I'm sure it was a honest mistake in this case. And there's certainly no need to get lawyers involved.
But I still think that companies should get their act together soon and agree that this kind of activity is unacceptable. It is no different from unauthorized cracking. And it's an extremely sad statement about society if companies can get away with this when individuals cannot.
We basically need a code of practice whereby any data collection needs the prior consent of the customer. It's only good manners, it's not difficult to do, and it's the only fair solution. If no code of practice is forthcoming, we may need to resort to regulation. This would be less than satisfactory given the average government's competence with technology regulation.
Furthermore, if notices about this kind of thing are going to get put on a product they need to be a little more prominent than the small print in the EULA. A reasonable person would not expect to be signing away their privacy rights when they sign a license to use software.
In this case, why not just pop up a dialog box when the program first runs to ask if the user wants to let the publisher know about their hardware configuration for statistical purposes? Most people will probably say yes anyway, since they will have been asked permission politely and it basically ammounts to a "vote" for more support for their own machine type.
This is going to get more and more frequent, I am afraid.
Unless something is done.
I think some kind of binding code of practice needs to be swiftly adopted. Specifically, users must be warned in advance if *any* information is going to be collected, generated or transmitted from their machine.
I know that there may be legitimate reasons for a company to want to send information back to their server. But if it is going to happen, then the user absolutely must be informed about it.
It's also yet another good reason to use open source software - that kind of abuse simply can't get past a well informed community based on peere review.
It's clear that teachers aren't going to be able to keep up with the latest developments in their field. For that matter, even science researchers often have difficulty keepingon top of just a tiny branch of human knowledge.
But I don't think it's really a problem. The role of teachers is to get their students to learn important skills, and they can do this without knowing what new element was discovered last week. Education in science is nearly always an over-simplification anyway.
So I reckon teachers should admit honestly that they aren't completely up to date. Then they should get on with the important task of getting their students to understand the important aspects of the subject, giving them some real enthusiasm and encouraging them to take the initiative and delve into the state of the art themselves.
Interesting piece, though I think it skirts one of the more interesting aspects of network effects. Namely that companies often have the ability to make network-type products compatible with others if they choose.
If some way of ensuring interoperability is guaranteed, e.g. via open communication standards, then *everyone* benefits from the network effect. It ceases to be a case of "my network vs. your network" since users can gain the advantages of both without being tied to either.
Of course, companies with potential monopoly power don't want competition, so may deliberately place barriers in the way of interoperability. This reduces competition, allows them to reap monopoly profits but most seriously prevents consumers from being able to gain the advantages of a unified network. The internet wouldn't be as great as it is today if it was fragmented into incompatible proprietary segments.
As I see it, if antitrust legislation in the next century is going to be effective then it will have to adapt to take this into account. Specifically, it should be made illegal to artificially create barriers to isolate your network from others in order to gain monopoly power in any sector. Such incompatibilities are an enormous source of consumer harm.
The relevance of this to the Microsoft case is pretty obvious, and I am sure everyone can think of a hundred other examples where companies have abused their ability to build barriers to interoperability. This is likely to become more and more important as networked technology plays a larger part in our lives.
Therefore, open standards are definitely the way forward from an economic perspective. If that occurs, then true market competition will reign.
I quite agree with the conclusion that successful NT implementations rely on elbow grease. I've done a few in my time.
And I've seen the way that management at big companies work. Once thay've decided on a "project" they pour resources into it like there's no tomorrow. You know, hire a few more NT sysadmins for good measure. Deploy random product X to a thousand machines because it's the flavour of the month.
Linux needs to get into the position where the same amount of resources get thrown at it. This is a big task, and it needs a concerted effort on the part of the open source community. Most corporations have a "better the devil you know" mentality, so some serious PR work needs to be done.
My number one hint:
Get a consortium of Linux consultants to put together a "showcase" 100% Linux enterprise system. Linux servers, email, e-commerce, intranet, security and desktops. Put up a top quality website showing how it was all done, the hardware chosen, the software used and the configuration steps taken.
This will give Linux some serious credibility. As a bonus, the partners in the venture will make a mint by helping out with implementations for companies that want a similar system. And it will show the commercial viability of supporting Linux to everyone else.
Quite right. You should use the right OS for the job. I'm a big GNU/Linux advocate, but if Linux is going to win in the mainstream, it will have to win by being *actually* better rather than simply having great potential.
Despite a lot of philosophical/technical problems with Windows, I still use it as my primary development environment.
It's got my favourite Dev. tools (Delphi, KAWA), favourite spreadsheet (Excel) and I actually like Internet Explorer for it's speed and user interface. Even if the GUI sucks, it's still relatively consistent and well supported.
But once those tools or equivalent are running on Linux, it will be a different story....
I don't really see the problem in releasing the source anyway. Here's why:
Anyone who changes the source will more than likely know exactly what they are doing, and certainly not need any support. Put on a disclaimer if you like, but my guess is that the number of people wanting to modify and recompile your drivers will be in single figures.
But hey, you might get lucky. Suppose some technical guru spots a deep bug that she can fix, or sees a way to optimize the code to make it leaner, faster and more stable, or maybe finds a cool way to interface with other hardware that you never dreamed of. And the great thing about the GPL then is that you get these enhancements back to incorporate into your next release!
Basically, GPL is great for drivers and hardware support. You shouldn't waste any energy trying to obfuscate access to the source, since this will only throw away most of the considerable benefits that the GPL can bring.
The world would be a safer place without analysts.
on
Analyzing the Analysts
·
· Score: 2
There are a number of reasons why anything coming from a market research company should be taken with a pinch of salt.
Firstly, there is the age-old problem of motivation. These guys are in it for the money, and will say whatever it takes to get them the most sales, sponsorship or consultancy fees. At best, you have to question the validity of research coming from a company subject to these pressures. At worst, people are being deliberately misled in the name of the good old bottom line.
All the good things about academic research are completely lacking with these guys. You don't get anything like the level of rigour and peer review that guarantees the quality of most academic work. Market research organisations in general aren't interested in checking someone else's work because there won't be much profit repeating something that's already been done.
There's also the issue of unequal publicity. Some studies get blown out of all proportion to their intrinsic worth. This can happen for a number of reasons, but usually because some big backer who likes the outcome throws the results everywhere in their publicity material for the next year. Either that or someone mentions it on slashdot. What's worse, the tendency is for more controversial or flawed studies to attract the most attention.
Finally, most of the stuff I've seen from market analysis organisations is unscientific twaddle. They don't seem to know the first thing about performing simple regressions. They commit just about every possible statistical sin. Even if they did do some solid groundwork, this gets cut in any published material because the target audience wouldn't have a clue what it meant. This all adds up to pretty meaningless conclusions.
The only reason I read market research at all is that it can give me a real competitive advantage to know exactly what all the bandwagon bozos are thinking.....
In a breakup-situation, no cross-ownership on a large scale could be allowed. Otherwise, as you point out, it would still be effectively one monopoly company as before.
IANAL, but I expect that any breakup would have rules preventing anyone from owning a significant stake in two or more of the Baby Bills. Mr Gates himself would therefore have to sell off a large proportion of his shares. Good opportunity for him to diversify his portfolio, IMO.
I agree with you about the initial stages, but not regarding the later ones. I don't think we are anywhere close to seeing commoditisation of 3D graphics cards. The point is that sounds cards are fundamentally simple. They pump out waveforms, and that's about it. The system isn't at all complex, and a 44kHz output is fine for human ears. Sound content is by and large recorded, so there's not a lot of scope for sound processing beyond a bit of filtering and a few special effects. It was obvious very early on that a CD-quality sound card was going to turn up soon, and that this would be enough for most people. 3D Graphics cards are a completely different ballgame. Sure, they need to be able to reach sufficient resolutions, bit depths and refresh frequencies. No problem, 1600*1200*32 at 60Hz is about as much as a human eye needs. That kind of spec can and will become a commodity. But 3D rendering is insanely complex. Nothing in the world is even remotely close to being able to render complex realistic scenes in realtime. Even having a pentium processer for every pixel wouldn't be fast enough to do complex raytracing. Even if we double rendering capabilities every year, we're still over twenty years away from being able to do this in realtime on a commodity platform. Point is, there will always be scope for enormous innovation in the 3D cards market to implement new techniques. There are unlimited optimisations and innovations to be made. 3D cards are all about producing an approximation of a visual scene, and the winner will be the card that makes the best approximations, the most "realistic" scene while maintaining some kind compatibility with standards. Take, for example, hardware T&L technologies. Good idea, now becoming feasible to implement. Once it catches on cards without it won't have a chance. But even hardware T&L will get replaced as cards start to implement scene description langauges etc. My guess is that you will see ever-more processing delegated to the graphics subsystem until you have what is in effect a fully programmable, dedicated graphics computer. These will become the standard, and start to ramp up ever more powerful specs, rather like PCs at the moment. Clearly the graphics supercomputer-on-a-card is a long way off right now. This means there is going to be technological "leapfrogging" for the forseeable future. Sure, some people will be happy once technology gets to a certain point. These are the people who are already content with a decent hi-res 2D card to do their wordprocessing and run a few business apps. But in the 3D arena, there will *always* be something that looks and feels a lot better just around the corner, and that is exactly what all the hardcore gamers will want to buy. Still, I reckon that the first device to create photorealistic 3D scenes in realtime won't be a graphics card at all. It'll be a very clever genetic algorithm that "paints" the scene. Just give me ten years or so......
Excellent point. The magic about Open Source is the ability to produce better software that benefits everybody. Marketing, dare I say, is not the movement's strong point. There is still a case for evangelising and gaining user base in that it raises awareness, builds the open source momentum and encourages further development. But my point would be that we don't want this to happen too soon. Much as I like GNU/Linux, I still don't think it's "ready for the masses". Giving Linux to the average user before it can match Windows on superficial ease of use is a bad idea. It will just create a bad impression when the poor sod shoots himself in the foot. Far better, I think, to concentrate on making Linux as good as possible and attract people on board when it becomes too good to resist. People will come when they are ready, which is exactly what we want.
They might well have said that, and the interesting thing is, they'd have been right. The people at Slashdot aren't stupid.
Off the top of my head, I can think of at least five good reasons why Linux "monopoly tactics" cannot be equated with Microsoft ones. They should therefore be regarded in a completely different light:
1. Microsoft has >90% market share. Linux doesn't. It doesn't take much economic savvy to realize that competition is good in a capitalist economy. Anything that helps even up the market share is a *good* thing.
2. Microsoft is a single profit-making organisation. It has a financial incentive to create a Monopoly position for itself and screw everyone else. The vast majority of Linux zealots have little to gain personally from a Linux monopoly beyond the point whan it achieves widespread application and hardware support. If/when Linux reaches 30% market share, the zealots will probably have everything they want.
3. Linux is open source free software. Monopolies are harmful if they charge a price above marginal cost. Linux clearly will always be available for free - even Red Hat et al. are charging for convenience and support more than anything else.
4. There are many Linux distributions competing. Even if Linux was the only OS in the world, there would be no monopoly power because the distributions would compete. It would also be very easy for new distributions to spring up if the big players got too lazy.
5. The Open Source movement is genuinely trying to make things better for everyone. Even if you don't agree with the method, those goals are pretty laudable. It's good to see that kind of philosophy advanced.
Finally, I don't see how you can regard Linux supporters as hypocrites. On the contrary, they are usually brutally honest. They like fair competition, freedom to choose and thinking for themselves. That particular mindset squares quite nicely with lending their support to the open source movement and opposing anything that smells of monopoly power.
A visual development language for Win32. Uses Object Pascal for the core language. Native code compiler. It has the best IDE I've ever used, bar none. I've used a lot. Think of C++ power, VB-style visual development and an elegant programming language rolled into one, and you are somewhere close.
It supports DirectX, ActiveX, COM, CORBA, and virtually every bit of drag-and-drop database functionality you can think of. Special emphasis on internet functionality. Huge number of solid third-party components, though you can craft your own with the minimum of effort. I've even used it to write web server applications (ISAPI and CGI), for which there is a wizard included.
You don't have to touch the monstrosity that is MFC, because you get a great object-oriented component library (Borland's VCL). Delphi thrashes C/C++ on compilation time and matches both for execution speed. And yes, there is an inline assembler for all the keen hackers out there.
That any programmer worth their salt is voting for VB when Delphi is around totally baffles me. Seriously, I think that most people don't even realise that this tool exists.
Apologies for the language rant - but I really felt the need to shout about another fantastic bit of software largely sidelined by the Microsoft Monopoly Marketing Machine.
When Delphi finally arrives for Linux, I for one will be cheering very loudly indeed.....
Exactly comrade! What they call cyber-terrorism is in fact our glorious battle for freedom!
Let us embrace information warfare as our greatest tool to overthrow the crypto-fascist power structures that even now are throttling the planet with their software patents and mass-media mind control.
And at the end of our heroic revolution may we awake to a world governed by true democracy:
OPEN GOVERNMENT
All world policy shall be openly decided in a global peer-review process. The ultimate open source project shall be humanity itself!
Let there be no leaders but those who stand out by the wisdom of their arguments. Let there be freedom of speech, information and take-away pizza. Let no person claim software as their own, only that they may be recognised as a true guru and showered with admiration, gifts and exotic lifestyles in proportion to the soundness of their code.
The war has begun, brothers and sisters, log in and conquer!
This case has always been far more than just an anti-trust lawsuit. It's a symptom of the fact that laws and regulations designed for early twentieth century manufacturing industry are becoming increasingly irrelevant.
Breaking up companies could work in the old economic system since it created rivals that would be forced to compete directly. Products were comparatively simple - you could pretty much guarantee to sell more by making things better or cheaper. Hence competition drives down prices, increases quality and everybody wins.
But that doesn't work in today's world. Value is created by networks, communications and relationships. Price and quality are far less important than convenience and compatibility. Microsoft hold on to their market power by the network externality effect - they simply make it extremely inconvenient to use anyone else's product. Consequently, most of the sheep simply stick with Microsoft and there's never sufficient incentive for other firms to create competing software. Microsoft rakes in the big cash, while other firms scrabble around for niches. Free Market? I think not.
Whether or not to break up Microsoft is a side issue. What's needed is a rethink of how competition law should be structured. A few ideas:
Stop the pedantic arguments about what constitutes a monopoly. It's the size of barriers to competition that allow abuses, not market share.
Make it an offence to introduce incompatabilities that prevent the use of competing products.
Make it compulsory to announce, document and support APIs and file formats for use by other developers.
Make companies that bundle products *prove* that they are adding value rather than just stamping on competition.
Oh yeah, dump those stupid software patents...
As a final thought, just think of what would happen if Microsoft actually won. They'd then have carte blanche to launch into all the anti-competitive practices they'd love to use but haven't been able to so far because of the lawsuit. Penalties for hardware manufacturers who make drivers for other operating systems. Terminator software that self-destructs after six months after flashing up a pleasant invitation to upgrade. Three hundred gigabytes of patented "features". Word for Windows Markup Language.
Is that where you want to be tomorrow? Even if you don't like the DOJ, you have to give them credit for keeping MS on their toes.
It's certainly worth worrying about the government trying to interfere with the computer industry, but IMO that isn't problem here. Good government shouldn't try to control the market, but it does have an obligation to put in place the regulations needed to ensure fair competition. The technology industry is far too important to allow it to be stifled by monopoly power or unfair trading practices. Claims by Microsoft that they represent the "free market" tend to make me laugh.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure it was a honest mistake in this case. And there's certainly no need to get lawyers involved.
But I still think that companies should get their act together soon and agree that this kind of activity is unacceptable. It is no different from unauthorized cracking. And it's an extremely sad statement about society if companies can get away with this when individuals cannot.
We basically need a code of practice whereby any data collection needs the prior consent of the customer. It's only good manners, it's not difficult to do, and it's the only fair solution. If no code of practice is forthcoming, we may need to resort to regulation. This would be less than satisfactory given the average government's competence with technology regulation.
Furthermore, if notices about this kind of thing are going to get put on a product they need to be a little more prominent than the small print in the EULA. A reasonable person would not expect to be signing away their privacy rights when they sign a license to use software.
In this case, why not just pop up a dialog box when the program first runs to ask if the user wants to let the publisher know about their hardware configuration for statistical purposes? Most people will probably say yes anyway, since they will have been asked permission politely and it basically ammounts to a "vote" for more support for their own machine type.
This is going to get more and more frequent, I am afraid.
Unless something is done.
I think some kind of binding code of practice needs to be swiftly adopted. Specifically, users must be warned in advance if *any* information is going to be collected, generated or transmitted from their machine.
I know that there may be legitimate reasons for a company to want to send information back to their server. But if it is going to happen, then the user absolutely must be informed about it.
It's also yet another good reason to use open source software - that kind of abuse simply can't get past a well informed community based on peere review.
It's clear that teachers aren't going to be able to keep up with the latest developments in their field. For that matter, even science researchers often have difficulty keepingon top of just a tiny branch of human knowledge.
But I don't think it's really a problem. The role of teachers is to get their students to learn important skills, and they can do this without knowing what new element was discovered last week. Education in science is nearly always an over-simplification anyway.
So I reckon teachers should admit honestly that they aren't completely up to date. Then they should get on with the important task of getting their students to understand the important aspects of the subject, giving them some real enthusiasm and encouraging them to take the initiative and delve into the state of the art themselves.
Interesting piece, though I think it skirts one of the more interesting aspects of network effects. Namely that companies often have the ability to make network-type products compatible with others if they choose.
If some way of ensuring interoperability is guaranteed, e.g. via open communication standards, then *everyone* benefits from the network effect. It ceases to be a case of "my network vs. your network" since users can gain the advantages of both without being tied to either.
Of course, companies with potential monopoly power don't want competition, so may deliberately place barriers in the way of interoperability. This reduces competition, allows them to reap monopoly profits but most seriously prevents consumers from being able to gain the advantages of a unified network. The internet wouldn't be as great as it is today if it was fragmented into incompatible proprietary segments.
As I see it, if antitrust legislation in the next century is going to be effective then it will have to adapt to take this into account. Specifically, it should be made illegal to artificially create barriers to isolate your network from others in order to gain monopoly power in any sector. Such incompatibilities are an enormous source of consumer harm.
The relevance of this to the Microsoft case is pretty obvious, and I am sure everyone can think of a hundred other examples where companies have abused their ability to build barriers to interoperability. This is likely to become more and more important as networked technology plays a larger part in our lives.
Therefore, open standards are definitely the way forward from an economic perspective. If that occurs, then true market competition will reign.
I quite agree with the conclusion that successful NT implementations rely on elbow grease. I've done a few in my time.
And I've seen the way that management at big companies work. Once thay've decided on a "project" they pour resources into it like there's no tomorrow. You know, hire a few more NT sysadmins for good measure. Deploy random product X to a thousand machines because it's the flavour of the month.
Linux needs to get into the position where the same amount of resources get thrown at it. This is a big task, and it needs a concerted effort on the part of the open source community. Most corporations have a "better the devil you know" mentality, so some serious PR work needs to be done.
My number one hint:
Get a consortium of Linux consultants to put together a "showcase" 100% Linux enterprise system. Linux servers, email, e-commerce, intranet, security and desktops. Put up a top quality website showing how it was all done, the hardware chosen, the software used and the configuration steps taken.
This will give Linux some serious credibility. As a bonus, the partners in the venture will make a mint by helping out with implementations for companies that want a similar system. And it will show the commercial viability of supporting Linux to everyone else.
Quite right. You should use the right OS for the job. I'm a big GNU/Linux advocate, but if Linux is going to win in the mainstream, it will have to win by being *actually* better rather than simply having great potential.
Despite a lot of philosophical/technical problems with Windows, I still use it as my primary development environment.
It's got my favourite Dev. tools (Delphi, KAWA), favourite spreadsheet (Excel) and I actually like Internet Explorer for it's speed and user interface. Even if the GUI sucks, it's still relatively consistent and well supported.
But once those tools or equivalent are running on Linux, it will be a different story....
I don't really see the problem in releasing the source anyway. Here's why:
Anyone who changes the source will more than likely know exactly what they are doing, and certainly not need any support. Put on a disclaimer if you like, but my guess is that the number of people wanting to modify and recompile your drivers will be in single figures.
But hey, you might get lucky. Suppose some technical guru spots a deep bug that she can fix, or sees a way to optimize the code to make it leaner, faster and more stable, or maybe finds a cool way to interface with other hardware that you never dreamed of. And the great thing about the GPL then is that you get these enhancements back to incorporate into your next release!
Basically, GPL is great for drivers and hardware support. You shouldn't waste any energy trying to obfuscate access to the source, since this will only throw away most of the considerable benefits that the GPL can bring.
There are a number of reasons why anything coming from a market research company should be taken with a pinch of salt.
Firstly, there is the age-old problem of motivation. These guys are in it for the money, and will say whatever it takes to get them the most sales, sponsorship or consultancy fees. At best, you have to question the validity of research coming from a company subject to these pressures. At worst, people are being deliberately misled in the name of the good old bottom line.
All the good things about academic research are completely lacking with these guys. You don't get anything like the level of rigour and peer review that guarantees the quality of most academic work. Market research organisations in general aren't interested in checking someone else's work because there won't be much profit repeating something that's already been done.
There's also the issue of unequal publicity. Some studies get blown out of all proportion to their intrinsic worth. This can happen for a number of reasons, but usually because some big backer who likes the outcome throws the results everywhere in their publicity material for the next year. Either that or someone mentions it on slashdot. What's worse, the tendency is for more controversial or flawed studies to attract the most attention.
Finally, most of the stuff I've seen from market analysis organisations is unscientific twaddle. They don't seem to know the first thing about performing simple regressions. They commit just about every possible statistical sin. Even if they did do some solid groundwork, this gets cut in any published material because the target audience wouldn't have a clue what it meant. This all adds up to pretty meaningless conclusions.
The only reason I read market research at all is that it can give me a real competitive advantage to know exactly what all the bandwagon bozos are thinking.....
In a breakup-situation, no cross-ownership on a large scale could be allowed. Otherwise, as you point out, it would still be effectively one monopoly company as before.
IANAL, but I expect that any breakup would have rules preventing anyone from owning a significant stake in two or more of the Baby Bills. Mr Gates himself would therefore have to sell off a large proportion of his shares. Good opportunity for him to diversify his portfolio, IMO.
I agree with you about the initial stages, but not regarding the later ones. I don't think we are anywhere close to seeing commoditisation of 3D graphics cards. The point is that sounds cards are fundamentally simple. They pump out waveforms, and that's about it. The system isn't at all complex, and a 44kHz output is fine for human ears. Sound content is by and large recorded, so there's not a lot of scope for sound processing beyond a bit of filtering and a few special effects. It was obvious very early on that a CD-quality sound card was going to turn up soon, and that this would be enough for most people. 3D Graphics cards are a completely different ballgame. Sure, they need to be able to reach sufficient resolutions, bit depths and refresh frequencies. No problem, 1600*1200*32 at 60Hz is about as much as a human eye needs. That kind of spec can and will become a commodity. But 3D rendering is insanely complex. Nothing in the world is even remotely close to being able to render complex realistic scenes in realtime. Even having a pentium processer for every pixel wouldn't be fast enough to do complex raytracing. Even if we double rendering capabilities every year, we're still over twenty years away from being able to do this in realtime on a commodity platform. Point is, there will always be scope for enormous innovation in the 3D cards market to implement new techniques. There are unlimited optimisations and innovations to be made. 3D cards are all about producing an approximation of a visual scene, and the winner will be the card that makes the best approximations, the most "realistic" scene while maintaining some kind compatibility with standards. Take, for example, hardware T&L technologies. Good idea, now becoming feasible to implement. Once it catches on cards without it won't have a chance. But even hardware T&L will get replaced as cards start to implement scene description langauges etc. My guess is that you will see ever-more processing delegated to the graphics subsystem until you have what is in effect a fully programmable, dedicated graphics computer. These will become the standard, and start to ramp up ever more powerful specs, rather like PCs at the moment. Clearly the graphics supercomputer-on-a-card is a long way off right now. This means there is going to be technological "leapfrogging" for the forseeable future. Sure, some people will be happy once technology gets to a certain point. These are the people who are already content with a decent hi-res 2D card to do their wordprocessing and run a few business apps. But in the 3D arena, there will *always* be something that looks and feels a lot better just around the corner, and that is exactly what all the hardcore gamers will want to buy. Still, I reckon that the first device to create photorealistic 3D scenes in realtime won't be a graphics card at all. It'll be a very clever genetic algorithm that "paints" the scene. Just give me ten years or so......
Excellent point. The magic about Open Source is the ability to produce better software that benefits everybody. Marketing, dare I say, is not the movement's strong point. There is still a case for evangelising and gaining user base in that it raises awareness, builds the open source momentum and encourages further development. But my point would be that we don't want this to happen too soon. Much as I like GNU/Linux, I still don't think it's "ready for the masses". Giving Linux to the average user before it can match Windows on superficial ease of use is a bad idea. It will just create a bad impression when the poor sod shoots himself in the foot. Far better, I think, to concentrate on making Linux as good as possible and attract people on board when it becomes too good to resist. People will come when they are ready, which is exactly what we want.
They might well have said that, and the interesting thing is, they'd have been right. The people at Slashdot aren't stupid.
Off the top of my head, I can think of at least five good reasons why Linux "monopoly tactics" cannot be equated with Microsoft ones. They should therefore be regarded in a completely different light:
1. Microsoft has >90% market share. Linux doesn't. It doesn't take much economic savvy to realize that competition is good in a capitalist economy. Anything that helps even up the market share is a *good* thing.
2. Microsoft is a single profit-making organisation. It has a financial incentive to create a Monopoly position for itself and screw everyone else. The vast majority of Linux zealots have little to gain personally from a Linux monopoly beyond the point whan it achieves widespread application and hardware support. If/when Linux reaches 30% market share, the zealots will probably have everything they want.
3. Linux is open source free software. Monopolies are harmful if they charge a price above marginal cost. Linux clearly will always be available for free - even Red Hat et al. are charging for convenience and support more than anything else.
4. There are many Linux distributions competing. Even if Linux was the only OS in the world, there would be no monopoly power because the distributions would compete. It would also be very easy for new distributions to spring up if the big players got too lazy.
5. The Open Source movement is genuinely trying to make things better for everyone. Even if you don't agree with the method, those goals are pretty laudable. It's good to see that kind of philosophy advanced.
Finally, I don't see how you can regard Linux supporters as hypocrites. On the contrary, they are usually brutally honest. They like fair competition, freedom to choose and thinking for themselves. That particular mindset squares quite nicely with lending their support to the open source movement and opposing anything that smells of monopoly power.
Borland Delphi:
A visual development language for Win32. Uses Object Pascal for the core language. Native code compiler. It has the best IDE I've ever used, bar none. I've used a lot. Think of C++ power, VB-style visual development and an elegant programming language rolled into one, and you are somewhere close.
It supports DirectX, ActiveX, COM, CORBA, and virtually every bit of drag-and-drop database functionality you can think of. Special emphasis on internet functionality. Huge number of solid third-party components, though you can craft your own with the minimum of effort. I've even used it to write web server applications (ISAPI and CGI), for which there is a wizard included.
You don't have to touch the monstrosity that is MFC, because you get a great object-oriented component library (Borland's VCL). Delphi thrashes C/C++ on compilation time and matches both for execution speed. And yes, there is an inline assembler for all the keen hackers out there.
That any programmer worth their salt is voting for VB when Delphi is around totally baffles me. Seriously, I think that most people don't even realise that this tool exists.
Apologies for the language rant - but I really felt the need to shout about another fantastic bit of software largely sidelined by the Microsoft Monopoly Marketing Machine.
When Delphi finally arrives for Linux, I for one will be cheering very loudly indeed.....
Exactly comrade! What they call cyber-terrorism is in fact our glorious battle for freedom!
Let us embrace information warfare as our greatest tool to overthrow the crypto-fascist power structures that even now are throttling the planet with their software patents and mass-media mind control.
And at the end of our heroic revolution may we awake to a world governed by true democracy:
OPEN GOVERNMENT
All world policy shall be openly decided in a global peer-review process. The ultimate open source project shall be humanity itself!
Let there be no leaders but those who stand out by the wisdom of their arguments. Let there be freedom of speech, information and take-away pizza. Let no person claim software as their own, only that they may be recognised as a true guru and showered with admiration, gifts and exotic lifestyles in proportion to the soundness of their code.
The war has begun, brothers and sisters, log in and conquer!
This case has always been far more than just an anti-trust lawsuit. It's a symptom of the fact that laws and regulations designed for early twentieth century manufacturing industry are becoming increasingly irrelevant.
Breaking up companies could work in the old economic system since it created rivals that would be forced to compete directly. Products were comparatively simple - you could pretty much guarantee to sell more by making things better or cheaper. Hence competition drives down prices, increases quality and everybody wins.
But that doesn't work in today's world. Value is created by networks, communications and relationships. Price and quality are far less important than convenience and compatibility. Microsoft hold on to their market power by the network externality effect - they simply make it extremely inconvenient to use anyone else's product. Consequently, most of the sheep simply stick with Microsoft and there's never sufficient incentive for other firms to create competing software. Microsoft rakes in the big cash, while other firms scrabble around for niches. Free Market? I think not.
Whether or not to break up Microsoft is a side issue. What's needed is a rethink of how competition law should be structured. A few ideas:
Stop the pedantic arguments about what constitutes a monopoly. It's the size of barriers to competition that allow abuses, not market share.
Make it an offence to introduce incompatabilities that prevent the use of competing products.
Make it compulsory to announce, document and support APIs and file formats for use by other developers.
Make companies that bundle products *prove* that they are adding value rather than just stamping on competition.
Oh yeah, dump those stupid software patents...
As a final thought, just think of what would happen if Microsoft actually won. They'd then have carte blanche to launch into all the anti-competitive practices they'd love to use but haven't been able to so far because of the lawsuit. Penalties for hardware manufacturers who make drivers for other operating systems. Terminator software that self-destructs after six months after flashing up a pleasant invitation to upgrade. Three hundred gigabytes of patented "features". Word for Windows Markup Language.
Is that where you want to be tomorrow? Even if you don't like the DOJ, you have to give them credit for keeping MS on their toes.
It's certainly worth worrying about the government trying to interfere with the computer industry, but IMO that isn't problem here. Good government shouldn't try to control the market, but it does have an obligation to put in place the regulations needed to ensure fair competition. The technology industry is far too important to allow it to be stifled by monopoly power or unfair trading practices. Claims by Microsoft that they represent the "free market" tend to make me laugh.