I've often wondered this myself. What is the reward for developing open source software?
Well, I get a paycheck, as I imagine most others do as well.
If companies can come in and use open source components in their own creation in a way that they make money without violating licenses, but at the same time aren't obligated to give anything back to the community, where's the motivation for new developers to go open source?
Developers in general just do the work they're paid to do. Open source code is a feature of the product. It benefits users, not developers. You might as well ask, what is the motivation for developers to write software that doesn't self-destruct after one year? I mean if users can just keep using the software they paid for, why would they hire developers to write it again?"
The answer is simple. You give customers what they want and they pay you. Nothing stops a company from writing software that self-destructs, but customers will probably buy software that doesn't from someone else because it benefits them, thus the first company loses in a competitive market. You can write closed source software too, but smart customers want open source since it benefits them by letting them hire the best bid for any additional work they want done and because they get free development from other companies that are also users. Code being open is just like code being coded without a self-destruct. It isn't ideal for developers, but it is what customers want and they pay the bill.
Not everybody operates with an altruistic "I'm giving back to the community" motivation.
The vast majority of open source contributions are paid for their efforts. Altruism has nothing to do with it. In my personal case, we sell specialty servers. We sell a bundle of hardware, open software, closed software, and services. What's a better choice for an OS for us to include in this bundle:
an open one that is free but which we might need to modify
a closed one we need to license and pay a license fee for for every unit and which we have to pay that one vendor for changes to
a closed one we develop ourselves from scratch taking 1000 times the development work and slowing our project by 8 years
Looking at the business case, does contributing some minor modifications and fixes to the open OS cost us more than either of the other options? Hell no, not by a long shot. So we pay people to work on an open source OS, which benefits others as well as ourselves. This has nothing to do with altruism, it is simply the best business case and the most efficient way to work.
What am I missing here?
The business method. You're looking at open source development and imagining it is sold for profit just like closed source. This is completely false. Software is simply a tool to do something. Open source is a better tool.
Does the amount they contribute back exceed the amount they gain by benefiting from the work of others?
Umm... who cares? As a developer that makes money off of open source software, why do I care what the ratio of our contributions to use is? Why should someone looking at both making and using such software care? So long as it is making money for people why do you care if some other people aren't?
The unqualified statement "antitrust is a criminal offense" is wrong.
No it is 100% accurate, although maybe not as complete as you'd like. It was especially accurate in that it was rebuttal to the statement "This is not a criminal offence. It is a civil offence."
As indicated in the passage you quote, it can be either criminal or civil.
Antitrust laws in general can be civil or criminal offenses and sometimes the criminal offenses can be handled by the civil process via some weird voodoo in the law (in the US). The particular action we were discussing, however, was the tying of Windows desktop and server via secret protocols, which in the US was prosecuted by the DoJ and the criminal courts.
Bullshit. Another admin who does not know how to stably configure a windows server. I have used both LDAP and AD. No windows server I have ever worked on has been "crashy" or slow.
Then you must not have been in the business for very long. Windows servers running multiple services were notoriously crashy for years.. and yet they gained in market share. Microsoft replaced all the hotmail backend Linux servers with Windows machines and doubled the number they needed to keep it running. Are you saying MS is too incompetent to properly configure their own servers?
I prefer QNX or FreeBSD but I can work just as effectively on a windows server.
So you prefer FreeBSD huh? And it is free to use. And yet people buy Windows licenses. Why is that do you suppose?
The market did not fail, you did.
You say that as if they were mutually exclusive. I only admin servers for my personal uses. The info about Windows machines is what I've been told by numerous admins at numerous ISPs and companies I work with. It's also what most of the independent reviews of the platforms say when reliability is tested. The ability to run Windows only protocols is the main reason they sell boxes. That is illegal.
Without looking at the documentation, which I'm sure you haven't either, I can't say one way or the other whether the documentation is sufficient or insufficient. Neither can you.
MS admits their documentation is insufficient. The US courts also found their documentation to be insignificant. The EU commission's experts found it to be insufficient. The impartial expert MS selected before the proceedings started found it to be insufficient. Sure, maybe they're all wrong or lying, but I don't think it is reasonable to make that assumption.
Microsoft is in the business of making money. It's hurting their stock price to have this still hanging over their heads. It's hurting their productivity to have spend money to pay people to document all these protocols. Whether it's five people over 10 months or one person over fifty months probably means very little -- aside from the fact that Microsoft, trying to make money, would rather have this over and done with.
MS is making money hand over fist by not complying. They sell a huge number of inferior servers because those servers work with Windows desktops. They sell a huge number more desktops because other machines cannot properly communicate in the same way and they already bought an MS server. Thus the cycle continues. MS does not want this to stop until they have most of the server market and have created one more huge lock-in to stop others from threatening their desktop monopoly. So both from an immediate cash flow and a strategic perspective, they'd rather pay the fines than let others compete fairly with them.
They don't want this over, because they have no intention of complying until the cost becomes too high. In the mean time, they will continue delaying tactics like they have been and spreading tons of propaganda about the issue.
I'll reiterate my original point: an 8 day deadline is absurd. I can't imagine anyway that MS could complete the task in that time.
If you go out and start grabbing money out of the tills of cash registers downtown, how many days do you think the cops will give you to stop before they take some action to stop you? 8 days? MS is willfully breaking the law. It is part of their business plan. Do you think after multiple convictions for this offense their lawyers still did not know this was illegal? Pulling Windows server from the market and making it illegal to sell until it is fixed would be the just thing to do. The EU is being political and conciliatory and bending over backwards here. They were convicted in 2004 and still have not even stopping committing the crime, let alone paid any fines. That is absurd, but not in the way you imply.
However, providing an unreachable goal helps no one.
The only way MS will stop this action is if it becomes unprofitable. Daily fines that affect their bottom line are a damn fine way to do this. It helps a lot of people.
...the 3 million euro daily fine would be a great reason to get it out there if they did.
It might be, if they were actually paying the fine and if they weren't making more money than that by keeping the market broken with this action.
...ask MS to complete it faster.
They tried that over a year ago. This isn't the first delay you know.
...telling Microsoft NOW that they want the information in 8 days is simply absurd...
They're not saying it has to be done in 8 days. They're saying they're starting to collect the fines because MS has run up to big of a bill. Hopefully this is a prelude to raising the fines or taking other action that will motivate MS to act, since fines this size have not.
Microsoft is too smart of a company, no matter how evil and monopolistic, to want to carry this out any longer than necessary; it's too expensive, and Microsoft is in the business of making money.
This is a fundamental disagreement between us. I think MS is still making
From the Website of the Antitrust division of the DoJ: "There are three main ways in which the federal antitrust laws are enforced: criminal and civil enforcement actions brought by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, civil enforcement actions brought by the Federal Trade Commission and lawsuits brought by private parties asserting damage claims... What Kinds of Cases Has the Justice Department Brought? - Because of the harm that cartel violations cause, the Justice Department's number one antitrust priority is criminal prosecution of those activities. "
Antitrust violations are covered by and prosecuted under criminal law, although in recent years civil actions have been more common. That does not change the fact, however, that it is a criminal offense.
This is nothing more than bribery for trade secrets. Period.
Yeah those criminals at the EU that expect Microsoft to obey the law, or at least comply with the punishment they negotiated after being convicted... madness. And please, stop writing the word "period" after and before the punctuation mark. It is more than a little redundant.
The only thing Microsoft can do is retaliate.
Ha! yeah, umm that would go well. Governments and courts, especially ones recently established love it when companies retaliate against their implementation of the law. That's not a challenge to their authority that will force them to respond or anything.
1) Immediately release a statement that they are horrified that they are being pressured to make copyrighted works public or else face fines.
Well, MS is good at releasing statements. Not that anyone who matters is fooled.
Announce an IMMEDIATE withdrawl of Windows software from the EU... Announce no more support for those that continue to use it.
I see, so they should abandon 8 billion in revenue to save themselves from 1 billion in fines? Yeah, the shareholders will go for that in a big way. Of course due to the genuine advantage program that would also mean they are in violation of their contracts with thousands of international corporations, all of whom would immediately sue them in the US and probably bankrupt them.
Profit.
The executives would be far to busy bending over in the prison showers at this point for massive shareholder fraud than anything else.
The EU would shit their pants if Microsoft pulled Windows from the market. They could not function without it.
Umm, and people wouldn't just use pirated copies why? MS would have no standing in any EU court after refusing to comply with their laws and no way of enforcing their copyrights. Heck the EU would probably invalidate their copyrights for that antitrust abuse alone, possibly assigning them to a competitor or new company formed from the seized MS assets in the EU.
Call their bluff, Microsoft.
Yeah do it. It's brilliant. I was wrong about all of the above. It'll be great.:)
I can see complaining if the EU was enforcing some obscure law that they never enforce against EU companies, but this is pretty routine. They enforce it all the time and it is the same law the US convicted them of violating for the same incident. I mean come on already. Where do you get ideas like this?
Bill Gates responded "Okay, we'll just use our auto-update feature to turn off all Windows copies in every EU country. Hope you all know how to install Linux, fuckers!"
That would be so funny. Bill Gates would be out on his ass about as fast as they could arrange an emergency meeting of the board of directors. I wonder if the shareholders would take time away from apologizing to the EU long enough to hire someone to kidnap Gates and slowly torture him to death for the hundreds of billions of dollars he just cost them.
Yes, the free market means a lot. It means the greed and self interest that is part of human nature can be harnessed to drive innovation and lower prices through competition. That is, unless that free market is undermined by a company that uses a monopoly in one market to create artificial barriers to entry and take over a second market without innovating. In that case it leads to higher prices and retards innovation.
It isn't like microsoft MADE itself a monopoly.
Well, technically they did, but it doesn't matter because they weren't convicted of being a monopoly. That is legal. Abusing a monopoly to gain in other markets is illegal and this what they were convicted of.
Why should Microsoft (or any company for that matter) have to hand over its "secrets" simply because their method works better than anyone elses?
Didn't you cover this stuff in Econ 101? I've got a monopoly on cars. There are five companies nearby that make cheese. The ones that make the best cheese at the lowest price have most of the market. I decide to tie my cheese sales to my car sales. Now everyone who buys one of my cars (everyone who drives) gets a lifetime supply of cheese and the cost of my cars goes up by a few thousand bucks. It is crappy cheese, but most people aren't willing to pay twice since I just gouged them for a few grand they otherwise could have spent. The other cheese sellers go out of business and I look for another market to take over. The quality of cheese has gone down; the price up. Everyone except me loses and the free market is broken. That is why bundling is illegal. Bundling is one form of tying, but there are others. Secret protocols are one way. Sure maybe Active Directory is not as good as LDAP, but AD is built into all Windows desktops and I need those to run my business. Thus it makes sense for me to buy the expensive, crashy, slow Windows server, instead of the Linux server that uses LDAP. Again the market has failed.
Isn't that what the goal of buisness is? To have an idea that works better than everyone else?
Using these anticompetitive practices, a monopolist can take over the market despite someone else having a better idea that works better (or would if not for the abuse). That is why it is illegal.
Why don't these security companies that are bitching give a big f.u. to microsoft and build their OWN operating system.
Because they don't have enough money for starters. Because having a better OS won't let them win in the market either. They won't be able to get it pre-installed by any OEM, so they'll need hardware too. That's a huge amount of money to enter a market and you get a better return with less risk in a non-monopolized market. The point of capitalism is everyone acting in their own best interests makes for better products at lower prices and everyone wins. Capitalism breaks in the face of a monopoly abusing its position which is why almost every country in the world is a regulated capitalism and makes this illegal.
I started to read your comments and then I gave up. I just don't particularly want to waste any more time. You obviously don't understand what I'm saying or the scientific method and how it is properly applied or how it was misapplied in the "Gaia Theory" (which technically is not even a theory). But I learned something today... I don't care.
The lawyers and judges (who don't generally understand software development or architecture at all) keep making numerous faulty assumptions.
You're the one making faulty assumptions. Many of the people working on this case know all of the things you cite, but they don't matter. This is a punishment for MS breaking the law that MS bargained for after they were found guilty. They claimed they would do it.
Just because Microsoft doesn't publish documentation for every conceivable thing they do, it doesn't mean a competitor is incapable of interoperating with their stuff.
If they're writing something that connects their desktop OS in the market they've monopolized with the server OS in a different market, they bloody well knew it was illegal unless it was open and documented so they bloody well should have done so. Or, they could have used the original standards they corrupted in order to make these protocols and avoided breaking the law in the first place. It doesn't matter if the Samba team can reverse engineer well enough to get Linux to mostly work. By law they have to have exactly the same capability to do so that Microsoft has and that means clearly written docs or the original developers hired to help them and anyone else who wants it.
If Microsoft wants to take over the server OS space, great. Let them do it by making the best server OS, not with this illegal bullshit. In my opinion, MS should be fined a hell of a lot more than they have been and the money handed over to all the competitors they have harmed. The damage they have done to the entire industry will take many years to fix and it won't start until this is solved.
If this were a first offense or something I'd be a little more lenient but it isn't even close. They've done this same thing again and again and they continue to do so. It needs to be made clear that breaking the law as part of your business plan is not acceptable and you will be smacked down hard if you do it. The US should break them up, but since the US courts are too corrupt, the EU should make sure they walk away from the next meeting of directors with a clear message that breaking the law will not be profitable.
That goal applies to a population of genetically related organisms acting in a local environment.
You miss my point entirely. A genetic change to one organism is not going to feedback into the rest.
An adaptation which makes a half square mile of ocean a temperature more favorable to life may do the same to the a portion of the world's climate.
You think a single mutation in one organism competing within a population will change an entire square mile of area?
But the intent of the organism is not to make the world's climate more favorable. That's a side effect. Its "intent," (If we can anthropomorphise it as such), is only to alter the local environment.
Lots of creatures adapt to alter their local environments and survival of the fittest promotes/explains that. The point is, global changes do not feed back to "stabilize." There is no genetic code for the current state of the planet within a certain set of variables.
Part of that impact is homeostatic.
Again, you miss the point. There are various competing forces in the environment and they change over time in a given location. None of this explains why anyone would assert the planet is such a system or why the Earth being 500 degrees warmer is likely to be promoted or stopped by local organisms by any mechanism other than intelligence.
Why not? What do you mean by 'genetic development' here? That's a little vague.
If you read the rest of that paragraph it explains why. Genetic changes in response to environment are evolution. The global environment adapting to suit "life" is speculation with no support.
I've given pretty straightforward mechanisms, and you've ignored them.
No you haven't. You've cited possible examples of an organism changing the environment, but no mechanism why such changes should promote life rather than randomly promote or endanger life, in general. I don't think you're understanding how evolution works and why the "Gaia Theory" fails to parallel it both in progression and methodology.
This is a strawman. You seem to have no understanding whatsoever of what Lovelock is proposing nor have you acknowledged what I've written.
No, this is an analogy. It is the same broken version of the scientific method applied to a different subject. The point is that both the analogy I presented and the "Gaia Theory" are trying to propose a possible unexplained mechanism for a reason something happens, rather than a method by which what we observe is happening.
As far as I can recall, MS did endeavor to document a bunch of their interfaces. The response was that it was insufficient. MS tried to find out how it was insufficient, and was told that it was MS's responsibility to figure that out.
Bullshit. MS was given clear instructions. They need sufficient documentation so that competitors can re-implement these protocols in their own servers. It is simple and clearly defined and instead of complying MS published a bunch of lies and tried to both sway public opinion and provide the least possible info to satisfy the EU in the hopes that they could get away with something that was insufficient for their competitors in the server space.
MS does produce technical documentation for a whole slew of its products. Look at the API-level documentation that is on http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/. It's just not the most obvious documentation. Is it usable? For the most part. Does it cover every single idiosyncracy? No.
They do not publish reasonable documentation on the protocols as they themselves have admitted and the US courts have also judged them in noncompliance (although due to their lobbying we don't punish them). If they're going to use secret broken versions of existing standards, they can't use them in both their client and server. This is simple and obvious if you read the law. MS knew it. They still know it. They're just delaying the fines as long as possible.
Providing MS with an EIGHT DAY deadline is just absurd.
Again I call bullshit. This is how long they have to stop breaking the law in this one way. They knew the law in the first place. Zero days before a fine is levied is sufficient in my opinion. Listen Mr. Murderer, I know 8 days isn't a lot of time, but we need you to stop killing people within that time frame. I know it's hard to change, but that's just the way it is. Besides, they have 8 days till the fines kick in. They've had two years since they were officially convicted of the crime already. That is way, way, way too long. Every day weakens competition and hurts both consumers and the industry.
Anyone who has ever written technical API documentation will probably be inclined to agree that trying to compress even a three month timeline into 8 days will be well nigh impossible.
APIs? They have had 2 years to document communication protocols, not APIs. The protocols were mostly copied from existing open standards in the first place. Either you've bought into their propaganda beyond all reason or you're being paid to spread this FUD.
The commissioner's demand is effectively a demand for money, not for documentation; I can't see any way ANY company, no matter their motives, would be able to meet the deadline.
Good. Hopefully it will go beyond that. MS has built their business plan around breaking the law and paying off politicians and lawsuits. This is unacceptable. They should be progressively fined higher and higher amounts until breaking the law is no longer profitable for them and then they should be fined even more so that other companies understand such practices are not acceptable. If the US was not run by corrupt scumbags MS would have been broken up long ago and this would not be a problem. For political reasons the EU cannot order MS to break up, but they sure as hell should be fining them into oblivion until they obey they law.
I guess i could just say your analogy sucks... a better and more appropriate analogy would be... What if Ford created a car and you had to use a Ford starter in it, or if you had to use Ford door pannels.
I agree his analogy sucks and so does yours. You both miss the same thing everyone misses when they make analogies in these monopolist threads. They always make an analogy, except they don't include a monopoly in said analogy. Neither you nor the parent included one. The reason for this is simple, monopolies are rare in the US.
So lets try this again, what if Ford was the only supplier of cars in the US and if you wanted a car you pretty much had to buy a Ford. Now, ford decides it wants to move into the fuel market. So they switch all Ford cars to use only Ford fuel.
Parent post is correct, its laws that our lawmakers make like the DMCA that makes it illegal to reverse engineer most software.
The parent poster does have a point, but it is really stretched. For example, the Samba team has done a fine job of reverse engineering and have not been stopped by the DMCA. Their main hurdle is not having access to the documentation for weird edge cases. You can argue our copyright laws are broken, and I'd agree. You can argue that the government should revoke MS's copyrights and I'd disagree. Copyright needs to be applied equally across the market. Making a special case is a bad idea, especially when laws on the books already deal with the general situation of monopoly abuse.
Enforce the antitrust laws against MS, just as they were enforced against other abusive monopolies. Copyright reform is a separate issue.
In the words of my hip and cool friends... dont hate the player, hate the game.
But that's just the point. The laws are not being applied to MS the same as they are to everyone else because MS has not been punished for their illegal actions. Even the EU fines are tiny compared to the abuse. The only real solution has to come from the US for political reasons and it should be to break up MS the same way the telephone monopoly was broken up. Give at least two companies complete rights to all MS's existing copyrights and trademarks. Forbid them from collusion. Competition will be restored in short order and everyone will benefit.
You keep using the word 'Force', I do not think it means what you think it means.
"Do this or go out of business when we charge you twice as much as your competitors for a vital component for which we are the only supplier." Yeah, in economic terms that is pretty much forcing someone.
Seriously, the OEMs chose to sign the contracts...
Yeah, and then they signed them anyway because the alternative was go out of business and hope the US courts would actually enforce the law in a reasonable timeframe and force MS to stop. Basically, these agreements are big vote of "no confidence" in the capability of the US courts to act in a reasonable timeframe against one of the largest contributors to both party's campaign funds. These companies made the right choice, from what we've seen.
Doesn't Microsoft offer "collaboration servers" based on these formats? If so, they'll have to be opened.
I'm not sure what you're referring to specifically (sharepoint?), but to be clear, no servers or code needs to be opened at all. Only the protocols need to be documented. They can sell a closed desktop OS and a closed server OS, so long as everything that goes between the two (protocols) is documented so anyone else that wants to make a server OS can interact with the desktop in the same way. MS doesn't have to give up their source code or let others use it, just give them the same opportunity to write code to work with Windows desktop as MS has.
What power does the EU ultimately have to enforce the fines at this point if MS simply doesnt pay the fines...
They can confiscate MS property and assets in the EU, and they can throw corporate executives that fail to comply in prison.
Are they prepared to ban the importation of MS products and quit the MS Windows habit cold turkey?
There is no need to do this. They could simply confiscate MS's copyrights if so inclined.
can't see many businesses appreciating being deprived of a standard business environment/tool such as Windows or Office.
That's not going to happen. MS broke the law to hold businesses hostage, the EU is not going to let them suffer for MS's crimes and there is no reason to do so.
I'm fairly ignorant of EU politics but is there enough strength in the political system to push an embargo though and make it stick?
Again, there will be no embargo. The commission does have the clout to throw people in jail, and eventually they'll get far enough down the line so that someone will comply. In a worst case scenario they will order MS Europe to be formed from the assets, personnel, and funds MS has in the EU and grant that company the copyrights within the EU. The EU cannot afford to let a big company flaunt breaking the law or they will lose credibility and power and they know it. They have the authority and the guns and they will use them if they have to, but they won't.
MS will comply with the EU, even if they are slow about it. They would be idiots to walk away from the huge revenue stream that is the EU, in order to save a tiny portion of that in fines. It would also necessitate a huge new competitor to fill the space, destroying their stranglehold elsewhere. Do you want to buy Windows Vista from MS USA or Windows EU (with the same features) from MS-EU? Which will lower their price the most?
Speculation is fun and all, but really, this isn't going to happen.
I would reckon.doc,.xls, NTFS protocol etc etc etc, But I'm far from sure about this:)
This applies only to interactions between Windows desktops and servers, so file formats are unlikely to be included. This should include Active Directory, Exchange protocol, and Group policies. I'm not sure if it includes any others.
And as we all know, once the state says something, that is the truth. There cannot be another opinion about it.
This is a strawman.You made this argument, not the previous poster. The fact that the US and the EU and several other countries all ruled that MS is a monopoly does speak to the fact that experts hold this opinion. More importantly, however, is they do wield enough influence in the market, to disrupt free market action as demonstrated repeatedly. Thus the reason for antitrust laws (regardless of whether you want to call them a monopoly of something else) applies directly to them.
Most new Intel Core 2 systems and all workstation and server AMD systems come with "legacy" BIOS.
True, but for Intel and AMD systems this is pretty unlikely to last very long once Vista ships. They both already have it in production and neither wants to be left behind.
So LinuxBIOS is still very relevant.
I didn't say it wasn't relevant, I spoke to the scope of the relevance which was misrepresented in the summary.
In fact, it is still useful even if EFI was prevelant, as it is popular in the construction of clustered systems with homogeneous hardware.
I can certainly see benefits for this type of environment, which is probably why Google is interested in it, but most people are concerned about their desktops and servers, not clusters. Take a look at this thread. How many people do you see discussing this for getting Linux running on specific hardware that does not have drivers, or for clusters? Most people assumed this project was aimed at the average desktop (something implied by the summary) and were rightly concerned/dismissive as it is not a good fit there.
While I am like most of Slashdot in that I think that Microsoft has a very tight grip on the computer market, I still will never understand why the EU is so against Microsoft. Is it because it is produced in a foreign market? I know many European countries have unhealthy feelings of xenophobia...
While I, like most people on Slashdot understand that Lee Boyd Malvo is a good shot, I still will never understand why Virginia is so against him. Is it because he is black and Virginians hate blacks? I know a lot of Virginians are Clansmen...
Microsoft broke the law. The EU has enforced this same law against numerous companies that are both European and based in other countries. What's so hard to understand?
Remember: they bought the software...
Do you even know what this case is about? The whole point is that because everyone pretty much has to use Windows on the desktop to get software they need to do business means it is illegal for MS to force them to buy their server OS as well by tying the two together with secret protocols that make it hard to use a different server with Windows desktops. Since doing so is clearly against the law both in the US and the EU and MS was convicted of it both in the US and EU, I don't really see where refusing to fix the problem by providing a level playing ground for Linux and Solaris and everyone else as far as their interactions with the Windows desktop is concerned is in any way confusing.
Listen, I know MS publishes a lot of FUD about this and tries to confuse the issue, but it just isn't that hard. MS built their business model around breaking the law. They knew from the outset what they are doing is illegal and why and they just figured they'd make more money by breaking the law then paying any fines than by obeying the law. So far they've been very right. Even assuming they pay the fines they've acquired they're still right. They're not going to stop unless someone makes them with a bigger stick than this. Stop buying their marketing FUD.
Time for Microsoft to apply for patents on anything and everything described by these protocols...Otherwise, they're up a creek.
Well, since for the most part these protocols are intentionally broken copies of preexisting open standards, I don't think it likely they will be patentable. Also, since this is an antitrust abuse case, they would be forbidden by law from exercising any such patents or possibly even using patented protocols at all between their desktop and server since that would be a violation all by itself.
LinuxBIOS is generally used in massive clusters. The project was started at Los Alamos. I suppose they must have much lower standards than you do. But apart from your facts and opinions being a load of bollocks, I thought your post had a lot of merit.
Try not to be too hard on people. The summary misrepresented this project to some degree (I think) and the Web site is slashdotted. The fact that this is likely to be used mostly with legacy hardware or clusters was completely absent. The summary should have made it clear that this is not currently in the running to replace EFI as the basis for most new workstations and servers, but rather that it is mostly about getting specific old machines running Linux.
There certainly are features of modern chipsets that LinuxBIOS will probably ignore but which can be useful to some people. LinuxBIOS is not a full featured firmware. It is a quick and slim one.
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I've often wondered this myself. What is the reward for developing open source software?
Well, I get a paycheck, as I imagine most others do as well.
If companies can come in and use open source components in their own creation in a way that they make money without violating licenses, but at the same time aren't obligated to give anything back to the community, where's the motivation for new developers to go open source?
Developers in general just do the work they're paid to do. Open source code is a feature of the product. It benefits users, not developers. You might as well ask, what is the motivation for developers to write software that doesn't self-destruct after one year? I mean if users can just keep using the software they paid for, why would they hire developers to write it again?"
The answer is simple. You give customers what they want and they pay you. Nothing stops a company from writing software that self-destructs, but customers will probably buy software that doesn't from someone else because it benefits them, thus the first company loses in a competitive market. You can write closed source software too, but smart customers want open source since it benefits them by letting them hire the best bid for any additional work they want done and because they get free development from other companies that are also users. Code being open is just like code being coded without a self-destruct. It isn't ideal for developers, but it is what customers want and they pay the bill.
Not everybody operates with an altruistic "I'm giving back to the community" motivation.
The vast majority of open source contributions are paid for their efforts. Altruism has nothing to do with it. In my personal case, we sell specialty servers. We sell a bundle of hardware, open software, closed software, and services. What's a better choice for an OS for us to include in this bundle:
Looking at the business case, does contributing some minor modifications and fixes to the open OS cost us more than either of the other options? Hell no, not by a long shot. So we pay people to work on an open source OS, which benefits others as well as ourselves. This has nothing to do with altruism, it is simply the best business case and the most efficient way to work.
What am I missing here?
The business method. You're looking at open source development and imagining it is sold for profit just like closed source. This is completely false. Software is simply a tool to do something. Open source is a better tool.
Does the amount they contribute back exceed the amount they gain by benefiting from the work of others?
Umm... who cares? As a developer that makes money off of open source software, why do I care what the ratio of our contributions to use is? Why should someone looking at both making and using such software care? So long as it is making money for people why do you care if some other people aren't?
The unqualified statement "antitrust is a criminal offense" is wrong.
No it is 100% accurate, although maybe not as complete as you'd like. It was especially accurate in that it was rebuttal to the statement "This is not a criminal offence. It is a civil offence."
As indicated in the passage you quote, it can be either criminal or civil.
Antitrust laws in general can be civil or criminal offenses and sometimes the criminal offenses can be handled by the civil process via some weird voodoo in the law (in the US). The particular action we were discussing, however, was the tying of Windows desktop and server via secret protocols, which in the US was prosecuted by the DoJ and the criminal courts.
Bullshit. Another admin who does not know how to stably configure a windows server. I have used both LDAP and AD. No windows server I have ever worked on has been "crashy" or slow.
Then you must not have been in the business for very long. Windows servers running multiple services were notoriously crashy for years.. and yet they gained in market share. Microsoft replaced all the hotmail backend Linux servers with Windows machines and doubled the number they needed to keep it running. Are you saying MS is too incompetent to properly configure their own servers?
I prefer QNX or FreeBSD but I can work just as effectively on a windows server.
So you prefer FreeBSD huh? And it is free to use. And yet people buy Windows licenses. Why is that do you suppose?
The market did not fail, you did.
You say that as if they were mutually exclusive. I only admin servers for my personal uses. The info about Windows machines is what I've been told by numerous admins at numerous ISPs and companies I work with. It's also what most of the independent reviews of the platforms say when reliability is tested. The ability to run Windows only protocols is the main reason they sell boxes. That is illegal.
Without looking at the documentation, which I'm sure you haven't either, I can't say one way or the other whether the documentation is sufficient or insufficient. Neither can you.
MS admits their documentation is insufficient. The US courts also found their documentation to be insignificant. The EU commission's experts found it to be insufficient. The impartial expert MS selected before the proceedings started found it to be insufficient. Sure, maybe they're all wrong or lying, but I don't think it is reasonable to make that assumption.
Microsoft is in the business of making money. It's hurting their stock price to have this still hanging over their heads. It's hurting their productivity to have spend money to pay people to document all these protocols. Whether it's five people over 10 months or one person over fifty months probably means very little -- aside from the fact that Microsoft, trying to make money, would rather have this over and done with.
MS is making money hand over fist by not complying. They sell a huge number of inferior servers because those servers work with Windows desktops. They sell a huge number more desktops because other machines cannot properly communicate in the same way and they already bought an MS server. Thus the cycle continues. MS does not want this to stop until they have most of the server market and have created one more huge lock-in to stop others from threatening their desktop monopoly. So both from an immediate cash flow and a strategic perspective, they'd rather pay the fines than let others compete fairly with them.
They don't want this over, because they have no intention of complying until the cost becomes too high. In the mean time, they will continue delaying tactics like they have been and spreading tons of propaganda about the issue.
I'll reiterate my original point: an 8 day deadline is absurd. I can't imagine anyway that MS could complete the task in that time.
If you go out and start grabbing money out of the tills of cash registers downtown, how many days do you think the cops will give you to stop before they take some action to stop you? 8 days? MS is willfully breaking the law. It is part of their business plan. Do you think after multiple convictions for this offense their lawyers still did not know this was illegal? Pulling Windows server from the market and making it illegal to sell until it is fixed would be the just thing to do. The EU is being political and conciliatory and bending over backwards here. They were convicted in 2004 and still have not even stopping committing the crime, let alone paid any fines. That is absurd, but not in the way you imply.
However, providing an unreachable goal helps no one.
The only way MS will stop this action is if it becomes unprofitable. Daily fines that affect their bottom line are a damn fine way to do this. It helps a lot of people.
It might be, if they were actually paying the fine and if they weren't making more money than that by keeping the market broken with this action.
They tried that over a year ago. This isn't the first delay you know.
They're not saying it has to be done in 8 days. They're saying they're starting to collect the fines because MS has run up to big of a bill. Hopefully this is a prelude to raising the fines or taking other action that will motivate MS to act, since fines this size have not.
Microsoft is too smart of a company, no matter how evil and monopolistic, to want to carry this out any longer than necessary; it's too expensive, and Microsoft is in the business of making money.
This is a fundamental disagreement between us. I think MS is still making
From the Website of the Antitrust division of the DoJ: "There are three main ways in which the federal antitrust laws are enforced: criminal and civil enforcement actions brought by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, civil enforcement actions brought by the Federal Trade Commission and lawsuits brought by private parties asserting damage claims... What Kinds of Cases Has the Justice Department Brought? - Because of the harm that cartel violations cause, the Justice Department's number one antitrust priority is criminal prosecution of those activities. "
Antitrust violations are covered by and prosecuted under criminal law, although in recent years civil actions have been more common. That does not change the fact, however, that it is a criminal offense.
This is nothing more than bribery for trade secrets. Period.
Yeah those criminals at the EU that expect Microsoft to obey the law, or at least comply with the punishment they negotiated after being convicted... madness. And please, stop writing the word "period" after and before the punctuation mark. It is more than a little redundant.
The only thing Microsoft can do is retaliate.
Ha! yeah, umm that would go well. Governments and courts, especially ones recently established love it when companies retaliate against their implementation of the law. That's not a challenge to their authority that will force them to respond or anything.
1) Immediately release a statement that they are horrified that they are being pressured to make copyrighted works public or else face fines.
Well, MS is good at releasing statements. Not that anyone who matters is fooled.
Announce an IMMEDIATE withdrawl of Windows software from the EU... Announce no more support for those that continue to use it.
I see, so they should abandon 8 billion in revenue to save themselves from 1 billion in fines? Yeah, the shareholders will go for that in a big way. Of course due to the genuine advantage program that would also mean they are in violation of their contracts with thousands of international corporations, all of whom would immediately sue them in the US and probably bankrupt them.
Profit.
The executives would be far to busy bending over in the prison showers at this point for massive shareholder fraud than anything else.
The EU would shit their pants if Microsoft pulled Windows from the market. They could not function without it.
Umm, and people wouldn't just use pirated copies why? MS would have no standing in any EU court after refusing to comply with their laws and no way of enforcing their copyrights. Heck the EU would probably invalidate their copyrights for that antitrust abuse alone, possibly assigning them to a competitor or new company formed from the seized MS assets in the EU.
Call their bluff, Microsoft.
Yeah do it. It's brilliant. I was wrong about all of the above. It'll be great. :)
I can see complaining if the EU was enforcing some obscure law that they never enforce against EU companies, but this is pretty routine. They enforce it all the time and it is the same law the US convicted them of violating for the same incident. I mean come on already. Where do you get ideas like this?
Bill Gates responded "Okay, we'll just use our auto-update feature to turn off all Windows copies in every EU country. Hope you all know how to install Linux, fuckers!"
That would be so funny. Bill Gates would be out on his ass about as fast as they could arrange an emergency meeting of the board of directors. I wonder if the shareholders would take time away from apologizing to the EU long enough to hire someone to kidnap Gates and slowly torture him to death for the hundreds of billions of dollars he just cost them.
Free market mean anything?
Yes, the free market means a lot. It means the greed and self interest that is part of human nature can be harnessed to drive innovation and lower prices through competition. That is, unless that free market is undermined by a company that uses a monopoly in one market to create artificial barriers to entry and take over a second market without innovating. In that case it leads to higher prices and retards innovation.
It isn't like microsoft MADE itself a monopoly.
Well, technically they did, but it doesn't matter because they weren't convicted of being a monopoly. That is legal. Abusing a monopoly to gain in other markets is illegal and this what they were convicted of.
Why should Microsoft (or any company for that matter) have to hand over its "secrets" simply because their method works better than anyone elses?
Didn't you cover this stuff in Econ 101? I've got a monopoly on cars. There are five companies nearby that make cheese. The ones that make the best cheese at the lowest price have most of the market. I decide to tie my cheese sales to my car sales. Now everyone who buys one of my cars (everyone who drives) gets a lifetime supply of cheese and the cost of my cars goes up by a few thousand bucks. It is crappy cheese, but most people aren't willing to pay twice since I just gouged them for a few grand they otherwise could have spent. The other cheese sellers go out of business and I look for another market to take over. The quality of cheese has gone down; the price up. Everyone except me loses and the free market is broken. That is why bundling is illegal. Bundling is one form of tying, but there are others. Secret protocols are one way. Sure maybe Active Directory is not as good as LDAP, but AD is built into all Windows desktops and I need those to run my business. Thus it makes sense for me to buy the expensive, crashy, slow Windows server, instead of the Linux server that uses LDAP. Again the market has failed.
Isn't that what the goal of buisness is? To have an idea that works better than everyone else?
Using these anticompetitive practices, a monopolist can take over the market despite someone else having a better idea that works better (or would if not for the abuse). That is why it is illegal.
Why don't these security companies that are bitching give a big f.u. to microsoft and build their OWN operating system.
Because they don't have enough money for starters. Because having a better OS won't let them win in the market either. They won't be able to get it pre-installed by any OEM, so they'll need hardware too. That's a huge amount of money to enter a market and you get a better return with less risk in a non-monopolized market. The point of capitalism is everyone acting in their own best interests makes for better products at lower prices and everyone wins. Capitalism breaks in the face of a monopoly abusing its position which is why almost every country in the world is a regulated capitalism and makes this illegal.
I started to read your comments and then I gave up. I just don't particularly want to waste any more time. You obviously don't understand what I'm saying or the scientific method and how it is properly applied or how it was misapplied in the "Gaia Theory" (which technically is not even a theory). But I learned something today... I don't care.
The lawyers and judges (who don't generally understand software development or architecture at all) keep making numerous faulty assumptions.
You're the one making faulty assumptions. Many of the people working on this case know all of the things you cite, but they don't matter. This is a punishment for MS breaking the law that MS bargained for after they were found guilty. They claimed they would do it.
Just because Microsoft doesn't publish documentation for every conceivable thing they do, it doesn't mean a competitor is incapable of interoperating with their stuff.
If they're writing something that connects their desktop OS in the market they've monopolized with the server OS in a different market, they bloody well knew it was illegal unless it was open and documented so they bloody well should have done so. Or, they could have used the original standards they corrupted in order to make these protocols and avoided breaking the law in the first place. It doesn't matter if the Samba team can reverse engineer well enough to get Linux to mostly work. By law they have to have exactly the same capability to do so that Microsoft has and that means clearly written docs or the original developers hired to help them and anyone else who wants it.
If Microsoft wants to take over the server OS space, great. Let them do it by making the best server OS, not with this illegal bullshit. In my opinion, MS should be fined a hell of a lot more than they have been and the money handed over to all the competitors they have harmed. The damage they have done to the entire industry will take many years to fix and it won't start until this is solved.
If this were a first offense or something I'd be a little more lenient but it isn't even close. They've done this same thing again and again and they continue to do so. It needs to be made clear that breaking the law as part of your business plan is not acceptable and you will be smacked down hard if you do it. The US should break them up, but since the US courts are too corrupt, the EU should make sure they walk away from the next meeting of directors with a clear message that breaking the law will not be profitable.
That goal applies to a population of genetically related organisms acting in a local environment.
You miss my point entirely. A genetic change to one organism is not going to feedback into the rest.
An adaptation which makes a half square mile of ocean a temperature more favorable to life may do the same to the a portion of the world's climate.
You think a single mutation in one organism competing within a population will change an entire square mile of area?
But the intent of the organism is not to make the world's climate more favorable. That's a side effect. Its "intent," (If we can anthropomorphise it as such), is only to alter the local environment.
Lots of creatures adapt to alter their local environments and survival of the fittest promotes/explains that. The point is, global changes do not feed back to "stabilize." There is no genetic code for the current state of the planet within a certain set of variables.
Part of that impact is homeostatic.
Again, you miss the point. There are various competing forces in the environment and they change over time in a given location. None of this explains why anyone would assert the planet is such a system or why the Earth being 500 degrees warmer is likely to be promoted or stopped by local organisms by any mechanism other than intelligence.
Why not? What do you mean by 'genetic development' here? That's a little vague.
If you read the rest of that paragraph it explains why. Genetic changes in response to environment are evolution. The global environment adapting to suit "life" is speculation with no support.
I've given pretty straightforward mechanisms, and you've ignored them.
No you haven't. You've cited possible examples of an organism changing the environment, but no mechanism why such changes should promote life rather than randomly promote or endanger life, in general. I don't think you're understanding how evolution works and why the "Gaia Theory" fails to parallel it both in progression and methodology.
This is a strawman. You seem to have no understanding whatsoever of what Lovelock is proposing nor have you acknowledged what I've written.
No, this is an analogy. It is the same broken version of the scientific method applied to a different subject. The point is that both the analogy I presented and the "Gaia Theory" are trying to propose a possible unexplained mechanism for a reason something happens, rather than a method by which what we observe is happening.
As far as I can recall, MS did endeavor to document a bunch of their interfaces. The response was that it was insufficient. MS tried to find out how it was insufficient, and was told that it was MS's responsibility to figure that out.
Bullshit. MS was given clear instructions. They need sufficient documentation so that competitors can re-implement these protocols in their own servers. It is simple and clearly defined and instead of complying MS published a bunch of lies and tried to both sway public opinion and provide the least possible info to satisfy the EU in the hopes that they could get away with something that was insufficient for their competitors in the server space.
MS does produce technical documentation for a whole slew of its products. Look at the API-level documentation that is on http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/. It's just not the most obvious documentation. Is it usable? For the most part. Does it cover every single idiosyncracy? No.
They do not publish reasonable documentation on the protocols as they themselves have admitted and the US courts have also judged them in noncompliance (although due to their lobbying we don't punish them). If they're going to use secret broken versions of existing standards, they can't use them in both their client and server. This is simple and obvious if you read the law. MS knew it. They still know it. They're just delaying the fines as long as possible.
Providing MS with an EIGHT DAY deadline is just absurd.
Again I call bullshit. This is how long they have to stop breaking the law in this one way. They knew the law in the first place. Zero days before a fine is levied is sufficient in my opinion. Listen Mr. Murderer, I know 8 days isn't a lot of time, but we need you to stop killing people within that time frame. I know it's hard to change, but that's just the way it is. Besides, they have 8 days till the fines kick in. They've had two years since they were officially convicted of the crime already. That is way, way, way too long. Every day weakens competition and hurts both consumers and the industry.
Anyone who has ever written technical API documentation will probably be inclined to agree that trying to compress even a three month timeline into 8 days will be well nigh impossible.
APIs? They have had 2 years to document communication protocols, not APIs. The protocols were mostly copied from existing open standards in the first place. Either you've bought into their propaganda beyond all reason or you're being paid to spread this FUD.
The commissioner's demand is effectively a demand for money, not for documentation; I can't see any way ANY company, no matter their motives, would be able to meet the deadline.
Good. Hopefully it will go beyond that. MS has built their business plan around breaking the law and paying off politicians and lawsuits. This is unacceptable. They should be progressively fined higher and higher amounts until breaking the law is no longer profitable for them and then they should be fined even more so that other companies understand such practices are not acceptable. If the US was not run by corrupt scumbags MS would have been broken up long ago and this would not be a problem. For political reasons the EU cannot order MS to break up, but they sure as hell should be fining them into oblivion until they obey they law.
I guess i could just say your analogy sucks... a better and more appropriate analogy would be ... What if Ford created a car and you had to use a Ford starter in it, or if you had to use Ford door pannels.
I agree his analogy sucks and so does yours. You both miss the same thing everyone misses when they make analogies in these monopolist threads. They always make an analogy, except they don't include a monopoly in said analogy. Neither you nor the parent included one. The reason for this is simple, monopolies are rare in the US.
So lets try this again, what if Ford was the only supplier of cars in the US and if you wanted a car you pretty much had to buy a Ford. Now, ford decides it wants to move into the fuel market. So they switch all Ford cars to use only Ford fuel.
Parent post is correct, its laws that our lawmakers make like the DMCA that makes it illegal to reverse engineer most software.
The parent poster does have a point, but it is really stretched. For example, the Samba team has done a fine job of reverse engineering and have not been stopped by the DMCA. Their main hurdle is not having access to the documentation for weird edge cases. You can argue our copyright laws are broken, and I'd agree. You can argue that the government should revoke MS's copyrights and I'd disagree. Copyright needs to be applied equally across the market. Making a special case is a bad idea, especially when laws on the books already deal with the general situation of monopoly abuse.
Enforce the antitrust laws against MS, just as they were enforced against other abusive monopolies. Copyright reform is a separate issue.
In the words of my hip and cool friends... dont hate the player, hate the game.
But that's just the point. The laws are not being applied to MS the same as they are to everyone else because MS has not been punished for their illegal actions. Even the EU fines are tiny compared to the abuse. The only real solution has to come from the US for political reasons and it should be to break up MS the same way the telephone monopoly was broken up. Give at least two companies complete rights to all MS's existing copyrights and trademarks. Forbid them from collusion. Competition will be restored in short order and everyone will benefit.
This is not a criminal offence. It is a civil offence.
Are you certain? In the US, antitrust abuse is a criminal offense. I'm not certain about the EU, but I do know the laws are very similar.
You keep using the word 'Force', I do not think it means what you think it means.
"Do this or go out of business when we charge you twice as much as your competitors for a vital component for which we are the only supplier." Yeah, in economic terms that is pretty much forcing someone.
Seriously, the OEMs chose to sign the contracts...
Yeah, and then they signed them anyway because the alternative was go out of business and hope the US courts would actually enforce the law in a reasonable timeframe and force MS to stop. Basically, these agreements are big vote of "no confidence" in the capability of the US courts to act in a reasonable timeframe against one of the largest contributors to both party's campaign funds. These companies made the right choice, from what we've seen.
Doesn't Microsoft offer "collaboration servers" based on these formats? If so, they'll have to be opened.
I'm not sure what you're referring to specifically (sharepoint?), but to be clear, no servers or code needs to be opened at all. Only the protocols need to be documented. They can sell a closed desktop OS and a closed server OS, so long as everything that goes between the two (protocols) is documented so anyone else that wants to make a server OS can interact with the desktop in the same way. MS doesn't have to give up their source code or let others use it, just give them the same opportunity to write code to work with Windows desktop as MS has.
What power does the EU ultimately have to enforce the fines at this point if MS simply doesnt pay the fines...
They can confiscate MS property and assets in the EU, and they can throw corporate executives that fail to comply in prison.
Are they prepared to ban the importation of MS products and quit the MS Windows habit cold turkey?
There is no need to do this. They could simply confiscate MS's copyrights if so inclined.
can't see many businesses appreciating being deprived of a standard business environment/tool such as Windows or Office.
That's not going to happen. MS broke the law to hold businesses hostage, the EU is not going to let them suffer for MS's crimes and there is no reason to do so.
I'm fairly ignorant of EU politics but is there enough strength in the political system to push an embargo though and make it stick?
Again, there will be no embargo. The commission does have the clout to throw people in jail, and eventually they'll get far enough down the line so that someone will comply. In a worst case scenario they will order MS Europe to be formed from the assets, personnel, and funds MS has in the EU and grant that company the copyrights within the EU. The EU cannot afford to let a big company flaunt breaking the law or they will lose credibility and power and they know it. They have the authority and the guns and they will use them if they have to, but they won't.
MS will comply with the EU, even if they are slow about it. They would be idiots to walk away from the huge revenue stream that is the EU, in order to save a tiny portion of that in fines. It would also necessitate a huge new competitor to fill the space, destroying their stranglehold elsewhere. Do you want to buy Windows Vista from MS USA or Windows EU (with the same features) from MS-EU? Which will lower their price the most?
Speculation is fun and all, but really, this isn't going to happen.
I would reckon .doc, .xls, NTFS protocol etc etc etc, But I'm far from sure about this :)
This applies only to interactions between Windows desktops and servers, so file formats are unlikely to be included. This should include Active Directory, Exchange protocol, and Group policies. I'm not sure if it includes any others.
But, but, your honour - we don't HAVE any competition...!
An amusing aside, but in truth they're talking about competition in the server OS market, not the monopolized desktop OS space.
And as we all know, once the state says something, that is the truth. There cannot be another opinion about it.
This is a strawman.You made this argument, not the previous poster. The fact that the US and the EU and several other countries all ruled that MS is a monopoly does speak to the fact that experts hold this opinion. More importantly, however, is they do wield enough influence in the market, to disrupt free market action as demonstrated repeatedly. Thus the reason for antitrust laws (regardless of whether you want to call them a monopoly of something else) applies directly to them.
Most new Intel Core 2 systems and all workstation and server AMD systems come with "legacy" BIOS.
True, but for Intel and AMD systems this is pretty unlikely to last very long once Vista ships. They both already have it in production and neither wants to be left behind.
So LinuxBIOS is still very relevant.
I didn't say it wasn't relevant, I spoke to the scope of the relevance which was misrepresented in the summary.
In fact, it is still useful even if EFI was prevelant, as it is popular in the construction of clustered systems with homogeneous hardware.
I can certainly see benefits for this type of environment, which is probably why Google is interested in it, but most people are concerned about their desktops and servers, not clusters. Take a look at this thread. How many people do you see discussing this for getting Linux running on specific hardware that does not have drivers, or for clusters? Most people assumed this project was aimed at the average desktop (something implied by the summary) and were rightly concerned/dismissive as it is not a good fit there.
While I am like most of Slashdot in that I think that Microsoft has a very tight grip on the computer market, I still will never understand why the EU is so against Microsoft. Is it because it is produced in a foreign market? I know many European countries have unhealthy feelings of xenophobia...
While I, like most people on Slashdot understand that Lee Boyd Malvo is a good shot, I still will never understand why Virginia is so against him. Is it because he is black and Virginians hate blacks? I know a lot of Virginians are Clansmen...
Microsoft broke the law. The EU has enforced this same law against numerous companies that are both European and based in other countries. What's so hard to understand?
Remember: they bought the software...
Do you even know what this case is about? The whole point is that because everyone pretty much has to use Windows on the desktop to get software they need to do business means it is illegal for MS to force them to buy their server OS as well by tying the two together with secret protocols that make it hard to use a different server with Windows desktops. Since doing so is clearly against the law both in the US and the EU and MS was convicted of it both in the US and EU, I don't really see where refusing to fix the problem by providing a level playing ground for Linux and Solaris and everyone else as far as their interactions with the Windows desktop is concerned is in any way confusing.
Listen, I know MS publishes a lot of FUD about this and tries to confuse the issue, but it just isn't that hard. MS built their business model around breaking the law. They knew from the outset what they are doing is illegal and why and they just figured they'd make more money by breaking the law then paying any fines than by obeying the law. So far they've been very right. Even assuming they pay the fines they've acquired they're still right. They're not going to stop unless someone makes them with a bigger stick than this. Stop buying their marketing FUD.
Time for Microsoft to apply for patents on anything and everything described by these protocols...Otherwise, they're up a creek.
Well, since for the most part these protocols are intentionally broken copies of preexisting open standards, I don't think it likely they will be patentable. Also, since this is an antitrust abuse case, they would be forbidden by law from exercising any such patents or possibly even using patented protocols at all between their desktop and server since that would be a violation all by itself.
LinuxBIOS is generally used in massive clusters. The project was started at Los Alamos. I suppose they must have much lower standards than you do. But apart from your facts and opinions being a load of bollocks, I thought your post had a lot of merit.
Try not to be too hard on people. The summary misrepresented this project to some degree (I think) and the Web site is slashdotted. The fact that this is likely to be used mostly with legacy hardware or clusters was completely absent. The summary should have made it clear that this is not currently in the running to replace EFI as the basis for most new workstations and servers, but rather that it is mostly about getting specific old machines running Linux.
There certainly are features of modern chipsets that LinuxBIOS will probably ignore but which can be useful to some people. LinuxBIOS is not a full featured firmware. It is a quick and slim one.