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This reminds me of the whole OJ Simpson trial; it seems that given the current situation he is in, Karma has come back to bite him on the behind.

Its interesting how the universe happens to balance things out; Farwell spews vile hatred against gays and he dies of pneumonia.

The unfortunate thing is, vendors like Adobe, Quicken, and MYOB lock the customers into Windows by their refusal to either port or even work with wine to get their application working with *NIX in a stable manner.

I can assure you, if every software company said tomorrow they're going to create a *NIX version of their application, there would be a mass exodus from Windows - that is the only thing holding people to Windows, application availability. Its the only thing Windows actually has going for it; it certainly doesn't have any advantage in any other areas.

What I would have loved to see with this ruling was FORCING Microsoft to GIVE AWAY their technology specifications free of charge - no royalties, no NDA's, everything disclosed and out in the open. When it is changed in Windows, the specification is updated within 24 hours of the change within Windows.

Its unfortunate that regulators don't get it. If you want Microsoft to do something, you need to explicitly state EVERYTHING you want them to do; you can't make assumptions that they'll do something - if you do, they'll try to weasel out of it. You need to explicitly state what they must do to comply. If that means a 10,000 page book, then so be it.

Whilst Application support isn't perfect on all alternatives, it is still adequate for the largest portion of users, including power users like myself.

If there's one universal rule of life, it's that no matter what problem you have, as soon as you discuss it, somebody else has had a lot worse. The same can be said of switching platforms:

When coming up with reasons to not leave Windows, people should bear in mind:
* There are many people that have switched who used to use precisely the same application set as you - you are not the only person who uses those applications, remember.

* There are alternatives and entirely different paths you can take for tasks that tie you to Windows. I gave up on VB6 and ASP, and learnt PHP. There is always someone else out there who has tried harder than you to switch and done it successfully. Excuses are one thing, reasons are another.

* I did it. It's not impossible. You just have to wake up and smell the coffee, and start taking baby steps away from Microsoft. If you're using a pirate copy of Office, get Open Office, or any alternative. If you use Windows only technologies, use your spare time to start learning cross-platform technologies so that you can one day shift OSes without affecting your work.

In this day and age "Application X isn't available on Platform Y" isn't a reason anymore. You can virtualise Windows on any other platform, and then learn new alternatives entirely - and the last, most important part:

* You will be better off.

I like all your points but the last. That one is a bit subjective.

Are you speaking from being on another platform? If you're on an alternative, and you don't think you're better off, then please do tell us about it.

But to be blunt, I don't think it's subjective at all until you're off of Windows and have experience to talk about. Cries of Windows being great are songs to the choir in a walled garden to me. There is no way that I could say that Tennis is better than Badminton until I've played both thoroughly. And people who think they are better off on Windows, yet have only ever used Windows, don't have a clue to be honest.

"You need to explicitly state what they must do to comply. If that means a 10,000 page book, then so be it."

I swear that one time MS made a 6,000 page book explaining it specifications and people just complained it was too long...

Who said anything about specifications? I said that ALL the demands that are made of Microsoft need to be placed explicitly down on paper. I don't know *WHERE* you got the idea that i was referring to specifications.

This is action against ILLEGAL monopolistic behavior, resulting in the destruction of multiple businesses and the loss of many jobs, while denying the consumer their RIGHT to a free market, which provides choice and competition.

The EU is acting on law, not on blind anti-Microsoft delusions. And in that respect, GO EU GO!!

--The loon

I cannot agree here. Ms still goes to great lenghts to secure Windows as dependable and consistent platform for commercial, closed source software. No other platform have achieved such combination of wideness and stability of api/abi over the years. The only legitimate serious desktop competitor-linux is a showcase of failure in this area.

Still I agree that MS business model is mostly based on extorting their market power than delivering innovation (which they try from time to time but with meager results). Hopefully the law based appeal wont take ages and sw devs around the world will see some fruits of this in this decade, besides EC draining money from MS.

Edited 2007-09-18 08:18

At least Adobe also publishes osX versions of there software. It would be nice if they also offered ports to other Unix like OS being how easy it is to simply recompile the osX/BSD source.

Of course, no one expects Adobe to give Photoshop away for free but your quite right, it'd be nice if they opened themselves up to the rest of the market not just Win32/64 and osX.

I like that quote. But as for alternatives I don't know. It's not so much vender lock in that I'm concerned with but rather but rather freedom to move within the scope of my chosen playground. To be perfectly honest, I feel more restricted with some MS alternatives than I do with MS themselves.

I welcome elaboration on the aspect. I suspect there are many users here who want insight on specific restrictions you feel from MS alternatives.

In a free software world the only limitation is your knowledge.

Of course, if you think that a GNU/Linux distribution is oh so hard to learn, because your friend XYZ tried and failed, then you might feel unfree, but that is only a very subjective and limited unfreeness.

Think about it: No more worries about copying applications illegaly, no more shelling out good money and finding out, that the application did not deliver what you assumed it would. Just download, and try it out, if it suits you, use it at your home, job and give it to your friends. Or make some money supporting an application, or give some money by buying support from someone.

60 years are a very long time.
In the meantime we have proven what we can do. How about uniting 27 countries all out of their free will?

What's this got to do with software? Or do you just not have any other arguments?
Pretty much like the Americans that were pouring good french wine out on the streets 'cos France did not oblige helping them to invade Iraq.

You misunderstand the meaning of "should not be a part of".

It means that WMP should not be a required dependency in Windows, but be optional. It should be completely removable. The same goes for IE.

It doesn't mean that Microsoft cannot deliver a media player, they just cannot make it a hardwired dependency.

You misunderstand the meaning of "should not be a part of".

It means that WMP should not be a required dependency in Windows, but be optional. It should be completely removable. The same goes for IE.

It doesn't mean that Microsoft cannot deliver a media player, they just cannot make it a hardwired dependency.

Why not? I do not have problems with that and I am a customer.

If you take a closer look, EU did not force Microsoft to make those changes you talk about. They told them to make another Windows (XP N, Vista N) but the "full" version is still there. And nobody wants it - doesn't that tell you something?

The thing is, Microsoft will do that on their own - for security reasons, they already are doing it (Core server, etc).

Yes, it tells me that no resellers are advertising the N-version. It is completely impossible to find anyone selling it.

Those interested in the N-version has already bought a version of Windows and are not interested in buying a new license. Some of them are using nLite to create a customized version of Windows.

I don't mind Microsoft bundling whatever they want as long as I can remove it. And I'm a customer too (though using Win2K3 Server instead of XP or Vista - though I have licenses for this and that).

Yes, it tells me that no resellers are advertising the N-version. It is completely impossible to find anyone selling it.

And how is that Microsoft's fault? Because resellers don't want to sell it? Maybe it's because they have no reason (read: $$$) to support 2 different versions when, most likely, first thing Joe Sixpack will ask is: "How do I play my audio and video files? What da hell is this?"

Maybe EU should now compensate Microsoft for expenses thay had to produce extra version (Windows N), version that nobody wants. Not even resellers, as you said.

Hey, why don't you start business selling it and see how well it goes? You seem to think that there is much demand for it.

> It means that WMP should not be a required dependency in Windows,
> but be optional. It should be completely removable. The same goes for
> IE.
>
> It doesn't mean that Microsoft cannot deliver a media player, they just
> cannot make it a hardwired dependency.

Unfortunately, the distinction is not that clear from a technical point of view. I'll take IE as a better example than WMP. If you remove IE, then of course everything that depends on it will break. Depending on the amount of breakage, this may already be regarded as "IE cannot be removed", and will therefore force a technically nonsensical decision upon MS (namely to make other components independent of IE, thus forking the IE code instead of keeping IE a re-usable system component).

The usual counter-argument is that IE should be removable and replaceable by a sufficiently similar component (e.g. a replacement that was written by a competitor) such that users can choose the better implementation. The necessary move by MS would be to release the complete interface specification. This is not going to work in practice, as the oft-argued clean separatoin of interface and implementation does not exist in most real software. This is much less a trick to crush competitors, than poor engineering happening when software is developed - although it comes quite handy as an argument for MS not to release a specification.

I am all for tackling a problem at its root. In this case the tight integration of system components, and the inability to remove and replace a component, is not the root of the prolem. MS's monopoly is. There are plenty of examples where similar practices have not lead to antitrust rulings nor to an uproar among the consumers simply because the offending company did not have a monopoly, and the consumer had to choice to move to another vendor in case the situtation escalated.

Therefore, the natural and IMO correct solution to the whole problem is to crush MS's monopoly. There are plenty of ways to move that way, none of which is currently pursued by the governments in general (although there are some exceptions). It seems to me as if we rather rest assured that we can hit MS with the big "antitrust" hammer whenever it freaks out, denying the fact that MS has a position of power which we are too scared or to whiny to attack.

I thing MS has already been pushed to behave more well by this "hammer". Otherwise redhat would be now drowning in the swapm of MS inspired patent ligitations.

1. "WMP should not be part of Windows" is just lame. I want Windows Media Player to be part of Windows. I don't want Windows to become "do-it-yourself-every-little-thing-and-then-some-Linux-like"

MS is using its monopoly position to push "Windows Media" on consumers. They purposely link their media product (their DRM technology) to their established monopoly and exclude all other platforms.
From the Flip4Mac (bought by MS) faq page :

"Can third parties build Windows Media DRM capable clients for the Mac?
Microsoft makes Windows Media DRM technology available for Windows operating systems and many device platforms. At this time, Microsoft has no plans to offer Windows Media DRM support on the Macintosh."

This kind of tying together of products to gain an advantage in a new market is illegal in the EU. This is why WMP, or more correctly the technology behind it, should be unlinked and be interchangeable with technology from other vendors (eg. quicktime or real media, both multiplatform.) Then resellers can bundle the non-ms technology if they so wish.

Then resellers can bundle the non-ms technology if they so wish.

And since when they can't? Are you serious?

Look at any preconfigured installation from Dell, HP, etc. Those come with tons of preinstalled (non-MS) software.

Then resellers can bundle the non-ms technology if they so wish.

And since when they can't? Are you serious?

They couldn't in the past. MS claimed this would interfere with the "Windows experience". Vendors weren't even allowed to install software or place icons on the desktop.

This culminated in court cases, like the Beos case, where MS forbade the vendor (with threat of financial sanctions) to offer a bootmanager by default or to put a desktop icon in windows to reboot into Beos. They had to put a seperate bootfloppy in the box or a paper explaining how to enable dual boot.

They were convicted for this. Learn your history before criticising.
Also do you really think even now MS would allow vendors to take out Windows media (they claim it's impossible) and deliver Windows with Quicktime codecs instead ?

Well. I don't. Especially I wouldn't like to have to pay for ms codecs and spread them just too have a runtime for my win32 apps.
Now I don't have much choice (as windows N isn't any cheaper).

Would it be so "do it all yourself" hard to open your browser, go to Windows Update and download Media Player as an available add-on instead of having it prebundled? That's all they really have to do on the WMP thing and everyone suddenly gets the choice to use it or not. (repository managed OS really are that easy)

Server products should end at the network card. MS does all they can to impose the server os down the network medium to the client? If my server is running Windows, why should it care that my workstation runs something else. If industry standards are used or MS protocols properly documented and not changed to force an ongoing game of catchup then what's the problem?

In the DOS days, I could dial a BBs by modem and connection without this sort of BS. Your BBs runs on a Mac, a *nix or a Windows box; don't care.. your BBs and my workstation both end at the modem leaving the transmission medium neutral. I use Terminate for dialing but you use Wildcat BBs; don't care, they both talk to each other just fine. So why should it be any different now with Windows if you use Exchange Server and I don't use Outlook?

Keeping the MS secret sauce protocols hidden and changing them purely to keep competition a step behind does not benefit the customers. It's just another dirty trick to keep from having to address the quality of there products in an actually competitive market.

Would it be so "do it all yourself" hard to open your browser, go to Windows Update and download Media Player as an available add-on instead of having it prebundled?

Browser? What browser? Browser should not be there either.

And then you can say the same for, let's see.. Notepad, TrueType Fonts, DirectX, icons, NTFS --- well, everything.

Yet with other alternatives, I can uninstall the equivalents of notepad, fonts, directX, icons.

NTFS is a partition file format so that's really outside the scope of "bundled applications" since it is an essencial part of the NT OS unlike notepad, IE and WMP which are user space programs not truly essential to booting the NT kernel and reading a drive.

But there again, I can choose from over 30 different partition file formats including fat16, fat32, NTFS, ext2, ext3, RieserFS. Still, with winNT, I can use fat32 or NTFS partitions but in reality the functions provided by NTFS are still essential to a properly functioning and secure winNT. I include this last bit as more of a comparison demonstrating the limitation of Windows and flexability of it's alternatives.

NTFS is a partition file format so that's really outside the scope of "bundled applications" since it is an essencial part of the NT OS unlike notepad, IE and WMP which are user space programs not truly essential to booting the NT kernel and reading a drive.

Why is NTFS essential part of the NT OS when Windows can work using FAT, etc?

How about TTF fonts? Look, you and I can't sell our font collections that well cause Windows has TTF fonts already. Etc, etc. MS should be punished?

Who gets to say what's in scope and what's not? The truth is in the eye of the beholder, you know.

Should MS be punished because Vista has speech recognition? There are also third-party applications for that (DragonSpeak, for example) so, surely they suffer from Vista's new capabilities???

Etc, etc.

I think one can reasonably draw a line between what is integrated and abusing monopoly power to kill competition and what is integrated without causing unfair advantage over the competition.

If FAT supported partition level security then there may be an argument against NTFS but it doesn't while NTFS does. If you build a winNT on fat32, you don't get to make real use of those read/write/create file attributes which negates the entire basis of NT security. That makes NTFS an integral part of winNT.

Font retailers and distributors are not being monopolied out of the market. I've a friend who owns a printshop and Mircrosoft's fonts must be less than 10% of his available type faces. Pointing at fonts, notepad and other minimal applications which are not truly pushing other competitors out of the market is *really* stretching it.

Who desides though? I'd say reasonable and rational people with the technical unbias knowledge to evaluate the indavidual components and overall integrated product. WMP, the Browser.. those are major applications that obviously create an unfair advantage over competition through there integration. Can we uninstall DirectX or install DirectX on other platforms to see all those spiffy websites that prefer IE standards over industry standards?

The problem is really not that these integrated applications are part of the default installation or even available as options. The issue is still that they cannot be removed without voiding your warrenty and EULA.

I use firefox and Media Monkey for my browsing and media file management; can I uninstall WMP and IE or do I need to leave the bloated media player and browser security risk on my machine?

If I have a employee who's job does not include any need of an internet browser where a network connection is needed; can I uninstall the browser from that workstation or will I be seeing website browsing in the network monitor? Granted, this one is a management issue but in reality a network use policy does very little and would be unnecissary if the browser was integrated. (IE being originally to kill competition for internet access when MS went 180 on there "that internet fad will blow over" possition)

Going overboard and trying to make an argument out of the partition type or light apps like notepad is really reaching for a basis of argument; even if your just playing devil's advicate. There is a rational distinction between the major components being discussed and the lesser applications. Anyone who tried to take MS to court over notepad would have a case even OJ's lawyer couldn't spin into a win. At that point, the argument is just irrational and over the top.

Your argument is completely beside the point.

Microsoft had a monopoly in the home operating system market. In the EU (as well as in the USA), a monopoly company is not allowed to use it's monopoly in one market (here: operating system) to gain a monopoly in an other market (here: media player market).

And that was exactly what Microsoft did.

I do not know, why the EU did not order MS to completely remove WMP from Windows.
Then Microsoft would have had to compete with the other media player companies on a fair basis - offering a download, placing the stuff on the shelf, whatever.

The EU commission was much too mild with their actions and requirements.

Go on then, astonish us all with your firm grasp of the legal issues involved.

Dear Almafeta.

Microsoft is harming consumer choice by making its products irremovable (e.g. they cannot be uninstalled). Red Hat ships a distribution with many applications, but they can ALL be removed, and modified and whatever the user may want. Even legally. Microsoft does not allow that.

Novell, Canonical, IBM and several other companies do the same. They are tying applications but not in a way that harms consumer choice (e.g. they are not limiting the amount of choices for Users).

Try again. With your in-depth legal knowledge of the case I'm sure you're aware of the specific complaints and why your solution does not address them?

I cannot uninstall WMP or IE.

I can hide them to some extent and have other applications as default applications, but I cannot get rid of them.

EDIT: Corrected IE7 to IE. It _is_ possible to rollback IE7 to IE6 in pre-Vista Windows.

Edited 2007-09-17 15:59 UTC

And how to remove Internet Explorer using those tools? Is it really possible? I don't think so, that's the point here.

You cannot deinstall any of the apps in Vista. You cannot remove IE, you cannot remove Windows Gallery, Calendar, DVD Maker and so on. That's gigs of disk space you cannot easily claim back.

Don't want Safari on your Mac? Drag it to the bin, done. It won't rear its ugly head again every time you click a link in MSN and so on. It's gone - finito.

"You cannot remove IE,...Don't want Safari on your Mac? Drag it to the bin, done."

That isn't a fair comparison; a better one would be WebKit -> IE as they are both the underlying frameworks powering their respective browsers. To my knowledge, you cannot uninstall WebKit from OSX without having side effects similar to what they would be on Windows if you ripped out all of the core IE dll's.

"That's gigs of disk space you cannot easily claim back. "

Also, all the apps you listed are maybe a couple hundred MB in size. Try again.

Let me know how uninstalling IE from your winXP or Vista computer goes. I'd really love to read the simple steps through the control panel that let you do that.

No....this is mostly about Microsoft NOT publishing some propietary protocols. It's funny that Microsoft tries to look like they're standard-friendly with OOXMNL, but in reality they are not.

I disagree with you completely. While you may not be able to remove certain products you can choose not to use them. I'm not sure why you would want to remove them anyway. It's true you can remove products from Red Hat but it isn't easy and uninstalls other applications along with it. I've had functional linux boxes become unfunctional due to removing one application that decided it wanted to remove a slew of other ones as well.

While you may not be able to remove certain products you can choose not to use them.

Freedom of choice is not only about what you can choose not to use, but also about what you can choose to use and about what you can do with your computer and what you cannot. I don't know about how US market works, but in the EU there are some rules that can be essentially dumbed down to three problems:

1. The operating system I use is not Microsoft's problem. Obviously, this doesn't mean that they have to port their products to every available system -- that would be dumb -- but they have to release the specs, in order to allow interoperability. See the WMP DRM problem above.

2. (based on 1.) The operating system my friends, colleagues and collaborators use is not Microsoft's problem. If I want to use some operating system that is not Microsoft's, it's obviously unfair to ask them to port their products to whatever crazy tool I use. But again, they have to release the specs to their protocols and formats, so that compatible solutions can be developed and nobody gets locked.

3. The products I choose to have on my computer are not Microsoft's problem. If I want to remove an application from my computer, no software company (and that includes Microsoft) has the right to prevent me from doing so. I paid for the computer AND the applications -- what I do with it is my problem. On a marginal note, imagine what a mess it would be if Google, for instance, suddenly had the idea to "improve" your experience by bundling every little piece of useless software they have ever written with one of their flagship products, not allowing you to uninstall them afterwards.

Obviously, it's perfectly fair to bundle applications that are absolutely vital to a system's functionality and make them uninstallable. The only reason why you can basically uninstall anything on Linux is that you get a choice even for those (although, quite frankly, I fail to see what's difficult in removing a package (apt-get remove <package>? yum remove <package>) -- and how you managed to get the boxes not to function, unless you'd removed the kernel or important system library and rebooted the computer without installing a replacement). However, I do somehow fail to see what is so important about WMP (and not just WMP, but this is just an example) and how it's vital to the operating system.

These rules aren't here to mess with everyone's business practices -- they are here because the EU economic system depends very heavily on competition, and also because, being given its nature, collaboration in the EU depends very heavily on interoperability.

I'm not willing to deny that there are a couple of vendors that fully deserve to get the same kind of treatment -- see the case of Apple (who should, if not will, get some bashing with they don't unlock the iPhone).


Edit: the comparison between IE and Safari is perfectly justified.

Microsoft applications do use IE's rendering engine (Trident? I'm not sure, really), just like many other OS X applications use Safari's rendering engine.

Safari is really like a "frontend", it's just an application that uses WebKit for web browsing (only one of the reasons why someone would use a component that renders HTML code). The same, frankly, goes -- or should go, by any sane design practice, for IE. I don't know how it works, but bundling the entire application should not be necessary, only the rendering engine would be enough. Again, this is strictly from my point of view -- something I would do as a developer. Tying a back-end to an application, so that removing just one application would cause all others to fail is just dumb, it defeats the entire purpose of having a back-end. But hey, I guess this is what happens when developers get orders from marketing.

[By rendering engine, I am referring to the entire back-end actually, but I'm too lazy to change it or to find the correct word]

Edited 2007-09-17 18:37

"So when will the injunctions against Canonical, Novell, Red Hat, etc., be coming?"

When they fall in the actual relevant part of that sentence:

"The court said Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, was unjustified in tying new applications to its Windows operating system in a way that harmed consumer choice".

The most important issue is not mentioned in the article: it's not really a problem that Microsoft bundles software; everyone does that. Even the fact that something cannot be removed does not have to be a problem, persé. The big problem with Microsoft is that it is abusing its monopoly on the desktop to gain monopoly in other area's such as the world of media players and servers, for example.

Here's the press release: http://curia.europa.eu/en/actu/communiques/cp07/aff/cp070063en.pdf

Edited 2007-09-17 16:13

Exactly!

And as expected, the spinmeisters neatly ignore the real problem but instead focus on the bundling detail.

This results in less informed people to see just the arguments about media players and browser instead of learning about the issues that for example media server technology providers have run into because not being treated equally by the default media player.

I wish that instead of requesting a separate player-less bundle such rulings would request having competing client side technology equally bundled, i.e. all currently available codec being equally pre-installed or equally available through automatic download.

You are so far off the mark with that one, it's not even funny. When both the US and the EU find a company to be abusing it's market position and actively harming consumer choice than I, and anybody with an ounce of sense, am going to believe them. To do otherwise is to stick your head in the sand or stick your fingers in your ears while loudly shouting out 'I can't hear you!'.


When they start tying applications into they're offering without the ability to uninstall those applications. That's when.

You ask "So when will the injunctions against Canonical, Novell, Red Hat, etc., be coming?"

My answer is... As soon as they also own 95% of the market and can dictate only Linux will be sold on new computers!

Edited 2007-09-17 16:24

Well, I don't think it will be long before the EU will take on Apple's iPod/iTunes monopoly practices. In addition, if Apple does not provide its own methods of unlocking the iPhone in many countries in Europe where they must do so according to the law (The Netherlands, for instance), the EU will surely talk about that one too.

Edited 2007-09-17 17:00 UTC

self-edited, off topic.

Edited 2007-09-17 18:18

Please don't complain about moderation in the comments' section. They invented email for this stuff.