The History of Microsoft's Anti-Competitive Behavior 361
jabjoe writes "Groklaw is highlighting a new document from the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (PDF) about the history of Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior. Quoting: 'ECIS has written it in support of the EU Commission's recent preliminary findings, on January 15, 2009, that Microsoft violated antitrust law by tying IE to Windows. It is, to the best of my knowledge, the first time that the issue of Microsoft's patent threats against Linux have been framed in a context of anti-competitive conduct.' The report itself contains interesting quotes, like this one from Microsoft's Thomas Reardon: '[W]e should just quietly grow j++ share and assume that people will take more advantage of our classes without ever realizing they are building win32-only java apps.' It also has the Gates 1998 Deposition."
Re:And now for the cloud (Score:5, Insightful)
Since that didn't work out so well for them re: the internet, I'm not all that worried.
Re:Anyone else notice (Score:5, Insightful)
Stacker / DBLSpace / Lawsuit (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember in 1989 the Stacker disk compression fiaso?
I think that was one of the original examples of this kind of behavior, in this case Stac electronics were able to get some money from MS - but it was a sour victory as MS has effectively removed them from the market place in the process.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics [wikipedia.org]
nearly 30 years of watching MS I have no faith that the firm will *ever* play fair, and as a business trying to please their shareholders it is very naive to expect them to do so. they have a monopoly and will abuse it to their benefit as long as they can get away with it.
Companies as competing Organisms (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Brings me back (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember one of my first computer courses in school where we were taught computer history. I still remember the professor telling us about the early days of Microsoft and how it didn't take long for them to start ripping off ideas, only to then buy the company that was suing them.
And they're still in business. Something's wrong here.
Re:And now for the cloud (Score:3, Insightful)
Since that didn't work out so well for them re: the internet, I'm not all that worried.
I know you're talking about sites, but it worked horrifically well with browsers. Do you know of a large commercial site that can afford to ignore IE6?
Re:Brings me back (Score:2, Insightful)
I heard the matter-of-fact assertion that Bill wrote DOS again in a book on tape that I am listening to. (13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time by Michael Brooks).
I also remember the same matter-of-fact assertion on the A&E network many years back, probably on the program biography.
So it seems like Bill was not only able to effectively steal ideas but also to somehow get these false ideas that he was the creator of them as well. He's seen a the genius behind lots of things that he has no claim to other than popularizer. People claim he's a computer genius when he's really a marketing genius. I think computer science, with its great many breakthroughs that help improve human ability, deserves much more than this.
Re:And now for the cloud (Score:2, Insightful)
I read a good chunk of Bill's book The Road Ahead maybe a couple of years after the internet went mainstream (the book was published in '95). His comments, thoughts and strategies showed that the man did not have clue one about what he was getting into. Oh wait, Ballmer's in charge now? Naaah, I'm still not worried.
MS as we knew it is dead. Only thing still carrying it is inertia.
Just remember come tax time next year, it's partly your taxes* that make sure MS doesn't abuse its monopoly.
Not me bub, I'm a canuck. Besides, that sentence is laughable. US regulatory agencies have become such a joke it's not funny anymore.
Nice to see (Score:2, Insightful)
I just read through the entire document and I have to say that, well, it's probably the most professional, fleshed-out, well-worded summary of Microsoft's major illegal actions over the past two decades.
While nothing it says is necessarily new, the fact that several of the accusations people have been making for years have finally been put into one very highly professional document that is actually being used in a case that might finally do something about Microsoft's monopoly is impressive and has given me a lot of hope.
The problem with this is (Score:3, Insightful)
MS doesn't have a monopoly or even the top market share in some categories the EU is interested in such as servers. MS's presence in those markets is actually increasing competition. As was the case in the US, the EU is probably more interested in protecting specific MS competitors than in helping the consumer.
Re:Don't see the point (Score:5, Insightful)
What, like Windows does?
Re:Stacker / DBLSpace / Lawsuit (Score:3, Insightful)
"in this case Stac electronics were able to get some money from MS - but it was a sour victory as MS has effectively removed them from the market place in the process."
Stac got around 80 million dollars from MS for their trouble. I wish I had a "sour victory" like that.
Re:Brings me back (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? I don't believe in intellectual property... do you?
I do.
-Linux user
I also believe that like most property, it can be made freely available.
Re:Companies as competing Organisms (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the opportunity it is very hard for any person or company to pass up a chance to change the rules of a game in a way that disadvantages its competition in that game. This is especially true when survival is at stake. We do not and should never condone this type of behavior but we must realize it is natural and (without regard to morality) should be expected. This type behavior is bad for our industry as we have all seen so we must always be aware that some company out there will always try this as a means to advantage and stop it to allow strength to be generated via fierce competition.
It's bad for every industry. It's natural to be competitive and that's why morals and values are a good thing. Business is bad when the bottom line and being number 1 becomes more important than the product. At that point you've lost focus and have embraced greed. I'm a small business owner, but I learned from a great mentor that all deals should be win/win and you should never screw someone over to get ahead or you'll get a bad name. When I sell, I don't bad mouth competitors products and I tell the people who work for me not to either. Say a few positive things about the competition and then educate the merits of your product, if it's good it'll sell.
Being conservative I have to say that the Bush administration really let us down with the MS antitrust case. Not to mention other things, but I prefer to stay on topic.
Re:Brings me back (Score:4, Insightful)
Bad research has been around for a long time and writers can be guilty of it without any help from Bill Gates.
I guess people say that Gates is a "marketing genius" because they don't want to believe he's a real geek and they have to come up with some explanation for his success. If you've ever seen Bill Gates do a presentation you'd know how absurd this "marketing genius" belief is. Steve Jobs is the marketing genius in this business.
The fact is that MS existed before the PC and Gates really wrote code for their Basic interpreters. They were written in multiple assembly languages for each target processor. That's geek enough for you.
Re:Anyone else notice (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I think the exact opposite happened. Back when Gates was in control you had at least halfway working products (and the reason of Windows ME imho was mainly because they tried to squeeze out one more 9x version for monetary gain and nobody was really interested in the project because NT was coming to the desktop anyway).
Gates was more focused on marketing than technology though and that's what got them in the current position in the first place. Ballmer is more focused on income (keeping the monopoly and selling more licenses to increase lock-in) than anything else as you can see with the recent licensing models for netbooks, SharePoint and 3rd world countries. I think Vista was more because of Ballmer than because of Gates. At the time Vista started, Gates was already working his way out and dedicating time to his philanthropy. Windows 7 imho is just Vista SP3 or "what Vista should've been but we had to release something fast in order to counter Mac OS X".
The company itself has never been about technology at the core. It always either steals or buys the best from elsewhere (DOS, OS/2, VMS, ...) and makes it 'just good enough' to sell a boxed products and then makes marketing or licensing sell it.
Re:Anyone else notice (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you for real?!?
Bill Gates took a common good, walled it off and called it his property. He wasn't a shrewd businessman. He was a thief who destroyed massive amounts of value, created chaos, misunderstanding and distrust among technical workers and set both ethics and technology back decades. There are few if any individuals in the history of mankind who have caused more damage to our species than Bill Gates did. He ought to be shot in the face and forced to apologize to the person who shot him.
Wait... maybe that was Dick...
What would've been the alternative if Gates didn't do what he did? Either it would be chaos in the marketplace with different incompatible and expensive computers or Apple would have a monopoly and would be selling $3000 computers to this day, both of which are way worse than today. Microsoft licensing DOS to Compaq's IBM clones was the biggest reason that computers are as cheap and affordable as they are today. Even Linux became popular because of inexpensive x86 machines. Imagine having to buy a Apple machine with a compulsory Apple tax to run Linux on.
Re:Brings me back (Score:1, Insightful)
BTW I still stand behind the principle that having IE with Windows is not anti-competative. If that were the case then Red Hat, Apple OS, and others would be anti-competative for having an browser pre-installed in their systems. When I installed Red Hat it had FireFox (but did not have IE). When I saw an apple demo laptop it had Safari & FireFox but not Opera or IE. Also, I think car companies are anti-competative because they come bundled with radios, heaters, air conditioners, locks and trunks - which are all convenience items in cars. On a side note I use FireFox, not IE. I use IE for websites that require it (OWA) and to d/l FireFox on a fresh install.
Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe, just possibly, because people were worried, and therefore monitored what MS was doing, and made sure MS wasn't allowed to leverage their desktop monopoly advantage?
Not at all.
Not even slightly.
Microsoft has been leveraging the hell out of the desktop and (more importantly) corporate monopoly status to try and push people to use Microsoft technologies on the internet.
It's not because people were worried that they've not been able to establish a stranglehold - it's that there is real competition and the cost to use alternative solution is now so low, even from a time to build perspective.
We should all be worried as hell about what Microsoft is up to, but we should not make the mistake of not understanding what kinds of things will build Microsoft true monopolies. Happily Microsoft is seemingly short on vision these days and so there has not been as much danger.
Re:WOW... this is breaking Shocking News... (Score:5, Insightful)
lol. Slashdot has always been like this. The mainstream media noticed us and ignored us years ago.
I've noticed a lot of posters relatively recently that are popping up and basically saying "linux is not ready yet, until you plug it in and it 'just works' it won't be ready", either implying Windows does "just work" or explicitly stating it. I know no computer does that, there's niggles in everything, but I seem to hear that mantra more often than I ever did.
Maybe you havn't been paying attention to them, but they're there.
There are a lot of pro-MS postings, I've done them myself, but they tend to be more objective against trolls saying Linux is perfect at everything and Windows couldn't possibly be any good. Windows is a perfectly usable OS, I just consider Linux to be architecturally better and has the potential to be significantly better.
Lacking harsh punishments (Score:3, Insightful)
So what you're saying is that society needs much harsher punishments for such behavior as a counter-incentive?
Re:Stacker / DBLSpace / Lawsuit (Score:4, Insightful)
Not before DoubleSpace (and later DriveSpace, the non-infringing version) were used by millions of people, though.
The fact that DoubleSpace was bundled with DOS 6 meant that nobody needed to bother buying Stacker for the couple of years before whole-drive compression became mostly unnecessary. While that certainly was what killed Stac, what we don't know is what they might have come up with if they'd stayed in businessâ"after all, Stac was an innovator, while Microsoft just ripped of the technology.
Re:Don't see the point (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you realized how silly this sounds? The whole point of monopoly law is that things that are legal most of the time are no longer legal when you have monopoly power. That is because when you reach a certain point, you can do things which make it impossible for any competitor to emerge, at which point you can charge whatever you like.
So yes, they are doing things which would be legal if they weren't a monopoly. The fact remains that they are a monopoly (according to a trial) and can no longer do those things.
Aside from that, I hate the current attitude that exists in the US that it only matters what is legal, not what is ethical. If the large banks had acted according to what is ethical, not what is legal, we wouldn't be in the financial crisis we're in. At what point did we as a country decide it was OK to screw over anybody you wanted, as long as you could justify it legally?
Re:Don't see the point (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Brings me back (Score:4, Insightful)
I also believe that like most property, it can be made freely available.
A few questions: Freely available to whom? Everyone? On whose conditions? What kinds of property, besides intellectual, can/should be made freely available?
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Brings me back (Score:5, Insightful)
All of it (intellectual property), should eventually be made free, after the creators have had a chance to profit off it for a reasonable time.
Wait, that's what Copyright says. Damnit.
We just lost 'reasonable' somewhere along the line.
Re:Don't see the point (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep.
Vista installation:
Insert disk. Enter a little information. Done everything works. IT could see and store my cameras images, print, installed the correct video driver, recognized my monitor, found my network, all USB devices.
everything.
This same machine I tried Ubuntu, and it would not see my printers or the wireless network.
I GOT them to work, but it took another 30 minutes. Not a long time, but it didn't 'Just Work'.
Yes, I have Linux experience. Starting with Slackware 1.
Re:Brings me back (Score:5, Insightful)
14 years. That's what we considered reasonable before Disney perverted the system.
Brings me back...to 1996 (Score:5, Insightful)
But this approach will NOT work on the desktop. To get Linux to work on the desktop Linux will have to make a 180 degree shift away from its current position, which I don't see happening.
Except it is happening. Try installing a modern Linux distribution, especially a user-friendly one. It will default to runlevel 4 and Gnome, which means you never see a command line unless you go looking for it. Gnome's menu system makes Windows look very complicated by comparison. I'm not a Gnome fan because it's *too* simple for me, but many people (particularly the audience you're targeting) love it.
Linux would have to abandon CLI in favor of all the GUI interfaces like those that Windows has in abundance. GUI interfaces, wizards, everything will have to be "clicky clicky" and the simple fact is most developers and IT guys HATE that. They hate the fact that the GUI robs them of power just as much as the users hate that the CLI is too strange and requires arcane Unix commands which they have NO desire to learn.
False dichotomy. There's no reason why one can't develop a good application that has a command line interface as well as a GUI. And while many Linux folks are CLI gurus, that's becoming an anachronistic stereotype; many Linux users these days prefer the GUI. Not to mention which, many developers have the goal of crushing MSFT (likely or not), so they're attempting to make Linux easier. Additionally, even the most ardent CLI guy has a wife, grandma, sister, cousin, neighbor, etc. who's constantly asking for computer help; if he wants to switch them to linux (and he does), he knows it's going to have to be stupid simple.
Seriously, most people use the internet and create documents. It's not hard to set up Linux with firefox and OpenOffice on Gnome. At that point, the Linux experience ain't much different from Windows.
Re:Brings me back (Score:5, Insightful)
To get Linux to work on the desktop Linux will have to make a 180 degree shift away from its current position, which I don't see happening. CLI will have to be all but abandoned, because no matter how easy a geek thinks CLI is 99% of the desktop users will NEVER use CLI and it is in fact a deal breaker.
What, by its existence? Windows has a CLI, too. It's called CMD -- there's a new one, too, called PowerShell. OS X even has Bash now. And people certainly used DOS when it was all that was there.
GUI interfaces, wizards, everything will have to be "clicky clicky" and the simple fact is most developers and IT guys HATE that.
It doesn't matter -- the two are not mutually exclusive. What I hate is when "clicky clicky" is the only option.
Have you ever fired up a modern distro, like Ubuntu? It is possible to use it without once opening up the commandline, except perhaps to copy and paste some commands -- and I think even people paranoid of the commandline know how to copy and paste.
Sadly the one company that I have seen really trying to make it work in a Windows based world, Xandros, with their buying of Click N' Run(which is a much nicer experience to a Windows user than Synaptic)
Could you be specific about what makes it better? I've always found Synaptic to be a better user experience, even for Windows People, because at the very least, it is safer than downloading random EXEs from the Internet.
gets flamed to the nine hells for having to deal with MSFT.
This is the Internet. Everyone gets flamed. For everything.
I'm going to say that Linux actually has a better GUI, in many respects, than its competition. Apple is a close enough second that I can see why people would prefer it, as a matter of taste. I really don't understand why people would prefer Windows, all other things being equal.
But they aren't. You identified the real problem, here:
MSFT rules the business and if your gear can't play nice with AD and Exchange you can give it up.
Exchange is just part of the massive lock-in that Windows generates -- all the things that have been built on the Windows platform over-the-years. Accountants are on Windows because of Quickbooks. Graphic designers are on Windows because of Photoshop. Gamers are on Windows because of Half-Life 2 -- I mean, Crysis -- I mean, Bioshock 2 -- insert game of the week here.
Linux has to be better than Windows in many ways before someone is willing to switch. And emulating Windows (better AD integration, for example) is important, but not nearly as important as developing the things that truly differentiate us.
And yes, one of those is the CLI. And yes, it is under active development -- just a month ago or so, I installed a set of scripts which adds a git status into my command prompt. Just yesterday, I wrote a new alias for a common (longer) command I often run.
But it has to be one of the oldest bits of FUD that you somehow can't use Linux without using the commandline, or that a UNIX commandline somehow precludes a decent GUI. The existence of OS X pretty much invalidates your whole argument.
Re:Brings me back (Score:3, Insightful)
When Win3.1 came out in '92, I had been repairing Macintosh 128's, 512's, and SE's for four years. I can count the number of times I had to use a CLI to do that with no hands. And still have an appendage left to play with.
While Bill may have made that happen for the Windows product line, it's well documented that the idea behind it wasn't his innovation. I'm not arguing that Gates isn't a 'genius' but that you're misattributing the nature of his genius. He's demonstrated over the past 25 years that his talent is not software design or product innovation. Bill is a capitalist genius, a master of the corporate trade, a captain of industry. And you don't accomplish that without testing the rules. And as a result, other people apply the labels monopolist, son of a bitch, and even thief.
Re:Don't see the point (Score:1, Insightful)
Just to point out that having a monopoly is not illegal. Abusing a monopoly is illegal... and Microsoft have been found guilty of abusing their monopoly... twice.
Re:Brings me back (Score:3, Insightful)
In a car you can have the manufacturer add a tape player, cd player, in addition to the AM/FM radio. In computers, the manufacturer of the pc was prevented contractually from adding other browsers to the machines they were sending out.
Two things for that: 1) Don't sign a contract and do business with the company 2) Sell a different computer with only the other OS (companies do this all the time..the fact that Dell did not is their choice, but if other companies could do it so could Dell) 3) Even if this is anti-competative, what does it have to do with IE? Thats a totally different subject. I could see the anti-competative argument of MS "forcing" companies to only sell MS products (though "force" is subjective), but the IE bundled totally loses the argument with me.
An Illegal Monopoly prevents these 3 things from happening if you want to stay in business.
Re:Brings me back (Score:3, Insightful)
Since you didn't provide any sources I have no idea if this history is correct or not. If it's true somebody stole a paper tape. Regardless of what you think of copyright, that was clearly a theft and Gates had every right to be upset.
It's not surprising that an unreleased software program was buggy and who knows how many bugs were introduced when it was "fixed" by the thieves.
Of course, MS produced a number of other basics.
If he really did use Harvard's computer, so what? He must of had some cooperation from the Harvard staff because computers in those days weren't just sitting in unlocked rooms.
Re:Brings me back (Score:3, Insightful)
Jobs "But our OS is better"
Gates "It doesn't matter"
I do think it shows the good and bad in all the main players quite fairly. They both had drive to make a lot of cash in computers and chose different ways to do it. They were both ruthless in their ambitions. They both shafted lots of people along the way to get their goals. They both leave a mixed legacy behind them.
Re:Brings me back...to 1996 (Score:3, Insightful)
in fact a good app will have a CLI.
Then someone else will come along and make a gui that abstracts that command interface, in a way that is much better than anything the guys who wrote the cli-based system would have made.
I think something like subversion is a case in point, excellent cmdline tool, some excellent guis too, many available for environments the svn devs have no interest or skills in.
Re:Brings me back (Score:5, Insightful)
Removing IE has nothing to do with it, and all of these mod points were wasted. At the time, web browsers were add-on features which cost money, and MS gave away IE for free to gain market share. There was no problem with that either, if a company wants to make a product and give it away fine.
The problem is bundling a freebie in with a market-dominating product, in order to bury the freebie's competition. What if your telephone company gave away newspapers with DSL? Your newspaper company would crap buckets. What happens when the paper company goes under and the telephone company never updates its paper? Everyone gets it in the butt. Surprisingly, some people have a problem with this.
Re:Brings me back (Score:3, Insightful)
Freely available to whom? Everyone? On whose conditions?
Up to the owner.
What kinds of property, besides intellectual, can/should be made freely available?
I never said "should". You can give away almost anything you own.
Re:Brings me back (Score:3, Insightful)
"Technically, it was stolen, but since he was one of the people that had paid for one and it was a year late, he could equally argue that he merely enforced some of the terms of the deal (it was still a year late and bug ridden, but he wrote that off once he finally got the copy he paid for)."
Try that argument on a judge. Theft is not a legal remedy for a contract dispute.
"When you get a bank employee to 'help' you that way, it's called an "inside job"."
What a phony analogy. Most universities allow students to access computers and don't consider such access as theft even if formal permission hasn't been granted.