Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> If Microsoft (or its henchmen) hates something, it means it's
> bad for Microsoft.
>
> Think: Linux advocacy, critics.
http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/Comes-3096.pdf
Slide on PDF page 45:
"/Mopping up/. During the mopping-up phase, ensure that the
enemy technology is routed. Use the press, the Internet, etc. to
heighten the impression that the enemy is desperate, demoralized,
defeated, deceased."
This "Microsoft has 96% of the netbook market" does exactly this,
IMHO.
Text page on PDF page 55:
"/11: Mopping up/"
"Mopping Up can be a lot of fun. In the Mopping Up phase,
Evangelism's goal is to put the final nail into the competing
technology's coffin, and bury it in the burning depths of the
earth. Ideally, use of the competing technology becomes
associated with mental deficiency, as in, "he believes in Santa
Claus, the Easter Bunny, and OS/2." Just keep rubbing it in, via
the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. make the complete
failure of the competition's technology part of the mythology of
the computer industry. We want to place selection pressure on
the companies and individuals that show a genetic weakness for
competitor's technologies, to make the industry increasingly
resistant to such unhealthy strains, over time."
This is a company that the Minnesota Attorney General was quoted
as having little ethical boundaries:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2001-08-23-microsoft-letters.htm
[quote]
08/23/2001 - Updated 11:30 AM ET
Report: Microsoft funded 'grass roots' campaign
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Microsoft has been helping to fund a
letter-writing campaign to pressure state attorneys general to go
easy in their antitrust lawsuits against the software giant, the
Los Angeles Times reported Thursday. [...]
"It's sleazy," said Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch, whose
office received about 300 pro-Microsoft letters. "This is not a
company that appears to be bothered by ethical boundaries."
[/quote]
> When Microsoft assists something, it's means it's good
> Microsoft.
>
> Think: Mono, Moonlight, OOXML plug-ins, Hyper-V support, SLE*.
Good also meant limiting software competition with its products
by inhibiting functionality with the OS:
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_tuncom/major/mtc-00029523.htm
[quote]
In contrast to the RPFJ, a meaningful remedy must account for the
fact that Microsoft manipulates interface information in a
variety of ways to preclude competition. Although too numerous to
recount, Microsoft's tactics include:
* "Secret Interfaces" - Microsoft does not publish all the
interfaces it uses and does not publish all the interface
information that others need to develop products that
interoperate with Microsoft software.
* "Crippled Interfaces" - For some functions, Microsoft
publishes information about an interface that is inferior to the
interface that Microsoft itself uses to accomplish a function, or
publishes incomplete information about an interface.
* "Kick Me Interfaces" - Sometimes, Microsoft publishes
information about an interface that Microsoft uses to perform a
function, but it "marks" non-Microsoft software in a way that
assures the interface will operate in an inferior way. Microsoft
can "mark" competitors software through tagging, signing,
encrypted passwords, or by noting the absence of such features.
* "Moving Interfaces" - If, by some means, a third party has
been able to obtain adequate interface information that Microsoft
doesn't want it to have, Microsoft will simply move the
interface. For example, Novell successfully figured out how to
enable its directory services software to interoperate with
Windows NT. To counter Novell's success, in Windows 2000
Microsoft broke up and moved the computer files containing the
interface information used by Novell and marked, or signed,
information required for the interfaces so that Novell could
neither use Microsoft's interface information nor replace it.
The typical result of such tactics is that Microsoft makes
competing products appear inferior to Microsoft's products.
Microsoft's actions may make a competing product appear slower,
require more memory, or perform with limited functionality. These
tactics also enable Microsoft to persuade customers to buy
Microsoft's inferior and/or more expensive products simply to
avoid Microsoft's roadblocks.(15)
[/quote]
Why it took so long for Microsoft to produce their 6,000 pages of
documentation on their OS for the European Union court order?
They also broke Sun's ODF plug-in for Microsoft Word and can't
seem to produce a decent plug-in of their own.
> Microsoft openly states (Ballmer and Ozzie) that open source
> and/or GNU/Linux are the biggest threats to Microsoft.
>
> Does anyone really think Microsoft will help its biggest
> threat?
>
> Microsoft is a business. It operates for shareholders. It
> works to defeat its competitive threats.
>
> This is obvious, but Mono and Novell apologist Just. Don't.
> Get. It.
>
> Microsoft sued Linux (SCO, TomTom, others). What more proof
> does one need that Microsoft does battle so-called "cancer"?
The following is a rather indicting article by the EU Commission:
http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepaper.pdf
[quote]
Microsoft
A History of Anticompetitive Behavior and Consumer Harm
March 31, 2009 [...]
A. Microsoft’s Failure To Comply With The Final Judgment
In 2003, the DOJ discovered that Microsoft had built a feature
into Windows that invoked Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser,
rather than the user’s chosen default browser, contrary to the
clear obligations of the Final Judgment. [120]
Similarly, in 2004, Microsoft attempted to require licensees of
its middleware offering, the .NET Framework, to obtain
Microsoft’s prior consent before publishing any benchmark testing
results for the software. [121]
In 2005, Microsoft demanded that manufacturers of portable music
players sign exclusive deals if they wanted integration with
Microsoft’s Windows Media Player. [122]
And in 2007, Microsoft made changes to allow consumers limited
choice of desktop search products in Windows Vista only following
an extensive government investigation and pressure from a number
of U.S. States. While Microsoft eventually made changes to its
conduct in each of these instances, these incidents all
demonstrate Microsoft’s willingness to use its monopoly products
aggressively first and make changes later only when confronted
about its behavior. This is particularly striking coming, as it
does, within the very limited range of issues covered by the
Final Judgment. [123]
In fact, the district court overseeing the Final Judgment
extended the decree for two more years, to November 12, 2009,
because Microsoft still has not come into compliance with its
obligations regarding communications protocols. [124]
[/quote]
Footnotes:
[quote]
120. See Interim Joint Status Report on Microsoft’s Compliance
with the Final Judgments at 6 (Oct. 17, 2003), United States v.
Microsoft, 87 F. Supp. 2d 30 (D.D.C. 2000) (No. 98-1232),
available at http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f201300/201386.pdf
121. See Interim Joint Status Report on Microsoft’s Compliance
with the Final Judgments at 7–8 (Oct. 8, 2004), United States v.
Microsoft Corp., 87 F. Supp. 2d 30 (D.D.C. 2000) (No. 98-1232),
available at http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f205700/205751.pdf
After plaintiffs, which included the United States and
several state attorneys general, brought this complaint to
Microsoft’s attention, Microsoft responded that it was willing to
require prior notice, rather than prior consent. See id.
However, plaintiffs still believed this response was
inadequate to comply with the Final Judgment and continued to
demand modification of this requirement until Microsoft
eventually gave in, agreeing to make “additional changes”
resolving plaintiffs’ concerns.
See Interim Joint Status Report on Microsoft’s Compliance
with the Final Judgments at 6 (June 1, 2005), United States v.
Microsoft Corp., 87 F. Supp. 2d 30 (D.D.C. 2000) (No. 98-1232),
available at http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f209300/209307.pdf
122. See Interim Joint Status Report on Microsoft’s Compliance
with the Final Judgments at 12–13, (Oct. 19, 2005), United States
v. Microsoft Corp., 87 F. Supp. 2d 30 (D.D.C. 2000) (No.
98-1232). The DOJ’s October 2005 Joint Status Report noted that
it was “unfortunate that the draft specification contained the
exclusivity provision.” Id. at 13.
123. The European Commission recently fined Microsoft $1.35
billion for failure to comply with the Commission’s 2004
antitrust ruling. See Peppi Kiviniemi, EU Fines Microsoft $1.35
bn, LiveMint, , Feb. 28, 2008,
http://www.livemint.com/2008/02/27210155/EU-fines-Microsoft-135-bn.html?atype=tp
A lawyer for ECIS expressed a similar regret in regards to
Microsoft’s conduct in the EC, observing that it is “more
profitable [for Microsoft] to reap the anticompetitive benefits
of non-compliance with the law and to pay the fines than to
comply.” Id.
124. See Memorandum Opinion at 38 (Jan. 29, 2008), New York v.
Microsoft Corp., 224 F. Supp. 2d 76 (D.D.C. 2002) (No. 98-1232),
available at
http://www.microsoft-antitrust.gov/pdf/Jan292008MemOp.pdf
(“It is abundantly clear that more than five years after the
Communications Protocols and related technical documentation were
required to be available to licensees under § III.E, the
documentation envisioned by that Section is still not available
to licensees in a complete, useable, and certifiably accurate
form.”).
The district court extended the decree “based upon the
extreme and unforeseen delay in the availability of complete,
accurate, and useable technical documentation relating to the
Communications Protocols that Microsoft is required to make
available to licensees….” Id. at 3.
The district court further noted that allowing the
provisions of the Communications Protocols to expire jeopardized
the “full procompetitive impact” of the Final Judgment. Id. at 4.
3. Government Exhibit 940, Handwritten Notes of Intel’s Steven
McGeady, United States v. Microsoft, 87 F. Supp. 2d 30 (D.D.C.
2000) (No. 98-1232), available at
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/exhibits/940.pdf ;
see also Transcript of the Direct Examination of Intel’s
Steven McGeady, Nov. 10, 1998, at 18:8–20:6, United States v.
Microsoft, 87 F. Supp. 2d 30 (D.D.C. 2000) (No. 98-1232),
available at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/msdoj/trial.html
(“November 10, a.m.” link) (testifying that Mr. Gates
further indicated the one thing Microsoft might change was its
document retention policies).
4. See United States v. Microsoft Corp., 253 F.3d 34, 54-58
(D.C. Cir. 2001); see also Competition on the Internet: Hearing
of the House Competition Policy and Antirust Laws Task Force of
the House Judiciary Committee, 110th Cong. 49 (2008) (remarks of
Bradford L. Smith, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and
Corporate Secretary, Microsoft Corporation) (acknowledging that
as of July 2008, “we know that we have a dominant position, for
example, in the market for personal computer operating systems”).
13. See Jon Pepper, Like MS-DOS, Only Better, SOFTWARE MAG.,
Oct. 1990,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0SMG/is_n12_v10/ai_9560823
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HPT
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