Newsflash: microsoft can break compatibility with ANY technology if they want to, whether they were the originator or not.
But it's only damaging in specific instances.
They've done it with Java...
Yes, but already went to court and were convicted and so are highly unlikely to try it again.
...they've done it with CSS, they've done it with HTML
Yes, but not until after they had gained market dominance with IE. They don't have market dominance with dev tools/language especially for cross platform apps targeting Windows. If they are blocked from gaining significant share, introducing incompatibilities is just a minor annoyance.
I'd say they'd be LESS likely to fuck compatibility up, if the huge amount of crap kept in windows soley for compatibility reasons is anything to go by.
They wait until they get adoption then they break compatibility with Linux while providing an easy upgrade path for Windows. This means minimal damage to them and maximum damage to Linux and mixed Linux/Windows use. It's a well used strategy of there's at this point, one that can be avoided by avoiding the technology in the first place and sticking with something they can't easily break, like Java.
Okay, they want freedom to choose the software they want to use, but considering the state of OS email clients I'm not sure they really have any.
I disagree, but let's discuss.
I'm not trying to troll, in fact we looked at migrating our machines at work from Outlook to Thunderbird or another free app on Windows or Linux, but gave up in the end because none of the available clients could replace what we do with Outlook.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt when it comes to trolling. Of course every client will have different strengths and weaknesses. Likely Outlook can't replace everything existing Thunderbird users have either. The difference being, Thunderbird can be altered by individual companies while Outlook cannot.
For example, Thunderbird does not have any kind of default template support, so our users would have to remember to use the right template every time they write an email.
The real problem here is familiarity and skill of people implementing the system, not limitations of Thunderbird. In this instance you can use the externaltemplateloader extension to load a default template based upon the user. I'd never done it, but it took me all of 30 seconds to figure out how and a 5 minutes to test it and confirm it works. If you haven't hired someone competent enough to do a Google search to do your evaluations (or better yet someone expert in the field to consult) you are unlikely to succeed in any transition and will always fail back to the status quo.
We looked at Kmail too (not bad, but lacks group calendaring and is Linux only)
Kmail is fine for parts of a company standardized on Linux or for mixed deployments where you let users have a choice of clients because you're standardized on truly open and standard protocols. I've worked in such places and found it very liberating.
For us iPhone and Blackberry integration is important too which makes things that much harder.
Why? Both have good support for both standard and proprietary e-mail protocols. How does this make choosing a desktop client harder?
What I'm saying is that unless you are willing to do some coding yourself then the freedom of OSS is not really that liberating if the area you are looking at happens to be under developed.
Well, due to the nature of opensource and its use of standard protocols, you will tend to gain more choice with it, but then the real strength of opensource is the flexibility and cost savings. The advantage multiplies with adoption rates and the size of the deployment. If you're only deploying to ten users, it makes little economic sense to pay someone to implement a feature and add it to en existing OSS client, when compared to the licensing cost of a proprietary client. When you're talking about a deployment of 100,000 users it quickly becomes cost effective to hire someone to make needed changes or even have a full time developer working on a project and adding features and fixing bugs important to your company.
...but there is still a lot of important software we need that forces us to stay with commercial software.
For some instances this is certainly true, but I find that more often people simply think it is true and don't bother consulting anyone who actually knows. If you're seriously considering different applications for some purpose, don't just talk to closed source commercial companies, talk to open source commercial companies. Ask Redhat or Canonical what they have to offer and what the can do for you. It makes a lot of sense especially for new transitions. If you don't feel like paying them in the long term, you can always go it alone later.
One of the biggest problems with this sort of adoption is people try to sell it as short term cost saving measure, when transitions will always incur expenses. OSS is abo
Your post ignores the fact that U.S. healthcare practitioners are already incredibly regulated
True, I did not discuss that topic.
For example, I ought to be able to study the hell out of, say, the 10 most common reasons to visit the doctor, and create a low-cost "McDonald's" kind of fast-healthcare for just those ten things.
Umm, so you expect patients to diagnose themselves before seeking treatment? I'm not saying that won't work, just that it will certainly have some level of issues. I does not, however solve the economic conundrum our current medical care system has placed us in. That is, lack of security in our health leads to lack of security economically leading to accelerated wealth condensation and destabilization.
. That kind of free-market solution can never exist in today's (and worse - tomorrow's) ever-growing regulated welfare-state.
Socialism and regulation are separate topics, but you seem to be one of those libertarian economists with a strong, but unsupported belief that an unregulated free market will somehow magically solve all problems. I understand the appeal of such a simplistic philosophy, I just don't buy it as a student of both economics and history.
Yeah, except the rules in the US have changed, so now patents expire X years after filing, not X years after publication. This would be why you don't see submarine patents anymore.
What!?! Are you joking? Twenty years from the filing date is not long enough for a patented technological mechanism to become silently adopted and then for lawsuits to be filed? In the software industry?
Wow, where do you live? You can walk into any hospital in the U.S. and get medical treatment. If you have an emergency they HAVE to treat you by law.
I live in Michigan. Yes, you can go in and get emergency treatment at any hospital, but it sure as hell isn't free. If you can't pay you are sent to collections and any wages you earn will be garnished after you lose in court.
If you really are low income you don't pay shit.
There are some programs, both federal and state to provide some aid to some low income people, but very little for people in the middle income who cannot get insurance for one reason or another.
I just had a baby at one of the best hospitals in San Francisco
So you live in basically the only state with a significant amount of state funded healthcare for the poor and you seem to think that reflects the norm?
... and my daughter has full health insurance for free.
It's sad, while better than adults, not even all children in the US without means have healthcare.
This whole line about not being able to afford medical care is bullshit.
Which is why it results in over half of all personal bankruptcies in the US?
Anyone can get it, you pay on a sliding scale and all you have to do is fill out some paperwork.
The only way I can get insurance is to stop working for myself and get a job that provides it. No insurance company will insure me otherwise for less than half my income.
...doesn't mean that information isn't out there and those services don't exist
Except that for most people in most states, they don't.
-No federal or state contracts from now on will include health insurance. (I'm sure there's better legalese for that, but you get the idea.) -Employers won't be forced to provide health insurance. Tada! Insurance suddenly has to prove it's[sic] own worth
Such a system doesn't work very well unfortunately. One of the big problems with employer provided insurance is lack of direct reactions from customers. The problem with direct customers is the healthcare industry is consolidated and thus the buyer has no real power compared to a huge corporation. They can often wait you out in court if there is a dispute and wait for you to die or settle, at which point they risk losing money while you're bargaining from the position of pain and/or potential death. Then there are the people who can no longer get health insurance. Ever been seriously ill? Any preexisting conditions? Naturally tall and skinny? History of heart disease in your family? Suddenly you can no longer get any insurance. And then, finally, there is the economic impact. The poor can't afford insurance so their incomes are less stable, his means more erratic fluctuations they can't weather which means more poverty stricken and repossessed homes and absurd credit and we end up in large scale economic recession.
In countries with a little more sensible policies they make healthcare an economic asset by socializing it and combining that with progressive taxes. It helps compensate fro wealth condensation and at the same time stabilizes the low end of the populace economically while raising overall standards of living which trickles up. Heck, socialized healthcare, statistically, is a much more effective method of reducing violent crime than any gun control bill. The consolidated nature of the purchasing likewise lowers overall prices as drug companies are willing to provide large discounts when you're buying from them or a competitor for a whole country at once.
This may be true, but Government control of medicine is actually worse. I live in Britain...
Congratulations, you live with one of the worst implemented of socialized medicine.
Still, many of us choose to buy private health insurance as well, paying twice simply because the quality of NHS care is so poor. It is poor because it is inefficient, and it is inefficient because it is run by a Government monopoly staffed by more bureaucrats than doctors.
I'm sure it's terrible, but statistically, you still pay less than the average US citizen with much, much better results. It may seem bad to you over there, but the grass is definitely browner over here. The rates of people going blind from preventable causes, is absurdly higher here, for example. The correlation between wealth and lifespan is much more drastic. The overall lifespan is shorter.
. An American may lose his house to pay for an operation, but at least he gets the operation...
Fewer and fewer have houses to lose, in no small part because of health care costs and trying to get a loan so you can get medical treatment is not going to happen. It's a bad bet. I have a friend who is naturally skinny and tall. He can't get insurance at all because he is clinically underweight. I know a girl who is short. Clinically overweight, no insurance for her. Most doctors won't even treat them even if they have cash. They don't go to the hospital when they get very ill, because they simply can't afford it. One had something stuck in their eye, but decided to wait it out and hope they would not lose vision in that eye, because the alternative was losing everything she owned. The other spent a week in massive pain because of a serious infection of the inner ear. Again, no option other than begging people he knew with money in the hopes someone would help. You assert that Americans get the operation but a huge number of us certainly don't. In the UK they prioritize by severity of condition but here if you don't have the money you just suffer in pain or even die. I have other friends stuck in jobs that provide health insurance. The job is terrible but they can't ever quit because it's the only way they can get healthcare. Oh, and what about me. I'm physically fit, not too old and have no serious medical conditions. I will never, ever be able to buy medical insurance again because I had an inexplicable illness once and they never figured out what it was, so I'm a poor investment for insurance companies too.
Sorry, but the US has every other first world nation pretty well beat for worst health care and there are plenty of numbers to back that up.
True... only you have alternatives to the corporate doctor, when the state takes full control, your options get pretty thin pretty fast.
Not really, because for the vast majority of americans it isn't the corporate doctor making the decision, but the corporate insurance agency bureaucrat who has a vested interest in not doing anything for you. With the government at least they have the ostensible purpose of administering your good health and outrageously bad decisions reflect on politicians concerned about being reelected. Outrageous decisions from the insurance companies result in them giving someone a promotion and bad press that comes to nothing because politicians care more about lobbying bucks than constituents.
I'm quite skeptical that the US government can create and run a reasonable socialized healthcare system, but I don't see any better alternatives. What we have now isn't working. We pay more than other countries for much less and it is one of the major factors destabilizing our economy. Half of personal bankruptcies are the result of medical problems. 75% of those were people who had health insurance that found a way to not ay or underpay to such a degree that the individual could not afford treatment. I've been through the system. I had some of the best healthcare available to the middle class when I became ill. I still ended up paying over $20K out of pocket to get treated which would have driven the majority of people (without my paranoiacly large amount of savings) into complete poverty. I can't even imagine how many people who are too poor for personal bankruptcy to make sense are driven into poverty by our broken healthcare system.
Medicine is one of those fields along with firefighting, law enforcement, and military defense where capitalism is a very poor fit.
Is Stallman also saying Open Office should be discontinued because it can read a Word document? The.doc standard is closed, heavily patented, rigidly controlled, and arbitrarily changed... yet I think we all agree an office suite that wants to be relevant better be able to save files in that format
The difference here is that the.doc format is already entrenched and the damage is done. MS has monopoly power in the office suite market already. For your analogy to work we'd have to be rewinding to a time before.doc was dominant, when MS was first introducing it. Further it would require there to be a competing standard already in existence, not created by MS and with a vested interest in cross-platform compatibility. If we could rewind the clock and throw the support of a a segment of the market behind, say WordPerfect's formats we could perhaps have avoided a lot of trouble and needless work and lock in for Linux developers for a decade and promoted the adoption of Linux. How many times over the years was lack of.doc compatibility cited as a reason to not migrate to Linux. Do you really want lac of.NET version X to be another reason and another way for MS to lock people into Windows?
What about Wine?
You think Stallman or any other reasonable person thinks building WINE into Linux and writing core applications to run in WINE is a good idea either?
Hell, even drivers could fall into this category. If you allow an MS mouse to function in Linux, are you afraid of patent suits there too?
MS doesn't have a monopoly on mice it can use to leverage against Linux.
C# may have been developed by a big bloated corporation that many consider evil (or at least unethical), but so was C!
If you think that is the reason Stallman said we shouldn't adopt it, you have problems with reading comprehension. Otherwise, this is a strawman.
.net was clearly built as a Windows technology, but that's simply because MS made it. MS pretty much CAN'T claim patents on it, because.net itself implements so many languages that MS had nothing to do with developing, that I think it's safe to say any.net-based patent suit would die in seconds.
Thanks for your legal opinion. I think you're 100% wrong, since they don't have a patent on C#, just lots of vital components that went into it, and even if it was, legal posturing and barratry can do plenty of damage even if MS were to eventually lose in court.
I'm no fan of MS, but I really don't see a problem with Mono unless you have Stallmanian paranoia.
Paranoia is an unreasonable fear, like thinking the people in the grey coats are out to get you. After the people in the grey coats have beaten you with clubs a few dozen times, it is no longer paranoia, just being sensible.
If MS wants to change the spec and not release this one as a standard what happens to all the software that was written using the current implementation?NOTHING. It still works!
That's true, but not the point. If MS moves to a version for the standard OSS developers cannot for licensing or patent reasons, then they can use their desktop OS monopoly to get pretty much every company developing for Windows (most of them) to jump to the new version as well. Then developers of.Net applications have a choice of abandoning Linux and using a standard that will continue to advance, or abandon Windows and use a standard that is frozen or being developed very slowly by only a few percent of developers. By breaking compatibility in this way, MS leverages their monopoly influence to hurt Linux by getting application developers who tried to move to a cross platform solution to drop or freeze the Linux versions of their programs. You don't see how that ends up hurting Linux as a platform given that the alternative might be those same developers adopting Java and moving forward with a cross platform standard MS can't break compatibility with and where the courts have already intervened to censure MS?
As non-american (your senseless patents don't apply), I'll re-ask the question again.
Don't be absurd. Just because software patents don't apply in a given country doesn't mean they can't cripple Linux development in that country. Do you really think forking Linux and having all the countries that currently enforce software patents and all the companies that do business in that country developing one fork and the rest developing a different fork would not be a crippling blow to Linux? I don't care where you live, if all the Linux developers in the US are stopped from using the Linux after it started to include Mono and have to go back and rewrite all the subsequent application built upon it in 5 years time, that will hurt all Linux users around the world and significantly slow progress.
You also failed to address my point about intentionally incompatible versions of standards. Since you're posting AC you're probably a troll. Get an account or make less trollish posts if you want further replies from me.
As much as Stallman would like to say otherwise, Linux is not GNU/Linux, and GNU is not all free software. And lets face it, Debian has a choice.
True, but then Stallman has every right to voice his opinion about that choice.
Either not include a useful application for the sake of "purity", or include a useful runtime and applications which use it.
"Purity". You make it sound like the Aryan Brotherhood or something. I'm about the furthest thing from an OSS purist. I've developed closed source software that combines with open source software I developed on an open source platform and sold the hardware at, well, more companies than I care to remember. I'm running Mac OS X to type this, a very useful blending of closed and open source. So when I say I understand and agree with Stallman's assessment you can't accuse me of doing so because I'm interested in "purity". It is strategy pure and simple. Sometimes it pays to take a longer view of things and learn from history. I have no problem with Mono in general or in c# or.NET applications. I don't think Linux distros should be including them by default for the same reason I don't think Linux should be including a reverse engineered copy of ActiveX and applications that rely upon it. It is, quite simply, too dangerous a move to include standards that may or may not have patent issues and which are almost completely controlled by a monopolist who has many times abused that monopoly to harm others. Relying on MS to obey the law is an idiotic proposal at this point. It's like building a business model on working with the Mafia and relying on them to obey the laws in your dealings.
IS the goal to create a useful system or a pure system?
The goal is to create a useful system in the long term and not encourage the adoption of one more trojan "standard" from Microsoft which can be used against us at a later date.
Mono is a cleanroom implementation of the CLR as specified by EMCA and.Net libraries, right? What exactly do you risk by using it?
Submarine patents for one. Investment of effort into technologies where MS can break compatibility for two. Buying into standards MS has too much influence on is simply asking for them to use that influence to hurt you at a later date. After the 20th or 30th such instance you'd think people would learn to be a little less shortsighted.
what amazes me is that RMS is saying at the same time that it is good to have a C# implementation, but warns against writing apps in it...
Except that's not what he said. He said it's good to have an implementation but bad to include that implementation and applications that reply upon it in GnuLinux distros and components. It's akin to saying that it is good to have support for FAT filesystems in Linux, but stupid to include a FAT partition by default when installing Linux along with applications that only work on FAT.
... if not outright imbecile, that's at least a very stupid position
Not everything you don't comprehend is stupid. Sometimes, you're just a little bit stupid instead, and so misinterpret the words of others in stupid ways.
The issue though is not whether they are a monopoly in that market (which they are, probably just as much as Microsoft is on the desktop market), but are they using it to prevent competition from others or in other markets?
I agree there is question about whether or not IBM's actions constitute an abuse in other markets, but that is not the only form of antitrust abuse. Methods of gaining the monopoly, preventing others entry into the initial market, or price fixing can all be issues. Further I'm not sure I would conclude that IBM has a monopoly on the relevant market. They certainly sell most of what people refer to as mainframes, but it is unclear that that label defines the competitive market in which they operate. The general server market and the supercomputer market may well constitute part of the relevant market for antitrust purposes. Do potential buyers of mainframes consider either as potential solutions when buying? Remember also software incompatibility itself does not make that question a "no" based upon precedent involving Apple computers versus Windows based PC's.
Is it just me, or does it seem like the U.S. is being foolish about over-concentrating its forces?
I agree.
It seems like just one or two nukes could make the U.S. nearly incapable of defending itself against a serious attack.
Nah, that's not such a big deal. They are more distributed than that with branch offices. I'm much more concerned about the financial aspects. open the base in Detroit already or one of the other areas of the US crippled by current changes to the economy.
HTML/HTTP were never designed as a method for running remote applications and shouldn't be used as such.
Developers use the best tool for the job and (sadly) Web apps are more functional and useful to people than native clients in many instances.
Yes I realise that for n00bs its all about the convenience of web apps but client-side apps need not be inconvenient. Look at the iPhone app store, n00bs love it and its full of client-server applications.
This is part of an interesting shift in computer technology. Mainly it is the shift to portable computing owned by the user. This contrasts with work provided computers controlled by them and public terminals. When you want to check your personal e-mail at work, using your work provided desktop, well a Web application is really convenient. When you want to check your personal e-mail at work and you own an iPhone, the game changes. When you want to check your personal e-mail at home, using the same thing you do at work is convenient.
Further, Web applications are cross platform. They work on all the different versions of Windows and OS X and Linux and anything else and you don't have to pay for and separately install the program on each device. You don't have to learn separate interfaces on each device. You don't have to worry about synching data. The truth is, Microsoft has a lot of power and they've spent the last decade trying to prevent easy cross-platform computing and serving as a road block to anything that might make the Web a more important chunk of computing than their OS. With the OS market so broken the Web is an attempt by the free market to route around the damage.
As I see it the fight between Web applications and native applications depends upon how the market/ecosystem evolves. As alternative devices and OS's like the iPhone, blackberry, Linux netbooks, OS X computers, etc. become more popular we'll see a shift back towards native applications. However, at the same time if Web technologies move forward in actual implementation and IE loses market share (which will accompany a shift towards the aforementioned devices) the Web will become a better medium for delivering useful applications and it will become an easier target for developers. We could see an alternative cross platform development strategy become dominant, such as Java or other VMs, but it is doubtful since MS will do everything they can to block such a technology and they still have a lot of power. More likely we'll see hybrid applications/services like the ones Google promotes. Send e-mail or chat via standard services through their Web interface when convenient or use a native client when you have access to a device you control.
your saying that whatever OS is the most popular at the moment is commiting a crime by pushing their own products?
That's not what the law says at all. What the law says if any one company or trust gains overwhelming market share in any market (in this case desktop OS's) they are forbidden from bundling and tying products from other, preexisting markets with that monopolized product. So if MS had 40% of the desktop OS market, Apple had 30% and Redhat had 30% all of them would be allowed to bundle anything they wanted with their OS.
The reason for these laws is simple. When you have huge amounts of influence in a market you have power over your customers. That power can be used to push inferior products in other markets. For example, for years IE has been by far the worst browser on the market, yet the most popular. For years no real progress has been made in Web technologies because MS would not implement it in IE so Web developers could not use those new technologies. Other browser makers could implement them, but had no motivation since they knew Web developers couldn't use them. The whole market slowed to a crawl, which is very unusual for a technological market especially one experiencing enormous growth. Any reasonable person 10 years ago would have assumed we'd have native video and audio tags by now as well as vector graphics, 3D Web environments, etc. Standards for these technologies were written up as drafts 10 years ago, then it all came to a screeching halt.
HOW they pushed them may have been unethical...
It was more than that; it was illegal.
...but just how has IE hurt browser innovation?
I think I've covered that.
Opera,Chrome,Firefox...all better the IE.
All better objectively. That doesn't mean they're better for given user because they are all artificially broken by MS. The number of IE specific Web pages and applications in existence all make those browsers inferior for many people. That's a direct result of MS's crime. The fact that OEMs don't preinstall other browsers instead of IE is the direct result of MS's crime.
No, it is not a criminal proceeding. Yes, there is the clayton antitrust act, but MS was *NEVER* charged with criminal violation of it.
You're partly correct. They were charged under the Sherman act with criminal violations and the Clayton act defined the civil "triple damages" the injured parties were eligible for as part of the preceding civil case. Regardless, both the Sherman and Clayton acts are criminal laws. Your links to the civil cases that lead to the criminal case are not particularly relevant nor are links to the civil fines they settled for with the states in the consolidated case. The meager remedies ordered by the courts are only allocable under criminal law.
And no, when they talk about the "Opera Complaint", they're not talking about a criminal complaint. They're talking about a complaint made to the EU Antitrust Commission. A Criminal Complaint is an actual case brought against someone in a court of law.
The European Commission is an enforcement branch of the executive, like the Department of Justice or FTC in the states. In the first case against MS, they refused to comply with the commissions ruling and so they took MS before the Court of Justice, like the DoJ taking someone before the Supreme Court. MS lost. This time the commission told MS they thought they were guilty and were going to pursue it and MS pretty much declined any defense, tantamount to admitting their guilt except they can retract it later.
You don't make a civil complaint to the DoJ or the EC regarding some other company's action. You make civil complaints directly to the courts in the judicial branch. A complaint to the EC is generally a criminal complaint. Otherwise, they refer to it as a query or somesuch.
That's a gross oversimplification, Ipods and Itunes do have enough of a market share to constitute a monopoly but Apple is unable to leverage that to inhibit competition...
The EU commission decided Apple did not have large enough market share because media capable cell phones were part of the relevant market. It has nothing to do with Apple somehow being unable to inhibit competition. People who buy iPods are much more likely to use iTunes instead of Realplayer or Songbird because iTunes is bundled with iPods. That's inhibiting competition in the music player application market. It is not significant enough of an influence though because Apple doesn't have enough of the market the iPod competes in. If Apple did have enough market share then their bundling would be illegal, although with the market already so broken by MS's abuse and the RIAA's abuse it is unlikely any practical remedy against Apple would actually benefit the market.
The only difference between MS bundling IE with Windows and Apple bundling Safari with itunes is that Apple does not constitute a monopoly on MP3 players.
Actually, the difference would be between MS bundling IE with Windows and Apple bundling the iTunes application with iPods. Safari is more loosely tied to iTunes via their software update mechanism , but no court with any sense would address Safari and Quicktime and the iTMS, when all they need to address for a remedy is the iTunes application.
Personally I don't like this kind of cross promotion and it should not be permitted...
You may not like it, but we don't pass laws banning things based upon your dislike. You need to present a real case of why the public is being harmed and the rights of people to take an action should be curtailed.
...at the very least an option must be given not to install the optional software (Safari in this case). The Itunes installer does not give you this option.
Umm, you don't have the option to not install Safari when installing iTunes? Since when?
BTW, this is also the condition I make with MS bundling IE with Windows, I don't want it removed in so far as I want it completely removable.
Bundling a product from one market with a product from another market does demonstrable harm. We banned this a hundred years ago because our economy was being destroyed and pretty much every nation on the planet has passed similar laws. It is a fundamental and well understood and absurdly well supported economic theory.
Some countries (and the EU) do place lesser limitations on companies with significant market share (but not enough to constitute monopoly influence). For the most part though, bundling is not a problem. So long as there is no monopoly involved bundling that hurts consumers just drives those consumers to competitors and the market corrects. Mind you monopolies that have not been checked and government granted monopolies run amuck (e.g. improper patents) can make the market unable to effectively do this.
Yeah, complaining after only a decade of criminal acts by a competitor. Those whiners.
How and who will decide what browser choices will you get on the first run?
The EU commission will, based upon the survey they've been circulating among PC makers. I won't bother to address your variations on this theme.
The only sane way for MS to comply was to remove IE.
No, the only legal way for MS to comply was to not bundle IE in the first place. Since they went a head and broke the law, the only legal way to comply with the commission is to wait for the commission to make a ruling and then do what they're told. MS's actions aren't an attempt to help fix the market. They are an attempt to do something towards that end that has very limited effectiveness in the hopes that the commission would not impose a more strict measure.
To avoid the fine, MS removed IE, and still there's a lot of BS going on.
Since when does stopping a criminal action mean you aren't fined for the time during which you were breaking the law?
Something tells me, though, that the EC doesn't make BMW sell customers a car without an engine...
No they don't Because BMW doesn't have a monopoly on the car market which they established while engines were a separate pre-existing market. It's the same law for everyone. You'd think with hundreds of comments here people posting would bother to find out what the law they're talking about is.
I don't think he's forgetting that, because it's not true.
Yes, it is.
. Neither the US DOJ anti-trust suit or the EU "commission" have chared Microsoft with any criminal wrongdoing.
Yes, they did. The Clayton antitrust act is criminal law. The case against MS started as a series of civil suits, but then the DoJ took over and prosecuted it as a crime. I can see why you'd be confused, but that is not uncommon in US antitrust law. Article 82 in the EU is also criminal law.
These are civil actions, and as such cannot deal with "punishment for crime".
Civil actions would be lawsuits. That is not the case at all as you can see by looking up the pertinent laws I quoted.
They can only extract monetary fines and seek to repair the problems.
That's all that ever happens with corporations. They're entities not individuals. This has nothing to do with it being a civil law.
This is why both the DOJ and the EU use terms like "Remedy".
No, they use the term "remedy" because they are trying to remedy the broken market. You'll also note they repeatedly refer to the opera complaint, not the Opera lawsuit. That's "complaint" as in criminal complaint.
ivil and Criminal law are two diffent things. Don't confuse them...
Yes they are, but you're the one who has confused them. Antitrust abuse is a criminal offense in both the US and EU.
Why not give the little guys a chance? After all, isn't that the whole point of disputing the inclusion of IE? To give other browsers a chance?
Only indirectly. The direct purpose is to correct the Web browser market so it is competitive again so that each browser can live or die based upon its merits. Basically, remove all incentive to create Web pages tied to IE or that only work in IE as well as other artificial incentives to use IE. Once that is done and once MS is no longer abusing their Windows monopoly to artificially inflate market share, it doesn't matter if "big" or "little" browsers win.
Slashdot Mirror
Newsflash: microsoft can break compatibility with ANY technology if they want to, whether they were the originator or not.
But it's only damaging in specific instances.
They've done it with Java...
Yes, but already went to court and were convicted and so are highly unlikely to try it again.
...they've done it with CSS, they've done it with HTML
Yes, but not until after they had gained market dominance with IE. They don't have market dominance with dev tools/language especially for cross platform apps targeting Windows. If they are blocked from gaining significant share, introducing incompatibilities is just a minor annoyance.
I'd say they'd be LESS likely to fuck compatibility up, if the huge amount of crap kept in windows soley for compatibility reasons is anything to go by.
They wait until they get adoption then they break compatibility with Linux while providing an easy upgrade path for Windows. This means minimal damage to them and maximum damage to Linux and mixed Linux/Windows use. It's a well used strategy of there's at this point, one that can be avoided by avoiding the technology in the first place and sticking with something they can't easily break, like Java.
Okay, they want freedom to choose the software they want to use, but considering the state of OS email clients I'm not sure they really have any.
I disagree, but let's discuss.
I'm not trying to troll, in fact we looked at migrating our machines at work from Outlook to Thunderbird or another free app on Windows or Linux, but gave up in the end because none of the available clients could replace what we do with Outlook.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt when it comes to trolling. Of course every client will have different strengths and weaknesses. Likely Outlook can't replace everything existing Thunderbird users have either. The difference being, Thunderbird can be altered by individual companies while Outlook cannot.
For example, Thunderbird does not have any kind of default template support, so our users would have to remember to use the right template every time they write an email.
The real problem here is familiarity and skill of people implementing the system, not limitations of Thunderbird. In this instance you can use the externaltemplateloader extension to load a default template based upon the user. I'd never done it, but it took me all of 30 seconds to figure out how and a 5 minutes to test it and confirm it works. If you haven't hired someone competent enough to do a Google search to do your evaluations (or better yet someone expert in the field to consult) you are unlikely to succeed in any transition and will always fail back to the status quo.
We looked at Kmail too (not bad, but lacks group calendaring and is Linux only)
Kmail is fine for parts of a company standardized on Linux or for mixed deployments where you let users have a choice of clients because you're standardized on truly open and standard protocols. I've worked in such places and found it very liberating.
For us iPhone and Blackberry integration is important too which makes things that much harder.
Why? Both have good support for both standard and proprietary e-mail protocols. How does this make choosing a desktop client harder?
What I'm saying is that unless you are willing to do some coding yourself then the freedom of OSS is not really that liberating if the area you are looking at happens to be under developed.
Well, due to the nature of opensource and its use of standard protocols, you will tend to gain more choice with it, but then the real strength of opensource is the flexibility and cost savings. The advantage multiplies with adoption rates and the size of the deployment. If you're only deploying to ten users, it makes little economic sense to pay someone to implement a feature and add it to en existing OSS client, when compared to the licensing cost of a proprietary client. When you're talking about a deployment of 100,000 users it quickly becomes cost effective to hire someone to make needed changes or even have a full time developer working on a project and adding features and fixing bugs important to your company.
...but there is still a lot of important software we need that forces us to stay with commercial software.
For some instances this is certainly true, but I find that more often people simply think it is true and don't bother consulting anyone who actually knows. If you're seriously considering different applications for some purpose, don't just talk to closed source commercial companies, talk to open source commercial companies. Ask Redhat or Canonical what they have to offer and what the can do for you. It makes a lot of sense especially for new transitions. If you don't feel like paying them in the long term, you can always go it alone later.
One of the biggest problems with this sort of adoption is people try to sell it as short term cost saving measure, when transitions will always incur expenses. OSS is abo
Your post ignores the fact that U.S. healthcare practitioners are already incredibly regulated
True, I did not discuss that topic.
For example, I ought to be able to study the hell out of, say, the 10 most common reasons to visit the doctor, and create a low-cost "McDonald's" kind of fast-healthcare for just those ten things.
Umm, so you expect patients to diagnose themselves before seeking treatment? I'm not saying that won't work, just that it will certainly have some level of issues. I does not, however solve the economic conundrum our current medical care system has placed us in. That is, lack of security in our health leads to lack of security economically leading to accelerated wealth condensation and destabilization.
. That kind of free-market solution can never exist in today's (and worse - tomorrow's) ever-growing regulated welfare-state.
Socialism and regulation are separate topics, but you seem to be one of those libertarian economists with a strong, but unsupported belief that an unregulated free market will somehow magically solve all problems. I understand the appeal of such a simplistic philosophy, I just don't buy it as a student of both economics and history.
Yeah, except the rules in the US have changed, so now patents expire X years after filing, not X years after publication. This would be why you don't see submarine patents anymore.
What!?! Are you joking? Twenty years from the filing date is not long enough for a patented technological mechanism to become silently adopted and then for lawsuits to be filed? In the software industry?
Wow, where do you live? You can walk into any hospital in the U.S. and get medical treatment. If you have an emergency they HAVE to treat you by law.
I live in Michigan. Yes, you can go in and get emergency treatment at any hospital, but it sure as hell isn't free. If you can't pay you are sent to collections and any wages you earn will be garnished after you lose in court.
If you really are low income you don't pay shit.
There are some programs, both federal and state to provide some aid to some low income people, but very little for people in the middle income who cannot get insurance for one reason or another.
I just had a baby at one of the best hospitals in San Francisco
So you live in basically the only state with a significant amount of state funded healthcare for the poor and you seem to think that reflects the norm?
... and my daughter has full health insurance for free.
It's sad, while better than adults, not even all children in the US without means have healthcare.
This whole line about not being able to afford medical care is bullshit.
Which is why it results in over half of all personal bankruptcies in the US?
Anyone can get it, you pay on a sliding scale and all you have to do is fill out some paperwork.
The only way I can get insurance is to stop working for myself and get a job that provides it. No insurance company will insure me otherwise for less than half my income.
...doesn't mean that information isn't out there and those services don't exist
Except that for most people in most states, they don't.
-No federal or state contracts from now on will include health insurance. (I'm sure there's better legalese for that, but you get the idea.) -Employers won't be forced to provide health insurance. Tada! Insurance suddenly has to prove it's[sic] own worth
Such a system doesn't work very well unfortunately. One of the big problems with employer provided insurance is lack of direct reactions from customers. The problem with direct customers is the healthcare industry is consolidated and thus the buyer has no real power compared to a huge corporation. They can often wait you out in court if there is a dispute and wait for you to die or settle, at which point they risk losing money while you're bargaining from the position of pain and/or potential death. Then there are the people who can no longer get health insurance. Ever been seriously ill? Any preexisting conditions? Naturally tall and skinny? History of heart disease in your family? Suddenly you can no longer get any insurance. And then, finally, there is the economic impact. The poor can't afford insurance so their incomes are less stable, his means more erratic fluctuations they can't weather which means more poverty stricken and repossessed homes and absurd credit and we end up in large scale economic recession.
In countries with a little more sensible policies they make healthcare an economic asset by socializing it and combining that with progressive taxes. It helps compensate fro wealth condensation and at the same time stabilizes the low end of the populace economically while raising overall standards of living which trickles up. Heck, socialized healthcare, statistically, is a much more effective method of reducing violent crime than any gun control bill. The consolidated nature of the purchasing likewise lowers overall prices as drug companies are willing to provide large discounts when you're buying from them or a competitor for a whole country at once.
This may be true, but Government control of medicine is actually worse. I live in Britain...
Congratulations, you live with one of the worst implemented of socialized medicine.
Still, many of us choose to buy private health insurance as well, paying twice simply because the quality of NHS care is so poor. It is poor because it is inefficient, and it is inefficient because it is run by a Government monopoly staffed by more bureaucrats than doctors.
I'm sure it's terrible, but statistically, you still pay less than the average US citizen with much, much better results. It may seem bad to you over there, but the grass is definitely browner over here. The rates of people going blind from preventable causes, is absurdly higher here, for example. The correlation between wealth and lifespan is much more drastic. The overall lifespan is shorter.
. An American may lose his house to pay for an operation, but at least he gets the operation...
Fewer and fewer have houses to lose, in no small part because of health care costs and trying to get a loan so you can get medical treatment is not going to happen. It's a bad bet. I have a friend who is naturally skinny and tall. He can't get insurance at all because he is clinically underweight. I know a girl who is short. Clinically overweight, no insurance for her. Most doctors won't even treat them even if they have cash. They don't go to the hospital when they get very ill, because they simply can't afford it. One had something stuck in their eye, but decided to wait it out and hope they would not lose vision in that eye, because the alternative was losing everything she owned. The other spent a week in massive pain because of a serious infection of the inner ear. Again, no option other than begging people he knew with money in the hopes someone would help. You assert that Americans get the operation but a huge number of us certainly don't. In the UK they prioritize by severity of condition but here if you don't have the money you just suffer in pain or even die. I have other friends stuck in jobs that provide health insurance. The job is terrible but they can't ever quit because it's the only way they can get healthcare. Oh, and what about me. I'm physically fit, not too old and have no serious medical conditions. I will never, ever be able to buy medical insurance again because I had an inexplicable illness once and they never figured out what it was, so I'm a poor investment for insurance companies too.
Sorry, but the US has every other first world nation pretty well beat for worst health care and there are plenty of numbers to back that up.
True... only you have alternatives to the corporate doctor, when the state takes full control, your options get pretty thin pretty fast.
Not really, because for the vast majority of americans it isn't the corporate doctor making the decision, but the corporate insurance agency bureaucrat who has a vested interest in not doing anything for you. With the government at least they have the ostensible purpose of administering your good health and outrageously bad decisions reflect on politicians concerned about being reelected. Outrageous decisions from the insurance companies result in them giving someone a promotion and bad press that comes to nothing because politicians care more about lobbying bucks than constituents.
I'm quite skeptical that the US government can create and run a reasonable socialized healthcare system, but I don't see any better alternatives. What we have now isn't working. We pay more than other countries for much less and it is one of the major factors destabilizing our economy. Half of personal bankruptcies are the result of medical problems. 75% of those were people who had health insurance that found a way to not ay or underpay to such a degree that the individual could not afford treatment. I've been through the system. I had some of the best healthcare available to the middle class when I became ill. I still ended up paying over $20K out of pocket to get treated which would have driven the majority of people (without my paranoiacly large amount of savings) into complete poverty. I can't even imagine how many people who are too poor for personal bankruptcy to make sense are driven into poverty by our broken healthcare system.
Medicine is one of those fields along with firefighting, law enforcement, and military defense where capitalism is a very poor fit.
Is Stallman also saying Open Office should be discontinued because it can read a Word document? The .doc standard is closed, heavily patented, rigidly controlled, and arbitrarily changed... yet I think we all agree an office suite that wants to be relevant better be able to save files in that format
The difference here is that the .doc format is already entrenched and the damage is done. MS has monopoly power in the office suite market already. For your analogy to work we'd have to be rewinding to a time before .doc was dominant, when MS was first introducing it. Further it would require there to be a competing standard already in existence, not created by MS and with a vested interest in cross-platform compatibility. If we could rewind the clock and throw the support of a a segment of the market behind, say WordPerfect's formats we could perhaps have avoided a lot of trouble and needless work and lock in for Linux developers for a decade and promoted the adoption of Linux. How many times over the years was lack of .doc compatibility cited as a reason to not migrate to Linux. Do you really want lac of .NET version X to be another reason and another way for MS to lock people into Windows?
What about Wine?
You think Stallman or any other reasonable person thinks building WINE into Linux and writing core applications to run in WINE is a good idea either?
Hell, even drivers could fall into this category. If you allow an MS mouse to function in Linux, are you afraid of patent suits there too?
MS doesn't have a monopoly on mice it can use to leverage against Linux.
C# may have been developed by a big bloated corporation that many consider evil (or at least unethical), but so was C!
If you think that is the reason Stallman said we shouldn't adopt it, you have problems with reading comprehension. Otherwise, this is a strawman.
.net was clearly built as a Windows technology, but that's simply because MS made it. MS pretty much CAN'T claim patents on it, because .net itself implements so many languages that MS had nothing to do with developing, that I think it's safe to say any .net-based patent suit would die in seconds.
Thanks for your legal opinion. I think you're 100% wrong, since they don't have a patent on C#, just lots of vital components that went into it, and even if it was, legal posturing and barratry can do plenty of damage even if MS were to eventually lose in court.
I'm no fan of MS, but I really don't see a problem with Mono unless you have Stallmanian paranoia.
Paranoia is an unreasonable fear, like thinking the people in the grey coats are out to get you. After the people in the grey coats have beaten you with clubs a few dozen times, it is no longer paranoia, just being sensible.
If MS wants to change the spec and not release this one as a standard what happens to all the software that was written using the current implementation?NOTHING. It still works!
That's true, but not the point. If MS moves to a version for the standard OSS developers cannot for licensing or patent reasons, then they can use their desktop OS monopoly to get pretty much every company developing for Windows (most of them) to jump to the new version as well. Then developers of .Net applications have a choice of abandoning Linux and using a standard that will continue to advance, or abandon Windows and use a standard that is frozen or being developed very slowly by only a few percent of developers. By breaking compatibility in this way, MS leverages their monopoly influence to hurt Linux by getting application developers who tried to move to a cross platform solution to drop or freeze the Linux versions of their programs. You don't see how that ends up hurting Linux as a platform given that the alternative might be those same developers adopting Java and moving forward with a cross platform standard MS can't break compatibility with and where the courts have already intervened to censure MS?
As non-american (your senseless patents don't apply), I'll re-ask the question again.
Don't be absurd. Just because software patents don't apply in a given country doesn't mean they can't cripple Linux development in that country. Do you really think forking Linux and having all the countries that currently enforce software patents and all the companies that do business in that country developing one fork and the rest developing a different fork would not be a crippling blow to Linux? I don't care where you live, if all the Linux developers in the US are stopped from using the Linux after it started to include Mono and have to go back and rewrite all the subsequent application built upon it in 5 years time, that will hurt all Linux users around the world and significantly slow progress.
You also failed to address my point about intentionally incompatible versions of standards. Since you're posting AC you're probably a troll. Get an account or make less trollish posts if you want further replies from me.
As much as Stallman would like to say otherwise, Linux is not GNU/Linux, and GNU is not all free software. And lets face it, Debian has a choice.
True, but then Stallman has every right to voice his opinion about that choice.
Either not include a useful application for the sake of "purity", or include a useful runtime and applications which use it.
"Purity". You make it sound like the Aryan Brotherhood or something. I'm about the furthest thing from an OSS purist. I've developed closed source software that combines with open source software I developed on an open source platform and sold the hardware at, well, more companies than I care to remember. I'm running Mac OS X to type this, a very useful blending of closed and open source. So when I say I understand and agree with Stallman's assessment you can't accuse me of doing so because I'm interested in "purity". It is strategy pure and simple. Sometimes it pays to take a longer view of things and learn from history. I have no problem with Mono in general or in c# or .NET applications. I don't think Linux distros should be including them by default for the same reason I don't think Linux should be including a reverse engineered copy of ActiveX and applications that rely upon it. It is, quite simply, too dangerous a move to include standards that may or may not have patent issues and which are almost completely controlled by a monopolist who has many times abused that monopoly to harm others. Relying on MS to obey the law is an idiotic proposal at this point. It's like building a business model on working with the Mafia and relying on them to obey the laws in your dealings.
IS the goal to create a useful system or a pure system?
The goal is to create a useful system in the long term and not encourage the adoption of one more trojan "standard" from Microsoft which can be used against us at a later date.
Mono is a cleanroom implementation of the CLR as specified by EMCA and .Net libraries, right? What exactly do you risk by using it?
Submarine patents for one. Investment of effort into technologies where MS can break compatibility for two. Buying into standards MS has too much influence on is simply asking for them to use that influence to hurt you at a later date. After the 20th or 30th such instance you'd think people would learn to be a little less shortsighted.
what amazes me is that RMS is saying at the same time that it is good to have a C# implementation, but warns against writing apps in it...
Except that's not what he said. He said it's good to have an implementation but bad to include that implementation and applications that reply upon it in GnuLinux distros and components. It's akin to saying that it is good to have support for FAT filesystems in Linux, but stupid to include a FAT partition by default when installing Linux along with applications that only work on FAT.
... if not outright imbecile, that's at least a very stupid position
Not everything you don't comprehend is stupid. Sometimes, you're just a little bit stupid instead, and so misinterpret the words of others in stupid ways.
The issue though is not whether they are a monopoly in that market (which they are, probably just as much as Microsoft is on the desktop market), but are they using it to prevent competition from others or in other markets?
I agree there is question about whether or not IBM's actions constitute an abuse in other markets, but that is not the only form of antitrust abuse. Methods of gaining the monopoly, preventing others entry into the initial market, or price fixing can all be issues. Further I'm not sure I would conclude that IBM has a monopoly on the relevant market. They certainly sell most of what people refer to as mainframes, but it is unclear that that label defines the competitive market in which they operate. The general server market and the supercomputer market may well constitute part of the relevant market for antitrust purposes. Do potential buyers of mainframes consider either as potential solutions when buying? Remember also software incompatibility itself does not make that question a "no" based upon precedent involving Apple computers versus Windows based PC's.
Is it just me, or does it seem like the U.S. is being foolish about over-concentrating its forces?
I agree.
It seems like just one or two nukes could make the U.S. nearly incapable of defending itself against a serious attack.
Nah, that's not such a big deal. They are more distributed than that with branch offices. I'm much more concerned about the financial aspects. open the base in Detroit already or one of the other areas of the US crippled by current changes to the economy.
HTML/HTTP were never designed as a method for running remote applications and shouldn't be used as such.
Developers use the best tool for the job and (sadly) Web apps are more functional and useful to people than native clients in many instances.
Yes I realise that for n00bs its all about the convenience of web apps but client-side apps need not be inconvenient. Look at the iPhone app store, n00bs love it and its full of client-server applications.
This is part of an interesting shift in computer technology. Mainly it is the shift to portable computing owned by the user. This contrasts with work provided computers controlled by them and public terminals. When you want to check your personal e-mail at work, using your work provided desktop, well a Web application is really convenient. When you want to check your personal e-mail at work and you own an iPhone, the game changes. When you want to check your personal e-mail at home, using the same thing you do at work is convenient.
Further, Web applications are cross platform. They work on all the different versions of Windows and OS X and Linux and anything else and you don't have to pay for and separately install the program on each device. You don't have to learn separate interfaces on each device. You don't have to worry about synching data. The truth is, Microsoft has a lot of power and they've spent the last decade trying to prevent easy cross-platform computing and serving as a road block to anything that might make the Web a more important chunk of computing than their OS. With the OS market so broken the Web is an attempt by the free market to route around the damage.
As I see it the fight between Web applications and native applications depends upon how the market/ecosystem evolves. As alternative devices and OS's like the iPhone, blackberry, Linux netbooks, OS X computers, etc. become more popular we'll see a shift back towards native applications. However, at the same time if Web technologies move forward in actual implementation and IE loses market share (which will accompany a shift towards the aforementioned devices) the Web will become a better medium for delivering useful applications and it will become an easier target for developers. We could see an alternative cross platform development strategy become dominant, such as Java or other VMs, but it is doubtful since MS will do everything they can to block such a technology and they still have a lot of power. More likely we'll see hybrid applications/services like the ones Google promotes. Send e-mail or chat via standard services through their Web interface when convenient or use a native client when you have access to a device you control.
your saying that whatever OS is the most popular at the moment is commiting a crime by pushing their own products?
That's not what the law says at all. What the law says if any one company or trust gains overwhelming market share in any market (in this case desktop OS's) they are forbidden from bundling and tying products from other, preexisting markets with that monopolized product. So if MS had 40% of the desktop OS market, Apple had 30% and Redhat had 30% all of them would be allowed to bundle anything they wanted with their OS.
The reason for these laws is simple. When you have huge amounts of influence in a market you have power over your customers. That power can be used to push inferior products in other markets. For example, for years IE has been by far the worst browser on the market, yet the most popular. For years no real progress has been made in Web technologies because MS would not implement it in IE so Web developers could not use those new technologies. Other browser makers could implement them, but had no motivation since they knew Web developers couldn't use them. The whole market slowed to a crawl, which is very unusual for a technological market especially one experiencing enormous growth. Any reasonable person 10 years ago would have assumed we'd have native video and audio tags by now as well as vector graphics, 3D Web environments, etc. Standards for these technologies were written up as drafts 10 years ago, then it all came to a screeching halt.
HOW they pushed them may have been unethical...
It was more than that; it was illegal.
...but just how has IE hurt browser innovation?
I think I've covered that.
Opera,Chrome,Firefox...all better the IE.
All better objectively. That doesn't mean they're better for given user because they are all artificially broken by MS. The number of IE specific Web pages and applications in existence all make those browsers inferior for many people. That's a direct result of MS's crime. The fact that OEMs don't preinstall other browsers instead of IE is the direct result of MS's crime.
No, it is not a criminal proceeding. Yes, there is the clayton antitrust act, but MS was *NEVER* charged with criminal violation of it.
You're partly correct. They were charged under the Sherman act with criminal violations and the Clayton act defined the civil "triple damages" the injured parties were eligible for as part of the preceding civil case. Regardless, both the Sherman and Clayton acts are criminal laws. Your links to the civil cases that lead to the criminal case are not particularly relevant nor are links to the civil fines they settled for with the states in the consolidated case. The meager remedies ordered by the courts are only allocable under criminal law.
And no, when they talk about the "Opera Complaint", they're not talking about a criminal complaint. They're talking about a complaint made to the EU Antitrust Commission. A Criminal Complaint is an actual case brought against someone in a court of law.
The European Commission is an enforcement branch of the executive, like the Department of Justice or FTC in the states. In the first case against MS, they refused to comply with the commissions ruling and so they took MS before the Court of Justice, like the DoJ taking someone before the Supreme Court. MS lost. This time the commission told MS they thought they were guilty and were going to pursue it and MS pretty much declined any defense, tantamount to admitting their guilt except they can retract it later.
You don't make a civil complaint to the DoJ or the EC regarding some other company's action. You make civil complaints directly to the courts in the judicial branch. A complaint to the EC is generally a criminal complaint. Otherwise, they refer to it as a query or somesuch.
That's a gross oversimplification, Ipods and Itunes do have enough of a market share to constitute a monopoly but Apple is unable to leverage that to inhibit competition...
The EU commission decided Apple did not have large enough market share because media capable cell phones were part of the relevant market. It has nothing to do with Apple somehow being unable to inhibit competition. People who buy iPods are much more likely to use iTunes instead of Realplayer or Songbird because iTunes is bundled with iPods. That's inhibiting competition in the music player application market. It is not significant enough of an influence though because Apple doesn't have enough of the market the iPod competes in. If Apple did have enough market share then their bundling would be illegal, although with the market already so broken by MS's abuse and the RIAA's abuse it is unlikely any practical remedy against Apple would actually benefit the market.
The only difference between MS bundling IE with Windows and Apple bundling Safari with itunes is that Apple does not constitute a monopoly on MP3 players.
Actually, the difference would be between MS bundling IE with Windows and Apple bundling the iTunes application with iPods. Safari is more loosely tied to iTunes via their software update mechanism , but no court with any sense would address Safari and Quicktime and the iTMS, when all they need to address for a remedy is the iTunes application.
Personally I don't like this kind of cross promotion and it should not be permitted...
You may not like it, but we don't pass laws banning things based upon your dislike. You need to present a real case of why the public is being harmed and the rights of people to take an action should be curtailed.
...at the very least an option must be given not to install the optional software (Safari in this case). The Itunes installer does not give you this option.
Umm, you don't have the option to not install Safari when installing iTunes? Since when?
BTW, this is also the condition I make with MS bundling IE with Windows, I don't want it removed in so far as I want it completely removable.
Bundling a product from one market with a product from another market does demonstrable harm. We banned this a hundred years ago because our economy was being destroyed and pretty much every nation on the planet has passed similar laws. It is a fundamental and well understood and absurdly well supported economic theory.
Some countries (and the EU) do place lesser limitations on companies with significant market share (but not enough to constitute monopoly influence). For the most part though, bundling is not a problem. So long as there is no monopoly involved bundling that hurts consumers just drives those consumers to competitors and the market corrects. Mind you monopolies that have not been checked and government granted monopolies run amuck (e.g. improper patents) can make the market unable to effectively do this.
Opera is being a crybaby.
Yeah, complaining after only a decade of criminal acts by a competitor. Those whiners.
How and who will decide what browser choices will you get on the first run?
The EU commission will, based upon the survey they've been circulating among PC makers. I won't bother to address your variations on this theme.
The only sane way for MS to comply was to remove IE.
No, the only legal way for MS to comply was to not bundle IE in the first place. Since they went a head and broke the law, the only legal way to comply with the commission is to wait for the commission to make a ruling and then do what they're told. MS's actions aren't an attempt to help fix the market. They are an attempt to do something towards that end that has very limited effectiveness in the hopes that the commission would not impose a more strict measure.
To avoid the fine, MS removed IE, and still there's a lot of BS going on.
Since when does stopping a criminal action mean you aren't fined for the time during which you were breaking the law?
Something tells me, though, that the EC doesn't make BMW sell customers a car without an engine...
No they don't Because BMW doesn't have a monopoly on the car market which they established while engines were a separate pre-existing market. It's the same law for everyone. You'd think with hundreds of comments here people posting would bother to find out what the law they're talking about is.
I don't think he's forgetting that, because it's not true.
Yes, it is.
. Neither the US DOJ anti-trust suit or the EU "commission" have chared Microsoft with any criminal wrongdoing.
Yes, they did. The Clayton antitrust act is criminal law. The case against MS started as a series of civil suits, but then the DoJ took over and prosecuted it as a crime. I can see why you'd be confused, but that is not uncommon in US antitrust law. Article 82 in the EU is also criminal law.
These are civil actions, and as such cannot deal with "punishment for crime".
Civil actions would be lawsuits. That is not the case at all as you can see by looking up the pertinent laws I quoted.
They can only extract monetary fines and seek to repair the problems.
That's all that ever happens with corporations. They're entities not individuals. This has nothing to do with it being a civil law.
This is why both the DOJ and the EU use terms like "Remedy".
No, they use the term "remedy" because they are trying to remedy the broken market. You'll also note they repeatedly refer to the opera complaint, not the Opera lawsuit. That's "complaint" as in criminal complaint.
ivil and Criminal law are two diffent things. Don't confuse them...
Yes they are, but you're the one who has confused them. Antitrust abuse is a criminal offense in both the US and EU.
Why not give the little guys a chance? After all, isn't that the whole point of disputing the inclusion of IE? To give other browsers a chance?
Only indirectly. The direct purpose is to correct the Web browser market so it is competitive again so that each browser can live or die based upon its merits. Basically, remove all incentive to create Web pages tied to IE or that only work in IE as well as other artificial incentives to use IE. Once that is done and once MS is no longer abusing their Windows monopoly to artificially inflate market share, it doesn't matter if "big" or "little" browsers win.