This by George Reisman, economist and free marketeer:
The New York Times reports that the European Commission has “ordered Microsoft to disclose secret code in Windows XP needed by rivals to allow them to write programs that work properly with Windows. And it required the company to introduce a second version of Windows XP with its audio and video player removed.”
The European Commission is also reported to be drafting a ruling that will require the world tennis champion Roger Federer to share the secrets of his play with rivals, to enable them, for example, to better integrate their returns with his serves.
In still another development, the European Commission is reported to be contemplating barring the sale of automobiles and other motor vehicles equipped with radios, CD players, or video players. The ruling is held to be necessary to preserve the separate markets of the suppliers of these devices and not allow them to be monopolized by automakers.
Here is more about anti-trust pursuit of Microsoft by the European Union, in a slightly less irreverent vein.
contemplating barring the sale of automobiles and other motor vehicles equipped with radios, CD players, or video players. The ruling is held to be necessary to preserve the separate markets of the suppliers of these devices and not allow them to be monopolized by automakers.
You know, if literally 90% of the world drove Volkswagen Golfs – in the same way such percentage of the fools do run Windows – I might think that was a good idea.
But then, I’m a Mac user.
alecm, no but as you yourself demonstrate, no-one is forced to use MS. There are alternatives. No-body forces me to buy one of Mr Gates’ software packages at gunpoint.
True, true, and I find it so depressing when I desperately want to see a free and open market, that people mindlessly persist in being so stupid as to prop up MS’s monopoly.
“But there are so many better alternatives”, I wail !
To save my sanity I work in an environment where Windows is positively rare – not unknown, but it really is just a choice amongst the Linux, Unix, Mac and BSD alternatives which I and my geek friends and colleagues patronise.
In short: regarding computer-systems, I live in an artificial world where my self-selection of people to whom I talk reflect my own prejudices, without having to take account of the reality of the corporate world outside my bubble.
How very libertarian and free-market of me. 🙂
Though I am not a fan of Microsoft, I do believe that they have a right to their intellectual property. Over time Linux, and the like, will gather an increasing share of the market while Microsoft operates in its usual somewhat quasi monopolistic manner. However, that being said, the whole point is that the market will punish Microsoft for its behaviour, it doesn’t need EU mandarins to step in and impose “fairness” on behalf of Microsofts’ competitors .
Frankly, the Open Source Foundation and LINUX need Microsoft to have any chance of being used by less than gruntled Microsoft escapees.
Frankly, the Open Source Foundation and LINUX need Microsoft to have any chance of being used by less than gruntled Microsoft escapees.
…so the only people who’d ever want to use something other than Microsoft are those who have first *tasted* Microsoft and decided to go elsewhere?
Oh yeah, that’s *really* a free market with. Go look outside the bubble, have a good think about how many people stick to what they know / what their groupthink tells them to use.
Oh yes: back to the “operating system as vehicle” metaphor; did we mention that they’re welding shut the hood, labelling it with “no-user-servicable-parts-inside” and making sure you can only use gas from one vendor who pays them a kickback?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/5326654.stm
MS are trying to make sure there will be no “Pimp My Vista” when/if it eventually comes out… or you can pimp it, but you have to use Genuine Microsoft Brand/Partner Parts.
That’s an open market, too! Not.
The problem is quantum: windows is both an appliance, and an environment for other applications.
When it’s an appliance – a toaster – the manufacturer can lock it down as much as they like for user convenience; but when it’s an environment, it needs to be a nice place for entirely foreign third-party applications to exist.
This is not a black/white distinction; there are midpoints like (usefully) the Xbox or Playstation which are meant to be shrinkwrapped appliances that present carefully-written, expensive-to-develop third-party games to the user.
But Vista will be most peoples’ window onto the web, the internet, and who can or should say where that is going to go in terms of software environment requirements?
If the net can go from Blogging to Podcasting to Vlogging in 2 years flat, do you really want to be sitting around waiting for MS’s browser development team to catch-up? Incidentally: hands up everyone who still uses Internet Explorer, like Microsoft said you should?
I am eternally amused by Microsoft haters. Have you developed in .NET, alecm? Have you even explored the development environment? Have you developed against SQL Server side-by-side with Oracle? I know which I prefer to deal with.
The main reason why Linux is no threat to Windows is quite simply that Linux programmers do not care about what Linux users actually want.
And why should they care? They do not make any money with the stuff they put out. It does not really matter whether 500 or 5.000.000 people install the software they made.
Open source programmers are not as altruistic as they like to pretend. There is no reason for them to spend extra time on such boring tasks as debugging and design, because other people’s satisfaction is simply not their objective. Their objective is to have fun programming and possibly to impress other nerds with their skills.
Not getting paid for job leads to low motivation and low motivation leads to low quality. It is systematic.
(disgruntled Linux user)
The EU is being silly and in the long run will suffer the usual consequences of silly behaviour if they succeed. In this case the consequence is likely to be increasing distance from the cutting edge of technology. Myself, I use linux because it fits most of my needs. For everyday use I expect folks to use a Mac or Windows on Intel because they fit everyday needs. A computer is a tool and folks should pick the tool that does the job they need. Making computers less useful and convenient out of the box for everyday use isn’t progressive. Not technologically progressive, anyway.
This argument has been going on for far, far too long. For those that care the original arguments were not really about bundling, but about MS preventing un-bundling. That is to say a reseller could not replace MS bundled items with items of their own choice. In some cases resellers couldn’t even add items if they were from companies MS didn’t like. In essence, MS wielded too much power over their resellers. That was about 10 years ago, centering around IE.
The list of disreputable MS business practices is so long that I’m happy to see even a hideous outfit like the EU laying into them. This particular EU case regarding media player is silly, and largely unjustified, but I’d still rather see MS lose, as punishment for past crimes.
Alfred – there is a difference between hating MS and not liking their products. Some of the products are good, and they have done some truly innovative things. But that doesn’t excuse their business practices in general.
Alfred: respectively no, yes in a somewhat dated fashion, and no but I have done Oracle. If you want to trade experiences doing systems admin for 200 wintel machines versus 30 unix boxes, or just raw lines of code developed over the past 20 years in C and Java, I’ll be happy to chat.
I’m not your average Linux weenie, and I agree Windows has its place, but I still remember with horror the fun of mixed memory models, “FAR PASCAL” pointers in MS-C, and horrific memory leakage and painful debugging. Unix is not a bed of roses, but at least the code can be clean.
So would you care to get back to the point rather than casting ad-hominem aspersions?