07.01.09
Posted in Microsoft, Novell, Patents at 5:44 pm by Roy Schestowitz
Microsoft rarely assaults directly
“…Microsoft wished to promote SCO and its pending lawsuit against IBM and the Linux operating system. But Microsoft did not want to be seen as attacking IBM or Linux.”
–Larry Goldfarb, Baystar, key investor in SCO
Summary: Microsoft extorts $120 Million out of rival Intuit, using the patent troll it is grooming
ACCORDING TO Glyn Moody, the world’s biggest patent troll — an anti-competitive man [1, 2] who originates in Microsoft — makes his move to make some more money through patent racketeering. Others at Microsoft are still behind him [1, 2], so his firm (essentially a shell) should not be treated an an entity separate from Microsoft. Moody calls it “the Super-Troll” (we called it Übertroll).
As with all patent trolls, the danger is that the more companies accept these proffered licensing deals, the stronger the trolls become. I imagine we’ll see many more such stories leaking out as Intellectual Ventures gains in confidence and ambition.
The big problem is not only that Myhrvold’s an ex-Microsoftie, but that Microsoft is also an investor in the company; this means that we are not going to see Microsoft on the receiving end of Intellectual Venture’s “offers”. But there is a very real danger that at some point the larger supporters of open source will be.
[...]
Expect, then, Mr Myhrvold to emerge as public enemy number one for the free software community; it’s just a matter of time now that the super-troll has awoken from its deep slumbers and started to feed on those that foolishly fail to defend themselves.
Moody links to this article which is titled “Intuit Taxed $120 Million by Intellectual Ventures.” It says: “Its latest deal is a licensing agreement with financial software company Intuit Inc. that will bring in $120 million, according to people who have been told about the transaction.” It is worth reminding that it is not possible to cross-license with a patent troll because it hasn’t actual products which may constitute an infringement.
TechDirt complains that the press does not scrutinise such people for the huge damage they cause to the industry.
Aaron Martin-Colby points us to Good Magazine’s softball interview with Erich Spangenberg, considered by many to be one of the more successful “patent trolls” or “non-practicing entities” out there.
In other news of interest, Novell has just earned yet another software patent.
Network content in dictionary-based (de)compression , patent No. 7,554,467, invented by Kasman E. Thomas of Wilton, Conn., assigned to Novell, Inc. of Provo.
Yes, Novell is part of the problem. Its exclusive deal with Microsoft is hinged on software patents and it legitimises them. █
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Posted in Debian, FOSS, FSF, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Patents, Ubuntu at 5:10 pm by Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A lot of news about Mono with special emphasis on key developments
A GREAT DEAL has happened [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] since Richard Stallman spoke his mind about Mono. Coverage in the press was initially scarce because Stallman’s statement had been made public just before the end of the week, but here is ZDNet UK catching up.
GNU project founder Richard Stallman has called on developers to pull back from Mono, arguing that increasing use of the open-source toolset could prompt legal action by Microsoft.
Stallman does not even say much (or anything) about the fact that Mono makes Windows stronger [1, 2, 3]. Novell makes it happen. It is almost Novell’s obligation to do so because as the SCO-faithful Maureen O'Gara put it a couple of days ago, “Of course, without Microsoft propping up its Linux business, Novell would be in the tank.” To say more on the path to Windows, watch how Novell loses to its so-called ‘partner’. From the news:
Sydney Water has decided to migrate its email platform from Novell’s GroupWise to Microsoft Outlook/Exchange and is looking for a contractor to help implement the change.
Is Novell trying to befriend the company which takes away its Netware and GroupWise customers? If so, why? And why does it help Microsoft by promoting and spreading .NET? GreyGeek writes the following in LinuxToday:
De Icaza has been trying for EIGHT YEARS to get a distro to become totally dependent on MONO, and since Novell bought De Icaza, both have increased their propaganda efforts, with the assistance of Microsoft TEs, trolls, astroturfers and fanbois.
IF MONO is what its advocates are saying it is (the best thing since sliced bread and safe to use), it would already be in widespread adoption by now. The fact that you can count dependent programs on the fingers of one hand says VOLUMES about how the Linux community as a whole totally distrusts MONO. They are right to hold that distrust.
Java is open source and is MUCH less susceptible to patent attacks. It has CONSIDERABLY MORE tools and applications built with it and for it than MONO does.
Qt4 is GPL’d and has an excellent API and development tools, bar none. It also has excellent apps built by it and tools available for it.
MONO serves no purpose, except to raise the risk of patent attack or of being left in isolation WHEN Microsoft adds extensions to .NET that patents will prevent being added to MONO. This is backwards from Microsoft’s usual attack mode.
The remainder of this comment is well worth reading.
Perhaps the most interesting finding today is this poll. Based on 557 votes in total, 62% don’t trust Microsoft on Mono (at the time of writing). Compare that to 73% who said "No" to Mono (for whatever reason). Might it be safe to infer from this that the majority of people are with Stallman on this subject?
Debian
Looking at distributions more specifically, Stallman referred to Debian as an example. One of the Debian officials wrote an open letter to Stallman. It concludes as follows:
So, Debian didn’t change “the default installation” (whatever that’s supposed to be) but the dependency of a package which is used by a minority of our users who explicitly wishes to install everything GNOME related (which is to the best of my knowledge in accordance with upstream developers who added tomboy to the default GNOME installation, too).
This is already covered by Heise
Debian - Mono is not in our default installation
[...]
In response to the open letter written by free software guru Richard Stallman about the Mono problem, Alexander Schmehl, Debian developer and spokesperson for the GNU/Linux distribution has pointed out that Debian has no plans to include the controversial programming environment in the default GNOME installation. Stallman, who opened his letter with “Debian’s decision to include Mono in the default installation, for the sake of Tomboy”, had suggested that Debian were including the Mono libraries for anyone using Debian with GNOME.
There are other noteworthy remarks and there are skeptics of Mono inside Debian. How is this for an argument?
I recently came across this very interesting article, written in 1999, which details the tactics used by Microsoft to fight IBM. They obviously saw OS/2 as a threat. Back then, Windows 95 was the trading token. They could have caused IBM a great deal of harm shall they refused to license it to them, but it seems the idea of subjugating IBM was more appealing. This is how Garry Norris (IBM) put it:
“Microsoft repeatedly said we would suffer in terms of prices, terms, conditions and support programs, as long as we were offering competing products.“
“[Microsoft] insisted that IBM sell 300,000 copies of Windows 95 in the first five months or face a 20 percent price increase“
Nice deal, eh? Make your dependancy on Windows 95 stronger, or else we’ll use your existing dependancy on Windows 95 against you. No surprise IBM abandoned the PC market. Are Red Hat and Sun/Oracle set on the same direction?
Why don’t people learn from history? It is an immense loss to ignore all these lessons. Consider what Bill Gates, for example, had to say on this subject.
Ubuntu
Canonical repeatedly insists that it will not change its Mono policy, not even after recommendations from the FSF and SFLC. There is a lot of coverage about it, such as:
- As It Stands, Ubuntu Has No Issues With Mono
- Ubuntu’s Position on Mono Revealed (Update)
- Mono Discussion: Stallman Warns, Ubuntu Dismissive
This comes at a price. From yesterday, for example, there is this:
Our company also takes the potential threat of patents seriously. As such we stand by the position of the SFLC, FSF and RMS in that Mono is just too dangerous.
We are therefore going to look at switching from Ubuntu to Fedora.
The threat is too great to ignore. I wish the UTB would reconsider this as more harm will come to Ubuntu rather than good.
For context, there is more in this address.
Sam Varghese cites the assessment of the SFLC and aligns this with Canonical’s relative apathy.
The Ubuntu technical board has announced that it sees no reason to consider a dependency on Mono as an issue when suggesting applications to be included in the default set included in the GNU/Linux distribution.
[...]
The Software Freedom Law Centre, which provides “legal representation and other law-related services to protect and advance Free, Libre and Open Source Software” has a diametrically different view.
Following the statement made by Free Software Foundation chief Richard M. Stallman against Debian’s inclusion of Mono as a default, SFLC technology director, Bradley Kuhn , has written an essay, backing Stallman’s view about it being better to avoid a language like C#.
And to conclude, popular blogger devnet writes about Ubuntu’s decision: “I think this is pretty bold…they’re inviting someone to throw the first stone so to speak.
“I’m with Stallman on this one….better safe than sorry.” █
“I saw that internally inside Microsoft many times when I was told to stay away from supporting Mono in public. They reserve the right to sue”
–Robert Scoble, former Microsoft evangelist
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Posted in Database, Europe, FOSS, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Open XML, Windows at 4:34 pm by Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft demonstrates that non-Free software is simply incapable of handling mission-critical tasks like GNU/Linux does (in Wall Street for example)
BACKED by roughly 20 references, we have already written quite extensively about the recurring issues at the LSE (the stock market, not the school). It is considered to be Microsoft’s poster child that they brag about in commercials all over their Web site. By some people’s assessment, this is considered the case study for Microsoft, never mind the excessive redundancy (cost) and poor track record.
Well, guess what?
The LSE is calling it quits and dumping the platform.
What an unbelievable PR disaster. IDG has the details:
London Stock Exchange reportedly to dump £40m platform
[...]
Dropping TradElect would be a dramatic about-face for the exchange, which had heavily promoted its ability to rival newer, dedicated electronic exchanges, and plumbed millions of pounds into doing so. It runs on HP ProLiant Servers and Microsoft .Net and SQL Server 2000 systems, and within a Cisco network architecture.
How will Microsoft respond to this PR gaffe, which was probably an expected blunder? Analogous systems running GNU/Linux are true success stories.
In a similar vein, now that the UK abandons this system, who can ever rely on proprietary formats like OOXML, for example? That too will be at risk if Glyn Moody gets his way. He is rallying for support at the moment.
Next week, I’m taking part in a debate with a Microsoft representative about the passage of the OOXML file format through the ISO process last year. Since said Microsoftie can draw on the not inconsiderable resources of his organisation to provide him with a little back-up, I thought I’d try to even the odds by putting out a call for help to the unmatched resource that is the Linux Journal community. Here’s the background to the meeting, and the kind of info I hope people might be able to provide.
Not surprisingly, the meeting is neither for my nor Microsoft’s benefit, but for that of Richard Steel, who is CIO of the London Borough of Newham. Those with good memories may recall that back in 2003 it looked like Newham was going to switch to open source, in what could have been a real breakthrough for free software in the UK, but that it then changed its mind and signed a long-term - and secret - deal with Microsoft. Winning Newham was so important to Microsoft that it helped set up a competitive trial…
The Newham situation is one that we wrote about in:
Indeed, it is rather ugly. Newham’s people are hopefully paying attention to the significant news from LSE. It is also in London. █
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Posted in FOSS, FUD, Microsoft at 4:13 pm by Roy Schestowitz
• IE 8 Get the facts campaign gets it wrong
If Microsoft wants me and others like me, to take IE 8 seriously, I expect them to treat our intelligence with some respect. Anything less, and after a while, we’ll have been taught to discount their bold claims.
• Excellent example for the threat to the openness of the internet
Were you ever worried that the internet could be controlled by single vendor technology? That there is certain information that you can only see and get when using one specific browser? That interoperability is at risk?
You are certainly not paranoid if you have such worries. Microsoft Australia now gives an example for what is possible and done by offering the chance to get $10,000 by finding information on some website - WHICH CAN ONLY BE VIEWED USING INTERNET EXPLORER 8 !!
• Browser Wars: Get the facts! Sort of…
But… consider the situation in Europe where Windows 7 will be supplied sans browser.
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Posted in Microsoft, Vista, Vista 7, Windows at 4:06 pm by Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Beyond the hype there is a rather colossal failure that the press actually reports on
HERE IS just a quick pointer to this new article from IDG. It shows that Windows XP (and GNU/Linux) is still keeping Vista out of people’s PCs.
A year ago today, Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows XP, no longer selling new copies in most venues. The June 30 kill date for XP followed a six-month outcry from users about Windows Vista, with demands that Microsoft keep XP available alongside Vista for the many users who were frustrated by ease-of-use, compatibility, and retraining issues.
The same should be expected from Vista 7, which is just like Windows Vista under its hood. And speaking of Vista 7 pricing, here is an interesting new accusation of price-fixing.
Who in their right mind will purchase Windows 7 at these prices?
The answer is of course is that Windows will not be sold at that price. Instead Microsoft will use its OEM monopoly control to fix prices so that it is priced to undercut competitors in any area they make an inroad by offering low OEM prices with conditions attached such as hardware spec. price etc. and offering rebates so that OEMs effectively are paid by Microsoft to keep competitors off preloaded systems. They are doing exactly this on netbooks and nettops right now, and there is a long suspicion that the reluctance of the likes of Dell and HP to advertise or aggressively sell Linux PCs and laptops that are preloaded with Linux in the past is due to such market manipulation.
See what we published about the scam of Vista 7 only a day ago. It is related to this. █
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Posted in Europe, Finance, Microsoft at 10:14 am by Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Another classic case of illegitimate use of money without public tender
THE GOVERNMENT of Switzerland was recently sued for doing this type of thing, which is a violation of the law. See for example:
- Microsoft Sued Over Its Corruption in Switzerland, Microsoft Debt Revisited
- Can the United Kingdom and Hungary Still be Sued for Excluding Free Software?
- 3 New Counts of Antitrust Violation by Microsoft?
- Is Microsoft Breaking the Law in Switzerland Too?
- Microsoft Uses Lobbyists to Attack Holland’s Migration to Free Software and Sort of Bribes South African Teachers Who Use Windows
- ZDNet/eWeek Ruins Peter Judge’s Good Article by Attacking Red Hat When Microsoft Does the Crime
- Week of Microsoft Government Affairs: a Look Back, a Look Ahead
- Lawsuit Against Microsoft/Switzerland Succeeds So Far, More Countries/Companies Should Follow Suit
- Latest Reports on Microsoft Bulk Deals Being Blocked in Switzerland, New Zealand
- Swiss Government and Federal Computer Weekly: Why the Hostility Towards Free Software?
- Switzerland and the UK Under Fire for Perpetual Microsoft Engagements
The Portuguese government appears to be engaging in similar practices. The European Commission-backed Open Source Observatory has some new coverage on that, which is summarises as follows:
Portugal’s National Association for the promotion of Free Software (Ansol) accuses the government Office of Construction and Property (INCI) of having broken procurement rules after it admitted on Monday that it had signed a 268,000 euro contract with Microsoft for the government’s website on Public Expenses, Base, without a public tender.
The full story told by ANSOL is a little long-winded, but here is this longer version:
You may find it quite newsworthy as it is scandalous: people admit what are probably crimes with their best angel faces put on.
Last year the government mandated that public expenses should be online for everybody to see, starting at the end of July 2008, the responsible entity is called INCI (some overview of the law and process can be found here and here).
This led the site called Base, which only listed, sequentially, the expenses (c.f. official Government site).
It quickly led to some people finding absurd software related expenses (the public expenses with software soap opera), but as it was revealing to be quite useful, it was also revealing a fatal flaw of the site: search was, in fact, worse than failure.
The list was composed of 60 items each pages, which you could only navigate in the following way: go to the first page, press next until the end OR go to the last page and press previous until the beginning. It was completely impractical do find anything as more and more public entities registered their expenses, you either had a way to search or the purpose of the site was now to hide expenses while pretending to show them.
The site had a search box, but it didn’t search through the expenses, only through “articles” in that website. Searching for “office” would actually result in adverts to Microsoft Office Server (MS SharePoint). Scandalous!
Many had complained to the official institution and I read at least one blogger who claimed to not even receive an official answer to his inquiries on the matter (I have an extensive list of blog entries and news articles I found about the subject at the time, but right now I can’t find which of then had this article). The government officials from INCI denied to ever receiving any contact prior to January 2009. [news paper article in the main daily newspaper Publico]
ANSOL, a Portuguese association for the promotion of Free Software, saw the need to have search because it would be an useful tool to search for software related expenses which would be helpful to denounce the (mostly) illegal expenses with software in the public administration, so after some development attempts of friends and associates we finally found out how to extract the data from the official site, by web-spidering the unmanageable list.
And with a few man-hours of work and the money necessary to register a domain for two years (both mine, in the name of ANSOL), we created the web-site Transparência na AP (Transparency in the Public Administration) and announced it on January 13th, 2009.
It works “just like google” and it provides many features the official site doesn’t until today.
It generated quite a scandal, Publico put it on the first page, referencing a full page 4 article on the matter, and a positive mention about my person in the last page as an example of citizenship.
People were finding hundreds of dubious expenses. I don’t know if any of them got to courts, but INCI claimed it was just a couple of errors made by the people who submitted the values.
The truth was that there were way too many “mistakes”, and some public entities felt quite insulted because they claimed to have submitted them correctly, and were demanding for correction of the registered values for many months (one of them was the City Hall of Sines).
Anyway, our website was such a success that the day the article showed up at Publico (16th of January), the website broke down due to the sheer number of hits, in a few hours about 200 thousand visits (not page hits, visits!). We had to, in emergency and with the evident technical problems of changing DNS entries, move to a more powerful server.
In the newspaper article (by the way, full copy is available here), INCI claimed it would have search in the next 10 business days. It took over a month!
Later on we had a meeting with INCI where we explained that the site still had many problems, for instance navigating until page 115 and then clicking next would provide a fatal error and navigation was disabled until you start from the beginning again (they quickly corrected it, but it broke our spidering in the meanwhile).
Right now, their website is broken. We fetch LESS expenses than those currently in our database, and we lack the manpower to investigate what’s wrong in over 1000 pages of listing.
And now we reached almost the status quo. I’ll list more facts, some are quite public, some came from our meeting, and some from the recent news:
- the authors of the website are Microsoft and Brandia Central
- in the meeting, INCI confirmed Microsoft is the site author and Brandia only designed how it should look
- in the meeting, INCI claimed it had to use Microsoft (and would continue) due to contractual obligations
- in recent news, it was revealed that:
- Microsoft begun work on the site BEFORE it was ordered
- it was granted to Microsoft without procurement even though the value would demand it
- it cost about 269 thousand euros
- adding search cost over 20 thousand euros more
- in the follow up to the previous news it was revealed that INCI claims:
- it respected the law
- claims there was no procurement for lack of time
- Microsoft was chosen due to Microsoft’s know-how, experience and credibility, also because it was the owner of the software that was going to be used, which is widely tested
- there was no extra payment for the search (in the meeting I had with INCI they confirmed they were charged for it, but no values were revealed).
Some words on the technology behind the official site:
- what is it? it’s Microsoft Sharepoint!
- not scalable
- not suitable
- not interoperable
- widely known for another Microsoft technological failure
- competition? No competition, no procurement, INCI admits in the same articles total vendor dependence and lock-in on Microsoft
- no governance! Microsoft owns, Microsoft made, Microsoft is the only option to INCI
For a little bit of background, the links below may also be of use. █
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Posted in Asia, FOSS, GNU/Linux, Marketing, Microsoft, Windows at 4:40 am by Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft is giving awards to marketing people who help its fight against GNU/Linux (and Free software in general)
FOR the uninitiated, learn how Microsoft trains its evangelists to crash competitors' events by attending them and stealing the thunder. This is not a side-effect but an actual intention which Microsoft employees are trained to adhere to.
Having just taken a second look at the Open Malaysia blog, the MSCOSCONF entry which we wrote about at the beginning of the month appears to be ‘decorated’ with new comments. Nasrul, who was the winner of the maligned ‘LAMP2WIMP’ contest (push GNU/Linux software towards Windows) is attacking the Malaysian FOSS proponents. His rude attacks are in Malay, but the answers are mostly in English, which helps the international crowd understand what is happening.
Being a winner of the Microsoft contest, he may deem it necessary to defend Microsoft. He is not a FOSS guy, but mainly a marketeer. See some of the comments, e.g.:
naah, I dont envy that advertisement. It was of no use for me. It was your facial expression and tone change after the people in the secretariat room (we) stated the advertisement was too large for the screenshot for the launch was what I see as something need to be fixed.
[...]
Free
its not free as in free price
its free as in Freedom
Open
its not just about opening up your source code
its also about the culture of Openness
[...]
Nasrul,
It is interesting that you are criticising our actions as FOSS proponents, when your comments itself certainly gives a bad impression to all the other LAMP2WIMP winners. Are all the winners of Microsoft’s money so hell bent in attacking FOSS people? I hope not. I really hope that you are the only anomaly. So lets try to fix that.
Can you state exactly what I criticized which has gotten you so riled up? As far as I can see, the above blog post on “the cognitive dissonance within MDeC” is a fair representation of the current state of events. I elaborated in the post to provide constructive corrections for MDeC and the communities to take in the future, so as to be more consistent with the FOSS message.
After your first comment, I tried to get in touch with you via Facebook, your favourite Social Networking platform, so as to take this issue offline. However you did not respond privately but instead preferred to engage in the name calling and petty personal attacks online. If thats the image you want to project for yourself, by all means, keep going. We’ll just sit back and enjoy the show.
So Nasrul, can you please tune down your vitriol? You are hurting your standing in the community more than you realise.
If you intend to contribute to the community, please realise that you need to thicken your skin with regards to taking constructive criticisms. You, like what I went through, will get alot of it. You should know by now that geeks like us are more direct and blunt with our messages.
We arent smooth tongued salesmen ala experienced marketeers, who have are thick in skin for self promotion even at the most inappropriate occasions, yet thin in skin when it comes to self criticisms.
Read my article again. I “spat” out my thoughts, but it was to heal the wounds [0 : follow the link; your favourite word, "licking," is involved too].
I will be happy to report to Microsoft that their Marketing monies in sponsoring their brilliant LAMP2WIMP competition has worked beyond their wildest dreams; Their investment has created some really fanatical anti-FOSS marketeers from within. So unless you want to remain a testament to their strategy, do us all a favour and educate yourself in what really FOSS means, and not be a tool for others.
Remember: Free as in Freedom.
The following response ought to explain who the “winner” of this Microsoft competition really is:
I am surprised, as an expert in Facebook marketing (after all, you wrote a whole book on it) that you could leave your Inbox so poorly maintained. Perhaps you could add that as the 12th Mistakes you can do in Facebook Marketing: [ http://www.rahsiapemasaranfacebook.com/buku/ - Bonus Tambahan ] : Prune your Inbox to Catch that Important Sale!
So besides that, I guess you missed the tweet I sent you at 2:25pm, Fri 27th June 2009 as well, reminding you that I sent a FB message?
http://twitter.com/yoonkit/statuses/2356075761
“@nasrulrpfb tone down the vitriol, dude. You are making yourself look lame #osdcmy you may take it offline if u like, if FB’d u 3 days ago.”
And yet you continued to comment on this public forum at 9pm later that day. As a PAKAR in viral marketing, I would expect you to handle your online communication logistics better.
So for those who keep pleading us to keep this private (Kage and Rafe), I let the evidence show that I gave him ample opportunity to do so. Nasrul, you obviously thought that you had to have your say, and I am not denying you that right. How you want to proceed is entirely up to you.
You asked, what is my purpose to be involved in the FOSS community? I dunno. I could tell you my history with regards to FOSS, but I believe you are not interested in it. After all your response was dripping with sarcasm, so I wont waste both our times.
[...]
Just how many people is Microsoft hiring to attack GNU/Linux under the disguise of "open source"? It’s getting shallow enough to see through. █
“There’s no company called Linux, there’s barely a Linux road map. Yet Linux sort of springs organically from the earth. And it had, you know, the characteristics of communism that people love so very, very much about it. That is, it’s free.”
–Steve Ballmer
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Posted in FUD, Formats, IBM, Microsoft, OpenDocument, Wikipedia at 3:56 am by Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft carries on smearing ODF in public while pretending to support it
Microsoft is still changing ODF’s history and daemonising ODF using Wikipedia. We wrote about that in:
Rob Weir has already complained about this. It is part of Microsoft’s ongoing attack on ODF [1, 2] — an attack which it is defending by buying journalists lunch (now confirmed to us by the journalist) so that is can carry on breaking ODF interoperability [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] without public scrutiny.
Weir has just published another rant about Wikipedia, so obviously he keeps track of the continued manipulation by Microsoft — one that we too are seeing because all edits are visible.
I have a mental model of how Wikipedia works and behaves. This may not reflect reality, but it is how I, as an end-user, expect Wikipedia to behave. I think these are reasonable expectations regarding things like standards of proof and balance and that if the real Wikipedia differs substantially from these expectations, then we have a problem.
[...]
Does anyone know whether the above statements have any basis in the aspirations or actual practice of Wikipedia editors and admins? Sadly, my recent reading of some articles suggests that these reasonable expectations are routinely flouted and bear little resemblance to reality.
It’s obvious what Microsoft must be thinking.
“All those haters…”
But to characterise opposition as “anti-Microsoft” is like describing the police as “anti-criminals” and thus “irrational haters”. Microsoft’s behaviour speaks for itself. █
“Their documents display a clear intent to monopolize, to prevent any competition from springing up. And they have used a variety of restrictive practices to prevent that kind of competition.”
–Judge Robert Bork, former US Supreme Court nominee (on Microsoft)
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