08.20.07
Microsoft Against Standards: So Many Years, So Little Change
New off the boiling plate from the Comes vs Microsoft trial in Iowa…
Thanks to an anonymous friend, we finally have this OCR-ed court exhibit [large PDF] (66 pages) and a plain text version of it. As a teaser, below you’ll find some text which was extracted from the large document.
There was Microsoft chart, but we don’t sell it independently it always comes with Word and Excel and then so on. And so there are a whole bunch of other separate companies that have charting applications: Jendel Scientific and Deltapoint, and so forth. They do nothing but charting. And so I went to the various ISVs and said, “How would you like to all work together to form a standard charting-OLE interface for both, you know, custom interfaces and OLE automation interfaces?” And they said, “Great! Great!” But of course it only matters if Excel participates, because if Microsoft Office doesn’t use that charting interface, it really doesn’t matter. So I went to the Excel guys, which is what I had expected to do, and said specifically to…I can’t remember the guy’s name, the guy in Chart who was in charge of charting, “Hey, how would you like to standardize this stuff and work with these ISVs and make it a standard?” And his answer was very simple. He said, “Why should I work with~anyone outside the company to make their products better because all it’s going to do is help them sell copies that could otherwise be a Microsoft copy? Any money they’re making they can sell…they can spend on improving their product and staying in existence, and making it harder for us to do well. My job is to make Excel basically, like, the only application in the world. And if it doesn’t add money to my bottom line, then there’s no point in my spending any cycles on it”…
Does this remind anyone of Microsoft’s attitude towards OpenDocument format?
There is a great deal one can find among the exhibits. You may also recall some older exhibits such as this one [compressed PDF].
[Microsoft:] “…we should take the lead in establishing a common approach to UI and to interoperability (of which OLE is only a part). Our efforts to date are focussed too much on our own apps, and only incidentally on the rest of the industry. We want to own these standards, so we should not participate in standards groups. Rather, we should call ‘to me’ to the industry and set a standard that works now and is for everyone’s benefit. We are large enough that this can work.”
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
Jared Spurbeck said,
August 20, 2007 at 10:13 am
You’d think that this would be obvious, given their history. It seems to be trendy to talk about working together with Microsoft nowadays, though. Many thanks for bringing this to our attention.
MattD said,
August 20, 2007 at 11:57 am
Roy, do you or anyone else know of a site that has documented Microsoft’s history regarding standards as well as the practice of breaking compatibility? There’s a ton of info out there but it’s all over the place.
Roy Schestowitz said,
August 20, 2007 at 4:33 pm
MattD, Rob Weir had a nice chart (timeline), but I’m not aware of a site which is dedicated to recording Microsoft’s track record when it comes to standards. I have also received the following some hours ago (via E-mail):
By the way, the above PDF turns out to be
PX_2456.pdf.There is also this other interesting exhibit
[PDF]:It might be worth categorising and organising some of this material.