Solving "The Microsoft Problem."
Erich Kohl
and monopoly position in the computer industry.
But then it occurred to me -- how many unique operating systems can the
industry support? After all, look at Linux. The number of
distributions is pretty bewildering, which is not necessarily a point
in its favor. I just think it's nice that the ubiquitous "Windows PC"
lets the average person hop from one computer to the next, secure in
the knowledge that they are compatible with one another.
Now, don't get me wrong. I like the idea that alternative operating
systems such as OS X and Linux give Windows a run for its money. And
I'm not necessarily advocating any kind of continuation of Microsoft's
bully-like dominance. But I'm starting to think that because of the
nature of what people want to do with information and our desire to
make it universal, it might actually be natural for one particular
technology standard (in this case Windows, or, Microsoft software in
general) to carve out for itself the largest market share.
Is there a way we can open up more room for true competition, all the
while ensuring that we don't end up with a situation where too many
operating systems start crippling the portability we are starting to
take for granted?
I once knew a guy (he was basically a utopian communist, now that I
think of it) who even took this concept much further and proposed the
notion that it shouldn't matter what software and/or operating system a
computer is running. He wondered why we shouldn't simply be able to
take a floppy disk with some files on it, put it in the disk drive of
literally *any* personal computer, and make it work. Is something that
grandiose even possible? Granted, we aren't really using floppies that
much any more, but I'm sure you all understand what I mean.
Of course, we actually are much closer to that goal than we ever were
before. I can plug my USB flash drive into either my Vista PC or my
iMac, and both machines recognize it. Macs (with Intel CPUs) can run
Windows and related apps. A Linux distribution like Ubuntu can read
from and write to a Windows partition. There's a version of MS Office
for both Windows and OS X, and the free, open-source productivity suite
Open Office runs on multiple platforms and can recognize MS Office file
formats. Plus, when any PC is connected to the Internet -- regardless
of what OS it is running -- information is freely exchanged via all of
the widely adopted standards that make the Information Superhighway
possible.
But still, incompatibilities have not been completely eliminated.
Maybe the point I'm making is that we are ultimately forced to deal
with a significant plethora of technological (and even economic)
ramifications as long as we stick to our current paradigm -- that is,
our requirement of having an "operating system" as the intermediary
between hardware and applications (and data). Is there another way?
AHappyCamper
> A lot of people complain about Microsoft's voracious appetite (greed?)
> and monopoly position in the computer industry.
>
> But then it occurred to me -- how many unique operating systems can the
> industry support?
With a million virus/malware popups/spybots/exploits, Microsoft Windows
has the worst 10 OSes, out of 7475 OSes currently available.
The Other 7,465 are FREE in their lack of lock-in, DRM, monopolistic
practices, and Microsoft virus/botware/malware/exploits.
And, to reiterate, the OTHER 7465 OSes are free to use, free in all
rights of Speech, and respect ownership of personal data files.
Sheesh, too many of you are really believing what Corporate says in the
promotional material.
Thundercleets
It is M$ monopoly and wholesale code and IP theft that burns most
about M$ success.
One of the main reasons M$ hates CopyLeft is that they can't rape
small start-ups and coders as easily as they did before.
As an OS, on it's own merits Windows, in all forms, sucks.
M$ has never been known as being a "tight" code house so it's no
surprise.
You can chalk-up M$ success to vendor lock-in, market intimidation and
graft.
I don't see anyone but zealots missing M$ when they do finally burn
out.
That term "Information Superhighway" indicates a kind of naivete.
It is almost ironic that M$ has been working hard for years to make it
hard for anyone not using "their standards" to use the internet.
TMT
Early in 1995, the BBS was still king. Compuserve, Prodigy, AOL—these
were the powerhouses. Most of computer-buying America knew little, if
anything, about the Internet.
Bill Gates even stated flatly at a press conference that the Internet
was a passing fad and unimportant.
Certified Mail: July 2002
July 2002, MCP Magazine Readers
Rex Ballard
> and monopoly position in the computer industry.
> But then it occurred to me -- how many unique operating systems can the
> industry support? After all, look at Linux. The number of
> distributions is pretty bewildering, which is not necessarily a point
> in its favor. I just think it's nice that the ubiquitous "Windows PC"
> lets the average person hop from one computer to the next, secure in
> the knowledge that they are compatible with one another.
Keep in mind that there are two basic "standard frameworks" for
Linux. There is LSB-3 which is commercially supported, and there is
the "Debian" framework which is more of a "pure Open Source"
framework.
Beyond those two frameworks, the differences in distributions are
mostly a function of what applications are included, how settings are
configured by default, and an overall "distribution philosophy".
Popular themes include "easy to use", "easy to install", "built for
commercial systems", or "most flexible".
There are some market leaders, such as Red Hat, SUSE and Ubuntu. At
the same time, the other 100 some distributions often introduce
innovations.
> Now, don't get me wrong. I like the idea that alternative operating
> systems such as OS X and Linux give Windows a run for its money. And
> I'm not necessarily advocating any kind of continuation of Microsoft's
> bully-like dominance.
There are standards, public standards, which Linux adheres to. In
fact, today, Linux is the measure of compliance and the standard
against which compliance is measured.
> But I'm starting to think that because of the
> nature of what people want to do with information and our desire to
> make it universal, it might actually be natural for one particular
> technology standard (in this case Windows, or, Microsoft software in
> general) to carve out for itself the largest market share.
Actually, there are specific standards already in place, and Linux
adheres to them. In fact, standards have guided both Linux and Unix.
Unix established standards back in the early 1980s, at the component
level, and the standards were published. These standards included ARPA/
DOD standards and later IETF, X/Open, Posix, and X11.
Ironically, it is Microsoft who has been notorious for their "embrace,
extend, extinguish" of these published standards, eventually trying to
force corporate and individual Windows users to accept perversions of
the standards, many of which caused security problems, including
viruses, worms, and other malware "back doors".
> Is there a way we can open up more room for true competition, all the
> while ensuring that we don't end up with a situation where too many
> operating systems start crippling the portability we are starting to
> take for granted?
That is exactly the situation we have today. Remember, we have OS/X,
and Linux,
and Linux is Open Source software, which means that there is no way to
monopolize it. On the other hand, it's easy to make money, but not
too easy. Distributions have to be supported, tested, coordinated,
updated, and integrated effectively. In addition, distribution can be
delivered over high speed internet, but it also helps to be able to
get DVDs to book stores in the form of books or magazines.
> I once knew a guy (he was basically a utopian communist, now that I
> think of it) who even took this concept much further and proposed the
> notion that it shouldn't matter what software and/or operating system a
> computer is running.
Note that even GPL advocates are not communists. When the GNU
manifesto was first published, one of the key elements was explaining
business models for GPL software. The software is "free" and you
can't make proprietary enhancements that you distribute publicly
without giving those enhancements back to the author of the original
GPL product, but you can make profit in packaging, service, support,
and documentation.
Other licenses such as LGPL and Artistic license permit the use of
"plug-ins" which isolate proprietary code from Open Source code, so
that the core framework remains consistent, and the proprietary
enhancements can be installed separately, or packaged together with
the OSS products.
> He wondered why we shouldn't simply be able to
> take a floppy disk with some files on it, put it in the disk drive of
> literally *any* personal computer, and make it work. Is something that
> grandiose even possible? Granted, we aren't really using floppies that
> much any more, but I'm sure you all understand what I mean.
There are already standards in place, some of which even Microsoft
can't ignore. This is much the goal of Java as well. Modern versions
of Java are much more platform independent.
> Of course, we actually are much closer to that goal than we ever were
> before. I can plug my USB flash drive into either my Vista PC or my
> iMac, and both machines recognize it.
So will Linux. Linux might be more reluctant to write to an NTFS
formatted USB drive, but the USB flash drive will work fine (since
it's FAT32).
> Macs (with Intel CPUs) can run
> Windows and related apps.
So can Linux. If your PC was licensed with XP, you can use VMWare
converter to create the same type of VMWare image that Mac uses, and
you can then run Windows apps when you need them, but you can run
faster Linux apps that don't need so much RAM and CPU.
There is also WINE, with the option of Crossover, which is even
capable of running Office and IE.
> A Linux distribution like Ubuntu can read
> from and write to a Windows partition. There's a version of MS Office
> for both Windows and OS X, and the free, open-source productivity suite
> Open Office runs on multiple platforms and can recognize MS Office file
> formats.
Not perfect, but "good enough". There are also many corporations and
institutions that are now adopting Open Document Format and are
sunsetting Microsoft Office formats. It seems that exactly what was
predicted by Richard Stallman in 1984, that the documents stored in
proprietary formats which allow the vendor of the proprietary software
to extort unreasonable sums of money from corporations - even when the
proprietary software had lost it's attraction, had come true.
Microsoft has been extorting about $40 billion/year for almost 15
years, and corporations are tired of having to announce layoffs,
cutbacks, and no bonuses, just because Microsoft wants everybody to
upgrade to a new version of Windows and/or Office. The CEOs have
gotten fed up with feeding Microsoft's 85% or even 45% profit margin
while their own profit margins of 15-20% are cut in half thanks to the
costs of the upgrades.
> Plus, when any PC is connected to the Internet -- regardless
> of what OS it is running -- information is freely exchanged via all of
> the widely adopted standards that make the Information Superhighway
> possible.
Microsoft has tried repeatedly to hijack the internet several times.
> But still, incompatibilities have not been completely eliminated.
Microsoft does everything they can to introduce as many
incompatibilities as possible.
> Maybe the point I'm making is that we are ultimately forced to deal
> with a significant plethora of technological (and even economic)
> ramifications as long as we stick to our current paradigm -- that is,
> our requirement of having an "operating system" as the intermediary
> between hardware and applications (and data). Is there another way?
You make a very effective argument for Linux/Unix. Remember, one of
the main features of Unix is that it makes any number of different
types of hardware look logically identical, allowing interoperability
when using TCP/IP and other public standards.
Rex Ballard
> On Jun 10, 2:32 pm, "Erich Kohl" <synth.virtu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > A lot of people complain about Microsoft's voracious appetite (greed?)
> > and monopoly position in the computer industry.
It's not just talk either. Remember that Microsoft has been
investigated and/or prosecuted and/or sued for numerous criminal
activities and most of these have resulted in preliminary judgements
against Microsoft that led Microsoft to offer preemptory settlements.
Criminal acts committed by Microsoft and ruled by judges to be
criminal acts inlude fraud, extortion, sabotage, blackmail,
embezzlement, theft, and obstruction of justice.
Microsoft's top executives avoid criminal prosecution by writing
carefully worded settlements which, in effect, grant immunity
Microsoft and it's executives and employees in exchange for minor
concessions and what appear to be generous settlements. Microsoft
pays an average of $2 BILLION per YEAR in settlements and another $2
BILLION per YEAR in LEGAL FEES in it's defense.
Microsoft has figure out a way to make criminal activity profitable
and avoid the usual criminal prosecutions an the same time. In other
words, at Microsoft CRIME DOES PAY.
> > But then it occurred to me -- how many unique operating systems can the
> > industry support?
Go to the grocery store. How many brands of soap to you see? Include
all forms of soap from bar soap to dishwashing liquid to clothes
washing detergent to shampoos and facial cleansers.
Now imagine walking into the "Microsoft store" where you see, at most
4 different types of lye soap made from pig fat and lye. It smells
horrible, and makes your skin break out in hives, and your clothes
disintigrate after 10-12 washings, but since it's the only stuff you
can get, and it's "thrown in" with each clothing purchase, each
haircut, and you employer gives you a bottle of the stuff along with
your paycheck, you really don't get a chance to use anything else.
Furthermore, the other soap makers are locked out of the market, and
can't get any publicity for their soap. They advertize in specialty
magazines to people whose alergies to Microsoft soap is so severe that
they are willing to order it and have it shipped to them, and they
even mix it themselves, mixing a concentrate with water or alcohol or
lotion, depending on what type of soap is needed.
The people who use this soap not only don't get allergies, their
clothes last longer, and their hair doesn't fall out so quickly, and
they don't have dandruff, and they actually smell nice for several
hours. They try to tell their friends about the soap, but they are
seen as crackpots because everybody knows that Microsoft soap is
"Free" and they get more of it than they really need.
What these people don't realize is that 20% of their paycheck,
including 40% of what they spend on clothes, is going to Microsoft to
pay for their "Free" soap. Microsoft has the clothing makers
convinced that if they don't include the soap, nobody will buy the
clothes. They also threaten employers by threatening to cut off their
supply of soap, telling them that without the Microsoft soap all of
their employees will get sick and die.
Sounds absurd doesn't it? When you use the word Soap instead of
software, and clothes instead of PCs, it just seems ridiculous that
anybody would fall for a scam like that, or pay so much, or let it get
so out of control. Yet, that's what Microsoft did for almost 30
years, increasing our dependency on their products, expanding their
control, and eventually forcing us to take products we didn't want or
need, while killing off all of the competitors through criminally
anticompetitive tactics including fraud, extortion, blackmail,
sabotage, embezzlement, theft, and obstruction of justice.
Had Procter and Gamble been able to pull that off, there wouldn't be
colgate polmolive, or any of the other competitors in the market, and
a grocery store might only have 1 isle of soap that smelled horrible,
ruined your clothes, was toxic, and made your hair fall out.
[snip]
> It is M$ monopoly and wholesale code and IP theft that burns most
> about M$ success.
Keep in mind that Microsoft has obtained monopoly in a wide variety of
markets, including not just the Operatign System, but nearly every
other type of application, from text editors and word processors to
web browsers and databases. Most of their stuff his horrible,
incompatible with everything else, and forces companies to spend
$TRILLIONS world-wide on wasted time and effort to support the
proprietary Microsoft infrastructure. The costs include everything
from malware and identity theft to manual copy/paste of documents into
useful forms to lost documents that take forever to find, or can't be
found, to ineffective collaboration, where a simple request can take
weeks to get approved because it has to be written as a Word document,
complete with way too much information, when often, a simple text
request made via instant messaging or e-mail would provide very
specific responses and/or requests for more information.
> One of the main reasons M$ hates CopyLeft is that they can't rape
> small start-ups and coders as easily as they did before.
OSS can't be controlled, it can't be bought, it can't be stolen, and
it can't be stopped. That creates a problem for Microsoft. Worse,
many of Microsoft's former partners, now competitors locked out of the
market and dependent on some huge parent company for survival (Lotus,
WordPerfect, Borland,...) are resorting to Open Source as a way to get
back into the market.
Microsoft tries to lock them out, but since end-users can install it
themselves, and there is little or no funding approval required, OSS
is spreading very quickly. It sees that, according to a few surveys,
FF now installed on more PCs than IE. Open Office is now running on
more PCs than Microsoft Office.
And yet, Microsoft is still able to extort $40 billion/year from OEMs,
Corporations, and institutions for their "shovelware", including
Windows, Office, and IE. Again, it seems that Microsoft's strategy is
to starve out the competition, locking them out of the corporate and
institutional budget. 600 million end users might install OO because
they can do more in less time, but Microsoft still gets it's $40
billion/year.
> As an OS, on it's own merits Windows, in all forms, sucks.
> M$ has never been known as being a "tight" code house so it's no
> surprise.
Actually, it has been Microsoft's strategy to burn as much RAM and
hard drive and CPU as possible, because it's supposed to help force
people into buying new computers. The irony is that Windows 98
running on a 400 Mhz Pentium II was faster than Vista running on a
dual-core 8 billion instruction per second Duo..
> You can chalk-up M$ success to vendor lock-in, market intimidation and
> graft.
Microsoft's good fortune was fundamentally part of their unique
understanding of copyright law just months after it was revised in
1977 (law drafted in 1976 and put into effect in 1977). Bill's father
understood the law, and encouraged Bill to license rather than sell
the software, and even helped Bill write most of the early Microsoft
licenses. Microsoft had made several million dollars licensing BASIC
in ROM. IBM didn't find out until it was almost too late, that
Microsoft wanted to grant IBM a nonexclusive license rather than just
charge a big huge lump sum. It was the timing of Microsoft's proposal
that caught them by surprise. Rather than asking for licenses up
front, the way another vendor did, Microsof let IBM play along until
it was too late, and then gave their price.
Erich Kohl
> On Jul 8, 10:31 am, Thundercleets <thundercle...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > On Jun 10, 2:32 pm, "Erich Kohl" <synth.virtu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > A lot of people complain about Microsoft's voracious appetite
> > > (greed?) and monopoly position in the computer industry.
>
> It's not just talk either. Remember that Microsoft has been
> investigated and/or prosecuted and/or sued for numerous criminal
> activities and most of these have resulted in preliminary judgements
> against Microsoft that led Microsoft to offer preemptory settlements.
> Criminal acts committed by Microsoft and ruled by judges to be
> criminal acts inlude fraud, extortion, sabotage, blackmail,
> embezzlement, theft, and obstruction of justice.
>
> Microsoft's top executives avoid criminal prosecution by writing
> carefully worded settlements which, in effect, grant immunity
> Microsoft and it's executives and employees in exchange for minor
> concessions and what appear to be generous settlements. Microsoft
> pays an average of $2 BILLION per YEAR in settlements and another $2
> BILLION per YEAR in LEGAL FEES in it's defense.
>
> Microsoft has figure out a way to make criminal activity profitable
> and avoid the usual criminal prosecutions an the same time. In other
> words, at Microsoft CRIME DOES PAY.
>
What I'd like to know is, is the amount of hot water Microsoft is in
due to its legal troubles any greater or lesser than any other typical
large corporation or organization?
That's no excuse, of course. But sometimes I just wonder if Microsoft
is put under the microscope with greater scrutiny because of their size
and/or success.
That analogy is certainly thought-provoking, but as I see it, soap
doesn't necessarily have to be compatible with other brands of soap,
the way operating systems and applications have to be if we are going
to continue to develop a world in which information can be freely
exchanged.
If grandma uses Windows XP and her grandson uses Linux, she's going to
wonder if the photos she sends him are going to display properly on his
computer (or vice versa).
I suppose it's not entirely dissimilar to the situation that existed
when CP/M was king. I was not really into computers at the time when
that was happening, but since competing hardware manufacturers used
this dominant operating system, people knew that their machines
possessed a certain amount of compatibility with each other, and I'm
sure they benefited from it.
At any rate, even though I enjoy using Vista (and I wouldn't describe
myself as a Microsoft-hater), I'm looking forward to playing around
with the latest version of Ubuntu. I recently installed it on my
system in a separate partition, and I'm very impressed. I bought a
book on it and plan to spend more time with it. (But I must vent a
little: It took MULTIPLE attempts at experimenting with distributions
to find one that worked properly and the way I wanted. It wasn't any
more of a pain to get Vista up and running properly -- probably less.)
Erich Kohl
> [snip]
>
> > I once knew a guy (he was basically a utopian communist, now that I
> > think of it) who even took this concept much further and proposed
> > the notion that it shouldn't matter what software and/or operating
> > system a computer is running.
>
> Note that even GPL advocates are not communists. When the GNU
> manifesto was first published, one of the key elements was explaining
> business models for GPL software. The software is "free" and you
> can't make proprietary enhancements that you distribute publicly
> without giving those enhancements back to the author of the original
> GPL product, but you can make profit in packaging, service, support,
> and documentation.
>
> [snip]
Oh, I definitely don't believe that Linux and/or the open source
movement have anything to do with communism. But when you introduce
ideas like "free" and "community," well, it won't take long for someone
to make that comparison in ideology.
Mark Dodel
<synth.v...@gmail.com> wrote:
-> What I'd like to know is, is the amount of hot water Microsoft is in
-> due to its legal troubles any greater or lesser than any other typical
-> large corporation or organization?
->
-> That's no excuse, of course. But sometimes I just wonder if Microsoft
-> is put under the microscope with greater scrutiny because of their size
-> and/or success.
->
Microsoft has twice been found guilty of being a predatory monopoly.
After each negotiated settlement they promptly did whatever they
wanted.
No one else would do that and get away with it.
Mark
--
From the eComStation of Mark Dodel
Warpstock 2008 - Santa Cruz, California: http://www.warpstock.org
Warpstock Europe 2008 - Düsseldorf, Germany: http://www.warpstock.eu