10.05.08
The Return of Vista Collusions: Will Ballmer be Deposed Soon?
Direct link to deposition video | Full set of the deposition videos (including Ogg Theora versions)
There are several interesting developments around Windows Vista at the moment and below is a summary.
Vista Trouble
A great proportion of Windows users not only neglect or reject Vista at times of computer purchase; some of them do it after repeated disappointment, so Microsoft has just extended — against its will — the duration of XP availability, proving that the backlash continues almost 2 years after RTM and many months after the release of Service Pack 1, which Microsoft said would Fix Everything™.
Partners originally had up until January 31 2009 to provide the Windows XP Professional recovery media with machines running Windows Vista Business or Windows Vista Ultimate. Now they have until July 31, 2009, a Reg reader has informed us.
According to the survey which is covered here, even in one of the most Microsoft-receptive countries in the world (United Kingdom), only 4% of the businesses have adopted Windows Vista. That’s how bad it is.
More than half (58 per cent) of businesses using Microsoft technology are “exploiting” Windows XP compared to just four per cent for Vista, according to the ‘reality checkers’ research by the Corporate IT Forum (Tif), seen exclusively by silicon.com.
The Vista Lie
Class action over the Vista collusion is proceeding and the following development sure is interesting.
Lawyers want Windows Update used to push ‘Vista Capable’ lawsuit notices
Lawyers in the “Windows Vista Capable” class-action lawsuit against Microsoft have asked a federal judge to force the company to use its Windows Update service to notify potential class members, court documents filed yesterday revealed.
In a motion submitted to U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman, lawyers for the plaintiffs laid out a notification plan that would include print ads in publications such as USA Today, banner ads on sites including Yahoo.com and MSN.com, and a message that would be delivered to Windows users by Microsoft’s automatic update service.
There is also an article about it in Linux Journal.
“Lawyers in the Windows Vista Capable lawsuit against Microsoft want a federal judge to force the company to use Windows Update to notify potential class members of the suit, according to court documents.” This is the opening paragraph in an article in ComputerWorld.
That may be only the beginning. Previously, it was the now-retired Jim Allchin who got called in for this investigation. He was not alone, either. Now it goes all the way up to the top as Microsoft’s CEO is called in and Microsoft fights to prevent a deposition.
The only thing CEO Steve Ballmer knew about Microsoft’s Windows Vista Capable marketing campaign was what he was told by subordinates, and he should not have to testify in the class-action lawsuit that accuses the firm of deceiving customers, the company said Friday.
Might Ballmer be deposed?
Microsoft tries to avoid Ballmer deposition in Vista suit
Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Steve Ballmer is the subject of a new legal squabble in a lawsuit over the company’s Windows Vista marketing practices.
Despite these excuses (yes, Ballmer himself struggled with Vista and knew about its flaws, as we noted and also showed before), the press remains skeptical.
Lawyers representing Microsoft in the “Windows Vista Capable” case filed a declaration by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer today, in which Ballmer says he was “not involved in any of the operational decisions about the Windows Vista Capable program.”
This is not over yet, so the court’s decision will be important. Did Microsoft’s chiefs decide to deceive? If so, how high up does this decision go?
Speaking of “misleading”, Roy Fielding has just thrown a fit at Microsoft, among others.
IBM, EMC, Microsoft blasted for ‘REST rip-off’
IBM, EMC, Microsoft and others have been blasted by the father of Representational State Transfer (REST) for making “misleading” and “idiotic” claims about a proposed specification for applications to talk to different vendors’ content management systems (CMS).
Picking on last month’s over-hyped Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) Specification announcement, Roy Fielding has said he’s getting tired of big companies making “idiotic claims about REST and their so-called RESTful architectures”.
Dishonesty might lead to ’success’, but dishonesty is not a quality. █
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.
Needs Sunlight said,
October 6, 2008 at 4:34 am
Who cares about deposed or not. Let’s see some hard jail time for Gates, Ballmer, Allchin and company.
Ziggyfish said,
October 6, 2008 at 5:43 am
Agreed.
Roy Schestowitz said,
October 6, 2008 at 5:46 am
In the United States, affluent people rarely go to prison; they pay bail, instead.
Needs Sunlight said,
October 6, 2008 at 8:35 am
@Roy: The normal procedures often don’t apply to special cases, such as treason, which could be relevant here, depending on how deep the investigation is allowed to go into M$ records.
Alternately, it could be dressed as an economic stimulus package. The depression isn’t being help any by productivity killers marketed as MS Office 2007 and MS Vista. SMEs have it hard enough without these albatrosses. Or getting rid of Windows in general will take a double-digit billions malware burden off the market.