The EU commission’s decision about Microsoft rose some heated discussion on nearly every part of it. Let’s take an accurate look at it and discuss the hows and
whys of the act that is going probably to change Europe’s technological assets in the near future.
Editorial Notice: All opinions are those of the author and not necessarily those of osnews.com
Note: English is not my mother tongue, please excuse any grammar/syntax errors.
The good, the bad and the ugly media player
The decision of the UE commission number IP/04/382 of the 24th march of this year represents a milestone in UE’s history of vision of technology and computer
system evolution history. The commission is not new at decisions on informaticion and generally technological oriented matters, suffice to remember the decision
that three years ago fined heavily Nintendo for abuse of position in the market of console videogaming. But surely never the knife had cut this near to the center
of the real problem on the battlefield of the operative system for desktop computers and low server market. The decision is composed by a preamble with some
comments from EU commissar Mario Monti (responsible for antitrust matters) and then composes itself of three precise fines:
-First a monetary one (the infamous 497,2 million Euro, rougly translating in 613 million dollar counter value), by ease the higher ever inflicted in the story of the
commission.
-A second one forces Microsoft to reveal not later that 120 days accurate and complete informations on interfaces that consent to non Microsoft server working
groups to get to the complete interoperability with PCs and server that works with Windows.
-Last but not least the commission sentenced Microsoft to offer a stripped version of its Windows OS without the windows media player in a time segment of 90
days from the sentence.
Useless to say MS appealed itself to the European court of justice in Louxembourg and things will run smoothly till the said court’s decision. Decision that will take
some time (even if I do not agree with the catastrophic prevision of 2009 made from Assistant Attorney General Hewitt Pate form Department of Justice).
The decision is complex and prone to misunderstanding. Like each juridical text it has clear and unclear points, but in all its vision is revolutionary.
I was a not surprised that the decision itself rised a whole host of comments, most of them were acute and interesting. In fact I was happily surprised that the
majority of the people reacted with positive comments on the commission’s decision, and the one that did not agree on the fines, agreed on the general
principles.
I could not help but to notice a rising portions of wails and rants from the dark that described the work of the commission as a fascism, an attack to US or (I
quote) “the last idea of justice from European crybabies”. With the exclusion of this kind of rudeness, that, thanks God, belongs to a marginal minority of
people, I was not surprised that a good portion of the surfer did not see what really the decision was about, seen the fact that being US citizens, they are not
accustomed with the law system that rules EU. I contacted thus Eugenia Loli-Queru and asked if she could be that kind to give my humble opinion a little space on
her web site and she gladly agreed, so here I am and I hope that I will not bore you too much. Let start.
Some premises are sometimes necessary…
This, sadly for the audience of OS news is NOT an entirely technical article, having to deal with law more than with technical issues. But fear not, because I
happen to be as much as geeky as it is permitted to a jurist and law scholar. I will divide this article in three parts, a legal introduction, the analysis of the
decision and finally the conclusions. Being those not easy matters, I expect some kind of feedback in the form of comments, that I will answer as appropriate on
the comment section of the site. If you really do not want to read what I’ve written under this lines, please feel free to go directly to the section “Returning
home” where everything has been recapped for your enjoyment. That said I think I will start.
The story so far
The decision of The UE commission starts for a plaint deposed by SUN microsystem in December 1998. Sun lamented that Microsoft refused to give information
about the interfaces that were necessary to the company to create programs that could dialog with the omnipresent Windows operating system.
The Commission started its enquiry, finding out that not only SUN had had those kind of problems. In fact they found out that this behavior was part of a more
complex and generalized strategy. So, after 5 year and half of work and three communications to Microsoft (1) the commission decided that:
-Microsoft is in a position of near monopoly with it’s huge customer number in the desktop market; near monopoly meaning that even if it has to fear the
concurrence from some other smaller companies, its power is that big that it does not fear to lose its monopolistic power on the market itself.
-Microsoft has abused of its position of monopoly creating dialogue protocols between server and client and then refused to reveal how those protocols worked,
creating a situation in which only time and retro engineering could permit to non Microsoft programs to work. Note well, I am speaking of the documentation on
the protocols, not on the API coding, more information on this later.
-Microsoft bundled its media player (from now on WMP) into Windows, creating a dangerous situation in which, by sheer number of WMP existing, other
competitors started in disadvantaged position in competing for the market of media resources and playback possibilities.
Now, before we continue, a bit of explanation is needed about the monopoly’s view of the commission. View that guided this decision. The commission noted
that Microsoft’s situation is that of a near monopoly , meaning that even if MS did not act as a full monopolist (well it actually did, but let go for now), the sheer
power of it’s market position forced other competitors out and did not offer space for other competitors to enter the market.
How?
Easy enough, with that quantity of Desktop system installed it is easy to predict that the most part of people will use IE, outlook,WMP or other MS related
products in their daily life, meaning that companies that produced software of any kind had to confront themselves with the “Microsoft way of doing things”.
There wasn’t an express denial for customer to get other programs, but the commission argued that the choice was limited from the start, more on that later.
This consideration drove the following action that was to concentrate on two points, the multimedia capabilities of Windows, identified in its framework, which
WMP is only the tip of the iceberg, and its politic of denying the access to the protocols of dialogue between client and server that permits to applications to
work in the Windows system.
The truth to be told, companies had this problem from a few years, and had started with patience and will to build a set of tools to outflank Microsoft’s denial.
Proof it is the Samba suit for dialogue with non Windows machine (tool set that each user of Linux knows well). But the problem that the commission foretold was
that if Windows opened it’s way in the low server market (thing that the Redmond company was doing) the monopoly would have quickly spread even in this
growing section of the market. Thus the decision and here is how it works.
(1)A communication is a document, that indicates that an enquiry has started on you or your company. It is necessary that the act is known from the suspected
who’s under enquiry, because, in case it is proved in court that the communication wasn’t received at all, the entire enquiry is useless and has to be started over
again!
The decision
The decision articulates on three points, all of them with more implications as it can first catch the eye, let’s see them together
The colour of money
613 millions of US dollars? Wooooh pal, take it easy! The amend that MS has to pay ranks to the top level of the fines ever commited by the commission, but
makes perfect sense in the frame of the antitrust laws of Europe. How is the calculation done? It depends on many factors too complicated (and boring) to recall
in this place at all.
In this particular case, it was calculated on the company’s year incoming , because antitrust law in Europe use this particular value to calculate all the fines.
The reasoning to this is quiet simple, if there is an income form an illegal concurrent practice (as the commission stated) it is pretty logical that the fine will
be calculated using that income as a parameter.
The highest limit is set to up the 10% of the years revenue of the company. In this particular case, it is around 1,6% of the annual income statement of Microsoft.
High? Well, it could have been worst, but fear not, money are not the main point here. Microsoft does have an annual income that is calculated on about 53
billions $ (source “The Economist”), so even if not a breeze, this money haul is something that MS can live with.
No, the real point about the fine is that if you’re fined you’re guilty of something and thus there is a precedent on which others can work. At the announcement
commissar Monti did say that they do not think that there would have been other plaints like this one, but I already have found out that Outlook express, IE and
another part of the API are being pointed at by three different companies in plaints that will be deposited shortly. If only the money interest you, be reassured
though. For my experience, the appeal court will probably drop the value from 30% to 50% making it more bearable.
Talking business
The second part of the decision regards the time limit of 120 days in which MS has to give away complete documentation regarding protocol of interoperability
and communications between the server’s interfaces of non Microsoft groups that permits to them to operate with the other side that is thought as being
composed by Windows operating server PCs. The documentation has to be updated regularly as the technology evolves; that to permit to competing companies to
adjust their softwares accordingly.
This part of decision rose the second best amount of moans and wails, why?
In part for a misunderstanding about the decision itself, that seemed at a first glance to ask for the opening of the code of the communications protocols API’s,
in part because it seemed that this revealing of information was made as a plain punitive measure more to wound MS than to restore the Law order.
Both assessments are wrong, because the measure have nothing to do with the API’s actual code but with the mere communication protocol. Let’s explain it in an
other way. There are two people that looks at a three, both of them are stranger to the other, let’s say that one is Japanese and the other is Arab. Both have two
sets of languages that roughly expresses the same concepts, in both of them there are the same concepts, but logically expressed with two different languages.
Now let’s say there is another person there that speaks Arab but does not speak Japanese. It goes per se that only the Arab could speak with him. Let’s also say
that both the Arab and the Japanese wants to tell to that person that there is a tree. In both language there is the word tree and the way to name it and describe
it, but if that person understands only the Arab, so the Arab just tells “look there is a tree” and the exchange of informations is done. Supposing the Japanese
wanted to do the same he could only try alternative ways of communicating the message; those methods are surely less direct that the base message, and will
surely take more time and work to be effective and transmit the information.
Translated to technical view it means that if you do not know the language mode, you’ll have to use alternative interfaces and retroengineering to put you
through your problem and this will take more time and be, surely, less effective. The commission has thus stated that those information permits to MS the
effective monopoly of the market, blocking the others competitors to effectively enter the market or get a fair share of it for their work.
Here is the first problem, how does the commission change this situation? The first idea could would have been to simply oblige MS to open the API’s code and
give them away free. This is plainly ridiculous, because, even if the monopolist, the intellectual property of MS has to be guarded as much as the other
competitors, so it would be impossible to ask them to do that, but infringing the UE law on intellectual property. The decision is simple, the only part that
Microsoft has to render open are the way the message exchange works.
Not the code, mind me, only the documentation that explains the logical operations that are behind the exchange scheme, permitting to everyone to understand
the mechanism and so to create an interface that works for both side, going back to my metaphor, giving the Arab grammar to the Japanese.
Now the second part of the problem, that roughly translates to “Hey, wait a second! I worked for it, do I have to give it free?” the answer is “Nope” the
commission states in the next paragraph that if the documentation involves technology that is covered by patent warranty on the EU territory, there will be a
meeting with Microsoft to decide an acceptable price for this piece of information. So MS has to sell it, thing that surely isn’t pleasurable, because it means the
end of one part of their market overhelming strenght, but the fact is that being the monopolist, they are treathed slightly differently from the other competitors.
One last clarification; many software houses like the creators of Samba objected that this would be unfair to the one that actually has gotten around the problem
with much work and will. I understand their problem, but this is a wrong conclusion based on two errors. The first one is that none is obliged to buy this piece of
information, because it is an expense and thus it cannot be forced on anyone. The second is that the commission did not say anything about retroengineering
and alternative ways of solving the problem, accepting the fact that companies had already dealt with the problem.
Long story short, you buy the grammar or you continue to use gestures, but the grammar may NOT be a secret.
Show must go on
And now comes the really big issue, the stripping down of windows from WMP. The howls of pain was heard to Europe and back “Why?! GOD WHY?!”. The answer
is, as usual, not easy. Let’s start by saying that the decision of stripping WMP from the core OS has some reasons to exist and it has to do with both the position
of MS in the market and on some basical mechanism of competition and software production. Let’s examine them one at time.
The commission noted that the WMP’s power was overwhelming in face off other player’s, like, let’s say, Real audio, or Quicktime, that still hold some kind of the
video and audio streaming market share, but surely more marginal than the overwhelming WMP. The commission stated that the WMP’s position was this strong
and was growing that stronger that it surely menaced to push out concurrence from the market and install an effective monopoly in the field of live multimedia
offer.
Why should one choose WMP? This is exactly the point of the commission. THEY DO NOT choose it, because WMP is automatically installed with the OS. This, far
from being a plus, it is a minus for the customer, because, even if not actually stopping the subject to use another player (paying or free) it impairs his real
decision.
Let’s explain this with another metaphor. Let’s say that you buy a house and as a plus the seller gives you a car with it. Nothing wrong with it at all.
Let’s say that this house looks like a fire fighter’s base and so you’d like your car to be red with chromed details. Said, done, you have your car, and each of the
new buyer of home from that house seller have this combo of themed house/car following their taste and wishes. Now the question is, if there was the possibility
to have another car, that answer your requests in a similar way, both in aesthetics and in mechanics, and let’s assume for the sake of the example that you even
could have it for free, would you get it? You already have one mind you, so you may be interested in another one only if the qualities of the latter car were
overwhelmingly better than the original car or met some specific desires and needs of you.
For a percentage of user the trouble of getting another car may be worth the try, but the legal assessment of the commission is that a large portion of the
average users wouldn’t be interested in another media player because they already have one that already does all the basic operations required and more, so, the
hassle of finding another one, downloading it or getting it from somewhere else, installing it, taking the risk that it may destroy some system’s unknown balance
may really not be worth the risk.
Worst than that the commission evidenced that WMP is the main troop of MS in the battle for media streaming. Media streaming technology that could bring, in
the near future, to the real possibility to just look at a movie or hear a complete concert live from your home on your desktop. So, that said, if WMP is bundled
with the OS and everything that was said before applies, why should Joe Average get another player? Look, we are speaking of WMP here, a program that, aside
from all considerations, is GOOD. I still believe there is better, but where else do you find a player that does live streaming, video playing, video and audio
encoding and CD ripping all in one combo and given free with the OS on top of that? Thus the commission decided that to re equilibrate things the WMP has to be
stripped out from the Windows OS within a period of 90 days. Microsoft has to offer the stripped version on a paritary level as the non stripped one, meaning
that it must be commercially valuable to offer it to customer (ie: cheaper or better packed or with lesser bug) and there must be a real interest in choosing the
stripped version instead of the classical one.
Mind that the decision, in reality, does not change immensely the way things are done; customers that buy a computer with preinstalled OS have just to specify if
they want or not the WMP in it, but if they choose to, the matter is settled. If they buy the computer without OS (or with OS bundled but not installed) they are
free to choose the Windows version with or without WMP. It’s just a matter of responsible choice.
Now let’s see why the decision of stripping the WMP from the OS.
As someone has evidenced, stripping down the WMP might not be the wisest thing to do, because it blocks some features that with XP has been offered to the
public, like the automatic preview of video files on thumbnail and the sound preview of audio on mouse pass. There are definite fears about the real possibility
of actually stripping the WMP out of the frame of Windows (possibility that MS denies from the beginning). The latter problem has been solved by Real, that in
front of Judges in November showed for testing a retroengineered version of Windows that offered Real player instead of WMP and WORKED.
The first problem is in reality a false problem, because the media system of Windows is only loosely bound to the media ability of the OS. Let’s put it that way.
You install an other player, like, let’s say, Bsplayer. Let’s say that you set the player as default player, and, finally, let’s say that you open a streaming WMA (which
is supported by Bsplayer), what happens? Simply that, if you have the basic installation without service pack of Windows, the OS uses the media player to play it,
even if the default player is another one. Two conclusion has to be taken from that fact.
-The first is that WMP is THE player and the matter is settled, thus the decision of the commission makes a perfect sense, because no matter what the customer
chooses, WMP will be used in the end.
-The second is that WMP has to be stripped off from the OS to permit real competition in the field of streaming media; why you say? Let’s put it this way: let’s
say that you are a webmaster of a site that offers live media of any kind you could like (let say porn, just to render my article less boring) and you have to
encode each months a fair amount of video for streaming.
You, being what Marx called a “good capitalist”, have interest in reaching the largest audience of customers possible, so you will encode in each media format
you can have notice off, so that each of the customer can be satisfied.
Logically the time at your disposition is not endless, thus you’ll have to encode in the more codecs possible that are the most popular around (even the good
capitalist has schedules, and encoding in “Uncle-Pino-media” just for the sake of the only customer that you have that uses that crappy player isn’t worth the
hassle).
So tell me, with it’s 90% or so of audience in the WORLD having installed WMP, WHICH type of streaming protocol do you think our beloved webmaster will use?
Proof it is that I find less and less sites that uses Real or Quicktime in face of WMA and WMV. Unbundling the WMP is thus the perfect and logical solution to this
question, it is feasible and will permit a loophole for competitors that will compete in the market.
Logically it is not a simple answer, because I’m aware that there are libraries that lies dormant under the GUI of WMP and that ARE needed to make the media
part of Windows work.
Sure, but the problem is right there, standardization may be a good thing, it surely helps the customer as much as the programmer, but standardization is good
in the measure in which it is part of a collective agreement and not as part of a monopolistic imposition. Think to Direct-X. Every game uses Direct-X, because
they are the surest way to make the game work, but the fact it that they will work UNDER WINDOWS.
Sure, direct -X are standard, they are free and everyone may have them. Three cheers for them, but the fact is that they bind the game to the Windows
platform and if the producer had to write the game for another system, the first thing to do would be to strip out the Direct-X protocol. Same goes for Media
players, if I want a player to do the same as WMP, I do not have the choice but to use the limitations of Microsoft’s protocols, but hey, they are free aren’t they?
Well, an old Italian saying tells us that “The devil always wants his share” and you can well see where I’m heading here.
An acute remark was made to me about this decision and it stated that it would have been smarter to simply force MS to open the specs to everyone and this
would have really hit MS for good. No, sorry, it may seem so, but if you read till here (and I do not think, because bore has surely killed you on the road) you
understand very well that opening the specs would have fortified MS because in the end the protocols that would have been used are THEIRS!
That would have been the hit of the century, can you imagine it? EVERYTHING running on Windows protocols! I can hear Ballmer gurgling in pleasure…
Returning home
So here we are, a quick recap of the essential points of this decision may be well needed after this long exposition. If you came here directly from the title the
points may seem mere assumptions, thus I suggest you to read up here, anyway, here we go:
-Microsoft was fined for a sum of money that is surely important, but only if you do forget that we are speaking of a company that declares an annual income of
53 billion dollars. Relax, they’ll survive.
-Microsoft, following this decision has to give away, not later of 120 day, the DOCUMENTATION regarding the protocol of dialog between the client side and the
server side.
Furthermore, this is limited to the client side and no API code is asked at all. Top of that, this documentation has not to be given free, but has to be sold where
it regards technologies that are under the protection of the patent law of the UE. The documentation has to be brought up to date while the technology changes,
so to permit to competitors to be always in position to adapt their programs.
-Microsoft has to offer not later than 90 days from the decision a version of Windows that has been stripped down from it’s media player.
The two version may co-exist on the market, but the stripped down version has to be commercially interesting and not offered as a worst product (so that
customers do not think at it like a leftover).
Customers that buy a computer with pre-installed OS have to ask explicitly for the installation of WMP; if they buy a computer with no preinstalled or bundled OS,
they are free to choose wich copy of the OS they like to have.
-Microsoft was sentenced for abuse of it’s monopolistic dominant position, after 4 years enquire by the European commission lead by Mario Monti; an agreement
could not be found from both sides and MS has appealed to the Court of Justice in Louxembourg that will now decide.
Final statement
So, what remains to add? That it is surely a complex decision, built on a attentive and strict enquiry, that made large use of technical experts offered by both
parts and thus permitted to open an interesting window (pardon me the pun) on a problem that could really badly turn out as the final taking over by Microsoft of
the PC market.
Aside from the consideration about law men messing with things they (usually) do not really understand, re reading the commission’s enquiry acts the fact that
jumps the most at your eyes is the accurate study from the point of view of understanding the idea that was behind the technology. Technology, in whichever form
it appears in our lives, is surely one of the path of progress, but there cannot be any progress if you leave the field lawless and without regulation that permits to
re equilibrate the market.
It remains only to await patiently for the decision of the European Court of Justice and see what happens. As we use to say in Italy “Who’ll live, will see”. There is
some measure of wisdom in old saying…
About the author:
Gianluca Casu was appointed Law Doctor by the university of Pisa, law faculty, in the field of industrial and commercial rights. He is actually earning, in the
same university, a master degree in private companies and management of public companies right. He works as Artistic director for a renown press house in
Italy and is a dedicated geek. He has used a great number of OS’s in his life and comes a long way from the prehistory of computers (Rest in peace trusted C64).
He is actually trying to take over the world, but is poorly succeeding in the task.
i know you said english isn’t your 1st language, and no offence intended mate, but this is hard work to read.
Uh, don’t you guys ahve proofreaders? There are many spelling errors Word could easily pick out.. And the grammar? Ghashly. But I wouldn’t nitpick since fair warning was given.
A second one forces Microsoft to reveal not later that 120 days accurate and complete informations on interfaces that consent to non Microsoft server working groups to get to the complete interoperability with PCs and server that works with Windows.
What you forgot to mention is that
1) This ruling is practical only with Windows Server, and possibly, Windows Mobile operating systems, neither which is even close to being a monopoly in their respective markets.
2) The DOJ already required Microsoft to fully disclose APIs and protocols of Windows’ desktop edition.
Like each juridical text it has clear and unclear points, but in all its vision is revolutionary.
Revolutionary implies that it brings something new that is good. It is hard to see how a WMP-less Windows be good for consumers.
In fact I was happily surprised that the majority of the people reacted with positive comments on the commission’s decision, and the one that did not agree on the fines, agreed on the general principles.
Most of the comments were ignorant, anti-Microsoft comments. Replace this ruling for, say, Communist Cuba, and you’d get the same results. Best justice isn’t done by mobocracy, it is done by what’s best and what’s right. Unfortunately, EC’s ruling wasn’t either for the best or right.
I was not surprised that a good portion of the surfer did not see what really the decision was about, seen the fact that being US citizens, they are not accustomed with the law system that rules EU.
Most Europeans themselves, even those extremely politically inclined, don’t understand Europe’s complex legal system created by a complex system of treaties and statutes.
Sun lamented that Microsoft refused to give information about the interfaces that were necessary to the company to create programs that could dialog with the omnipresent Windows operating system.
Of course, Sun’s original lament was that Sun couldn’t get to staple Java into Windows as Microsoft could with all of their APIs and protocols. Which is a form of whining – Sun practically chased Microsoft away by their condensending and bossy attitude in a market they have virtually no influence.
The Commission started its enquiry, finding out that not only SUN had had those kind of problems.
The Commision had no judiciary oversight, and Microsoft had little room to debate and counter evidence used by the Commision, at least in the early stages.
Microsoft is in a position of near monopoly [blah, blah, blah]
How is Microsoft a near monopoly in the server market, again?
Microsoft has abused of its position of monopoly creating dialogue protocols between server and client and then refused to reveal how those protocols worked, creating a situation in which only time and retro engineering could permit to non Microsoft programs to work. Note well, I am speaking of the documentation on the protocols, not on the API coding, more information on this later.
The documentation is clear for the most part, and while under a NDA and royalties are imposed for certain patents, I don’t see how EC’s ruling in its current wording would change anything.
Microsoft bundled its media player (from now on WMP) into Windows, creating a dangerous situation in which, by sheer number of WMP existing, other competitors started in disadvantaged position in competing for the market of media resources and playback possibilities.
Microsoft has WMP in Windows since Windows 3.1, and WMP was competing directly with Real and Quicktime since NetShow was fully integrated in 2000 – Microsoft has barely 30% of the market share. And the commission have yet to prove that Microsoft won this market share solely because WMP came with Window (Quicktime and Real for Windows, at least until recently, sucked real bad)
Easy enough, with that quantity of Desktop system installed it is easy to predict that the most part of people will use IE, outlook,WMP or other MS related products in their daily life, meaning that companies that produced software of any kind had to confront themselves with the “Microsoft way of doing things”.
You don’t seem to understand what’s going on. On the consumer end, hiding WMP would have absolutely no affect other than those of minor inertia. However getting rid of WMP in full would cause a lot of incompatiblities with third party and Microsoft applications – applications like Premier, Kazaa, Napster, etc. So the best solution is to allow WMP to be hidden, while still there for third-party applications to run unhindered. Oh wait – it’s already done.
The reasoning to this is quiet simple, if there is an income form an illegal concurrent practice (as the commission stated) it is pretty logical that the fine will be calculated using that income as a parameter.
However, the entire premise that Microsoft abused their monopoly to give an unfair advantage to WMP to be proven by the EC. No, lame predictions doesn’t count.
No, the real point about the fine is that if you’re fined you’re guilty of something and thus there is a precedent on which others can work.
During most of this process, EC was acting more on a commision, rather than a court case. In this case, Microsoft is “guilty” of something it could barely defend against. There’s little judiciary oversight in this case.
Not the code, mind me, only the documentation that explains the logical operations that are behind the exchange scheme, permitting to everyone to understand the mechanism and so to create an interface that works for both side, going back to my metaphor, giving the Arab grammar to the Japanese.
Thanks to the DOJ, this is practically happening today. The DOJ remedy required Microsoft do open up its documentation of APIs and protocols to competitors in an non-dicriminatory manner – EU does pretty much the same. If Microsoft really haven’t complied with DOJ’s requirements, why aren’t they pursuing the case in the US, instead of going the EU way?
[…] they are treathed slightly differently from the other competitors.
i.e. Being discriminated against. Which boils down to the main argument against Microsoft – Microsoft should be crippled. Of course, when you think of it, it doesn’t make sense. If in a race, one racer runs 10 times faster than the next fastest racer, crippling that first racer wouldn’t make the second racer faster.
Why should one choose WMP?
Perhaps it is superior?
Let’s explain this with another metaphor.[…]
The metaphor is wrong in many sense. The car comes free with the house. If you want to use another car – use it. I use WinAMP all the time, along with Opera and Trillian, I have no problem whatsoever. Now, using it isn’t the problem. Getting rid of the car is the problem. And that’s where your anaology breaks down.
Let’s just say the car provides power to the house. And lets just say in order to just certain electronic products, it must be connected to the car. And once the car if taken out of the house, the house competitive value is reduced because the car isn’t there.
So, that said, if WMP is bundled with the OS and everything that was said before applies, why should Joe Average get another player?
The same reason why they go out and download Real and Quicktime – for the content. The commision could never prove that the fact WMP is being bundled, it would become a monopoly. In fact, if you want to use the world’s most popular online music store, what do you have to use? iTunes. In order to use the world’s most popular mobile music player, what do you have to use? iTunes.
The latter problem has been solved by Real, that in front of Judges in November showed for testing a retroengineered version of Windows that offered Real player instead of WMP and WORKED
What Real proved what that when WMP was completely removed from Windows, Real was still able to play music and videos completely normal. What Real NEVER showed was third-party applications that depend on WMP that WORKED without WMP.
[…]but standardization is good in the measure in which it is part of a collective agreement and not as part of a monopolistic imposition.
Tell that to Apple, which had completely stapled Quicktime libraries into OS X where it practically can’t be used without it (note the differences between Quicktime libraries and the Player, which is a .app that can be removed)
Microsoft was fined for a sum of money that is surely important, but only if you do forget that we are speaking of a company that declares an annual income of 53 billion dollars. Relax, they’ll survive.
This income is worldwide, EU has only juridiction in Europe. Considering that 30% of Microsoft’s market comes from Europe, very roughly, it’s about $16 billion made annually.
Customers that buy a computer with pre-installed OS have to ask explicitly for the installation of WMP; if they buy a computer with no preinstalled or bundled OS, they are free to choose wich copy of the OS they like to have.
Which is another problem. Nobody asks what the OEM wants. Only what sore losers like Real wants.
Uh, don’t you guys ahve proofreaders? There are many spelling errors Word could easily pick out.. And the grammar? Ghashly. But I wouldn’t nitpick since fair warning was given.
Dang. Ghastly. Oh, the embarressment.
>There are many spelling errors Word could easily pick out..
I used OpenOffice and already fixed all it found. You might be meaning grammar/syntax errors, not [important] spelling ones.
If you are writing an article in a language you aren’t completely fluent in, you should run it by a proofreader who is. Its common courtesy.
They don’t come for free you know. And you did have your warning.
Now, get back on topic please.
Nobody ever forced you to buy windows. There are plenty of places out there where you can buy OSless PCs. Seriously, Real is utter crap. Everbody knows it. So, once again Sun, Real and others not being able to compete on the merits of their product go to a very sympathetic EU commission who obviously have political motives of their own. Still looks like a bunch of whiners to me.
I’m sorry, but people actually forced to having Windows installed on desktop computers! Mainly the people who buy OSless computers are people in the industry and really know what they are doing. But the average person, who is the majority on the market purchasing PC’s don’t feel comfortable taking that route.
You go to Dell, HP, Gateway, eMachines. On their customize page do you really see an option for operating system? You are given a option for everything except for OS! Right there, you’re force to use Windows.
No before everybody starts blowing up on me, I noticed in some cases Dell is starting to offer the machine to be “preped” for Linux. They don’t offer the machine with Linux installed, they just get it ready for you and provide you with the software. But hey at least companies are starting to understand there are more operating systems out there!
But Lumbergh, to saying people aren’t forcing you to buy Windows. You really got to look at the average people who are the majority of the population buying PC’s and they feel “safe” buying from the big players, that do not give you any choices and FORCE you to get Windows.
And to top it all off, RealNetwork needs to continue it’s fight. Because as long as Windows Media Player is bundled with the operating system, that sits on the majority of the populations PC’s, developers and everyone is going to be more tailered to using the WMP format. Thus sending RealNetwork into a not so good business position in the market.
I both agree and disagree with you. Yes Sun and Real are crybabies and yes real software is pretty awful and couldn’t stand on its own merits if it had the chance, but the dicision is a good one. The need for Microsoft to document its APIs and interfaces properly is extream. Once that documentation is available, Microsoft products will also finally have to stand on their own merits, rather then simply be the best choice because they are the only products that work with all the other MS products.
If MS really makes good software, then this decision shouldn’t really be a problem. (The fine certainly won’t be!)
“And to top it all off, RealNetwork needs to continue it’s fight. Because as long as Windows Media Player is bundled with the operating system, that sits on the majority of the populations PC’s, developers and everyone is going to be more tailered to using the WMP format. Thus sending RealNetwork into a not so good business position in the market.”
That’s nice but now people are just going to download and install winamp or wmp, no one in their right mind would use real in first place because that player sucks anyway. So one way or the other Real is dead!
“Sure, direct -X are standard, they are free and everyone may have them. Three cheers for them, but the fact is that they bind the game to the Windows platform and if the producer had to write the game for another system, the first thing to do would be to strip out the Direct-X protocol.”
I think the author maybe a bit confused here, first directx is an api and not a protocol (at least from a programming POV), secondly no one is getting a gun pointed at their head making them use directx, you can use opengl instead of direct3d and there are alternatives to directSound as well (miles for example).
Mainly the people who buy OSless computers are people in the industry and really know what they are doing.
And mainly the people who buy “home” computers do not give a shit about OSes. Windows is the choice because of the vast amount of software it runs, not the OS.
Until OSS provides a sane plan for third-parties to port, Linux is a disservice to the home market. Linux is not in competition “against” Microsoft, it’s in competition “with” Microsoft to garner third-party support — something it’s (unashamedly) poor at thus far.
And I barely use Windows, so don’t jump to conclusions. I’m mainly a Mac user, but sometimes, when a friend asks for advice, I may just suggest Wintel (mainly if they’re gamers) — if I suggest anything else I’m just being a selfish prick, and only “disservicing” my friends. And that’s how I see those who chime in with the Linux Desktop tune: Selfish Pricks.
The amount of Microsoft apologists here is staggering. Listen, these guys want to dominate every market by leveraging their monopoly in desktop markets into other areas, server, media streaming and media playing. If you do not understand or prefer to ignore the hugely detrimental effects that this has on good offered and on consumer choice, you do so at your own peril. But stop babbling about “Oh, poor Microsoft, that was unduly punished”.
Microsot was punished after one of the most exhaustive cases in competition history. They have not won one single case in the United States or Europe. The amount of evidence is fairly conclusive on this point.
Sadly enough, much harsher penalties are needed as Microsoft will continue to play the legal system and to disobey every single sentence that has been imposed on it.
See this great article by Cringely on Microsoft’s modus operandi…
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040401.html
“And mainly the people who buy “home” computers do not give a shit about OSes. Windows is the choice because of the vast amount of software it runs, not the OS.”
Correction my friend, people DO give a shit about what OS is installed! It all comes full circle to the operating system man, the reason for the vast amount of software is because of the operating system.
I hardly ever use Windows, unless I’m at work. I’m a 100% Apple user myself. But on the other hand, I think you’re doing a BETTER service to your peers when opening their eyes to other options rather then Wintel! You’re pointing people to Windows because YOU feel it would be best for them. When really, nobody EVER knows what’s best for a person. This is the reason why you give people OPTIONS! Not just give them a selection of Windows Home or Professional, that’s pathetic!
I believe we are reaching the point as consumers that we would want to see a nice selection at our finger tips. But as long as Microsoft has the freedom to just strong arm all the PC sellers, this will never happen, and we’ll see these news articles pop up on a daily basis.
People don’t give a shit about what OS is being used, please that’s just a bunch of bull.
I still do not get it. He pointed out one of the questions I wondered about since these things outbroke, but I have not been able tofind a clear and straight answer anywhere, not even in his article, yet.
What is, ****according to the EU comission**** “Windows Media Player (and hence what needs to be removed)? Is it just the application that runs as default when you double click a media file, or is it the whole video/audio framework in Windows (Video for Windows, directshow, its filters, codecs and whatever other mumbo jumbo that fits in the “under the carpet” category), that lets you, as he pointed out, preview media right from inside Windows Explorer and that acts as a renderer in Audio/Video Apps such as Adobe Premiere?
The amount of Microsoft apologists here is staggering.
Lol, people can also “choose” Microsoft too.
The only thing “staggering” is that _you_ have a problem with people’s choices, not that they have “no choice”.
I think many people here are missing the main point of the article (which I thought made a very good job of explaining why the commission ruled as it did).
Microsoft is a near monopoly in the Desktop market. As such it has to adhere to certain rules of practice, because it is a near monopoly. The alternative is not allowing monopolies to exist in our society.
Whatever arguments can be made for advantages for the consumer in the short term, in the long term the consumer will suffer.
You only have to look at the consumer telecommunications industry in the UK. Prior to the privatisation of telecommunications it was run as a monopoly by the GPO. After privitisation the company BT had a monopoly in the telecommunications market. Unless you were a shareholder in BT, you saw little advantage as a consumer. However, after a period of time competition was forcibly introduced, one way was to force BT to sell it’s services wholesale to other providers. The other was the creation of the cable market.
Since that time BT has improved immeasurably it’s service to the consumer, and we have healthy telecommunications competition between 3 major companies (after rationalisation occured in the market). Admitedly 2 of these companies may merge at some point in the future (ntl: and Telewest), but there will still be credible competition in the market.
This, I beleive, is what the EU Commission is trying to do with this ruling – re-introduce credible competition into the Consumber Desktop Market, for the benefit of the consumer.
I hardly ever use Windows, unless I’m at work. I’m a 100% Apple user myself. But on the other hand, I think you’re doing a BETTER service to your peers when opening their eyes to other options rather then Wintel!
Heh, well it’s not like I just tell them to use Windows. I usually ask what they want to do, and in most cases I’ll say Apple or PC either way, whatever, only that they better not call me when Windows breaks
In the case of gamers, I just see a lot of unnecessary inconveniences for anything but Windows…That may change soon, with all the consoles moving towards PowerPC — that may trickle down for Apple, who knows.
Maybe I should tell them to buy a Mac _and_ a Playstation from now on?
Firstly, thank you for your article. You managed to do remarkably well with rather complex expressions- given that english is not your native language.
Secondly- your analysis of the Commision’s decision was a good read and it was good to see your insight’s into the Commision’s decision.
I myself have some problems with the Commision’s decision-yet it must be said that although their decision leaves much, much to be desired, it is far, far better than the end result of the US Department of Justice trial. In both of these cases those who lead the investigation really did understand how Microsoft’s monopoly actually works-yet in both cases the subject matter at hand was relatively trivial in contrast to other issues which should have been addressed. Now that Sun and Microsoft are dating once again, new-found lovebirds, it is questionable whether or not the Commision will be able to maintain the high-ground in it’s accusation towards Microsoft-ie. Microsoft has a better chance of appealing now and having the decision revised than they had 5 days ago.
The fact remains that the Microsoft has a monopoly position regarding almost all of it’s desktop products -WMP is only the tip of the iceberg, MS Office is much farther reaching and with far more profound consequences.
Many, who fail to understand and appreciate the situation, cry “discrimination” when confronted with the Commision’s decision-these people probably felt the same during the US DOJ’s trial. The fact is the laws that form the basis of these proceedings are equally applied to those who are subject to these laws-ie. any monopoly can be subject to such punishments. This is equality, equality amonsgt equals.
The courts and commision’s have a trully difficult time dealing with the issue of ubiquitousness. Being ubiquitous is real essence of monopoly power. Such is not to be measured simply by numbers-it goes to the core of pervasive widespread availability and the “disposability”(ie. “disposes of” which such entails. When software is already always available on almost every PC sold, and every PC that has been sold, and will be sold- that software becomes the basis for future development of new software for the PC.
If MS WORD is standard on PC’s-which it has been, virtually uncontested for years, almost all documents produced and exchanged in the PC world will be in .DOC format. This means that one must pay a price when one wishes to use something different- they are being punished by not doing “what everyone else is doing/using”.
Precisely this form of social-control is what enables and maintains Monopolies. Every monopolist considers this to be the highest of all possible attainable goals-once your product becomes synonomous with it’s usage/functionality you have achieved monopoly status. Of course it is not illegal to be a monopoly, yet. What is illegal is using this position to illegaly quelch competition.
The reason why monopolies are not illegal is because governments have historically always supported monopolies, which makes sense-they themselves are monopolists-they have the monopolie of legal, military, police, etc. power at their disposal.
In one sense this kind of social-control is not the *fault* of the monopolist. “Free markets” are just a particular paradigm of social control, in which the subjects of the market en masse are concurrently the agents which impose the rules of the market(which is actually closely tied to the idea of “equality” inherent in contemporary understandings of democracy.) Yet governments are duty bound to respond to such situations due to their complicity, by way of citzens tax dollars, in maintaing and enabling monopolies.
The answer to these situations is of course not merely stripping functionality from products, as is the case with WMP, or forcing(allowing) companies to reveal their protocols(selling new propietary products-ie.the protocols) but mandating that all software which is used by governments and all institutions which are administered by the government (be it local, regional, or national) internally be based on free and open standards which are usable by any and all citizens.
In the information age data formats have become part of the infrastructure which holds the society together and which facillitates international cooperation. As such data formats(file formats, protocols, etc.) become something like public utilities.It is not now and has never been in the best interests of the citizens of a society that those things, res publica, which are subject to the domain of the common, which defines society, are held within private(ie. corporate) hands.
I applaud the EU Commission’s decision even if I am beyond skeptical concerning the ability of the given governemental institution’s, given their current structures, ability to adequately deal with the mass media social control phenomena which dictate the social life,ie. the life of individuals, of the masses.
Forgot to use my name….
I found the article quite interesting. Thank you, Dr. Casu. You made a lot of sense.
Alas, the major rebuttal (by Rajan R) was a collection of name-calling, conjecture, and falsehoods (E.g. “The Commision had no judiciary oversight, and Microsoft had little room to debate and counter evidence used by the Commision, at least in the early stages.” – Microsoft submitted tonnes of documentation and testimony but were not allowed to drag out the process). RR abused the author, EU, Real, Sun, etc. Only WMP received praise. I had hoped for a better counter argument, perhaps from somebody with more than bile in his pen.
And btw, there were 3 errors in your very first paragraph, RR. (And the correction had another: It is spelled embarrassment). Don’t complain about spelling and grammar if your own work is so sloppy. It was quite obvious from his choice of words that Dr. Casu tried his best.
The evidence is clear that Microsoft has continued to put new features into Windows that were previously provided by third-parties: backup, media, movie making, etc. I’m sure I or someone else could compile a list.
We all want new features and functionality in products we buy, and on the surface the deal we get from Microsoft is attractive (despite the complaints, Windows is finally – recently – a pretty good and advanced operating system) – however, the cost of this is the continual squeeze out of competitors and the loss of innovation that could have been provided.
The evidence, I said, was there, but it was very apparent with the browser war: inclusion of IE eliminated the surrounding landscape, even though IE barely included any innovations. The media player components are going exactly the same way: WM is in danger of squeezing out Real and other options, so we’re all stuck with WM that’ll stagnate and not deliver any innovations while Microsoft funds the next big feature to again prune away the competition.
It seems entirely appropriate for the authorities to put a stake in the ground at this point and say “hang on a minute”, and impose structural remedy upon Microsoft to force some sort of unbundling. The monetary fines are really just inconsequential.
As it stands, Windows still a few years ahead of its rivals in the Market: the signs are showing, but it’s still a couple of years before Linux desktop can seriously overtake as a viable competitor. OS X is of course far superior, but alas the majority of the world still runs on commodity hardware.
This is a good move by the EU: Monti should be applauded for getting the ball rolling. He’s been smart enough not to impose too much of a remedy on Microsoft (making it difficult for them reverse it on appeal), but enough along with a fine to alter the forward course, and set a sign for how other things in the future should happen.
What Microsoft now has to do if it really wants to compete is one of either (a) directly compete on like-for-like basis (e.g. WM vs. Real), or (b) indirectly compete on a technological basis, but embeddeding media into the O/S.
Rajan’s rants are always frothing. If he gets his way, we’ll all be eating Microsoft breakfast cereal, putting on our Microsoft suits and heading off to microserf land to where we can all get discounts at the MS employee store on MS coffemugs…you get the idea…
Calm down. Rajan makes some of the most logical and rational comments around here. Just because he isn’t spewing the slashdweeb party line your getting all worked up. Microsoft isn’t going to take away Linux or any other choice. Grow up.
Putting MediaPlayer in Windows or putting Internet Explorer in Windows does not constitute an abusive monopoly. Making your product better and more encompasing does not make it anti compeditive.
Making your product anti compeditive would be having Microsoft in a position of monopoly(It is) and forcing users to sign agreements to not use competing products. If there was a license agreement to purchace a computer from Best Buy that forced you to not install any other operating system, internet browser, or media player, that would be anti compeditive.
Making your product an abusive monopoly would be gaining a monopoly, the price fixing products strateigically to force out competition. Example: Microsoft has a monopoly and charges 50$ for Windows Media Player. Another contender enters the market, RealPlayer, and also wants to charge 50$. Microsoft quickly lowers their price of their product to 10$ and holds it there until the new company RealPlayer can no longer sustain itself and folds. Microsoft then raises their price for Media Player to 50$.
Microsoft is neither anticompeditive nor a price fixing monopoly, they simply generally make a superior product to the alternatives. In the cases where they don’t you have the ultimate option to choose them or not.
As a final note, I would recomend that anyone that doesn’t understand economics and how monopolies and anti trust laws work and why they exist, to keep to themselves. Voicing complaint out of ignorance is the worst abuse of democracy of all(ala Socrates).
MS are a crappy third rate Os manufacturer that have had time and luck on their side. Which has enabled them to establish a brutal monopoly which has produced nothing of much value in the past 20 years.
Well putting aside your slashdweeb-type rant for a second, if Windows did produce a third rate os then something would have displaced it a long time ago. It seem that you’re bitter that not everybody chooses linux. Sorry, but just because you know how to stick a Mandrake cd into your computer doesn’t make you elite or anything. The sooner you get out of the slashdork, groupthink mode of thinking, the better.
In your opinion he does, imho opinion he chats out of his arse.
Like you do? Let’s see…
I’ve never seen a bigger MS apologist. MS are a crappy third rate Os manufacturer that have had time and luck on their side. Which has enabled them to establish a brutal monopoly which has produced nothing of much value in the past 20 years. Nothing more than that.
Indeed, like you do.
If MS Windows was some third rate OS, something would already had replaced it. Quality doesn’t always matter. Quality/price do. Yes, Macs and NeXT computers were far better than Win 3.1… yet you had to sell an arm and a leg to afford one of them. Perhaps they didn’t developed any big innovation but they brang them to the masses and that’s what matters… and what the innovators don’t really understand.
If you think their OS is that bad (even if you probably use it), I challenge you to do something better.
By the way, I’m not a MS apologist. In fact, I use Linux. I just don’t live in some ivory tower. I think the pro-OSS folks are discrediting their own community when they are bashing Microsoft senselessly.
openal is another alternative to directsound
Matt S.: I’m sorry, but people actually forced to having Windows installed on desktop computers! Mainly the people who buy OSless computers are people in the industry and really know what they are doing.
And the rest are just either plain ignorant about their choices or couldn’t care less because they want to use Windows. In the prior case, it is NOT Microsoft’s fault that it gets a lionshare of OEMs that also happens to advertise a whole lot more than the OSless or Linux altenatives. They could easily use their consumer rights and by a OSless PC from a manufacturer that makes them OS-optional.
Matt S.: You go to Dell, HP, Gateway, eMachines. On their customize page do you really see an option for operating system?
You go to Dell, HP, Gateway, eMachines. On their customize page do you really see an option for different processor brands? What about hard disk brands? Man, I really hate HP’s motherboard, do you think their options include a competing mother board? You aren’t given an option for everything. Yeah, you’re given an option on hard disk size, RAM size, type of graphics card you want, monitors you want, etc.
Heck, you are even given a choice between XP Home and XP Pro. Why don’t they put Linux or [insert nice OS you think could make it big if not for meeny ol’ Microsoft]? Mainly, support cost. OEMs, since the DOJ remedy, are allowed worldwide to load a competing OS on their computers along with Windows. Nobody does it because hardly any customers demand for it and it would increase their support cost substantially.
Matt S.: You really got to look at the average people who are the majority of the population buying PC’s and they feel “safe” buying from the big players, that do not give you any choices and FORCE you to get Windows.
Are you forced to buy a computer from the big players? In fact, most computer buyers buy their computers from third-tier retailers, instead of second- and first-tier ones.
Devon: The need for Microsoft to document its APIs and interfaces properly is extream.
Already done with the DOJ case.
Eu: If you do not understand or prefer to ignore the hugely detrimental effects that this has on good offered and on consumer choice, you do so at your own peril
What amazes me instead of arguing based on points and facts., ABMers uses statements like these. Tell me, what’s the huge detrimental effect of WMP being in Windows? They now, after more than a decade, own the market? If 30% is owning the market, yeah.
Eu: They have not won one single case in the United States or Europe.
In Europe, there’s not much to fight – the commission is allowed to investigate, but without much check and balances, and very little room for Microsoft to defend itself. Besides, the antitrust laws you see can be applied to most successful companies. Take Apple for example – monopoly of the PowerPC desktop market. So many ways to pitch a fight against them. Why? Pretty much because both antitrust regulations from the US and from Europe don’t detail the different markets, it is left to the courts or the commision to decide.
Eu: See this great article by Cringely on Microsoft’s modus operandi…
Cringely isn’t exactly the most objective and reliable source of news.
Matt S.: But as long as Microsoft has the freedom to just strong arm all the PC sellers, this will never happen, and we’ll see these news articles pop up on a daily basis.
Even if Microsoft strongarms with their OEMs, which is very much debatable, the DOJ put a stop to that – OEMs are free to load whatever they want on their computer. What “strongarms” with OEMs is the sheer biting reality of business – loading a competing OS increases support cost by a substantial bit while there isn’t much consumer demand or need for it. In fact, the DOJ had prevented some mutual deals, like between Microsoft and Sony to give Sony a better deal for their VAOIs.
Matt S.: People don’t give a shit about what OS is being used, please that’s just a bunch of bull.
Seriously, find a bunch of people that use Windows, that doesn’t include your geek clique. Find out why they use Windows. You would find that an overwhelming majority just don’t care what OS is being used. Is this the wrong attitude by consumers? Yeap. How to fix it? Competitors spending time on marketing campaigns trying to make these bunch of people care.
Pete: You only have to look at the consumer telecommunications industry in the UK.
Bad example. Why?
1) Back then, people TAXES is used to be invested in the telecom. Microsoft is hardly connected to the US – or any other government.
2) After privatization, the courts didn’t give enough time for the market to mature with this privatization, instead sart handing to BT a set of extremely unprofitable regulation. This is okay, to a certain extend and time period because the infrastructure was financed by the people. But no government used tax payers money in Microsoft.
Pete: The other was the creation of the cable market.
How exactly did the courts bring on the cable market?
Anonymous: The fact is the laws that form the basis of these proceedings are equally applied to those who are subject to these laws-ie. any monopoly can be subject to such punishments.
The fact is the laws are very vague (for a reason: to be far-reaching), and nobody tells you are a monopoly until you’re in court trying to debate whether or not you’re a monopoly or not. And for monopolies, the law is even more vague – by some it means that the monopolies should give up on certain rights, to others it means that a monopoly should stay rather stagnant or less its movement would crush competition.
Alas, the major rebuttal (by Rajan R) was a collection of name-calling, conjecture, and falsehoods
Did I ever name-called the author? As for a conjecture – everyone in this forum is making conjectures on their own. Who can claim they know every single detail of how Microsoft operates and its effects to their competitors?
Microsoft submitted tonnes of documentation and testimony but were not allowed to drag out the process
If debating documentation and testimony by competitors are considered “dragging out the process”, no, it isn’t a court case. It is a commision. Microsoft have little right to cross-examine evidence by its competitors, instead are just required to give evidence of their own. This isn’t a court case, buddy. If it were, it is an extremely unfair one.
RR abused the author, EU, Real, Sun, etc.
I didn’t abuse the author. I’m not that good in English myself. I was complaining that this article is barely proofread, making it extremely painful to read. As for the EU – I did not abuse it. I complain about how EC runned this case, and that’s count as an abuse? As for Real and Sun, both of them can compete with Microsoft. The thing is that, in Real’s case, there are very little people that would choose RealOne over WMP.
Only WMP received praise.
Quote me where I praised WMP undeservingly. The fact that I don’t use WMP over its competitors (WinAMP) says a lot. Heck, even the author praised WMP – Page 3, Paragraph 2 – “Look, we are speaking of WMP here, a program that, aside from all considerations, is GOOD.”
And btw, there were 3 errors in your very first paragraph, RR.
No, there aren’t. I counter them all. Apparently my “abuse” of various organizations and persons is considered an error by you.
Don’t complain about spelling and grammar if your own work is so sloppy.
I’m commenting to a story, I don’t proofread what I say. It isn’t listed on the headlines of OSNews. The story I’m commenting to does, and deserves a good proofreader.
It was quite obvious from his choice of words that Dr. Casu tried his best.
I didn’t bash Casu. In fact, I complained OSNews didn’t provide him a proofread or run his article through Word.
The evidence, I said, was there, but it was very apparent with the browser war: inclusion of IE eliminated the surrounding landscape, even though IE barely included any innovations.
Uhm, IE in its initial days was superior to its competitors. It contained more features than Netscape, and was better at rendering most webpages than $40 Opera. Back then, I mean. After IE 5.5, things started to slow down. But IE didn’t win because of Windows. Cretainly, had not IE been bundled into Windows, it probably would have gotten 80-85% of the market.
And, besides, the “surrounding landscape” was pretty much Netscape – which was monopoly, and at the height of competition with IE, they decided to launch a 4-year rewrite. And there’s Mosaic – but it could hardly compete with two browsers based on it. And of course, there’s Opera – which was made by an obscure Norwegian company and until today not targeted towards mass consumerism. Meanwhile, during this time period of then and now, Opera increased their market share marginally, and Mosaic is pretty much no more.
Netscape on the other hand was bought by AOL. One would wonder, being owned by the world’s second largest ISP (first is NTT DoCoMo), there’s a huge distribution advantage Netscape could have. Instead, AOL uses Internet Explorer for their AOL 8.0, not Netscape. And they spend little to advertise Netscape. Had AOL adopted Netscape in full, I doubt Microsoft can be considered a legally-defined monopoly anymore. So if you want to blame Netscape’s continued decline – blame Netscape and AOL.
The media player components are going exactly the same way
Uhm, Microsoft bundled a media player since Windows 3.1, it still haven’t got a monopoly in the market. One would imagine that’s changing now because WMP is either just as good, almost as good or better than Real and Quicktime. And Real isn’t helping by making it hard for netizens to download a free version of their player. And it doesn’t help at all if 10.0 is a unstable heap of junk.
Where WMP is really rising is in the online music distribution stores. Apple has a lead here, but is not maintaining it by opening up its market to other companies (i.e. allowing competing stores to use Apple’s DRM, to sync with iPod, etc.). Microsoft on the other hand is the technology behind stores that span three different continents and many different markets.
Pete: You only have to look at the consumer telecommunications industry in the UK.
Bad example. Why?
On the contrary, the GPO was a wasteful organisation. There was no incentive to improve services or develop innovation precisely because it was a monopoly and a public utility. This is why the government of day decided to privatise it – not the courts
Adding competition to BT after privitisation was always on the agenda – again decided and implemented by government, not the courts.
Pete: The other was the creation of the cable market.
How exactly did the courts bring on the cable market?
They didn’t. Government made the cable market possible through legislation and incentives.
The main thrust of my argument is that monopolies must be regulated, otherwise you end up with stagnation and a poor deal for the consumer – in the long term.
Microsoft was fined for a sum of money that is surely important, but only if you do forget that we are speaking of a company that declares an annual income of 53 billion dollars. Relax, they’ll survive.
Annual income of 53 billion dollars?
This is for the “pro monopoly” people here:
Give me one good reason why a monopoly in computer OS’s is a “good” thing?.
wouldnt you be pissed off if Mcdonalds was the only fast food resturant in the world?
The big problem about this monopoly is that if it keeps going on for many years to come, then “windows” is going to be the only OS our kids will have ever heard of.
Do you want fries with that???
This is for the “pro monopoly” people here:
There isn’t any pro-monopoly people here.
Give me one good reason why a monopoly in computer OS’s is a “good” thing?.
Nothing. However, crippling a monopoly that got its monopoly status fair ans square wouldn’t make the competition better. Plus, I, and probably others, oppose the EC’s decission simply because they haven’t proved that the continued presensce of WMP in Windows would cause it to become a monopoly. And I also point out where the competition made some pretty stupid mistakes while competing with Microsoft, which is more likely to have caused their decline or downfall, not Microsoft’s abuse of their monopoly.
And I also think it is rather naive to think that the market should be mature enough to reject Microsoft’s monopoly – Linux’s rise in the desktop market shows that the market is maturing but haven’t matured completely. And Linux benefits very little from the antitrust deliberations by the EC and the DOJ. Ironically, Linux’s rise is atributed to the same reason how Windows’ rose – it’s cheaper and multi-vendor, while not necessarily being better.
“The failure of market processes to produce an optimal result does not ensure that the political process will do a better job.”
wouldnt you be pissed off if Mcdonalds was the only fast food resturant in the world?
I would be even more pissed if McDonalds aren’t allowed to serve ketchup with their burgers because of their monopoly.
The big problem about this monopoly is that if it keeps going on for many years to come, then “windows” is going to be the only OS our kids will have ever heard of.
No thanks to antitrust regulatio, Windows isn’t likely to maintain its legally-defined monopoly for too long, with Linux’s rise in the enterprise and small/medium businesses market. I’d say this is to be expected – Microsoft became too complacent once IBM and Apple weren’t serious competitors.
> Uhm, IE in its initial days was superior to its
> competitors.
Actually, IE’s been crappy until version 4. Guess what, that’s when it started gaining market.
Heh,I think RR is working in Redmond.And BTW, why do you keep calling Linux an operating system?And, on a side note,in late 90’s when IE came on the market was way beyond Netscape. Was not even included in Win. You had to download it , or in my case , install it from a magazine CD. Don’t know what was the version. I installed it because , yes , I had a choice at that time. I wanted to test as many as possible. Nowaday I’m using Firefox on my Windows box and I cannot get rid of IE , not because is not possible , but because many idiots build their pages for IE only like this was the only browser in the world. One year from now you will play music or watch movies that are working on WMP only. This is the problem for me , not what is bundled in Windows. I could care less about the fine microsoft got , they’ll survive anyway, I just want to have a choice. And before you say that WMP,IE etc are superior to any/many products on the market , let me ask you something : who are you to decide what is best for me?
1. The fine is just there to capture the big headlines because the other 2 items won’t. To alert the masses that we’re on track towards critical mass. The only other single “products” that have had followings of similar proportions are religions and the need for water.
2. The documentation of the API’s is not enforceable. MS will forget pieces, delay pieces, typo pieces, misrepresent pieces, etc. Remember Gates’s testimony? Besides, the IP is rightfully theirs – to do with as they as the please.
3. The WMP unbundling or disabling will have no effect. It’ll be the first thing customers ask to have reversed. Because it is the safe thing to do.
Another option would be to bundle MS with the phone and utility companies as a regulated entity. Time will tell.
A more realistic option is for more to show some chest hair and start using Linux as soon as feasible. Like Munich. Linux is the only hope for survival of capitalism in this market segment.
But the EU measures are just molasses allthough well intended.
If Microsoft projects a competing product as capturing 2% of core (OS) market share, it will try to strongarm it to death using any means possible. Even if you hit MS with a fine amounting to 10% annual income fine, it can just shrug it off, since, hey, the next 5 years of no competition will pay that off.
And strongarming competitors to death is what Microsoft excels at.
I got on the internet when version 3 browsers just came out. The same time just about everyone was getting on the net, the internet bubble was in full swing and netscape was the king for browsers it all changed when generation 4 browsers came out, at that time everyone was demanding new things. You had 2 choices at that point netscape 4 or IE 4 both were the same size download about 14 megs wich was a lot more then the 3-4 megs for the ver 3 browsers both IE and NS gave new features but IE had something that NS couldn’t give the desktop intergration. and automatic plugin installs (back when that was a good thing) so everyone jumped on the IE bandwagon and NS died.
Its not the same with wmp vs realplayer. Realplayer is a realy bad media player and has been ever sence the merged realaudio and realvideo together the who the whole wmp anti-trust crap is nothing more then whats been happening lately of if your product doesn’t sell well its MSs fault so sue them, and couse MS is a monopoly its very hard for MS to win any case.
Personly Im trying to break free of MS not becouse of Microsoft but rather the fact it seems like you cant download any freeware anymore without getting at least 1 spyware app. even the newest AIM includes wildtagent (aka were not spyware we just monitor what you do so we can delive ads) without telling you that it does
Bud: Heh,I think RR is working in Redmond.
I wished I was, those high paying jobs are certainly attractive – and those benefits? But I’m sadly stuck in the smog of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Anyway, this is the first time people call me RR – all of my brother’s initials are RR, so it made little sense.
Bud: And, on a side note,in late 90’s when IE came on the market was way beyond Netscape. Was not even included in Win.
Actually, in 97 when Windows 98 was released, IE was bundled and integrated into Windows. However, it tooked a couple of years till it became the version of Windows everyone used… so I don’t know.
Bud: Nowaday I’m using Firefox on my Windows box and I cannot get rid of IE , not because is not possible , but because many idiots build their pages for IE only like this was the only browser in the world.
At it’s market share, I would say it is close enough to being the world’s only browser. However, if AOL actually market Netscape aggressively as well as use Mozilla in their browser, things would be less loopsided towards Microsoft. AOL has the capacity, it just doesn’t want to get rid of a great tool: blackmailing Microsoft.
Bud: And before you say that WMP,IE etc are superior to any/many products on the market , let me ask you something : who are you to decide what is best for me?
You can decide what you want – I personally use WinAMP. Never had a problem with it. Along with that, I use Opera and Trillian. And I don’t use Windows Movie Maker or any of its competitors. So I decided what’s best for me. As long as I can install these applications with little to no problems, I’m happy.
:|: If Microsoft projects a competing product as capturing 2% of core (OS) market share, it will try to strongarm it to death using any means possible.
Like they are doing with Linux? Oh yes, they are very successful [/sacarsm]
Squarewav: You had 2 choices at that point netscape 4 or IE 4 both were the same size download about 14 megs wich was a lot more then the 3-4 megs for the ver 3 browsers both IE and NS gave new features but IE had something that NS couldn’t give the desktop intergration.
Internet Explorer was popular even with Windows 95, where there wasn’t any desktop integration. On of the main reasons why IE was picked up so fast even though most Internet users didn’t get it bundled with their copy of Windows at that time was IEAK. IEAK allowed ISPs to create custom versions of IE for distribution, thus becoming the preference of ISPs around the world. Netscape, 9 months later, came up with something vaguely similar but charged $2000 for it.
And then there’s the fact that IE was modular and the backend was available to third-party developers – which also explains why IE was carried along with many boxed software. IE provided something Netscape sold for free. Netscape couldn’t counter this with their current codebase, so they decided to do a complete rewrite.
What’s funny is that Netscape took 4 years to do a rewrite that took Opera barely months. They had enough developers, and after they were bought by AOL, they had enough finances. What they didn’t have was a clear-cut detailed roadmap, and because of that they changes the focus of Mozilla many times before finally arriving with Mozilla 1.0. Take for example, XUL -nice idea, but not very needed to compete with Microsoft.
“At it’s market share, I would say it is close enough to being the world’s only browser”
Therefore we witness here what is usually called monopoly. I am 100% sure that situation would be totally different if Netscape had the ability to embed itself into the OS.Maybe Netscape/AOL should try to seek justice in Europe reegarding this issue.
RR, you don’t get it, you can market your browser on every major event with a 5 minutes clip if you want, people buying an x86/AMD (the cheapest nowaday) will have Windows on it. I don’t care , seriously, I’m using windows at work and home when playing my favorite games, fact is that people won’t even bother to check for other browser. They will ask , hey , can I read my papers on Internet , yes you do , IE is embedded in the system and you can even update it via WindowsUpdate , not IEUpdate. I think you know what I mean. winXP is a good product , hell , I even bought one even if that was not necessary , but it pi$$es me off when that stupid MSN pops up or when IE allows popups and stuff! And these are not the only examples.It is a monopoly , and what is worst is that the company having this monopoly doesn’t deliver the best tools.Maybee is too mucch said , but is what I feel.
So many non-geeks are sick of pop-ups that they are switching in droves to Firebird(Firefox)…whatever its called this week. My mom, who can barely turn on a computer switched without me even telling her about it. One of her most definitely non-geek friends gave her the word of mouth about it. Those people that don’t have half a clue to deal with popups deserve IE.
I am 100% sure that situation would be totally different if Netscape had the ability to embed itself into the OS.
Actually, Microsoft approched Netscape regarding this. Netscape response was along the lines of “HELL NO! We want to watch while you dwindle in power! Mwuwhahahaha” (okay, exageration).
The thing is that *why* would Netscape want to embed itself in the OS? What profit-making ability would that give it? I mean, it is unlikely that the tonnes of IE4-using applications would switch to Gecko – so what’s the point? The thing is that Gecko/Netscape can make it big if AOL just get its act together.
For one, it should integrate it’s content into Netscape. Not the lame integration they produce today, but a deeper integration, where if you use news sites like CNN or watch trailers of movies made by Warner, it makes more sense using Netscape because it is easier. And if AOL just simply replace IE with Gecko in their special browser (entirely possible, as seen with the Mac version), Microsoft’s monopoly would be doomed.
Maybe Netscape/AOL should try to seek justice in Europe reegarding this issue.
They would be hypocrites in doing so. How dare AOL demand IE be taken out from Windows when they use IE for no plausible business reason (AOL icons no longer appear on your desktop by default). There won’t be any justice in it – they would be demanding that developers be forced with a choice between MSHTML and Gecko, when they themselves don’t voluntarily make that choice.
RR, you don’t get it, you can market your browser on every major event with a 5 minutes clip if you want
5 minutes ads is probably the stupidest campaigning idea I have heard.
fact is that people won’t even bother to check for other browser.
They shouldn’t have to research to find for other browsers. AOL should campaign their browser as the best thing since slice bread, and people would download it out of curiosity. And if they get them hooked on ideas such as tabs, they keep them. Tell me, why do people download AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, or heck, even MSN Messenger when Windows Messenger comes with Windows, built-it designed to annoy you till you use it?
Especially MSN Messenger – why do hundreds of thousands use it?
I think you know what I mean. winXP is a good product , hell , I even bought one even if that was not necessary , but it pi$$es me off when that stupid MSN pops up or when IE allows popups and stuff!
According to rather-accurate rumour mills dedicated to Microsoft rumours, IE 7.0 which would come in Longhorn would come with a pop-up block. And meanwhile, MSN Toolbar has a pop-up blocker. Heck, I’ve even heard that IE in SP2 has a pop-up blocker, but can’t say for sure.
I give up. You don’t seem to understand what I’m trying to say. Maybe is my limited English ,so leave as it is now. Everybody is happy, so am I. With what I have now.
See ya in the fence.
Thanks! – to Gianluca Casu for definitely the clearest exposition I have read on Microsoft vs. the EU. One thing I found reassuring was that existing reverse-engineered solutions such as Samba would be unaffected by the EU ruling, as this was a cause of some worry – I run a small photo/graphics house accumulating files at the rate of some 50-100 GB per year, so I rely on my Linux server and workstation but retain one Windows box to serve my A3 scanner, the only thing we have with no Linux drivers.
Microsoft throws its weight around like a playground bully – this is pretty clear. Monopoly legislation is designed to keep this in check. This is what the EU is trying to do. Any arguments along the lines of “this has already been dealt with in the US” are totally irrelevant. If I visit an arab state where the punishment for theft is to have my hand cut off, and I commit theft, I expect to get my hand cut off. Any argument along the lines of “we don’t do this under UK law” is specious.
We run Linux in the studio. This choice was made 5 years ago simply because I found Windows too irritating for my taste – the endless need to confirm everything twice, the fact that deleting a file involved cofirming “send to recycle bin” followed by opening the recycle bin and then confirming “empty recycle bin” just vey annoying. In fact the more familiar I became with Linux/Unix the more I realised Windows, under the skin, was just Unix redesigned by Fisher-Price, leaving out the difficult bits, and making the slashes run the other way to look different. The final killer app for me was the direct availability of thumbnails in the Konqueror file explorer – I believe Windows has now adopted this but I only run ’98 (drivers again).
Regarding Linux on the desktop – what’s the fuss? We had a family to stay (4 kids from 5 to 12 in age). I just set up their user accounts and turned them loose on the computers, unsupervised, gave them my KDE crash course (“The desktop is single-click” – end of course) knowing they couldn’t get at the server (no keyboard) and couldn’t access my files. They found everything they wanted – Tuxpaint, Potatohead, Tuxracer, Web browsing, e-mail etc. and never asked a single question. Kept them out of our way for hours. My daughter is at art college – using Windows at college, but she tends to work at home. She ignores the Windows machine and grabs my workstation – using Sodipodi instead of Illustrator, Gimp instead of Photoshop – they probably don’t even know at college. Oh, she does use MS word, she prefers it to OpenOffice (She tried StarOffice 5.0 – which was horrible – a few years back) but it runs under Codeweavers on our ancient unbranded P233 laptop on Vector Linux and Icewm – even W98 is just too slow and flaky on that. Her choice – which is what it’s all about – CHOICE.
First they ignore you – then they laugh at you – then they fight you – then you win. – Mahatma Gandhi.
The intolerance in these comments is staggering. The writer is not an English speaker and made that very clear. Meaningful communication requires a bit of tolerance and if you don’t have it, don’t criticize the writer. Expressing yourself in a second language is not easy and I suspect the writer worked very hard on this.
There is also considerable intolerance for the writer’s point of view. On this particular subject, facts are arguable; “so called” facts often take shape based on the observer’s view. The writer is apparently not a capitalist and sees things more like a European. Europeans (as well as all other nations) have the right to govern THEIR (and only their) commerce as they see fit. Unless you are a European, how is it right for you to decide the right and wrong of the EU’s decision? After all, the EU’s decision affects the way Microsoft does business IN Europe.
Need I say respect begins with acknowledgment that persons and/or groups have the right to conduct their business on the values and ethics they embrace and “OUR” view is not the ONLY view. Discourse is fine and valuable, but thinking your view is the only one is not discourse. It is an attempt to dominate other’s viewpoints, which is the equivalent of a monopoly of ideas. Is there not a bit of irony in that?
Backing to the main theme for a while…
Probably Microsoft will be forced to switch to a open protocol approach to everything, it means that they’ll sell (under NDA or whatever) a complete set of informations and instructions about how a program should be implemented to be fully integrated on a system; this or publish the source code.
This is more than a nightmare, voices from the EU tells that Monti was about to ask the full disclosure of WMP code, the final solution was different just because Luxembourg court would argue that no one can be forced to disclose such kind of things (already happened in the past) so they stated that have to publish the documentation that explains “how to” and rip WMP off.
If they, in the lapse of time granted, appear to be unwilling (or maybe uncapable of) they’ll be probably forced to release the WMP source code (as a BILL for their UNWILLINGNESS); this should be legal from the EU point of view.
That means just one thing, if Microsoft doesn’t rip WMP off their products in the time given they could be forced to disclose WMP and, you can bet on it, they won’t rip WMP off (it could be a serious threat to what MS always stated in USA, leading to a new wave of legal issues).
It means that in a small time (1 year for the luxembourg court) they’ll be probably forced to disclose the WMP sources… no matter what MS says, in the EU (expecially when you deal with “high” level courts) you cannot stop something using lawyers and arguing on commas…
> Revolutionary implies that it brings something new that is good. It is hard to see how a WMP-less Windows be good for consumers.
If something doen’t hit the market it doesn’t mean that’s not revolutionary… when electric companies switched from coal to oil there was no changes for “consumer” but there was a revolution in other segments …
> Most of the comments were ignorant, anti-Microsoft comments. Replace this ruling for, say, Communist Cuba, and you’d get the same results. Best justice isn’t done by mobocracy, it is done by what’s best and what’s right. Unfortunately, EC’s ruling wasn’t either for the best or right.
Muahahahah… leaving off some typical european consideration (USA laws applies very well in Guantanamo) you have to consider that the fact that we rely on the law to decide what’s wrong and what’s right rather than in the “market” doesn’t mean that we have a wroster system; anyway what the EU makes in his territory has to do with EU only… if MS is unhappy with this then they can shut their european market and don’t sell to us, we’re just 30% of their total income.
If you came to our land you’ve to accept our rules… that’s how the world goes.
> Most Europeans themselves, even those extremely politically inclined, don’t understand Europe’s complex legal system created by a complex system of treaties and statutes.
We’re formed by A LOT of countries, each with his own legal system and laws… we’ve to deal with different cultures, languages and jurisdictional issues so we’ve a really a complex system.
It’s bad because it requires more work for each thing but, at the same time, it protect citizens.
“Microsoft is in a position of near monopoly [blah, blah, blah]”
> How is Microsoft a near monopoly in the server market, again?
He was saying that Microsoft is a near monopoly on the CLIENT market (that’s legal and legit) and that they’re using their monopoly to gain another monopoly (that’s not legal)… Can you turn your head on?
> The documentation is clear for the most part, and while under a NDA and royalties are imposed for certain patents, I don’t see how EC’s ruling in its current wording would change anything.
The EU is trying to force MS to sell the documentation about each protocol MS uses in their client/server system.
We’re talking about selling (when the client come out) a complete reference about how the Windows clients works and how the server have to work with them (something like a complete, let me underline, “COMPLETE” RFC).
If, for example, Microsoft bring out LongHorn with CoffeeDelivery client the EU is stating that Microsoft have to sell a documentation that explains how CoffeeDelivery works and how CoffeeDelivery client and CoffeeDelyvery server have to communicate each other.
This permits third party OSes to make their own CoffeeDelivery servers eliminating the menace of a Client monopolist abuse.
> Microsoft has WMP in Windows since Windows 3.1, and WMP was competing directly with Real and Quicktime since NetShow was fully integrated in 2000 – Microsoft has barely 30% of the market share. And the commission have yet to prove that Microsoft won this market share solely because WMP came with Window (Quicktime and Real for Windows, at least until recently, sucked real bad)
Does WMP in Windows 3.1 play on the sidebars?
Does WMP in Windows 3.1 have a streaming system?
Does WMP in Windows 3.1 have a full integration with the system?
Was Windows 3.1 a near omnipresent server back then?
> You don’t seem to understand what’s going on. On the consumer end, hiding WMP would have absolutely no affect other than those of minor inertia. However getting rid of WMP in full would cause a lot of incompatiblities with third party and Microsoft applications – applications like Premier, Kazaa, Napster, etc. So the best solution is to allow WMP to be hidden, while still there for third-party applications to run unhindered. Oh wait – it’s already done.
There’s a huge difference between the codec system and the media player itself and, anyway, there’s no need of rip the entire codec layer off, they just have to change the wmplayer.exe file with a program that does all EXCEPT running directly (the FULL version can, however, be downloaded from internet).
> However, the entire premise that Microsoft abused their monopoly to give an unfair advantage to WMP to be proven by the EC. No, lame predictions doesn’t count.
They already proved this, more than this they proved that Windows CE was able to run using RealPlayer instead of WMP; that’s what Microsoft always told it was “impossible to do”.
Get real! a lot of society were drawn out of business by Microsoft and Microsoft repeadly used his near monopoly position to kick out possible enemies (gave a look at the PenWindows project and the letter sent to IBM by mr.Gates).
When Adam Smith underlined how a company should be he was talking about a society that doesn’t focus on profit at all costs! The market is leading to a far west of “intellectual properties”, “legal actions”, “fares” and so on… harassing people by law or harassing courts to get the maximum revenue isn’t the exception, it’s the rule in today’s market.
You cannot hope that corporations will bring virtue because corporations are making money with this west and, as long as the slaughter continue they’ll be gaining more and more… only a “super partes” entity like a government can stop this trend…
First of all thank you for your hard work.
-First a monetary one (the infamous 497,2 million Euro, rougly
translating in 613 million dollar counter value), by ease the higher ever inflicted in the story of the commission.
Some other company from Switserland IIRC got fined 462,xx million EUR. Unless you see the difference of 30 million Euro as “by easy the higher ever inflicted” you are right. I don’t for one don’t agree on the “by easy” part.
“-Microsoft, following this decision has to give away, not later of 120 day, the DOCUMENTATION regarding the protocol of dialog between the client side and the server side.”
Give away is something i correlate with “for free (as in beer)”. Perhaps i’m stating the obvious, but they may ask compensations for this. To which extend, i do not know nor understand since i’m blurred by all the
drama around this.
“Uh, don’t you guys ahve proofreaders?”
^^^^
Hehe! Rajan R, your English is far from perfect too. You have little right to complain about someone else his English.
“Best justice isn’t done by mobocracy, it is done by what’s best and what’s right.”
A very ignorant statement at best. Who decides “what’s best and what’s right”? Go study a random dictatorship (Saddam Iraq, Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, France Napoleon, Kingdoms like Russian Tsaar-dom — to name a few) and you’ll find out that all these (elite, few) people did “what’s best and what’s right” — including all the murders, the agony and pain of the opressed and the minorities who were different than the status quo and bullied. At least that was how they saw it, and who says they were right and your way -whatever it is- is “the best and right”?
Now, in the Western world where we live in, we live in a system called “democracy”. A game, as i call it, with a set of rules set by a few chosen people who were chosen by all the people (“mob” as you appear to define us). The chosen few do not always do what the mob wants (the war in Iraq is an example, at least for here in Europe) and the mob can’t always chose “what’s best and what’s right” because of disinformation. Thus, the people (“mob”) are influenced by the chosen few and in some extend they do what they want to according to your “best and what’s right.” to which i’ll keep on referring.
However, despite all this, we could call it just that, a “mobocracy”, since all the people (“mob”) _appear_ to chose “what’s best and what’s right.” In fact, we are ofcourse discussing a form of complex aristocracy.
An important difference between Europe and the USA is that we here in Europe have a system called Trias Politica. An invention by the Frenchman Montesquieu. It means the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary power are seperated. This is NOT the case in the USA, where lawyers are installed according to the political preference.
I suggest you go study how the European system works, Rajan R. Because if you think that the Trias Politica is ruled by a mob, i think you’re being deceived. Certainly, there are cases where one can proof such.
Well go ahead, go proof it with the facts based on the Trias Politica. I can do this with cases which are definitely unrelated with this specific case. There _are_ flaws. But you however, do NOT proof it. I hereby challenge you to proof that there is played a 2-1 between the European governments and the jurisdiction by the EC.
I have found no signs of it. In fact, i found a citizen of my country named Frits Bolkenstein member of the VVD (right wing “liberal” party (liberal has a different meaning in Europe than it has in the USA. We raped the term to make it apply only on business interests, the USA mostly didn’t rape the term however appears to applies it on everything more right than the common republican opinion.)) spoke against the ruling proposing a much lighter court ruling. Which obviously didn’t happen. It does however indicate not everyone of the “chosen few” here agreed on this case.
Why is it that someone mentions Nazis on every computer-related message board?
[…]anyway what the EU makes in his territory has to do with EU only… if MS is unhappy with this then they can shut their european market and don’t sell to us, we’re just 30% of their total income.
I always love to see that argument. It shows the cluelessness of the poster.
Now let’s say Microsoft quit the European Union tomorrow… Who would fill that void? Nobody. The sell of new PCs would plummet. That will be good for european OEMs, right? M Meanwhile, european corporations would need to stop their migration plan(s) or start new ones for porting their hundreds of millions of code to another platform, putting them at a great disadvantage against american and asian competitors.
Linux? FOSS? They’re getting really good but they’re not mature enough for desktop usage. Corporations would need something now, not in 2 years.
Personally, I believe the EC made that decision to break their dependance on Microsoft/american software. Honestly, that would make sense and I can’t blame them. I would do the same thing if I were them. However, bitching over WMP is simply stupid, especially since the competition is just bad.
Thanks fellow EU citizen for making this great summary. The damage that is done by it’s practices cannot be reverted anymore. But at least I feel a bit happy that MS is found guilty so it is up to you people to make a choice of whom to support in the future. Indeed most people don’t even know about other OS-es , so sad the situation has grown.
I wish you good luck with your carreer in Law.
If something doen’t hit the market it doesn’t mean that’s not revolutionary… when electric companies switched from coal to oil there was no changes for “consumer” but there was a revolution in other segments …
Ahh, but you see, the consumers are affected in this case, yet I don’t see how it is revolutionary.
If you came to our land you’ve to accept our rules… that’s how the world goes.
I never argued that Europe has no right to make such a judgement.
We’re formed by A LOT of countries, each with his own legal system and laws… we’ve to deal with different cultures, languages and jurisdictional issues so we’ve a really a complex system.
It’s bad because it requires more work for each thing but, at the same time, it protect citizens.
The United States it made up of 50 states. The problem with EU’s legal system is not that each state has its own, it is that the separation of state and EU powers aren’t always clear, and the EU system of government is extremely complex. What to say, EU is created by a series of unrelated treaties and statutes, and it would help a lot if they adopt a constitution.
He was saying that Microsoft is a near monopoly on the CLIENT market (that’s legal and legit) and that they’re using their monopoly to gain another monopoly (that’s not legal)… Can you turn your head on?
Did you read the ruling? Microsoft also have to disclose protocols and APIs for their server operating system.
The EU is trying to force MS to sell the documentation about each protocol MS uses in their client/server system.[…]
While the DOJ already forces Microsoft to disclose such documentatio, with permision for NDAs, for free. EC’s ruling, if anything, would give European competitors a harder time.
Does WMP in Windows 3.1 play on the sidebars?
Does WMP in Windows 3.1 have a streaming system?
Does WMP in Windows 3.1 have a full integration with the system?
Was Windows 3.1 a near omnipresent server back then?
No, no, yes, and no.
On the first two, it doesn’t matter what features WMP had, it was still WMP. A lot of people here are arguing that Microsoft can easily win the market with an inferior product, but they couldn’t back with Windows 3.1. As for the last one, unless you have WMP open all the time, it isn’t an omnipresent server.
There’s a huge difference between the codec system and the media player itself and, anyway, there’s no need of rip the entire codec layer off, they just have to change the wmplayer.exe file with a program that does all EXCEPT running directly (the FULL version can, however, be downloaded from internet).
1) The EC ruling never detailed what constitutes as WMP and what doesn’t, but looking at the proceedings of the case, it constitutes *much* more than wmplayer.exe.
2) And even if wmplayer.exe is the only thing removed, the difference of 72.0KB is enough to warrant a new edition of Windows that is cheaper? Hah.
They already proved this, more than this they proved that Windows CE was able to run using RealPlayer instead of WMP; that’s what Microsoft always told it was “impossible to do”.
No, what Microsoft always told it was impossible to do is removing every single bit of WMP and expecting everything to work all fine and dandy. And Real didn’t showcase that, they just show that with WMP gone and out of the way, RealONE still works fine (which kinda obvious, cause unlike hundreds of applications like Napster, Premier, etc. that uses WMP in one way or another, RealONE doesn’t)
Get real! a lot of society were drawn out of business by Microsoft and Microsoft repeadly used his near monopoly position to kick out possible enemies (gave a look at the PenWindows project and the letter sent to IBM by mr.Gates).
Why not you get real. I have already detailed why Netscape was kicked out – it could offer something in the heat of competition as fast as Microsoft, and when it did, they offered it at $2000 vs. free by Microsoft, and then they went into a rewrite – placing most of their developer’s resources in it. Had Netscape been run just slightly better, or AOL sees it as something a wee bit more than a blackmailing tool, I’m sure Netscape would be an important player in the market.
And the same goes for Be. They first came out with the BeBox – it was oh, so nice and cool. They expect Mac users to flock and get it, but one thing they did forget is that BeOS had no applications. They tried many stupid ways to get new application – by making a PPC edition for Macs, by trying to get OEMs to install BeOS. Since they lack much of a comprehensive business plan, or a distinct market for that matter, even if Microsoft allowed OEMs to do what they want, Be Inc. would have gone bankrupted eventually.
When Adam Smith underlined [blah, bla, blah]
I have little interest in debating your anti-capitalist rant.
dpi: You didn’t have to go on with a political rant based on a quote taken out of context. I only said that mobocracy is wrong because the argument made was that Microsoft has little PR value, “In fact I was happily surprised that the majority of the people reacted with positive comments on the commission’s decision, and the one that did not agree on the fines, agreed on the general principles.”
Justice shouldn’t be metted out based on how popular a certain company is. If everyone thinks John Doe killed 10 people, although the evidence doesn’t show, it doesn’t make John Doe guilty. Besides, you mentioned the liberal party’s opposition to the ruling. Of course they don’t matter when they 51 out of 626 seats in the European parliament. Heck, left-leaning parties control the Parliament (PES=180, EFA=48, EUL=42, EDD=16, plus a few more under NI, which makes it around 286, which makes it the majority voice in the Parliament. And that’s besides the fact that Christian Democrats are economically left)
Ugh. MS has no monopoly. Business tactics I disapprove of, sure. But anyone, please just take a look at all the OSes being talked about on this site. Nothing is preventing anyone from using them but their own ignorance (or simple personal preference in the case of windows users who are actually competent).
Media Player can be removed from windows quite handily. It was pissing me off in 2k3. I set other players to play .avi and .divx by default, but no matter what I did, WiMP played .asf files. Got pissed, and uninstalled it. Granted, it was a bit roundabout (must install WiMP 9.0 for windows XP then type something at the command line that I don’t have memorized) but then it’s gone, and I don’t know of anything that has broken yet.
Point being, it doesn’t have to come with windows, but at the same time, it can be removed. I would be happy if MS was forced to provide an easier way to remove it (same with Messenger.. editing files to remove ‘hidden’ is stupid). No one whines that KDE should drop Noatun, they just don’t install it. This is easy for linux where you can download the specific packages you want, but a PITA for a company that sells its product on CDs. As long as it can be uninstalled, that should be sufficient. The choice is always available to use a different program (though why anyone would use quicktime or realplayer for PC is beyond me)
Who in the hell would buy WindowsXP – RealPlayer version? LOL. Just buy XP and download realplayer ffs.. (and MS, add an uninstall for those of us who hate WiMP versions other than 6.4
)
Whoa! I’m a nazi? for what reason?
Dunno why you can tell whatever you want about the EU while I’m automatically a nazi if I state anything about the US system… got the point?
>> He was saying that Microsoft is a near monopoly on the CLIENT market (that’s legal and legit) and that they’re using their monopoly to gain another monopoly (that’s not legal)… Can you turn your head on?
>Did you read the ruling? Microsoft also have to disclose protocols and APIs for their server operating system.
How are the 2 things related ?
>Did you read the ruling? Microsoft also have to disclose protocols and APIs for their server operating system.
Let me rewrite something I’ve already stated: “The EU is trying to force MS to sell the documentation about each protocol MS uses in their client/server system.”
In my small country a client/server system is a thing that is formed by a CLIENT and a SERVER.
>> Was Windows 3.1 a near omnipresent server back then?
>No, no, yes, and no.
On the first two, it doesn’t matter what features WMP had, it was still WMP. A lot of people here are arguing that Microsoft can easily win the market with an inferior product, but they couldn’t back with Windows 3.1. As for the last one, unless you have WMP open all the time, it isn’t an omnipresent server.
I made a misstypo, it was “Was Windows 3.1 a near omnipresent client back then?”…
Well, the last is the real fact… EU laws set some barrier to the monopolist, if you aren’t the monopolist you don’t have thesee barriers… back then Microsoft wasn’t a monopolist… and, on top of that, these considerations have nothing to do with a clear logical statement:
“if (Microsoft is promoting his applications abusing of his monopoly?) then (Microsoft have to be punished); else exit (-1);”
> 1) The EC ruling never detailed what constitutes as WMP and what doesn’t, but looking at the proceedings of the case, it constitutes *much* more than wmplayer.exe.
> 2) And even if wmplayer.exe is the only thing removed, the difference of 72.0KB is enough to warrant a new edition of Windows that is cheaper? Hah.
1) Microsoft had and has the time to find a valuable solution with the EU, the commission isn’t just a court, they aren’t throwing the sentence and going out… Microsoft can discuss a way to settle the “wipe” in a way that doesn’t require a full rewrite… The one that’s unwilling is Microsoft that stated, state and is stuck with the idea that “WMP is a part of the OS and it cannot be separed”…
2) Yes; to state an example in Italy there’s a tax on video recording systems so it happens that the same video camera has 2 different models and prices, one with the digital in enabled for recording and another with the digital in disabled for recording.
It has nothing to do with length (software isn’t paid in a kilo base) but has to do with features…
A Promise controller had 2 prices 2 years ago… the difference ? one (100$) was a IDE raid controller, the other (10$) was an IDE controller without the raid function (that could be enabled via a firmware upgrade and a soldering).
GeForce and Quadro cards are THE SAME, the only difference is in a bios/sram setting, the same happened for Radeon 9500 that could be “upgraded” to 9500Pro or 9700…
Features and substance are two different things…
>> When Adam Smith underlined [blah, bla, blah]
> I have little interest in debating your anti-capitalist rant.
It was ABOUT capilasims, not AGAINST it; capitalism is like each thing in this world, good if you don’t abuse of it.
As, for wrawrat.
> I always love to see that argument. It shows the cluelessness of the poster.
> Now let’s say Microsoft quit the European Union tomorrow… Who would fill that void? Nobody. The sell of new PCs would plummet. That will be good for european OEMs, right? M Meanwhile, european corporations would need to stop their migration plan(s) or start new ones for porting their hundreds of millions of code to another platform, putting them at a great disadvantage against american and asian competitors.
> Linux? FOSS? They’re getting really good but they’re not mature enough for desktop usage. Corporations would need something now, not in 2 years.
As you SHOULD understand that decision is financial AND related to corporations; it has nothing to do with the EU commission.
You cannot say that the EU is wrong because it actually need Windows… it’s like saying: “The world cannot leave IRAQ as is because they need oil”… ops… right… we cannot attack Redmond to get the windows code back.
> Personally, I believe the EC made that decision to break their dependance on Microsoft/american software. Honestly, that would make sense and I can’t blame them. I would do the same thing if I were them. However, bitching over WMP is simply stupid, especially since the competition is just bad.
Personally I believe you’ve a narrow view of the entire thing… we use Windows and we’ll continue to use Windows; we’re looking for free and cheap alternatives like everyone in this world but this don’t make us anti US.
Making an EU vs US war for the sake of “it’s ours, you’ve to take it” it’s kinda stupid… you should understand that we aren’t second class people on this world, we’ve thousands years of civilization, and use this point of view as a key to state a “low intensity” war between our countries is offending.
You should instead think that probably you had to state, sometime in the past, something like “Microsoft is acting really bad”, well, THIS is mainly the reason we’re acting, because we’re unwilling to let Microsoft act in this way in our country and if you don’t like the way we’re doing it you’ve 2 ways:
1. live with it
2. attack the EU with your army
Whoa! I’m a nazi? for what reason?
I only use the term Nazi for a fascist, racist, pro-genocide jerk, like Saddam Hussein. I don’t remember calling you a Nazi.
How are the 2 things related ?
Don’t blame me if I didn’t understand the author’s meaning.
I made a misstypo, it was “Was Windows 3.1 a near omnipresent client back then?”…
Pretty much, yeah. Care to wager a guess what comes up when you double-click a .wav file?
Well, the last is the real fact… EU laws set some barrier to the monopolist, if you aren’t the monopolist you don’t have thesee barriers…
My main argument isn’t that EU should do this (I disagree generally with antitrust laws, but I don’t see OSNews as the proper forum to discuss my political views). My argument is that there’s absolutely no benefit to most of the parties involved in this case, and it wouldn’t affect competitors by all that much. Real and Quicktime is typically installed to use formats associated with it, and considering how both suck, I doubt that would change anytime soon.
Besides, in a capitalist market you claim to support, market mergings happen a lot of times. In fact, as contributing editor of NMC, I am currently witnessing a merger of the phone and PDA market. Slowly, but surely.
back then Microsoft wasn’t a monopolist…
Actually, when IBM pretty much gave up on OS/2 during the time of Windows 95, Microsoft fit the legal defination of a monopoly in Europe – 70% of the market.
Microsoft had and has the time to find a valuable solution with the EU, the commission isn’t just a court, they aren’t throwing the sentence and going out… Microsoft can discuss a way to settle the “wipe” in a way that doesn’t require a full rewrite… The one that’s unwilling is Microsoft that stated, state and is stuck with the idea that “WMP is a part of the OS and it cannot be separed”…
Actually, what Microsoft had suggested was that WMP be hidden from the users automatically in a special edition of their operating system everywhere on earth. Real and Quicktime naturally decline because WMP would still be on the OS. And yes, WMP is part of the operating system, other than wmplayer.exe and libraries only used by it, there are many different applications that take for granted WMP’s libraries.
Yes; to state an example in Italy there’s a tax on video recording systems so it happens that the same video camera has 2 different models and prices, one with the digital in enabled for recording and another with the digital in disabled for recording.
And I don’t see how that’s benefiting consumers.
It has nothing to do with length (software isn’t paid in a kilo base) but has to do with features…
You said it, not me. The EC is trying to limit Microsoft’s ability to add features.
It was ABOUT capilasims, not AGAINST it; capitalism is like each thing in this world, good if you don’t abuse of it.
Adam Smith in this book the Wealth of Nations was an argument against menchantilism and for capitalism. At that time, the government pretty much controls the prices of most resources, and the source of the resources themselves, in its country and its colonies.
Adam Smith never spoke about antitrust or curtailing natural monopolies, he was however an advocate of getting the government as far away from the economy as possible.
Here’s some capitalism sites
http://www.moraldefense.com/
http://capitalism.org/faq/antitrust.htm
As you SHOULD understand that decision is financial AND related to corporations; it has nothing to do with the EU commission.
Any decision that would have immense effect on the European economy would cause the EC to back down or the immense public backlash would cause component states to sign a new treaty reforming the EC or heck, even changing Europe’s competition law.
Making an EU vs US war for the sake of “it’s ours, you’ve to take it” it’s kinda stupid… you should understand that we aren’t second class people on this world, we’ve thousands years of civilization, and use this point of view as a key to state a “low intensity” war between our countries is offending.
What’s offending is that both Americans and Europeans pretend that their system of governance is all that different. Had Microsoft been a European company, EC probably would have done little to stop it, other than a few obstacles here and there. However, DOJ would have done a lot more, similar to what EC is doing, to impair Microsoft’s competitive edge in the American market. Get off your high horses, both act the same.
And another thing that’s offending is that Europeans always, and I mean, always, point to their centuries old culture in any US vs. EU argument. It’s sick. It doesn’t matter how Europeans act a millenium ago, it depends how they act *today*. India invented the number zero and invented a whole lot of things, and the philosophy that came out of India affected the whole world. Yet, if Indians go behind their culture to shrug off any criticism, wouldn’t you get offended?
Precisely.
2. attack the EU with your army
*sigh*.
If Europe wants to do it, I think longterm, it isn’t Microsoft that would be hurted. It would be European consumers that would be hurt. Just imagine, 2 decades from now. Linux has, say, 35% of the market, Windows has 60%. In the US, consumer distributions like Xandros can easily put in and integrate media applications, but in the EU, they have to come up with a separate edition. Why? One nifty feature of EU’s competition law is that all rulings would apply on all companies in the market. In other words, Microsoft’s competitors have to disclose their APIs, they have to offer a media-less edition, etc.
And also expect soon to your nearest Mac a dialog coming up right when you boot up (after the first-run wizard) asking if you want Quicktime installed or not. Sucks, doesn’t it?
Before going down again talking to Rajan R I want to say something that gives a new point of view to the entire:
cloning is possible but it’s not always believed to be moral, the fact that something is “possible” and that some feature “can” be added doesn’t mean always that is “right” to add these features.
sure, technological improvement can’t be bound by laws without killing him but, what the EU is trying to say is that someone that can kill an open market using the weight of a monopoly have to be blocked.
the countermeasures that can be used can vary largely from time to time and, mostly, they can seems a bit unfair if you look at them as “bills”, they are measures taken to handle a critical situation.
the critical situation is someone that’s abusing of a near monopoly trying to acquire an entire market; in this situation the EU commission found that the way to stop this is the one we’re discussing now.
It’s not a common way to handle things, it’s an EMERGENCY measure.
> I only use the term Nazi for a fascist, racist, pro-genocide jerk, like Saddam Hussein. I don’t remember calling you a Nazi.
Sorry, it wasn’t for you. I missreaded another post… sorry again… my english is quite bad…
> Don’t blame me if I didn’t understand the author’s meaning.
It was me that probably misunderstood the previous statement, sorry again.
> Pretty much, yeah. Care to wager a guess what comes up when you double-click a .wav file?
the sound is resampled or the audio out hardware is set up to mix the voices at the wav sample rate then the file is (often) copied into a consecutive memory zone that can be easily addressed by a DMA controller, then the program that issued the “play” set up the DMA controller and tell the audio card to start playing… when the buffer is played (not the whole song, just the piece that’s on the memory area) the DMA controller send an interrupt that hooks to a routine that makes the DMA access another consecutive memory area where the next samples are stored.
This is how a wav/pcm is played as long as I remember (yup, long time has passed since my last asm program under dos).
> My argument is that there’s absolutely no benefit to most of the parties involved in this case, and it wouldn’t affect competitors by all that much. Real and Quicktime is typically installed to use formats associated with it, and considering how both suck, I doubt that would change anytime soon.
RealONE (if I remember well, I don’t like aggressive programs) plays other formats too, of course it’s using the codec infrastructure but as long as it is always present on a Windows machine it’s obivious that you rely on it (as a programmer point of view)…
> Besides, in a capitalist market you claim to support, market mergings happen a lot of times. In fact, as contributing editor of NMC, I am currently witnessing a merger of the phone and PDA market. Slowly, but surely.
market merging? we’re talking about two different markets, and using one to get the other, desktop for server… no one is talking about Desktop and Server market to melt in a new uber-market.
> Actually, when IBM pretty much gave up on OS/2 during the time of Windows 95, Microsoft fit the legal defination of a monopoly in Europe – 70% of the market.
Things were a bit different back then… media players wasn’t a market …
> Actually, what Microsoft had suggested was that WMP be hidden from the users automatically in a special edition of their operating system everywhere on earth. Real and Quicktime naturally decline because WMP would still be on the OS. And yes, WMP is part of the operating system, other than wmplayer.exe and libraries only used by it, there are many different applications that take for granted WMP’s libraries.
As long as I heard Microsoft was about to find a solution with the EU, it failed because Microsoft wasn’t unwilling to accept restrictions on FUTURE OSes.
In the past programmers largely used ASPI layer (that Microsoft cut off from W2K), programmers relied on a Java virtual machine and so on.
There’s nothing unnatural in this, linux itself is a stack of programs relying on other programs (ok, don’t kill me for this).
Maybe newer programs will be built with stream coders/decoders embedded…
> And I don’t see how that’s benefiting consumers.
It’s a tax, you have your taxes as I’ve mine. they won’t benefit consumers, they are TAXES…
> You said it, not me. The EC is trying to limit Microsoft’s ability to add features.
It’s kinda different, they are trying to force Microsoft to add features OUTSIDE of the OS.
If you like something and if Microsoft want to put that feature in they can simply make a downloadable windows_media_player_install.msi and everyone will be happy.
The substance is that it haven’t to be INSIDE the OS, it can be offered outside but it haven’t to be a inseparable part of the whole.
> Any decision that would have immense effect on the European economy would cause the EC to back down or the immense public backlash would cause component states to sign a new treaty reforming the EC or heck, even changing Europe’s competition law.
You’re wrong with this. Microsoft won’t close EU agencies for some single reasons:
1. they gain money from them
2. they cannot permit a whole market to use other software (expecially if it’s free and expecially if the remainders have to communicate with that market)
Apart of that the back effect on closing the EU market will probably kill MSFT.
But from a higher point of view they are wrong with the law, they have to pay for that, the law cannot be changed to allow them to continue acting undisturbed.
> What’s offending is that both Americans and Europeans pretend that their system of governance is all that different. Had Microsoft been a European company, EC probably would have done little to stop it, other than a few obstacles here and there. However, DOJ would have done a lot more, similar to what EC is doing, to impair Microsoft’s competitive edge in the American market. Get off your high horses, both act the same.
I thing that the situation is a bit different but since MS isn’t an EU company we cannot talk about this in a clear way.
As long as I know, anyway, Real isn’t an american company (and the major Windows enemy, Linux, isn’t a EU brand).
> And another thing that’s offending is that Europeans always, and I mean, always, point to their centuries old culture in any US vs. EU argument. It’s sick. It doesn’t matter how Europeans act a millenium ago, it depends how they act *today*. India invented the number zero and invented a whole lot of things, and the philosophy that came out of India affected the whole world. Yet, if Indians go behind their culture to shrug off any criticism, wouldn’t you get offended?
It’s a common mistake… I never told that we’re OVER US, I’ve just said that we are not UNDER as civilization…
In my country we all talks about USA as “the greatest democracy in the world” but this no way mean we’re barbarians as some tries to argue.
> If Europe wants to do it, I think longterm, it isn’t Microsoft that would be hurted. It would be European consumers that would be hurt. Just imagine, 2 decades from now. Linux has, say, 35% of the market, Windows has 60%. In the US, consumer distributions like Xandros can easily put in and integrate media applications, but in the EU, they have to come up with a separate edition. Why? One nifty feature of EU’s competition law is that all rulings would apply on all companies in the market. In other words, Microsoft’s competitors have to disclose their APIs, they have to offer a media-less edition, etc.
Only the monopolist have to obey these anti-trust rules, others are free to act freely (and limits can change time to time depending on the situation).
> And also expect soon to your nearest Mac a dialog coming up right when you boot up (after the first-run wizard) asking if you want Quicktime installed or not. Sucks, doesn’t it?
Apple isn’t “A NEAR MONOPOLY”.
My Windows 3.1 had a lot of problems going to the net, there was no TCP/IP stack inside… it sucks too!
the sound is resampled or the audio out hardware […]
I was asking which application would come up and play the .wav file by default in Windows 3.1. The answer, BTW, is Windows Media.
RealONE (if I remember well, I don’t like aggressive programs)[…]
Still doesn’t discount the fact that RealONE is typically installed for its support of Real formats.
market merging? we’re talking about two different markets, and using one to get the other, desktop for server…
And I was talking about the operating system and media player market here.
Things were a bit different back then… media players wasn’t a market …
Before Windows Media was bundled and integrated into Windows, there was third party applications that does something like it. And after it, there was still third party applications that competed with it. It was a market anymore then than now. The different is that in 2000, Microsoft integrated NetShow (which became DirectShow) into WMP and Windows, pushing WMP in direct competition with Real and Quicktime.
ConteZero: In the past programmers largely used ASPI layer (that Microsoft cut off from W2K), programmers relied on a Java virtual machine and so on.
ASPI was cutted for a reason – it was a security hazard. Java virtual machine was cutted for a legal reason – Microsoft was then unable to make any changes to it due to a settlement with Sun, other than security and bug fixes (but still the backlash so bad that in SP1 they included Java VM). With Windows 2003, it was targeted towards the server market which rarely uses day-to-day applications that require ASPI, while giving desktop developers enough time to migrate out of it before SP2 of Windows XP.
But I don’t see how this is comparable. In the first case, Microsoft is removing a non-feature abused by developers and a security hazard left alone. In the second example you gave is actually an example to keep WMP in Windows – the backlash was rather bad that Microsoft decided to keep the Java VM till it can’t anymore. And WMP is used by more applications than Java VM.
Plus, EU’s decision affects 30% of Microsoft market. Now imagine if half of the Windows users there got the WMP-free version of Windows or selected to uninstall WMP on their new computer, it would mean that 80% of Microsoft’s customers still have their Windows with WMP. And developers would have little reason not to use WMP, after all, it is available on most copies of Windows.
It’s a tax, you have your taxes as I’ve mine. they won’t benefit consumers, they are TAXES…
Precisely.
It’s kinda different, they are trying to force Microsoft to add features OUTSIDE of the OS.
Microsoft rarely makes money outside of Windows and Office, EC is kinda like asking Microsoft to either stop trying or throw money around.
Apart of that the back effect on closing the EU market will probably kill MSFT.
It would immensely affect Microsoft, but it wouldn’t kill it. Europe is just 30% of the market, and as we go along, that market size is shrinking in comparison with the rest of the world. Now, if Microsoft is barred from Japan, or China, they are toasted.
As long as I know, anyway, Real isn’t an american company (and the major Windows enemy, Linux, isn’t a EU brand).
RealNetworks is based in the same state as Microsoft – Seattle, Washington, which isn’t suprising considering how Rob Glaser was a former Microsoft executive. As for Linux, it doesn’t matter whether it is a European brand or not, but some of the major distributions are from Europe (Mandrake, and until recently, SuSE which still maintains their offices in Germany)
Only the monopolist have to obey these anti-trust rules, others are free to act freely (and limits can change time to time depending on the situation).
You see, following antitrust rules to the word is extremely difficult for any business – antitrust rules bans action that may cause certain results, thus a monopolist pretty much can’t do much for himself but wander around until someone reduces its market share to be below the legal defination of monopoly.
And there’s another problem, the laws are very vague in its description of what constitutes a market. In other words, under the current wording, companies like Motorola, Be, etc. can sue Apple under antitrust violations because it can be constituted as a different market as Windows (Judge Jackson already paved the way, in the court proceedings it said that Apple wasn’t Microsoft’s competitor because it was using a different platform). Why haven’t anyone bothered with that? Why didn’t Be sue Apple along with Microsoft? Because there’s more money to be made out of suing Microsoft.
Apple isn’t “A NEAR MONOPOLY”.
EU competition law applies to everyone. If a ruling it given out, it would apply on Microsoft as much as it would apply on its competitors. Sucks, doesn’t it? This is the main differentiating point with Sherman Antitrust Act.
>Microsoft can tell the european eunion to get rooted and >we know what they do in belgium, fuckin child murderers >and rapists they deserve the the same fuckin fate and >they will get it too.
Right, I endured pages and pages of off topic comments about politics and culture that have absolutely nothing to do with the artichle I was writing.
I accepted it because there were some good pages of technical analysis of the OS market that I found quiet enjoyable, even if heated.
But this time, things has REALLY gone too far.
I was trying to write an article on the legal issues and from the legal point of view of a decision by an antitrust commission.
I just was underlyining how this decision has behind itself a rich background of cultural and legal difference and how it was based on different points of view due to this difference.
But this….
I do not live in Belgium as my name subgests, but I do know many Belgian people and know they are perfectly healthy and normal parts of tehir society.
I did not feel, in my article, the necessity to underline a concept, whatever it could have been, with reminds to Columbine or Oklahoma city.
This is Os news, not the Jerry Springer show, I hope it remains this way.
>Fuck the belgium beast.
With your comment you have not only insulted Belgium and EU, the land where I live, You’ve as much insulted this place, where people gather to discuss technical matters and related matters.
You have insulted Eugenia, that gave you freely a place to put that gratuitous display of racism and moral lowness.
And you’ve insulted yourself, showing to all off us what kind of IDIOT you are.
Wait, I scratch the last part, at least, now, we really understand how poorly less you are.
Pathetic…
Don’t feed the trolls. Under each comment, there’s a “Report Abuse” link. Use that.
The European Commission’s competition procedings against Microsoft have led to a verdict which gives a big boost to Microsoft’s monopoly position in the OS market and helps Microsoft expand this position to other markets. While the Commission may have earned substantial revenues for itself by imposing a one-time fine of 1% of Microsoft’s liquid cash reserves, the smallprint of the verdict gives Microsoft green light to kill its main competitors in the operating systems market. This smallprint was simultaneously reinforced through backroom deals in the Council’s Patent Policy working party, of which copies have been leaked to FFII. Immediately after the announcments the stock value of MSFT rose by 3%.
Details: http://swpat.ffii.org/news/04/cecms0326/index.en.html