs they add are less than the cost of an OS migration. The whole reason Wind River supports Linux today (instead of just their proprietary VXWorks) is because companies using VxWorks were undercut by companies who brought Linux to market and Wind River customers demanded Linux support or walked (or went out of business in many cases).
One question I have for you, if I may: How can you "distribute" your improved routing code as an improvement to an open source software system without exposing your improved routing algorithm as well?
You don't. You make improvements to the OS as needed to support your proprietary routing daemon. That daemon you keep closed source unless someone brings an OSS competitor to market t which point you redefine your core competency in a hurry).
That is one of the problems with using open source software in franchise operations.
OSS benefits users, not developers (unless they are also users). You apply it to cut costs in areas where you are primarily a user. This is generally not a problem for most applications, but for some where your core competency is tied to OSS, you have to move to a license that works, like BSD. (Even Microsoft has incorporated BSD code into their OS).
See, this sentence sums up why I wonder why businesses would want to jump on the OSS bandwagon. It's great if you're a startup, as you can leverage the work of other people. But if I'm already the Goliath that everyone is chasing, it is in my interest to keep barriers to entry into my market as high as possible - why would I want to make it easier for other participants?
In many cases we're talking about things that aren't barriers to entry in the first place. OSS is appropriate for areas where you are not developing your core competency and thus would like to reduce costs so a smaller, more agile startup cannot beat you to the punch. Suppose, for example, you create home theater systems. You use a real time OS (VxWorks) from Wind River. You use custom database. You use a custom barcode scanner software to automatically add works by accessing an online database of those works. You use a custom touch screen interface you outsource to a user interface development contractor. Your core competency is your hardware, putting it all together into one nice package, and leveraging your existing marketing and sales channels.
So here's what you can do and why it is (potentially) to your advantage. Switch your OS to Linux to save having to license VxWorks and to gain the ability to take bids on OS work from both Wind River and other places that support Linux. This probably saves you significant money and does nothing to make things easier for a competitor. Drop your custom database and switch to an OSS one so you don't have to waste dev time on it. Open Source your barcode scanning software so other companies that do the same thing help defray your development costs of it, while not lowering barrier to entry (since others cannot use your data it plugs into). Open source your touch screen interface so that you can get free work from others that use it and so for your next version other contractors can gain expertise and offer competitive bids (while your trademarks and copyrights help prevent others from leveraging your work too easily).
For the most part, in the above example, you're not doing much that will be of benefit to new startups, but you are cutting costs so that a startup can't introduce a new product that uses OSS versions of all of the above and significantly undercuts your price. In much of the consumer electronics world, big players have already moved to OSS for most of the above. I remember when Wind River did not give customers the option of Linux, and a lot of their customers were badly undercut by startups that did bring a Linux based competing product to market. What the gentleman from Redhat is proposing is talking to companies in other industries about how to move some of their proprietary components to OSS to beat startups to the punch and to allow them to cut costs and focus on their core competency.
Sure, it might cut my costs, too, but I'd rather keep my costs a little higher because I have to do more in-house creative work than lower the costs for my competitors so that they can more easily catch up to me without the investment in creative work that I've already put in.
Obviously you don't want to remove barriers to entry, but the point is many of the things you might consider to be providing barriers are less of a barrier than you think because of the option of others to share the cost to overcome them and then you may find yourself supporting an unneeded proprietary solution that is an albatross raising your costs. Worse, their may be existing OSS projects that are drop in replacements for your proprietary, outsourced components and a startup can come in, use OSS, and significantly undercut you immediately and for every future revision of the product until you copy them (incurring a migration expense and increasing time to market).
Almost every company of any size these days uses software and a lot of them are vulnerable to startups and existing competitors that may be more OSS savvy. Redhat is proposing explaining the OSS business models to those companies and helping them leverage the advantages of the OSS model where appropriate.
While I can see why this might benefit Red Hat it is not as clear to me how it benefits the companies serving that niche. It is always better, from the standpoint of any given company, to compete from the position of a franchise rather than as a price taker in a purely competitive market.
It benefits the companies because they have lower costs. They can charge less than companies that don't share software development costs with others. They gain from other reduced costs.
The provider of franchise product or service has greater pricing power than a price-taker in a purely competitive industry (although less than a monopoly) and pricing power translates into extra economic profits for the controller of the franchise.
Most companies compete with others in hundreds of ways unrelated to their core competency. Open sourcing software in those areas are what is of benefit.
Lowering costs is a worthwhile goal, but it must also be weighed against the possibility of helping one's competitors, particularly in a niche industry where franchises are more common, and lowering the barrier of entry to new competitors.
Contributing to an OS, doesn't significantly lower the barrier to entry in a market that builds upon OS's. For tertiary, niche markets where competition already exists, but is largely a commodity, you can undercut the competition... if you are the first to OSS your software and you can gain momentum behind it.
Also, why would a company want competitive bidding if they could possibly help it?
I think you're missing the point. OSS benefits users. If you write software for sale, it will reduce your profits. If you develop software you use internally, it will cost less money if you OSS it. Redhat is talking about getting companies that have internal software projects developed by their own engineers or by contractors to OSS them. It is to the advantage of those companies to be able to get competitive bids on future development. The biggest failure of people to understand OSS as a business model is they approach it from the point of view of a software development house or contract coder. OSS is a feature. Adding a feature always costs software developers money in the short term. OSS benefits users, so if you're a software user it can benefit you.
From the standpoint of the profit maximizer a no-bid contract is best and limited bidding is the next best thing.
Okay, let me give you an example I already gave in another post in this thread:
For example, I worked at a company that made core network routers. Routing software was our core competency, but OS development was not. By using NetBSD or Linux as the basis for routers, we save a lot of money and development work. We contributed to NetBSD and Linux when we needed a new feature or there was a bug that needed fixing. Did our competitors benefit from that? Yes. Did we benefit when our competitors did the same? Yes. Did companies that relied on expensive, proprietary OS's they paid for or made themselves crush us? Hell no. They went out of business or switched to the same OS's we were using because otherwise we undercut their prices by a huge margin. We never open sourced our core routing protocols and code (where we really competed) and the rest we used OSS (OS, dev tools, apache for Web interface, etc.). The same situation applies in almost any industry.
You'll note in the above situation we were consumers of OS's, Web servers, dev tools, etc. We were creators of routing software and finished routers. It was to our benefit to use and create OSS for products we consumed rather than buying them from proprietary vendors. It was not to our advantage to OSS our core competency upon which we compete. For the average business there are a lot of software areas outside of core competency and companies can cut costs by turning some of those internal projects or custom contract works into OSS projects.
Where's the advantage to the company that does the initial software development?
I think I already covered that, but here it goes again. Money spent is spent. You can't un-spend it an no one who went business school should fall prey to the fallacy of throwing good money after bad. In general, all companies have already invested in some niche software. The company open sourcing code may or may not have the best software out there, but making it OSS provides them, the users, with a new feature.
When you open source some project you benefit in numerous ways. First, you get are likely to get free code contributed by others (money you might otherwise have had to spend). New market entrants are more likely to adopt the same software you're using, giving you an advantage in interoperability in the future. It is not uncommon for the entire industry to slowly move to the software you already use which is a migration cost for them and if someone else beat you to supplying their code as the open source version you may well find yourself paying money in future to interoperate with them and everyone else or to migrate to their software (which is the new industry standard). Depending on how you release it, you may well have more influence in the development process than others and your competitors incur expense if they try to fork your project to better suit any of their needs which you don't share. If your software does gain market share because of open sourcing it, more development houses will become familiar with it, which means for the next contract to add to it, you can take competitive bids, slashing your costs.
And I'm sorry, but every piece of software is a point of competition. If one company can save money by using something as simple as a better email client, that's a competitive advantage over other companies that don't use the better email client.
Bullcrap. There is tons of software out there, like e-mail clients, which have little or no impact on how competitive a company is. There are just too many available that all meet your needs. The point of OSS development is to share code for areas that are outside your core competency. For example, I worked at a company that made core network routers. Routing software was our core competency, but OS development was not. By using NetBSD or Linux as the basis for routers, we save a lot of money and development work. We contributed to NetBSD and Linux when we needed a new feature or there was a bug that needed fixing. Did our competitors benefit from that? Yes. Did we benefit when our competitors did the same? Yes. Did companies that relied on expensive, proprietary OS's they paid for or made themselves crush us? Hell no. They went out of business or switched to the same OS's we were using because otherwise we undercut their prices by a huge margin. We never open sourced our core routing protocols and code (where we really competed) and the rest we used OSS (OS, dev tools, apache for Web interface, etc.). The same situation applies in almost any industry.
Neither you, nor anybody else in this thread has expressed a single, logical, positive financial reason why a company should open source software that they develop in house.
Yes, I did. You do it to cut future development costs and interoperability costs. It works. It has been working in many industries for decades. I'm sorry if you can't wrap your head around why the business model is a benefit, but I can't be much plainer. There are a lot of companies using Linux, Apache, MySQL, GCC, and hundreds of other projects and making more money than they would otherwise be able to. They also pay money to contribute to those projects as they need to, and it is still a lot less than what they would be paying to maintain an internal, proprietary project to do the same thing.
Redhat absolutely can show a lot of companies the numbers on this and examples from other industries. It is a chance for Redhat to grow their development and support services business, while at the same time costing less than proprietary companies or internal projects. OSS is smart business and first mover advantage has real benefits.
If I'm the CEO of a big-ass Insurance Company, Bank, Airline or Widget Manufacturer and I just invested a bajillion hours of developer time into creating software that gives me an advantage over my competition, why would it be in my best interest to give my code away?
It probably is not in your best interest. I don't think that is the most common situation or the situation Mr. Whitehurst was describing. In many cases there are numerous companies all doing business in the same industry and all of which need some type of application. For an example, lets say you're an airline. Every four years or so you hire a contract software firm to work on your luggage tracking software. Periodically new regulations or technologies require you to contract to have this software modified. RFID becomes useful, so you add support for it and tagging luggage and using handheld scanners. The government requires you to track luggage checked in by a passenger, who then misses a connecting flight (to detect potential bombs). The FAA requires you to interact with their system via a SOAP interface. The hardware your code runs on are EOL'd and you need it updated to run on a new chipset. You get the idea.
Your airline and every other airline is paying to develop and maintain proprietary software. Usually, you hire the same contract company every time because they are the only ones who understand the code base well enough, and you pay a premium because hiring a lower bidder is a risk. You aren't really gaining an advantage because your software is better. Every company's software does basically the same thing and you all pay similar amounts.
What Redhat can do is go to some of these airlines and say, "hey would you like a cheaper way to do this?" Take your luggage tracking software and open source it. We'll take your code and put it on sourceforge and get a few other airlines to contribute code as well. Then, whenever there is a new requirement you can take competitive bids from a number of different vendors to update it. Also, if you acquire any other airlines, they'll probably be using the same code, making the merger easier. Also, since it will be in use by several different companies, the FAA is likely to take it into account specifically when creating their new server application making that less expensive. Also, some of those other companies will be hiring developers to add new features they want, and you'll get that feature without paying a cent. When you need to interoperate with other airlines to hand off luggage, well it will be a lot easier. Finally, since the project is based upon your code, you have first adopter advantage wit the whole industry following your lead, something investors like to hear.
If you spent a lot of money and it is giving you a competitive advantage, well you probably should not open source it. I think, however, you're overestimating how often that is the case. Most of the time that proprietary application you keep paying to have updated is not a competitive advantage. Everyone buys a word processor and spreadsheet for use by office workers. Does your choice really give you a competitive advantage over others? It is just a recurring cost you and all other companies have to pay, one that could be a lot cheaper if you went the OSS route.
I think Red Hat has no right to attempt to coax or coerce companies into giving away code.
This is a straw man argument. The article said "coax." The summary said "coax." You added "coerce" which is not something anyone had brought up. In principal it is no different from saying that Redhat has no right to attempt to coax companies into giving away code or molest children.
If OSS is the future, then it will happen, with or without Jim's little tantrum.
I strongly disagree. Microsoft spends a lot of money convincing purchasers that they are better off buying all Microsoft, proprietary solutions. At the same time, not a lot of people making purchasing decisions understand the OSS business model and how it can save them a lot of money. Providing a voice that explains and advocates this method is very useful.
It is ridiculous for a CEO to attempt to paint his company as some kind of inspired model upon which other companies should remodel themselves.
He's not "painting his company" as a model. He's advocating an alternative development method that differs significantly from classic economic models. Redhat has done well by being a contributor to that model. That is not ridiculous at all.
Aside from being futile, attempting to turn the Old Establishment around does nothing but hurt the nascent organisations that will make up the New Establishment by casting doubt on their methods and making them look like they are non-viable without the support of the Old Establishment.
Old Establishment, New Establishment?!? Redhat is simply talking to companies, whether new or old, and trying to sell them on a cheaper way to do business that also helps undermine software lock-in strategies. OSS is, quite simply a feature of software, that many do not appreciate the advantage of. It needs to be explained, like most other new features consumers are not used to using.
I can see Ballamer[sic] right now, in a room full of beaureaucrats[sic] saying "See? OSS is all about getting handouts to survive." Furthermore, it is brining[sic] wolves in amongst the lambs.
In such a meeting, Ballmer is a salesman, and most companies don't trust salesmen. Microsoft already tries to paint OSS as something that is risky and unusable to big business, but not too many people are believers, given that IBM argues the opposite.
If Jim wants to make a difference, he should fund new development from emerging pools...
There is a lot of software in use today which is used in various niche applications. Quite often such software is custom built for a company, and their competitors also use custom built software. This software is not really a point of competition between these companies, just something they need in order to do business. What Mr. Whitehurst is saying is that Redhat can be more proactive in going to these companies and getting them to open source this code and allow all the companies that need that niche application to share the development costs, rather than each of them paying to develop their own version. This leads to many advantages for the companies including: lower overall development costs, more competitive bidding on development, and standardization within the industry for interoperability. Further, getting some of this code open sourced gives Redhat (and other such companies) a way to undercut proprietary software developers when providing custom coding, support, and added services.
There are plenty of companies already doing what he says, he should be happy for that and encourage those already willing rather than attempting to project an agenda onto those it does not suit.
I think you're still missing the point. This is about evangelizing OSS as a way to cut costs for companies that currently don't understand or contribute to it. There is a huge, potential market for OSS development and a lot of closed
Safari 3.1 is at 75, and looks pretty close to the correct image.
I'd add the Webkit nightly (Plus Safari) is up to 95, as of yesterday night.
Firefox 3 beta allegedly gets 63
The Firefox 3 beta For OS X and Linux scores a 67, or at least it did the day after the Acid 3 was finalized. The Firefox 3 beta for Windows scored a 59. There may be a newer beta by now.
Note: all these numbers were from my own testing on the same machine, not claims from others.
The EU is looking into the iTunes store forcing people to use their own local version instead of being able to buy from anywhere in the EC, which is contrary to EU trading laws...
Get with the times man. The EU already dropped that case after Apple talked the music distributors into more uniform pricing.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with iPods and whether they are a monopoly in the music player market that Apple is abusing (having a monopoly is not in and of itself illegal).
EU Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva spoke publicly about compatibility issues being an antitrust concern (after the pricing agreement with Apple over differential pricing in different territories was settled). Then Philip Lowe (head of the EU commission) spoke in Munich with regard to her statements and said they were "looking into" whether competition was healthy or not given Apple's domination with the iPod, but also mentioning new entrants like the Zune.
In the US, Thomas Slattery is pursuing an antitrust lawsuit against Apple (and has been since 2005) and Stacy Somers has just started a class action lawsuit specifically addressing antitrust issues and calling for the DoJ to investigate.
I can forgive you for being ignorant of these facts, but perhaps in future you could at least give people the benefit of the doubt and ask to what specific events they are referring instead of assuming that the last incident you remember is the last one that anyone knows about. Finally, where exactly in my previous post did you get the idea that I was implying having a monopoly was illegal? I spoke only about whether or not Apple had monopoly influence as defined by the law. I did not go into what would then constitute antitrust issues (having thought the tying of the iPod to iTunes and the iTunes store and through iTunes to their updater to Safari was a bit much to try to explain to the average reader and not yet important).
Now, on to Acid 3. IE8 is still clearly trailing everyone else by some distance and is probably going to play catchup for a while yet until they implement native SVG...
The Webkit nightly is up to 95/100 on Acid 3. Anyone run Gecko nightly lately?
>but the reason Apple won't face any lawsuits for this is because they are breaking into the Windows browser market, not dominating it
That makes no sense.
Agreed.
If a copy of Office 2008 for OSX installed Windows Media Player to fight off iTunes then slashdot would melt from the outrage.
Actually, that is a close analogy because Apple has not been declared to have a monopoly on portable music players and MS has not been declared to have a monopoly on office suites. It is different, however, in a couple of ways. First, MS does ship a copy of WMP with every copy of Windows (which MS has been declared to have a monopoly on). Second, MS has settled several lawsuits, paying out very large sums to avoid having the courts declare them to have a monopoly on office suites. Third, MS is a many time repeat offender for antitrust abuse, which Apple is not.
When Apple does it, slashdotters bend over bankwards to rationalize it.
Actually, most Slashdotters seem to be of the opinion that what Apple has done is wrong. Personally, I am not sure Apple has monopoly influence and even if they do, the Web browser market is already in ruins because of MS's unchecked antitrust abuse. Apple's potential abuse in that environment is actually bringing competition to the market. It would be better yet if neither of them was allowed to influence the Web browser market with anything but the merits of their browsers.
The enemy of your enemy is not your friend.
This is not a truism. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend, but neither does it preclude it. Apple is using the open source, standards compliant, WebKit and supporting some of the most cutting edge Web standards. For now, they seem to be fighting the good fight on behalf of standards and advancing the state of the art and OSS web rendering engines. Only a great fool ignores the potential benefits of an alliance with their enemy's enemy, especially when one has been fighting a losing battle for a long time.
Just how do we define Apple as having a monopoly on MP3 players?
Generally authorities start looking when a company has more than 70% of a market.
Having dominant market share does not a monopoly make, to my understanding.
Not dominant share, no. The courts have to believe one company or group has enough influence in a market, such that they can use it to unduly influence other markets.
I certainly see a *lot* of non-Apple mp3 players when I'm browsing around Best Buy or Amazon.
By some estimates, all non-Apple MP3 players combined account for less than 20% of sales. The real question the EU commission needs to decide is whether to take into account other devices such as cell phones that also play MP3s (and if consumers consider them alternatives when making a purchase).
No such ruling has been made against Apple in the portable music market, and for good reason.
...because the courts are really slow to act? The EU is looking into that possibility right now.
As good as Apple is at making iPods, there are clones galore out there that work "just as well", are cheaper, and are selling tons of product.
Some estimates place Apple as having as much as 80% of the market. Arguing that there are healthy sales of other players is actually rather weak.
Comparing the Apple and the iPod to Microsoft and Windows is quite absurd.
I disagree. It is perfectly valid to make such a comparison. Apple may well have enough influence in the portable, music player market to qualify as having monopoly influence. That is not to say they are a monopoly, but such a possibility is not absurd. The real question depends upon how the market is defined. If just MP3/MP4 players are considered, Apple probably has a monopoly. If, consumers consider cell phones, handheld gaming systems, and video players that also play music when making purchasing decisions... then Apple has only a small share and does not have a monopoly. It would take some real, careful investigation to make that determination, although until it is made Apple can do what they want.
...all that said, I think an automatic install of safari with itunes upgrades sounds sleazy.
Personally, I'm all for it. If it gets a few iPod owning Windows users to install Safari and use it instead of IE, maybe we can get some standards compliance and Web standards back into the market.
A smart, cheap move by Apple would have been to not build Safari in the first place and throw a few bucks and their weight into the Mozilla project.
Why? Really, How is Apple throwing money an engineers behind the KHTML open source rendering engine (now called WebKit) and different than them doing the same for Mozilla, except that they liked one open source project more than the other?
Neither Apple nor Microsoft has made any money on a browser, and all it has caused is negative feelings, security holes, government intervention, and fragmentation of the browser market.
Microsoft makes boatloads of money with IE. Think of all the customers that are locked-in because their company Web applications and services only run on a the nonstandard technologies in IE. Just think of all the people who could have switched to Linux or OS X and used Web applications if the Web were not artificially restricted to using the 8 year old, incomplete versions of Web standards instead of modern, capable versions.
Shareholders should be revolting against both companies for spending millions...
Only if shareholders don't understand the business strategies. Of course shareholders generally just look at return and both Apple and MS have been providing it.
If M$ did this there would be a huge uproar and several anti-trust lawsuits.
Umm, MS does bundle their browser with their monopolized product and they have been convicted by the US courts for that action. Sadly they were not punished before politians to whom they made "donations" gained power.
Now that the iPod is working on a monopoly of the mp3 player market, why is what Apple did any different?
Well, a couple of ways. First, Apple has not been held by any court to have a monopoly on MP3 players. Second, it is not clear that will ever happen, it depends upon how close examination defines the market. Third, assuming Apple is declared a monopoly, Safari is different from IE in that it is standards compliant and based upon an open and shared rendering engine, which means it does not in any way damage Web standards and retard innovation in that market (yet). Fifth, there is some question how this applies as leveraging a monopoly since Apple has recently taken steps to break ties between the iPod and iTunes (someone told me the other day iTunes does not ship in the box with iPods anymore). Finally, the Web and market for Web browsers is currently in a very, very broken state and is for all intents and purposes being negatively influenced by a monopoly. Introducing a second monopoly influence into that market, can't really break it any more. While leveraging a monopoly is illegal and generally detrimental, the courts failure to stop MS's actions actually make this action on Apple's part to be beneficial, introducing more competition into the market.
Before anyone responds to this, I think Apple should be stopped from taking this action, if they are declared to have a monopoly and iTunes is declared to be tied to that monopoly... but not before the courts act to stop MS's bundling which has been going on much longer and which is responsible for the current, terrible state of that market.
The quality of the software doesn't matter here.
Actually, the standards compliance of the software speaks to the potential of that software for lock-in that could be used to disadvantage other Web browsers. The open and copyable nature of the rendering engine, speaks to the same. You can't lock people into your browser when other companies can easily be 100% interoperable with it by using the exact same engine.
Not that I have any faith either in that guy, but sure would love PC gaming to win over consoles.
Not to burst your bubble, but I hope you're wrong. I hope neither wins and that PC, console, cell phone, smartphone, PDA gaming markets all continue. The more the merrier. Bring the simple games to all of them more easily and make cross-platform and open development tools and practices the standard. Targeting just one console is fine too, but really if we don't have to tools to easily target multiple platforms, then we don't have healthy competition. We end up with more and more "exclusive" titles so we have to buy multiple systems of miss out. Worse yet, in such a market one player could gain the upper hand and suddenly we have another monopoly that leads to slower innovation, higher prices, and fewer choices.
Forget hoping either PC or console gaming "win" and join me in hoping game players "win" by having healthy market producing games and losing money when those games suck.
If the same games where made for PC directly, you would simply win on all fronts (even on the price; it's true that you save on the console, but you lose that by the lack of competition on games).
The problem with this is "PC gaming" is pretty much the same thing as "Microsoft wins" since they control 90%+ of all PCs and the proprietary DirectX APIs. They're aiming at removing just the competition you're hoping for with DirectX and a PC or Xbox. If the other consoles "lose" (even if the Xbox does) nothing stops them from being the gatekeeper of all games and that means higher prices and fewer choices.
Actually, now that you mention it, iPods are no longer bundled with iTunes.
That is interesting, but hard to confirm without going down to an Apple store.
You have to download iTunes in order to use it with your iPod. So back on topic: EU can't accuse Apple of bundling iTunes if iTunes doesn't come with an iPod.
According to Apple's Website, you have to have iTunes as a system requirement for using an iPod. So while they may not be bundling, they are not necessarily in the clear for tying. Remember, Microsoft was ordered to provide public documentation on all the APIs for communications between their desktop and server OS's. I don't think Apple publishes their APIs for communications between the iPod and iTunes so that other software can have the same level of functionality. Nor does Apple license Fairplay for use by others (one of the ways they communicate), with the exception of a few phone deals. Apple would have to publish an API and either license Fairplay or stop using it altogether if they wanted to be in the clear on that count. Further, Apple might have to provide support for devices accessed by other software, although not for the software itself.
The only place I've read where the EU is investigating Apple is over nonuniform pricing across the EU (here) and has noting to do with bundling. Also, the US isn't investigating Apple, either, it is a lawsuit filed by Thomas Slattery in California. Can you tell me otherwise? I would like to know.
Slattery filed a case in 2005, but I thought it died or was settled, although I don't see any proof of that. I believe I read that Stacy Somers had started a class action lawsuit over iPod/iTunes availability to third parties with antitrust allegations in early 2008, and requested the DoJ look into it. I did not hear if there was a response yet.
As for the EU, Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva spoke publicly about compatibility issues being an antitrust concern (after the pricing agreement with Apple over differential pricing in different territories, which was more aimed at the music companies than Apple) then just the other day Philip Lowe (head of the commission) spoke in Munich with regard to her statements and said they were "looking into" whether competition was healthy or not given Apple's domination with the iPod, but also mentioning new entrants like the Zune. I'd provide a link, but it is a subscription article. I'm sure Google will give you other references. The crux of that matter is if they feel competition is broken and how they define the market.
So regarding tying: Users still have to download iTunes. They aren't bundled, they aren't forced, they aren't tied.
I don't think you understand the term "tying" as it applies to antitrust law. MS was convicted of tying because not all the protocols for communication between their server and desktop were documented and available to competitors. MS paid a lot in fines because they were slow to deliver, they were not complete and usable enough, and then they were not licensed freely enough for low enough price. Compare that to Apple's public docs on communications between iTunes and the iPod. It is very similar, right down to competitors reverse engineering the formats and attaining partial compatibility. Microsoft was convicted in the US of tying because they used a nonpublic API for MS Word, which they did not provide to Corel (then makers of WordPerfect). Tying doesn't mean you can't use one of the products without the other, it simply means your product gains an advantage over others in functionality or even time to market over the competition.
More damning by far is the state of music services. Right now Apple still sells DRM'd works via their service and will not license that DRM (sans very few exceptions) and will not support other DRM. This gives Apple a clear adv
I don't think that the whole evolution versus creationism business is as big a deal as you think. It's more a result of a minority of vocal activists attempting to hijack the system to fit their agenda.
Umm, I think it that a vocal minority succeeded in hijacking most of the system. The president justified invading Iraq because God told him to. He consulted weekly with televangelists until they were caught hiring gay prostitutes. The head of the Dept. of Justice thought dancing should be illegal. Sorry, but from my perspective that is a lot of vocal religious activists making some pretty big decisions, especially with regard to the law and how tax dollars are spent.
Precisely. Newton didn't care that the Catholic Church became angry when he said the earth is Not the center of the universe.
If Newton were alive today, he'd probably have his own public access TV show about aliens. He was a wackjob... a smart wackjob, but a wackjob nonetheless. He was not the first to claim the earth was not the center of the earth, but he did go temporarily blind from staring at the sun too long... to see if he would go blind. That is nothing compared to the awl experiment. He was also in alchemy and rosicrucian cults.
He just spoke the truth and passed on the knowledge to anyone who would listen.
He said a lot of things. The credit to the scientific method is we've forgotten the things that weren't useful or entertaining.
Nintendo doesn't yet have a monopoly with the Wii, so bundling Wii Sports is not a problem.
Yup, but more than that we don't know that they ever will have a monopoly in the future.
When Apple introduced the iPod, they obviously didn't have a monopoly, so bundling iTunes was not a problem.
Correct; so long as you pay attention to the tense.
Are you saying, now, seven years later, that bundling iTunes is a problem?
Yes, because while it is fine that Apple shipped them bundled, if Apple is declared to have a monopoly, then Apple should (theoretically) be ordered to stop bundling them for future sales.
I'm not 100% sure if a monopoly is in of itself illegal in Europe, but again the point is that when iTunes was first bundled, neither iPod nor iTunes store was even close to a monopoly.
Having a monopoly is not illegal in Europe. You're missing the point that bundling isn't illegal, bundling when you know or should be reasonably expected to know you have a monopoly is. Think of it like this. Shooting a firearm is not illegal. Shooting a person with a firearm is illegal. If John went to the range an legally fired a gun at a target, does that make him immune to prosecution if he goes outside and fires a lot of rounds in the air. Does it make him immune to prosecution if he shoots the gun while he knows it is likely to hit another person?
Just because Apple's bundling in the past was legal, does not mean continuing to bundle in the future is legal, or even bundling while they have a reasonable suspicion that they have a monopoly is legal.
Also, I thought the EU investigation regarding Apple was due to non-uniform prices across each store, and had nothing to do with bundling, monopoly, or anti-trust.
That was a different investigation entirely one in which Apple was mentioned, but the courts were considering fining only the music industry companies. Apple was investigated in the US in 2006, which went nowhere. Then they were investigated by the EU beginning in October of 2007, and just recently they are being investigated again in the US (as of Jan 2008)
Also, I thought the EU investigation regarding Apple was due to non-uniform prices across each store, and had nothing to do with bundling, monopoly, or anti-trust. As best I can tell, the case was brought up by Novell in 1993 (more here) because Microsoft extracted a license fee for every PC shipped even if Windows was not installed on the system.
The original complaint was from Novell and they were paid compensation. Additional complaints from Apple and RealNetworks addressed bundling the media player, and statements from Sun with regard to tying of their server OS also were included in the remedy. Here's a link about the media player ruling. The releveant excerpt is:
The decision, handed down by European Competition Commissioner Mario Monti on Wednesday, requires Microsoft to offer two versions of its Windows operating system: one with the Media Player audio/video software and one without it. The ruling is intended to prevent Microsoft from shutting out rivals in the media software market, including RealNetworks and Apple Computer, by bundling its Media Player software with an operating system that is used on more than 90 percent of the world's PCs.
You'll note it specifically mentions the bundling of media player and Windows.
Later a ruling was made that said Microsoft had to offer an unbundled version of XP so competitors (like Apple!) could create their own products that OEMs could bundle, instead.
That was part of the same case, as noted above. It has also been widely viewed as a useless measure that has not addressed the problem. RealNetworks is expected to soon file suit in the
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't try to register, but using the test drive feature seems to work. It seemed functional, with the exception of applying the distortion filters. (Safari 3.1 and OS X 10.5.2)
So this is an article that doesn't give any answers to the question it poses and references a study presented at blackhat, but which has not yet been published and in fact whose presentation is not even online yet.
Can't we at least wait until we have some sort of data to discuss before embarking on half-assed arguments about how relevant the data is and if the methodology is credible?
A note for clarification: Adobe Reader used to be named Acrobat Reader, so users mistaking one for the other have been understandably mislead by Adobe's own marketing in the past.
It might actually make a difference for when IE is complaint, depending upon what the EU decides with regard to Opera's antirust complaint against Microsoft. I also like to think that with Firefox, Safari, Opera, Opera Mobile, Safari Mobile, and the other embedded browsers the market for Web browsers might be slowly leaving Microsoft behind... maybe enough so that in the EU or somewhere where companies feel antitrust law will actually be enforced, OEMs might ship with another browser installed.
I've never known that to be a problem. How much code does one reuse between a daemon and an OS? Anyway, the risk is only one way. You can't copy any code from the Linux code base, but there is no problem with inserting our code into both the daemon and Linux, since nothing prevents code from being licensed as GPL and a closed license simultaneously. (Although if that was an issue it would be best to comment it well so that if anyone accused you of transferring code the other way you could prove the provenance.) Perhaps you overestimate the risks. IBM and many others been applying this type of business model since forever.
I'd be more likely to guess this has something to do with the code base and the number of different contributors. Opera has one group contributing. Webkit has about four big contributors. Gecko has a whole lot of different people contributing, even individuals. I've also heard the code for Gecko is a lot more convoluted, whereas the more recently engineered Webkit is fairly clean and straightforward.
Does it all come down to browser share = slow progress?I doubt it, although the more versions of each platform supported adds to the time for each QA cycle.
Or could it be that Opera and Safari are putting other projects behind to pass the Acid3 test?I don't know about Opera, but I know there are dedicated teams specifically targeting Acid3 for Webkit and Gecko.
No. That's the whole point of using OSS for areas outside of core competency (areas where you are primarily a software user, rather than a developer). If your core competency is specialized software development then you only want to open source it if your customers force you to. OSS benefits the user, so you open software you primarily use, not that you try to sell.
In GPL for example, the act of distribution triggers the share and share alike clause, so unless you use the improvements only internally or perhaps as part of a Software as a Service (SAS) model how can you keep your "secret sauce" secret?Linux is GPL'd. Literally thousands of companies sell products that run Linux as well as some closed and proprietary software on top of it. Those companies contribute to OSS with their fixes and improvements to Linux. This allows them to undercut companies still using VxWorks or Windows, or some other, proprietary software only available from one vendor who can gouge them so long as the short term costs they add are less than the cost of an OS migration. The whole reason Wind River supports Linux today (instead of just their proprietary VXWorks) is because companies using VxWorks were undercut by companies who brought Linux to market and Wind River customers demanded Linux support or walked (or went out of business in many cases).
One question I have for you, if I may: How can you "distribute" your improved routing code as an improvement to an open source software system without exposing your improved routing algorithm as well?You don't. You make improvements to the OS as needed to support your proprietary routing daemon. That daemon you keep closed source unless someone brings an OSS competitor to market t which point you redefine your core competency in a hurry).
That is one of the problems with using open source software in franchise operations.OSS benefits users, not developers (unless they are also users). You apply it to cut costs in areas where you are primarily a user. This is generally not a problem for most applications, but for some where your core competency is tied to OSS, you have to move to a license that works, like BSD. (Even Microsoft has incorporated BSD code into their OS).
In many cases we're talking about things that aren't barriers to entry in the first place. OSS is appropriate for areas where you are not developing your core competency and thus would like to reduce costs so a smaller, more agile startup cannot beat you to the punch. Suppose, for example, you create home theater systems. You use a real time OS (VxWorks) from Wind River. You use custom database. You use a custom barcode scanner software to automatically add works by accessing an online database of those works. You use a custom touch screen interface you outsource to a user interface development contractor. Your core competency is your hardware, putting it all together into one nice package, and leveraging your existing marketing and sales channels.
So here's what you can do and why it is (potentially) to your advantage. Switch your OS to Linux to save having to license VxWorks and to gain the ability to take bids on OS work from both Wind River and other places that support Linux. This probably saves you significant money and does nothing to make things easier for a competitor. Drop your custom database and switch to an OSS one so you don't have to waste dev time on it. Open Source your barcode scanning software so other companies that do the same thing help defray your development costs of it, while not lowering barrier to entry (since others cannot use your data it plugs into). Open source your touch screen interface so that you can get free work from others that use it and so for your next version other contractors can gain expertise and offer competitive bids (while your trademarks and copyrights help prevent others from leveraging your work too easily).
For the most part, in the above example, you're not doing much that will be of benefit to new startups, but you are cutting costs so that a startup can't introduce a new product that uses OSS versions of all of the above and significantly undercuts your price. In much of the consumer electronics world, big players have already moved to OSS for most of the above. I remember when Wind River did not give customers the option of Linux, and a lot of their customers were badly undercut by startups that did bring a Linux based competing product to market. What the gentleman from Redhat is proposing is talking to companies in other industries about how to move some of their proprietary components to OSS to beat startups to the punch and to allow them to cut costs and focus on their core competency.
Sure, it might cut my costs, too, but I'd rather keep my costs a little higher because I have to do more in-house creative work than lower the costs for my competitors so that they can more easily catch up to me without the investment in creative work that I've already put in.Obviously you don't want to remove barriers to entry, but the point is many of the things you might consider to be providing barriers are less of a barrier than you think because of the option of others to share the cost to overcome them and then you may find yourself supporting an unneeded proprietary solution that is an albatross raising your costs. Worse, their may be existing OSS projects that are drop in replacements for your proprietary, outsourced components and a startup can come in, use OSS, and significantly undercut you immediately and for every future revision of the product until you copy them (incurring a migration expense and increasing time to market).
Almost every company of any size these days uses software and a lot of them are vulnerable to startups and existing competitors that may be more OSS savvy. Redhat is proposing explaining the OSS business models to those companies and helping them leverage the advantages of the OSS model where appropriate.
It benefits the companies because they have lower costs. They can charge less than companies that don't share software development costs with others. They gain from other reduced costs.
The provider of franchise product or service has greater pricing power than a price-taker in a purely competitive industry (although less than a monopoly) and pricing power translates into extra economic profits for the controller of the franchise.Most companies compete with others in hundreds of ways unrelated to their core competency. Open sourcing software in those areas are what is of benefit.
Lowering costs is a worthwhile goal, but it must also be weighed against the possibility of helping one's competitors, particularly in a niche industry where franchises are more common, and lowering the barrier of entry to new competitors.Contributing to an OS, doesn't significantly lower the barrier to entry in a market that builds upon OS's. For tertiary, niche markets where competition already exists, but is largely a commodity, you can undercut the competition... if you are the first to OSS your software and you can gain momentum behind it.
Also, why would a company want competitive bidding if they could possibly help it?I think you're missing the point. OSS benefits users. If you write software for sale, it will reduce your profits. If you develop software you use internally, it will cost less money if you OSS it. Redhat is talking about getting companies that have internal software projects developed by their own engineers or by contractors to OSS them. It is to the advantage of those companies to be able to get competitive bids on future development. The biggest failure of people to understand OSS as a business model is they approach it from the point of view of a software development house or contract coder. OSS is a feature. Adding a feature always costs software developers money in the short term. OSS benefits users, so if you're a software user it can benefit you.
From the standpoint of the profit maximizer a no-bid contract is best and limited bidding is the next best thing.Okay, let me give you an example I already gave in another post in this thread:
For example, I worked at a company that made core network routers. Routing software was our core competency, but OS development was not. By using NetBSD or Linux as the basis for routers, we save a lot of money and development work. We contributed to NetBSD and Linux when we needed a new feature or there was a bug that needed fixing. Did our competitors benefit from that? Yes. Did we benefit when our competitors did the same? Yes. Did companies that relied on expensive, proprietary OS's they paid for or made themselves crush us? Hell no. They went out of business or switched to the same OS's we were using because otherwise we undercut their prices by a huge margin. We never open sourced our core routing protocols and code (where we really competed) and the rest we used OSS (OS, dev tools, apache for Web interface, etc.). The same situation applies in almost any industry.You'll note in the above situation we were consumers of OS's, Web servers, dev tools, etc. We were creators of routing software and finished routers. It was to our benefit to use and create OSS for products we consumed rather than buying them from proprietary vendors. It was not to our advantage to OSS our core competency upon which we compete. For the average business there are a lot of software areas outside of core competency and companies can cut costs by turning some of those internal projects or custom contract works into OSS projects.
I think I already covered that, but here it goes again. Money spent is spent. You can't un-spend it an no one who went business school should fall prey to the fallacy of throwing good money after bad. In general, all companies have already invested in some niche software. The company open sourcing code may or may not have the best software out there, but making it OSS provides them, the users, with a new feature.
When you open source some project you benefit in numerous ways. First, you get are likely to get free code contributed by others (money you might otherwise have had to spend). New market entrants are more likely to adopt the same software you're using, giving you an advantage in interoperability in the future. It is not uncommon for the entire industry to slowly move to the software you already use which is a migration cost for them and if someone else beat you to supplying their code as the open source version you may well find yourself paying money in future to interoperate with them and everyone else or to migrate to their software (which is the new industry standard). Depending on how you release it, you may well have more influence in the development process than others and your competitors incur expense if they try to fork your project to better suit any of their needs which you don't share. If your software does gain market share because of open sourcing it, more development houses will become familiar with it, which means for the next contract to add to it, you can take competitive bids, slashing your costs.
And I'm sorry, but every piece of software is a point of competition. If one company can save money by using something as simple as a better email client, that's a competitive advantage over other companies that don't use the better email client.Bullcrap. There is tons of software out there, like e-mail clients, which have little or no impact on how competitive a company is. There are just too many available that all meet your needs. The point of OSS development is to share code for areas that are outside your core competency. For example, I worked at a company that made core network routers. Routing software was our core competency, but OS development was not. By using NetBSD or Linux as the basis for routers, we save a lot of money and development work. We contributed to NetBSD and Linux when we needed a new feature or there was a bug that needed fixing. Did our competitors benefit from that? Yes. Did we benefit when our competitors did the same? Yes. Did companies that relied on expensive, proprietary OS's they paid for or made themselves crush us? Hell no. They went out of business or switched to the same OS's we were using because otherwise we undercut their prices by a huge margin. We never open sourced our core routing protocols and code (where we really competed) and the rest we used OSS (OS, dev tools, apache for Web interface, etc.). The same situation applies in almost any industry.
Neither you, nor anybody else in this thread has expressed a single, logical, positive financial reason why a company should open source software that they develop in house.Yes, I did. You do it to cut future development costs and interoperability costs. It works. It has been working in many industries for decades. I'm sorry if you can't wrap your head around why the business model is a benefit, but I can't be much plainer. There are a lot of companies using Linux, Apache, MySQL, GCC, and hundreds of other projects and making more money than they would otherwise be able to. They also pay money to contribute to those projects as they need to, and it is still a lot less than what they would be paying to maintain an internal, proprietary project to do the same thing.
Redhat absolutely can show a lot of companies the numbers on this and examples from other industries. It is a chance for Redhat to grow their development and support services business, while at the same time costing less than proprietary companies or internal projects. OSS is smart business and first mover advantage has real benefits.
It probably is not in your best interest. I don't think that is the most common situation or the situation Mr. Whitehurst was describing. In many cases there are numerous companies all doing business in the same industry and all of which need some type of application. For an example, lets say you're an airline. Every four years or so you hire a contract software firm to work on your luggage tracking software. Periodically new regulations or technologies require you to contract to have this software modified. RFID becomes useful, so you add support for it and tagging luggage and using handheld scanners. The government requires you to track luggage checked in by a passenger, who then misses a connecting flight (to detect potential bombs). The FAA requires you to interact with their system via a SOAP interface. The hardware your code runs on are EOL'd and you need it updated to run on a new chipset. You get the idea.
Your airline and every other airline is paying to develop and maintain proprietary software. Usually, you hire the same contract company every time because they are the only ones who understand the code base well enough, and you pay a premium because hiring a lower bidder is a risk. You aren't really gaining an advantage because your software is better. Every company's software does basically the same thing and you all pay similar amounts.
What Redhat can do is go to some of these airlines and say, "hey would you like a cheaper way to do this?" Take your luggage tracking software and open source it. We'll take your code and put it on sourceforge and get a few other airlines to contribute code as well. Then, whenever there is a new requirement you can take competitive bids from a number of different vendors to update it. Also, if you acquire any other airlines, they'll probably be using the same code, making the merger easier. Also, since it will be in use by several different companies, the FAA is likely to take it into account specifically when creating their new server application making that less expensive. Also, some of those other companies will be hiring developers to add new features they want, and you'll get that feature without paying a cent. When you need to interoperate with other airlines to hand off luggage, well it will be a lot easier. Finally, since the project is based upon your code, you have first adopter advantage wit the whole industry following your lead, something investors like to hear.
If you spent a lot of money and it is giving you a competitive advantage, well you probably should not open source it. I think, however, you're overestimating how often that is the case. Most of the time that proprietary application you keep paying to have updated is not a competitive advantage. Everyone buys a word processor and spreadsheet for use by office workers. Does your choice really give you a competitive advantage over others? It is just a recurring cost you and all other companies have to pay, one that could be a lot cheaper if you went the OSS route.
I think Red Hat has no right to attempt to coax or coerce companies into giving away code.
This is a straw man argument. The article said "coax." The summary said "coax." You added "coerce" which is not something anyone had brought up. In principal it is no different from saying that Redhat has no right to attempt to coax companies into giving away code or molest children.
If OSS is the future, then it will happen, with or without Jim's little tantrum.
I strongly disagree. Microsoft spends a lot of money convincing purchasers that they are better off buying all Microsoft, proprietary solutions. At the same time, not a lot of people making purchasing decisions understand the OSS business model and how it can save them a lot of money. Providing a voice that explains and advocates this method is very useful.
It is ridiculous for a CEO to attempt to paint his company as some kind of inspired model upon which other companies should remodel themselves.
He's not "painting his company" as a model. He's advocating an alternative development method that differs significantly from classic economic models. Redhat has done well by being a contributor to that model. That is not ridiculous at all.
Aside from being futile, attempting to turn the Old Establishment around does nothing but hurt the nascent organisations that will make up the New Establishment by casting doubt on their methods and making them look like they are non-viable without the support of the Old Establishment.
Old Establishment, New Establishment?!? Redhat is simply talking to companies, whether new or old, and trying to sell them on a cheaper way to do business that also helps undermine software lock-in strategies. OSS is, quite simply a feature of software, that many do not appreciate the advantage of. It needs to be explained, like most other new features consumers are not used to using.
I can see Ballamer[sic] right now, in a room full of beaureaucrats[sic] saying "See? OSS is all about getting handouts to survive." Furthermore, it is brining[sic] wolves in amongst the lambs.
In such a meeting, Ballmer is a salesman, and most companies don't trust salesmen. Microsoft already tries to paint OSS as something that is risky and unusable to big business, but not too many people are believers, given that IBM argues the opposite.
If Jim wants to make a difference, he should fund new development from emerging pools...
There is a lot of software in use today which is used in various niche applications. Quite often such software is custom built for a company, and their competitors also use custom built software. This software is not really a point of competition between these companies, just something they need in order to do business. What Mr. Whitehurst is saying is that Redhat can be more proactive in going to these companies and getting them to open source this code and allow all the companies that need that niche application to share the development costs, rather than each of them paying to develop their own version. This leads to many advantages for the companies including: lower overall development costs, more competitive bidding on development, and standardization within the industry for interoperability. Further, getting some of this code open sourced gives Redhat (and other such companies) a way to undercut proprietary software developers when providing custom coding, support, and added services.
There are plenty of companies already doing what he says, he should be happy for that and encourage those already willing rather than attempting to project an agenda onto those it does not suit.
I think you're still missing the point. This is about evangelizing OSS as a way to cut costs for companies that currently don't understand or contribute to it. There is a huge, potential market for OSS development and a lot of closed
I'd add the Webkit nightly (Plus Safari) is up to 95, as of yesterday night.
Firefox 3 beta allegedly gets 63The Firefox 3 beta For OS X and Linux scores a 67, or at least it did the day after the Acid 3 was finalized. The Firefox 3 beta for Windows scored a 59. There may be a newer beta by now.
Note: all these numbers were from my own testing on the same machine, not claims from others.
Get with the times man. The EU already dropped that case after Apple talked the music distributors into more uniform pricing.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with iPods and whether they are a monopoly in the music player market that Apple is abusing (having a monopoly is not in and of itself illegal).EU Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva spoke publicly about compatibility issues being an antitrust concern (after the pricing agreement with Apple over differential pricing in different territories was settled). Then Philip Lowe (head of the EU commission) spoke in Munich with regard to her statements and said they were "looking into" whether competition was healthy or not given Apple's domination with the iPod, but also mentioning new entrants like the Zune.
In the US, Thomas Slattery is pursuing an antitrust lawsuit against Apple (and has been since 2005) and Stacy Somers has just started a class action lawsuit specifically addressing antitrust issues and calling for the DoJ to investigate.
I can forgive you for being ignorant of these facts, but perhaps in future you could at least give people the benefit of the doubt and ask to what specific events they are referring instead of assuming that the last incident you remember is the last one that anyone knows about. Finally, where exactly in my previous post did you get the idea that I was implying having a monopoly was illegal? I spoke only about whether or not Apple had monopoly influence as defined by the law. I did not go into what would then constitute antitrust issues (having thought the tying of the iPod to iTunes and the iTunes store and through iTunes to their updater to Safari was a bit much to try to explain to the average reader and not yet important).
The Webkit nightly is up to 95/100 on Acid 3. Anyone run Gecko nightly lately?
Agreed.
If a copy of Office 2008 for OSX installed Windows Media Player to fight off iTunes then slashdot would melt from the outrage.Actually, that is a close analogy because Apple has not been declared to have a monopoly on portable music players and MS has not been declared to have a monopoly on office suites. It is different, however, in a couple of ways. First, MS does ship a copy of WMP with every copy of Windows (which MS has been declared to have a monopoly on). Second, MS has settled several lawsuits, paying out very large sums to avoid having the courts declare them to have a monopoly on office suites. Third, MS is a many time repeat offender for antitrust abuse, which Apple is not.
When Apple does it, slashdotters bend over bankwards to rationalize it.Actually, most Slashdotters seem to be of the opinion that what Apple has done is wrong. Personally, I am not sure Apple has monopoly influence and even if they do, the Web browser market is already in ruins because of MS's unchecked antitrust abuse. Apple's potential abuse in that environment is actually bringing competition to the market. It would be better yet if neither of them was allowed to influence the Web browser market with anything but the merits of their browsers.
The enemy of your enemy is not your friend.This is not a truism. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend, but neither does it preclude it. Apple is using the open source, standards compliant, WebKit and supporting some of the most cutting edge Web standards. For now, they seem to be fighting the good fight on behalf of standards and advancing the state of the art and OSS web rendering engines. Only a great fool ignores the potential benefits of an alliance with their enemy's enemy, especially when one has been fighting a losing battle for a long time.
Generally authorities start looking when a company has more than 70% of a market.
Having dominant market share does not a monopoly make, to my understanding.Not dominant share, no. The courts have to believe one company or group has enough influence in a market, such that they can use it to unduly influence other markets.
I certainly see a *lot* of non-Apple mp3 players when I'm browsing around Best Buy or Amazon.By some estimates, all non-Apple MP3 players combined account for less than 20% of sales. The real question the EU commission needs to decide is whether to take into account other devices such as cell phones that also play MP3s (and if consumers consider them alternatives when making a purchase).
...because the courts are really slow to act? The EU is looking into that possibility right now.
As good as Apple is at making iPods, there are clones galore out there that work "just as well", are cheaper, and are selling tons of product.Some estimates place Apple as having as much as 80% of the market. Arguing that there are healthy sales of other players is actually rather weak.
Comparing the Apple and the iPod to Microsoft and Windows is quite absurd.I disagree. It is perfectly valid to make such a comparison. Apple may well have enough influence in the portable, music player market to qualify as having monopoly influence. That is not to say they are a monopoly, but such a possibility is not absurd. The real question depends upon how the market is defined. If just MP3/MP4 players are considered, Apple probably has a monopoly. If, consumers consider cell phones, handheld gaming systems, and video players that also play music when making purchasing decisions... then Apple has only a small share and does not have a monopoly. It would take some real, careful investigation to make that determination, although until it is made Apple can do what they want.
...all that said, I think an automatic install of safari with itunes upgrades sounds sleazy.Personally, I'm all for it. If it gets a few iPod owning Windows users to install Safari and use it instead of IE, maybe we can get some standards compliance and Web standards back into the market.
Why? Really, How is Apple throwing money an engineers behind the KHTML open source rendering engine (now called WebKit) and different than them doing the same for Mozilla, except that they liked one open source project more than the other?
Neither Apple nor Microsoft has made any money on a browser, and all it has caused is negative feelings, security holes, government intervention, and fragmentation of the browser market.Microsoft makes boatloads of money with IE. Think of all the customers that are locked-in because their company Web applications and services only run on a the nonstandard technologies in IE. Just think of all the people who could have switched to Linux or OS X and used Web applications if the Web were not artificially restricted to using the 8 year old, incomplete versions of Web standards instead of modern, capable versions.
Shareholders should be revolting against both companies for spending millions...Only if shareholders don't understand the business strategies. Of course shareholders generally just look at return and both Apple and MS have been providing it.
Umm, MS does bundle their browser with their monopolized product and they have been convicted by the US courts for that action. Sadly they were not punished before politians to whom they made "donations" gained power.
Now that the iPod is working on a monopoly of the mp3 player market, why is what Apple did any different?Well, a couple of ways. First, Apple has not been held by any court to have a monopoly on MP3 players. Second, it is not clear that will ever happen, it depends upon how close examination defines the market. Third, assuming Apple is declared a monopoly, Safari is different from IE in that it is standards compliant and based upon an open and shared rendering engine, which means it does not in any way damage Web standards and retard innovation in that market (yet). Fifth, there is some question how this applies as leveraging a monopoly since Apple has recently taken steps to break ties between the iPod and iTunes (someone told me the other day iTunes does not ship in the box with iPods anymore). Finally, the Web and market for Web browsers is currently in a very, very broken state and is for all intents and purposes being negatively influenced by a monopoly. Introducing a second monopoly influence into that market, can't really break it any more. While leveraging a monopoly is illegal and generally detrimental, the courts failure to stop MS's actions actually make this action on Apple's part to be beneficial, introducing more competition into the market.
Before anyone responds to this, I think Apple should be stopped from taking this action, if they are declared to have a monopoly and iTunes is declared to be tied to that monopoly... but not before the courts act to stop MS's bundling which has been going on much longer and which is responsible for the current, terrible state of that market.
The quality of the software doesn't matter here.Actually, the standards compliance of the software speaks to the potential of that software for lock-in that could be used to disadvantage other Web browsers. The open and copyable nature of the rendering engine, speaks to the same. You can't lock people into your browser when other companies can easily be 100% interoperable with it by using the exact same engine.
Not to burst your bubble, but I hope you're wrong. I hope neither wins and that PC, console, cell phone, smartphone, PDA gaming markets all continue. The more the merrier. Bring the simple games to all of them more easily and make cross-platform and open development tools and practices the standard. Targeting just one console is fine too, but really if we don't have to tools to easily target multiple platforms, then we don't have healthy competition. We end up with more and more "exclusive" titles so we have to buy multiple systems of miss out. Worse yet, in such a market one player could gain the upper hand and suddenly we have another monopoly that leads to slower innovation, higher prices, and fewer choices.
Forget hoping either PC or console gaming "win" and join me in hoping game players "win" by having healthy market producing games and losing money when those games suck.
If the same games where made for PC directly, you would simply win on all fronts (even on the price; it's true that you save on the console, but you lose that by the lack of competition on games).The problem with this is "PC gaming" is pretty much the same thing as "Microsoft wins" since they control 90%+ of all PCs and the proprietary DirectX APIs. They're aiming at removing just the competition you're hoping for with DirectX and a PC or Xbox. If the other consoles "lose" (even if the Xbox does) nothing stops them from being the gatekeeper of all games and that means higher prices and fewer choices.
Actually, now that you mention it, iPods are no longer bundled with iTunes.
That is interesting, but hard to confirm without going down to an Apple store.
You have to download iTunes in order to use it with your iPod. So back on topic: EU can't accuse Apple of bundling iTunes if iTunes doesn't come with an iPod.
According to Apple's Website, you have to have iTunes as a system requirement for using an iPod. So while they may not be bundling, they are not necessarily in the clear for tying. Remember, Microsoft was ordered to provide public documentation on all the APIs for communications between their desktop and server OS's. I don't think Apple publishes their APIs for communications between the iPod and iTunes so that other software can have the same level of functionality. Nor does Apple license Fairplay for use by others (one of the ways they communicate), with the exception of a few phone deals. Apple would have to publish an API and either license Fairplay or stop using it altogether if they wanted to be in the clear on that count. Further, Apple might have to provide support for devices accessed by other software, although not for the software itself.
The only place I've read where the EU is investigating Apple is over nonuniform pricing across the EU (here) and has noting to do with bundling. Also, the US isn't investigating Apple, either, it is a lawsuit filed by Thomas Slattery in California. Can you tell me otherwise? I would like to know.
Slattery filed a case in 2005, but I thought it died or was settled, although I don't see any proof of that. I believe I read that Stacy Somers had started a class action lawsuit over iPod/iTunes availability to third parties with antitrust allegations in early 2008, and requested the DoJ look into it. I did not hear if there was a response yet.
As for the EU, Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva spoke publicly about compatibility issues being an antitrust concern (after the pricing agreement with Apple over differential pricing in different territories, which was more aimed at the music companies than Apple) then just the other day Philip Lowe (head of the commission) spoke in Munich with regard to her statements and said they were "looking into" whether competition was healthy or not given Apple's domination with the iPod, but also mentioning new entrants like the Zune. I'd provide a link, but it is a subscription article. I'm sure Google will give you other references. The crux of that matter is if they feel competition is broken and how they define the market.
So regarding tying: Users still have to download iTunes. They aren't bundled, they aren't forced, they aren't tied.
I don't think you understand the term "tying" as it applies to antitrust law. MS was convicted of tying because not all the protocols for communication between their server and desktop were documented and available to competitors. MS paid a lot in fines because they were slow to deliver, they were not complete and usable enough, and then they were not licensed freely enough for low enough price. Compare that to Apple's public docs on communications between iTunes and the iPod. It is very similar, right down to competitors reverse engineering the formats and attaining partial compatibility. Microsoft was convicted in the US of tying because they used a nonpublic API for MS Word, which they did not provide to Corel (then makers of WordPerfect). Tying doesn't mean you can't use one of the products without the other, it simply means your product gains an advantage over others in functionality or even time to market over the competition.
More damning by far is the state of music services. Right now Apple still sells DRM'd works via their service and will not license that DRM (sans very few exceptions) and will not support other DRM. This gives Apple a clear adv
Umm, I think it that a vocal minority succeeded in hijacking most of the system. The president justified invading Iraq because God told him to. He consulted weekly with televangelists until they were caught hiring gay prostitutes. The head of the Dept. of Justice thought dancing should be illegal. Sorry, but from my perspective that is a lot of vocal religious activists making some pretty big decisions, especially with regard to the law and how tax dollars are spent.
If Newton were alive today, he'd probably have his own public access TV show about aliens. He was a wackjob... a smart wackjob, but a wackjob nonetheless. He was not the first to claim the earth was not the center of the earth, but he did go temporarily blind from staring at the sun too long... to see if he would go blind. That is nothing compared to the awl experiment. He was also in alchemy and rosicrucian cults.
He just spoke the truth and passed on the knowledge to anyone who would listen.He said a lot of things. The credit to the scientific method is we've forgotten the things that weren't useful or entertaining.
Nintendo doesn't yet have a monopoly with the Wii, so bundling Wii Sports is not a problem.
Yup, but more than that we don't know that they ever will have a monopoly in the future.
When Apple introduced the iPod, they obviously didn't have a monopoly, so bundling iTunes was not a problem.
Correct; so long as you pay attention to the tense.
Are you saying, now, seven years later, that bundling iTunes is a problem?
Yes, because while it is fine that Apple shipped them bundled, if Apple is declared to have a monopoly, then Apple should (theoretically) be ordered to stop bundling them for future sales.
I'm not 100% sure if a monopoly is in of itself illegal in Europe, but again the point is that when iTunes was first bundled, neither iPod nor iTunes store was even close to a monopoly.
Having a monopoly is not illegal in Europe. You're missing the point that bundling isn't illegal, bundling when you know or should be reasonably expected to know you have a monopoly is. Think of it like this. Shooting a firearm is not illegal. Shooting a person with a firearm is illegal. If John went to the range an legally fired a gun at a target, does that make him immune to prosecution if he goes outside and fires a lot of rounds in the air. Does it make him immune to prosecution if he shoots the gun while he knows it is likely to hit another person?
Just because Apple's bundling in the past was legal, does not mean continuing to bundle in the future is legal, or even bundling while they have a reasonable suspicion that they have a monopoly is legal.
Also, I thought the EU investigation regarding Apple was due to non-uniform prices across each store, and had nothing to do with bundling, monopoly, or anti-trust.
That was a different investigation entirely one in which Apple was mentioned, but the courts were considering fining only the music industry companies. Apple was investigated in the US in 2006, which went nowhere. Then they were investigated by the EU beginning in October of 2007, and just recently they are being investigated again in the US (as of Jan 2008)
Also, I thought the EU investigation regarding Apple was due to non-uniform prices across each store, and had nothing to do with bundling, monopoly, or anti-trust. As best I can tell, the case was brought up by Novell in 1993 (more here) because Microsoft extracted a license fee for every PC shipped even if Windows was not installed on the system.
The original complaint was from Novell and they were paid compensation. Additional complaints from Apple and RealNetworks addressed bundling the media player, and statements from Sun with regard to tying of their server OS also were included in the remedy. Here's a link about the media player ruling. The releveant excerpt is:
The decision, handed down by European Competition Commissioner Mario Monti on Wednesday, requires Microsoft to offer two versions of its Windows operating system: one with the Media Player audio/video software and one without it. The ruling is intended to prevent Microsoft from shutting out rivals in the media software market, including RealNetworks and Apple Computer, by bundling its Media Player software with an operating system that is used on more than 90 percent of the world's PCs.
You'll note it specifically mentions the bundling of media player and Windows.
Later a ruling was made that said Microsoft had to offer an unbundled version of XP so competitors (like Apple!) could create their own products that OEMs could bundle, instead.
That was part of the same case, as noted above. It has also been widely viewed as a useless measure that has not addressed the problem. RealNetworks is expected to soon file suit in the