Comments on: Why Microsoft is under assault from all corners

Attorney Lars Liebeler says open hostility toward the software maker runs contrary to a central premise of free-market economics.

[C_G_K]

Microsoft and the free market

As far as I am concerned, Micro$oft and free market should not be used in the same sentence. To pretend that M$ really plays fair in the free market, and is just protecting its IP is a farce that flies in the face of the facts. Why shouldn't competitors have access to the same APIs that MS can access? Why should there be a general purpose API for everyone else, and a special, better, faster, more powerful extended API that only M$ programmers can use? Of course this gives M$ an unfair advantage when creating software and only serves to perpetuate their pseudo-monopoly. The nature of I.T. is that for compatibility reasons, one product tends to dominate in a given area of computer software. This has been a blind luck bonus for M$. The price to pay SHOULD be that they have to give everyone access to all of their internal APIs and related aspects of the operating system. You win some, you lose some, but it's in the best interest of consumers and society in general. The law has to be flexible enough to take the new reality of technology into account to keep things fair for consumers and keep competition healthy.

[KEITH-1]

The Free Market

I absolutly agree, the writer of this articale obviously has no concept of what a "FREE MARKET" is.
First you have to understand what 'PROTOCOLS' are. Protocols are like the engineering specifications for say a gearbox for which you want to make an after market gear shift system for, so that your gearshift will work properley with the gearbox. It is ilegal in any other field to to withhold this information or to charge for it. But some stupid judge in the U.S.A. ruled it was OK for software companies to do so.
This gives the software companies a power they should not have, the ability to pick & choose who can write software to fit with their products. Well of course this is market stacking which is exactly what MS is trying to do in EU.
All protocols should be freely available to everyone in order for the free market to function properly.

[capt_haddock]

Re: Microsoft and the free market

"a special, better, faster, more powerful extended API that only M$ programmers can use?" It would be better if you don't throw such general terms and be more concrete in the examples.
I would also like to point out the underlying flaw in your argument. If these "special" API's are faster and better as you say they are, then there in lies the innovation and gives every right for Microsoft to charge a fee for that IP. What EU is saying is there is NO innovation in these protocols and hence they can't charge for these IPs. What I don't understand is if there is "NO Innovation" then why was an IP issued in the first place. The fact that an IP was issued is fact in itself that there was innovation and gives MS every right to protect it.

[Bob H in NPR]

Biaswed author?

I have no problem with MS protecting its legitimate individual patents. After x number of years, those patents & the code that went into them then become public domain. They gained a 90% market share with Windows through their efforts. If those ideas were stolen, then they should be sued or prosecuted.

My problem stems from MS's use of their huge bank account that strives to monopolize all aspects of computer & internet applications, as well as the threat & use of lawsuits that discourages startups in the field. I believe they should be broken up into separate companies, each with their own specialties, much like ATT was in the 70s.

[noldrin]

What are you talking about?

The problem with the Microsoft GPL deal is this. The FSF owns the copyright to most of this software. Novell is selling special unspecified license rights to use this software which they licensed from Microsoft for a limited time. This unbelievably harmful to the FSF's IP, and to many other's IP and is an example of exercising bad faith with regards to the license under which Novell is allowed to distribute the code in the first place. All the FSF is doing is closing up this loop hole that Novell came up with. The license will once again be doing the same thing in practice as it's always done.

If Dell found a loop hole in Microsoft's EULA that allowed it to give out windows for free, don't you think Microsoft would close up this loop hole? Why are the rights of the FSF and other users of the GPL less than the rights of Microsoft and Novell?

[gogobear06]

The EC just needs to sustain itself through fines

It appears that the European Commission has a great deal going on self funding. Talk about a heavy handed organization, they can make all the rules, and basically look for big companies to go after to self-fund their big building and fancy offices, plus job security. They especially like bringing in american owned company money. They don't represent EU consumers, but work to keep their own life busy with a steady stream of money. If you have a profitable competitor, go tap on the shoulder of an EC commissioner and tell them that you'd like help to make the other company less powerful, and the EC organization gets to keep the cash, billions of it! It's almost like they look at their bank account and say "hey we need more money, who should we shake down next for it?"

[sjaaksken]

where are your arguments

Do you have any data at all to back up your theory? I mean is this something you wondered upon while reading your paper than thought 'yeah , that might be true' and than just posted it as if you had first hand info?

You really think there is no control over what the EC does? That they have a bankaccount directly connected to the EC and all get a mastercard, that they even have access to the fines? That's a nice thought and easy to believe in but I guess you have no clue how the EC works at all. How would the EC especially sue american companies? Again, do you have any data to backup that theory? Do you even know of a company different than microsoft that got sued by the EC?

It's also funny how you seem to think microsoft hasn't done anything wrong. You seem to forget microsoft is the criminal and not the victim. It's not microsoft that gets targeted, they made a target of themselves by not respecting free market rules. And in case you didn't know, companies not only have rights, they have duties too, even microsoft.

[labcondave]

WHAT?

An "anti-trust" counsel is extolling the virtues of free market economics and questioning the need for antitrust legislation? OK, so hell has frozen over... The reason that Microsoft is the subject of anti-trust investigations is that they have been and are in violation of anti-trust laws. The make second rate copies of innovations and force the innovators out of business. They made their bed.

[swift2--2008]

Pusillanimous, thy name is this guy

Whatever the legal reality, Microsoft is under attack from all
sides because it is a company well past its prime. The best thing
that could have been done for it was that it break into three
units, as the first judgment by Judge Jackson called for. Then
you'd have the Office suite actually competing, and it would be
much better, I can guarantee you. The OS company and the X-
box and Zune company would all be putting out much better
products, because their mind would be on excellence, rather
than creating the sheep-like Windows brand. Whatever the law
says, and it's very clear that the Jackson ruling was correct,
they'd be better off as smaller companies doing work in a
coherent fashion.

But if you want to make a clear roadmap for decline, go ahead
and keep the company in one big ball, like the registry, or like
that horrible ball of crap that Outlook keeps its messages in.

[labcondave]

YES!

I remember back when my mom was leasing a rotary dial phone from AT&T. You couldn't own a phone, nor did you have any choice when it came to selection of equipment or providers. Breaking up AT&T benefited consumers AND AT&T. And look, AT&T is whole again... makes you wonder what could have been. But alas, when you have wolves in sheep's clothing like the author of this article spewing "pro microsoft propaganda", a radical solution to the scourge that is microsoft will never be.

[William Squire]

Try to keep up...

Jackson's ruling was flat-out rejected with good causes. Just because you liked it doesn't mean that it was right. Just because you envision a world where things are done differently doesn't mean that the way things currently are is wrong. The facts show quite clearly that your beloved Judge Jackson was branded as legally unfit to judge, and his illegal behavior cost him his position in the case. Judge Jackson was biased as was proceeding with a personal agenda. The fact that you are still siding with him shows that you have not kept up to date on all of the facts and issues. Jackson was a joke, and Kollar-Kotelly was a more than suitable replacement, who understood the responsibility of the job she was tasked with.

Its kind of funny to hear random commenters explain how the world would be better if they could wrestle control of the world's most successful software company... funny, because... if you actually could do better, you probably would. How big is your company? And how many lives has it enriched?

[phoehne]

A misunderstanding of free markets

A free market is free in the sense it is open to competition, not free from governance. This author, like so many recent authors, confuse a market where companies can freely compete with a regulation free market. However, it is through anti-trust regulation that markets are free and therefore competitive. The EU has an interesting proposal, in that they reduce the problem of proprietary protocols and lock-in. Weather the market is controlled by a cabal of government bureaucrats or by the board of a single company leads to the same, miserable situation for consumers.

[jtzski]

Time for Econ 101

"Free Market" otherwise know as "laissez fair" means free from intervention including antitrust laws - free from governance. In a free market government's role is to protect property rights (including intellectual property), provide security, and a common currency. Adam Smith the Economic philosopher related to free markets referred to monopolies as a "self-curing disease".... not something to be regulated and governed against.

[Newspeak finder]

Microsoft is subject to the law

Unfortunately, Lars fails to understand one simple concept.
Microsoft is not above European law when it chooses to do
business in the EU.

Microsoft will continue to be subject to European law in the EU.

If their argument wins in law then it wins. If it doesn't - it
doesn't.

It looks like that this simple concept is alien to Lars and his
clients but put up with it they will.

If they wish to continue doing business in the EU that is.

Happy chewing.

[mariomiy]

Reminds me of IBM and India about 40 years ago

I couldn't find the report, but from memory, the story is:
The president of IBM, a proud and arrogant American talked with the prime minister of India, discussing high level commercial and industrial strategy. The minister bargained for his country, while the American greedily wanted to monopolize computing in India. Eventually, the IBM man looses his cool with the stubborn Indian and "shoots from the hip". The prime minister gives IBM one month to leave the country. It did not hurt India, on the contrary, today India is self-sufficient in computing because it was never a slave of IBM, in the best style introduced by the Mahatma Ghandi. It has guts, and eventually always wins.
When I read that the EU had fined MS by $680million, I immediately remembered that story. If Ballmer insists, the EU commissioner has the power, the will, and the knowledge of the prior event to kick MS out of Europe, too, or will charge lots of fines to balance the European economy. Microsoft found an equal in power of bargain, and will eventually lose.

[Gromit801]

Natural Selection

Darwin's naturla selection at it's best.

MS is the lumbering Wooly Mammoth being backed into the tar
pits.

[kjbfsjkdvb]

Wrong understanding of FSF's action

For a piece of software to be able to be using a GLP license, it needs to be free from patents violations. By signing a deal, Microsoft and Novell admit this violation, and this admission implies those who didn't sign such deal are outlaws. This doesn't make sense. FSF is right in demanding these deals to be impossible. If an open-source software contains patents violations, the part of code used to do that should simply be removed. This should be the correct way to go.

FSF's actions are additionally consistent, e.g., with the general tendency to avoid proprietary graphics cards' drivers usage with Linux, as they are also illegal.

[BillTheCat]

Microsoft is NOT an Innovator

The article makes a huge, but wrong assumption -- That being that Microsoft is an Innovator. One of Microsoft's own vice presidents recently stated that Microsoft does not innovate. They buy companies that do. Maybe this is the reason that Microsoft always is the last player to implement something new.

Apple does the iPod and sometime later, Microsoft offers their zune player.

Time after time we read about how Microsoft buys a company, takes their technology and standards, adds to them so they are no longer standard and thus destroys a good thing. Take the web as an example. HTML was a standard. Microsoft added their own extensions to it that only their server would honor. Now, we have Firefox, Opera and other standards based browsers that don't properly work on tons of web sites because those sites have proprietary Microsoft code in them. XML may be the next technology on Microsoft's death row.

So, while this article may have a purpose, it is based on a false presumption of innovation. Microsoft is not alone here. Take a look at other corporate monstors in aerospace, chemistry, pharmaceuticals and other industries. The game is the same -- only the players are different.

[rapier1]

Innovation

You know one of those evil html extension microsoft developed (for IE 5.0) is the enabling technolgy for AJAX which is the cornerstone for Web 2.0, right?

Also, you make it sound like Apple invented everything in a black box. The foundation of OS X is BSD, the Mach Kernel was developed at CMU, the GNU tools signifcantly predate OS X, etc etc etc... Every tech company innovates, borrows, steals, and buys technology to advance itself. Every company. Microsoft and Apple are not exceptions to this.

[mariomiy]

Microsoft hurts society--users have to reject it

"HTML was a standard. Microsoft added their own extensions to it that only their server would honor. Now, we have Firefox, Opera and other standards based browsers that don't properly work on tons of web sites because those sites have proprietary Microsoft code in them."
=====================================
Microsoft added extensions to Java, so that MSjava worked well only on Windows. Sun brought a lawsuit and forbid MS from using Java. That is why MS created C# instead.
In Brazil, our Caixa Economica Federal, one of the most important banks for the wage-earners and real-estate buyers, had its user interfaces for tax and installment payments written in MSjava. After the Sun vs MS lawsuit, those CEF interfaces were not cleaned from the MS extensions in Java. When a new client tries to execute mandatory and urgent operations with the CEF online, his/her environment is unable to recognize the interface. The developers who wrote the code are alleged by CEF to be gone, so they are unable to change the obsolete code. Somebody found an old Java library that works. This problem is still there, unsolved. This is one of the subtle ways in which Microsoft hurts society.
The US Department of Justice convicted MS but the Bush administration did not punish it.
The EU is trying hard, but has been unable to control MS.
=========== Therefore ================
The only resource left, ladies and gentlemen, is total boycot, i.e., each of you has to take justice in your own hands. And I have an excellent scheme to painlessly migrate away from the Microsoft domination: run a Windows virtual machine under GNU/Linux temporarily while your Windows-only application is ported, adapted or replaced, while the existing setup continues to work.
This will work even for games. Then tell the original developers that you will pay reasonable prices if they port their applications to become multiplatform. Graphical artists should petition Adobe to do such porting, or offer massive help to the Gimp team to accelerate their development of better features. I think the Gimp would be a killer application if it offered decent color mapping that would enable one to scan a photo with a given blue shade and reproduce it on a printer. Once they get it, everything else will be easier.
This VM solution is applicable everywhere, even in the federal agencies, such as the FAA, DOT, NIST, CIA, FBI, NASA, the Forbes 500, 1000, 10000, all the cities and companies in Germany, I mean, ALL WINDOWS USERS.
When the MS shareholders feel the pressure, they will abandon the sinking ship IMMEDIATELY. BTW, MS is already in trouble at the stock exchange already: it is buying back its own shares in order to maintain the value above $28, not fast enough. MS will run out of funds eventually; the cost has been near one billion dollars per day, for they have been buying 30 million shares, when the average had been 62 million shares per day. Ladies and gentlemen, that is desperation, because once MSFT drops to $25, gravity will pull it down to $1, like SCOX. MS's market cap, now $272 billion, will be $1 billion, lower than General Motors! Then it will be very difficult for MS to recover from its past wrongdoings. I would say, it is poetic justice.

[Microsoft_Facts]

This story is a farse! A late April Fools joke?

There is no "free market" where Microsoft is involved. You based your opinion on mistaken facts. The harm caused to society by Microsoft can not be repaid by the small restitution of returning IP property it stole from elsewhere, handing it back to the rest of the industry for free. In my opinion MS should release all source code for every product they have; cease and desist collecting any revenue for any licenses, only charge for support; and even then that probably doesn't go far enough for MS to repay its debt to society.

[rkhalloran]

Same ol' MS-shill comments from CompTIA

The MS/Novell deal is getting attention because (a) Ballmer barely waited for the ink to dry before implying any other Linux distributions were liable for infringing Microsoft, without of course providing any specifics, and (b) the deal skirts the edge of the GPL redistribution issue; this is why the people working on version 3 explicitly forbid a "side deal" that protects only one distributor of GPL code; if you make a deal for yourself, it extends to any others using the same code.

The EU issue is simple: MS *is* a monopoly, it is obliged to play by a different set of rules to avoid leveraging its position to bludgeon its way into other markets. The EU mandated MS provide *specs* for its protocols to allow interoperability; they don't want *code*, they want *specs*. Of course MS is so incapable of providing a clear specification of their own protocols they're having to throw code in: "we don't know exactly how it works, but here's the code that does it".

[PEdlund]

This guy is right on!

I'm so tired of you open source ID-10-TS who just hate Microsoft regardless of the ever-more-impressive products they release. You're kidding yourself if you think that Microsoft doesn't innovate.

[mariomiy]

Mr. PEdlund, it is not the way you think.

We, the open source idiots, do not hate MS. MS is doing whatever it can to earn money out of its "intelectual property", and it has been successful, so far. Only problem is that its business methods hurt society, so we feel it to be our obligation to do something righteously about it. There is the rub.
The ever-more-impressive products released are mostly not Microsoft's merit: they were purchased, yanked, hijacked, or stolen from different parties, some of them deceased. The few impressive products made in house have not succeded, or are not made out of love for the customers. The only credit due to MS is to have made the desktop and multimedia popular in the world, by preinstalling its software on brand new computers, but MS did it to enlarge its market share, so we did not have a choice.
You are kidding yourself if you think that MS can innovate. It has chosen to be a marketing company, where marketeers tell programmers what to do to maintain its market share. It has no team capable of developing its own operating system. Its code base is so incongruous and filled with patches, that the maintenance team has a hard time to identify the bugs found in the source code. I believe the MS technical personnel are doing miracles with what they have under control, and the PR people fill the gaps with creative explanations. Keep in mind that it is always possible to hide ugly stuff behind pretty pictures; people in theaters have done that very well. Apparently you know little about the MS background. Read more, interpret, then we talk.

In other words, the entire MS structure is doing their best under their business plan, but lately, not even the best has been sufficient to keep their house standing. Some of them are overdoing without orientation, and are spoiling the public perception. You might be unaware of those facts, or are dismissing them as fake. You know, there are people who still don't believe that people stepped on the Moon; they think it was a TV production. They are not bad, just difficult to convince. Are you perhaps one of those? Sorry to ask, but one never knows...

I firmly believe that the most valuable component of a person is wisdom. Wisdom is concerned with truth. All else is accessory; only the truth will free your mind from dependence from others.
Just watch the next few months. Have you seen the MSFT share behavior in the stock market lately?

[fcekuahd]

PEdlund, you've got it all wrong...

It's not just open-source or Macintosh users who are tired of Microsoft's tactics. I'm a MSCE, and I've become very disillusioned with Microsoft as well. The fact of the matter is that Microsoft hasn't released a really significant product since 2000. They've declared war on customers and competitors alike to maintain their hold on the market, and in the end it's going to backfire.

[sandkicker]

Some of these responses are amusing

1964 a corvette cost $3000, gee all they have done is add improvements, guess they should sell it for $3000 today.

On the PC/computer/word processer venue:
Franklin, Apple, Tandy, Commodore, Atari, HP, IBM and a host of other equipment all had propriatary software and you couldn't use it on anything besides their computers.

Word processing, spreadsheets, graphic emulations (presentations) if you two had organizations with different computers/software products you couldnt share your presentation with other groups without retyping the data.
The list goes on and on and on.....

As to always having to validate their software versions as stated by one individual did, if thats the case he/she is doing something wrong. I have been running WinXP and XP-Office pro on my machine since 2000, and have maybe revalidated 4 times, and one of those was a total rebuild after a disk crash.

Sure, I am not overly fond of MS pricing, but I will say that MS has provided a platform that can be used globably across machine platforms. I definately do not want to see the days having to worry about whether a system is Linux, Unix, IBM, or WordPerfect, PeachTree and a host of others return. MS has done more to unite people around the globe giving them the ability to **** and moan all they want and share data with less hassle.

No, I don't work of MS, I am retired military and civilian network/admin tech, who has been playing with computers for 40 years.

[Penguinisto]

You forget inflation...

...IIRC, the EU did not.

HTH,

/P

[Ian Joyner]

"Faulty assumption" is faulty assumption

"It is based on a faulty assumption that a company can use its
intellectual property to harm competition rather than fuel it."

That's a strawman argument. The fact that is argued is that a
company can use its "market position" to harm competition.

Microsoft very much inherited this anti-competitive stance from
IBM. I suggest you read Richard DeLamarter's "Big Blue: IBM's Use
and Abuse of Power".

[bigpicture]

Faulty Assumption

"It is based on a faulty assumption that a company can use its intellectual property to harm competition rather than fuel it."

Where do you get off making a crap statement like this, and presenting it like a fact. What kind of journalism is this? Why don't you do some research? You will find that this is about all that patents are used for. To prevents others from making better or more competitive products, or for blackmailing a pile of money from them. A fine example of patents at their best is the RIM decision.

[DarkPhoenixFF4]

Well...

Patents aren't ONLY used to harm competition...
in markets that warrant the kind of protection
patents give. The root problem is that software
is NOT one of those markets, and in fact the
inflexible structure of the patent system and
the length of the patent monopoly, combined with
some idiots at the wheel who simply rubberstamp
entries instead of checking has basically caused
the software tech industry to grind to a
standstill, except for a few random coders who
are still trying to innovate without drawing the
attention of/getting stepped on by someone at
the top.

Eventually, either the US patent system will
implode or someone will start to wonder why all
the new innovations seem to come from outside
the US.

[t8]

Not true at all.

Consumers do not want one OS to rule them all, but that is pretty much what they get because MS strong-armed the industry to include their OS and even banned others.

The problem here is the consumer gets what he is given, and that is not necessarily what they would have chosen had their been a choice.

Look at it another way. Let's say that Microsoft owned the OS for most cellphones through deals that barred competitors. Now look at the reality. We have choice and that is good.

So as you can see the customer doesn't always win. The customer only chooses that which is presented to him and Microsoft successfully stifled what the customer could get when it came to PCs.

[t8]

Not true at all.

Consumers do not want one OS to rule them all, but that is pretty much what they get because MS strong-armed the industry to include their OS and even banned others.

The problem here is the consumer gets what he is given, and that is not necessarily what they would have chosen had their been a choice.

Look at it another way. Let's say that Microsoft owned the OS for most cellphones through deals that barred competitors. Now look at the reality. We have choice and that is good.

So as you can see the customer doesn't always win. The customer only chooses that which is presented to him and Microsoft successfully stifled what the customer could get when it came to PCs.

[BigTreeMan]

Can't Trust

I've been in IT since before it was called IT and before Microsoft's ugly climb to the top. It has always been a fast, hard game.

There's money to be made from the 'magic' that the common man can't comprehend. And there's always lots of gready, ruthless people ready to take any|every one for a ride.

The meek will inherit nothing (FZ).

A tight reign needs to be kept on these crooks and a close eye kept on the press who suck up to these crooks, for a few scraps off the table.