Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
> On 17 Dec 2006 20:47:32 -0800, Rex Ballard wrote:
> > Visio was basically driven into bankruptcy then purchased in a "fire
> > sale".
>
> More of your manufactured "history", or as I like to call it "Rextory".
> Microsoft purchased Visio Corp for 1.5 *BILLION* dollars. That's hardly a
> "fire sale" for a company that makes a single product. And Visio has never
> been "third rate", it's always been the best of it's class.
> https://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2000/jan00/dealpr.mspx
Perhaps one of the driving factors behind the purchase of Visio was
their willingness to offer a version for Lotus SmartSuite, even in
1994, when IBM and Microsoft were duking it out over OS2/Warp vs
Windows 95.
http://visio.mvps.org/History.htm
> > Nearly all of the Windows shovelware included with Windows and
> > Office were very poor imitations of leading products which were far
> > superior at the time.
>
> At what time? The problem is that most of those companies sat on their
> laurels ad stopped improving their products.
1990-1991.
Sure, Lotus 1-2-3 was BETTER on SunOS on OS/2, but it worked pretty
well on Windows 3.0, unfortunately Windows 3.0 was buggy as hell, and
the frequent crashes made it difficult to port some of those really
cool features to Windows. It still ran circles around Excel.
WordPerfect had 85% of the market, and, much like Lotus, found that it
was very difficult to maintain their very powerful user interface and
look-and-feel with multiwindowed environment on the very unstable
Windows 3.0 and Windows 3.1 platforms, but by 1992, WordPerfect had
many features that didn't show up in Word until about 3 years later.
This may have simply been a problem of believing Microsoft's hype about
Windows. They also had a version for OS/2 which ran very well, and did
support all of those features.
Applix had a really nice office automation suite which included
integrated word, spreadsheet, graphics, and data interfaces, as well as
real-time charting. It was quite popular among SunOS users.
SCO had something called OpenDesktop, which had an integrated word
processor, spreadsheet, and graphics, nearly 2 years before Microsoft
offered their consolidated solution.
FrameMaker was an integrated OA platform which used the ability of X11
to embed frames from multiple applications into a single document. One
of my favorite documents was the "live" document, in which graphs could
be refreshed in near-real-time.
The EZ editor wasn't all that great, but it did introduce IBM's
Generalized Markup Language (GML) in a simplified and standardized form
as part of the Athena project, which became known as SGML. A subset of
SGML became known as HTML and was eventually used for display of
documents retrieved using a read only terminal program called a
browser. Lynx and Opera were on UNIX as early as 1992, and Cello came
out for Windows a few months later. Many of those early HTML documents
were edited using the EZ WYSIWYG editor.
>From 1993 to 1995, Microsoft spent nearly $4 billion per year on
advertizing campaigns, primarily to purchase favorable coverage of
Cairo and Chicago (NT 3.1 and 95) and to assure little or unfavorable
coverage of competitors such as SunOS, Solaris, Unixware, OS/2 Warp,
Linux, or SCO, and the products which ran on them. By 1994, Microsoft
controlled content and placement of all Microsoft trademarks and logos
used in OEM advertizements. An OEM who wanted to advertize the ability
of their PC to run Windows, had to let Microsoft review the content,
and had to pull ads from certain publications if requested to do so by
Microsoft. It effectively gave Microsoft control of the purse strings
of nearly $40 billion in advertizing revenue from 1995 to 1999. Even
today, Microsoft still controls content and placement, but is less
inclined to retaliate against publications who give favorable coverage
to Linux and OSS (because so many are doing so).
Microsoft has also tried to control the publication of benchmarks,
which to Microsoft includes ANY comparison between Microsoft and any
other 3rd party product.
> >> then sold it to people following up on marketing leads.
> > No. Microsoft engaged in illegal bundling, using "per-process"
> > licensing of both Windows and Office, demanding that Office be
> > installed on every machine, or else the OEM would have to pay nearly
> > twice the price.
>
> There is no evidence that Microsoft ever demanded OEM's to install Office
> on every machine. You do have evidence to support this, right? No?
They were given a choice. They could install Windows alone, for which
they would pay $100 per copy, and the end user could then pay retail
for application software, or they could pay $150 for Windows AND
Office, but they had to install it on every machine shipped.
This was part of a series of public hearings and a settlement. The
court nullified the "per processor requirement, but gave Microsoft
unrestricted control of pricing structures. This lead to the use of
"Cliff Tiered" pricing which was very effective for Windows.
In the past 3-4 years, users have had more options, and OEMs now often
don't order massive quantities of Office. Microsoft eventually started
offering discounted versions which the OEM could sell separately.
Users could choose Works, Office Student Edition (if they were
registered students in a middle-school, high school or college), or
Personal edition. Today, OEMs can sell Office Professional for as
little as $160 each, if it is purchased when the computer is purchased.
It's amazing how things change when there's a little REAL competition.
OpenOffice, WordPerfect, and other ODF based office suites are starting
to cut into Microsoft's Office revenues (shown in their 10k filings).
Margins are going down along with unit volumes, especially in terms of
market share.
> > Judge Jackson
> > found them in contempt of his ruling, and Microsoft got the ruling
> > overturned by the Appeals court by presenting their own version of the
> > facts, completely disregarding the rules of evidence, leaving the DOJ
> > no opportunity to challenge this "revisionist history" in
> > cross-examination.
>
> That's rich, coming from Mr. "revisionist history" himself. The court of
> appeals overturned the ruling because Judge Jackson had erred and because
> the DOJ had not proven their case.
That's Microsoft's version of the case. In the contempt of the
"Bundling" settlement, Microsoft attempted to present new information
and to essentially claim that the Judge didn't understand the
difference between an Applet and an Application.
During the Antitrust hearing, Judge Jackson issued his "Findings of
Fact" prior to issuing any rulings related to the Findings of Law.
These were not to be disputed. During the remedy hearing, Microsoft
used very finely worded legalese to publicly tell the judge he was an
idiot, that Microsoft was the only one qualified to define the facts in
the case, and proceeded to attempt to retry the facts of the case
during the remedy hearing.
Microsoft's lawyers just decided to ignore due process, and the
structure of court proceedings, and decided to attempt to rewrite the
findings of fact, rather than attempt to define mitigating and
aggrevating circumstances.
Keep in mind that Judge Jackson had limited the scope of the trial to
keep it from becoming a circus and a 5 year trial. Each side could
call 25 witnesses, and they could call anybody they wanted. The DOJ
case was weak. Microsoft could have called monkeys and beat the rap,
but their own witnesesses got on the stand and admitted, under oath, to
criminal acts.
I don't think Judge Jackson wanted to order divestiture. I think what
he really wanted, was to have his "interim" remedies accepted as valid
and appropriate remedies, and have the court overturn the divestiture
order. The forced divestiture was extreme, and unprecedented.
Remember, previous divestature orders, such as the break-up of AT&T had
been voluntary, as part of a bigger settlement. Unfortunately,
Microsoft tried to antagonize the Judge.
Judge Jackson had originally been leaning in favor of Microsoft. He
was willing to impose some behavioral remedies, but he was giving
Microsoft every possible opportunity to argue against divestature. He
also did everything he could to encourage Microsoft to settle.
> Now there you go, revising history again. Not only did Jackson merely
> "tell a reporter" things, but he actually gave them exclusive interviews
> DURING the trial. However, this was the second trial, not the contempt
> trial that you're trying to revise history to contain.
Actually, the hearings were over. The final verdict and final rulings
had not been issued.
Correct, I thought I had pointed out that I was talking about the
antitrust trial when referring to Judge Jacksons comments to reporters.
Again, I don't think Judge Jackson wanted the structural remedy to
stand, and he was giving Microsoft the out. He was fully aware that
his comments to the reporters would be published, and that making the
comments at that time, would constitute a mistrial. This is why he
filed his Findings of Fact and Findings of Law first. This was also
why he created the substantial and complex interim remedy. He was even
offering Microsoft an opportunity to negotiate on the terms of the
behavioral remedy during the remedy hearing, as an argument against
divestature. In effect, he was willing to give Microsoft the chance to
plea-bargain after the verdict.
The problem for the judge was that Microsoft gave him almost no room to
NOT grant the request for a structural remedy requested by the DOJ and
25 states. At the same time, he really did not want the courts
establishing a precedent which would allow prosecutors to just go out
and start breaking up large corporations based on Sherman act filings.
Such a precedent could have triggered the break-up of banks, oil
companies, airlines, and other companies in which vertical integration
was part of the process of staying competitive.
> > The judge did rule that Microsoft had illegally excluded
> > OS/2 and Linux from the marketplace, and was illegally protecting it's
> > monopoly.
>
> No, it did not. In fact, the Judge claimed that OS/2 wasn't relevant and
> that Linux was not in the same market, and chouldn't be used as evidence of
> competition.
I believe that the Judge's formal ruling was that Microsoft had
obtained it's monopoly legally, but was protecting it illegally.
> Funny how you seem to forget this stuff, but remember stuff that didn't
> actually happen.
The problem is that I am working from memory, and did have the various
rulings in front of me during each posting.
> From the Findings of fact:
> "The experience of the Linux operating system, a version of which runs on
> Intel- compatible PCs, similarly fails to refute the existence of an
> applications barrier to entry.
Microsoft had suggested that Linux proved that there was no
applications barrier to entry.
Microsoft had suggested that Linux had established a 12% market share.
Microsoft had suggested that this proved that there were no barriers to
entry.
The Judge ruled that the experience of Linux did NOT refute the
existence of an applications barrier to entry.
In the face of the ineffective settlement, the OSS community has gone
for a full frontal assault on the applications barrier to entry, by
releasing OpenOffice, and establishing Open Document Format as a fully
public standard implemented as Open Source software, throwing the doors
wide open to numerous competitors who can now create ODF compatible
products for both Windows AND Linux.
Keep in mind that this was only possible through the voluntary
cooperation of dozens of Microsoft competitors who were fed up with
Microsoft's exclusionary practices and were willing to allow their
employees to contributo to OSS projects to create effective competiton.
No single company could have established such a significant development
effort, and made the information available to all of the other players.
OSS made it possible to establish a standard which could compete with
Microsoft.
FireFox was also an OSS attact directly against Microsoft's monopoly of
the Browser market. Again, the OSS solution allowed numerous
contributors to contribute $billions worth of time, labor, effort,
skills, and promotional effort into a product that no single Microsoft
competitor could have afforded.
The OSS assault has resulted in FireFox taking nearly a 30% share based
on some browser surveys, as high as 45% in some markets. OpenOffice
has been deployed on nearly 300 million PCs.
In both cases, these new competitor products have been deployed, not to
the exclusion of competitors, such as Microsoft's products, but as a
supplement. Users can use FireFox to browse unknown web sites which
might try to implant malware in IE. They can still use IE for sites
which are well-known, fully trusted, and require IE (or IE spoofing) to
access their services.
The courts have done very little to help in establishing a competitive
Desktop IT marketplace.
> Linux is an "open source" operating system
> that was created, and is continuously updated, by a global network of
> software developers who contribute their labor for free.
Again, this was a ruling against Microsoft's claims that Linux
eliminated the need for any sort of intervention by the courts.
Microsoft might have been able to argue against a structural remedy,
but Microsoft was trying to claim that Linux eliminated the need for
any intervention by trying to claim that they did not have a monopoly.
These paragraphs state that in terms of the law, Microsoft has a
monopoly, and that Linux is not a sufficiently established competitor
to wrest monopoly control away from Microsoft (as of 1999).
> Although Linux has
> between ten and fifteen million users, the majority of them use the
> operating system to run servers, not PCs.
Microsoft had testified under oath that Linux had 14% of the market,
appearantly based on the assumption that 15 million units were sold,
that year, compared to nearly 100 million units of Windows sold during
that same year.
Microsoft might have been able to argue that many of these servers gave
desktop functionality through the use of remote consoles such as X11
and VNC. They chose not to attempt that argument.
Microsoft might have been able to argue that Linux had far more users -
based on the number of people use accessed Linux servers using web
browsers, but they did not attempt to do so.
Judge Jackson left them opportunities to argue against mitigation based
on these fine distinctions, but Microsoft decided instead, to
antagonize the Judge.
> Several ISVs have announced their
> development of (or plans to develop) Linux versions of their applications.
> To date, though, legions of ISVs have not followed the lead of these first
> movers.
Ironically, the antitrust hearings may have actually impeded progress
along those lines. Linux was trying very hard to stay below the radar.
Many applications such as Netscape communicator were available for
Linux, but Netscape was not putting the word "Linux" into the browser
signature, because they didn't want Microsoft pointing at the browser
survey and claiming that LInux had xxx million users. Netscape didn't
put "Linux" into the browser signature until after the settlement was
accepted by Judge Kollar-Kotelly. This is why there were so many
browser surveys that indicated Linux was less than 1% of the market.
Even I don't know how many Linux deployments are really out there. It
could be anywhere from 10 million to 300 million. The more commonly
used number these days is around 40-50 million desktop deployments,
which includes LiveCD, DualBoot, and Virtual Machines. Linspire
suggests that there are only about 10 million "Dedicated Linux"
deployments, and most of those are point of service (cash registers,
call centers, teller terminals), basic office (secretarial,
distribution, and other situations where Open Office alone is "good
enough". Most assertions of more than 200 million deployments include
Linux appliances, PDAs, TIVO, and anything else that runs Linux in any
form.
Ironically, however, the publication of OSS code, and the adoption of
ODF as a standard, have triggered a number of ISVs to consider
multiplatform solutions, and as more JAVA, ODF, and OSS solutions are
deployed, the number of Linux deployments also increases.
In effect, the courts did nothing so the OSS community pulled out all
the stops. Now we have SCO and Microsoft trying to claim that they own
this OSS and third-party software. Microsoft has agreed to "cross
license" technology with Novell, offering to distribute Novell server
software (for a hefty commission, of course).
> Similarly, consumers have by and large shown little inclination to
> abandon Windows, with its reliable developer support, in favor of an
> operating system whose future in the PC realm is unclear.
Again, this was Judge Jackson refuting Microsoft's claim that the
entire industry could defect to Linux in 6 months and bankrupt
Microsoft instantly if Microsoft were to weaken it's grip on the
industry, or if it was broken up.
The first antitrust hearnings were announced in 1997, nearly 10 years
later, Microsoft still gets Windows preinstalled on 99% of the machines
sold by the largest OEMs. This is an even larger percentage than
Microsoft had back in 1997, when only 92% of the machines were sold
with Windows preinstalled.
The main difference today is that there are far more "white boxes" and
far more "Linux Ready" boxes, which can be converted to Linux in less
than an hour. Most of the white boxes were designed to run Linux.
Microsoft has allowed retailers who sell these white boxes to sell OEM
versions of Windows XP for as little as $60, just to maintain a
presence in the white box market. Most White box vendors know exactly
which machines are "Linux ready".
In most countries outside the United States, most "white boxes" are
sold with Linux preinstalled. Microsoft maintains that these boxes are
used for piracy, but have yet to produce any substantial body of White
box machines running pirated versions of Windows.
> By itself, Linux's open-source development model shows no signs of liberating that
> operating system from the cycle of consumer preferences and developer
> incentives that, when fueled by Windows' enormous reservoir of
> applications, prevents non-Microsoft operating systems from competing."
The courts did weaken Microsoft's grip, but not the Antitrust
settlement. The Sun case allowed Sun to force Microsoft to distribute
the latest version of Java, which has made the proliferation of
multi-platform write-once run anywhere Java applications, including GUI
interfaces, far more popular in the ISV community.
The availablity of the cygwin library, along with other multiplatform
libraries such as Qt have also made the Linux API far more popular.
Many 3rd party applications are now written in mutiplatform APIs
including OpenGL, cygwin, Qt, GTK, and other toolkits forged in the
Linux foundry.
The industry itself has vindicated Judge Jackson's original findings.
No single competitor could have effectively challenged Microsoft's
monopoly. The Linux community has had to give away $billions worth of
intellectual property ranging from GPL source code, to freely
distributable live-CDs which can allow a machine to be booted into
Linux. Critical technologies such as Virtualization had to be
published freely in such packages as VMWare Player, Bochs, and Xen.
Even when users adopted Linux, Microsoft still collected royalties in
the form of permission to use Windows libraries with WINE or as a
virtual machine. This included Crossover and Win4Lin as well as OEM
supplied Windows licenses.
In many ways, Microsoft's presence in the market is stronger than ever.
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