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Are the EU Rules for Microsoft Reasonable?

rwguinn said:
non answer.
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Actually, it is. I would elaborate further, but frankly I'm at a complete loss as to how you could interpret what I said the way you did, so I don't even know where to start arguing against your position.
 
rwguinn said:
The courts are only trying to make it so you have a choice between a Ford and a Chevy. To make the analogy closer to what is really happening, if Ford built all the roadways, the courts are saying that they can't prevent Chevy from making cars by withholding the information necessary to do it. Nobody's trying to make you buy a Chevy. They're only trying to make sure you have the choice. If Chevy fails because their cars suck, so be it. Chevy failing because Ford makes it impossible for them to compete by leveraging their monopoly in a neighboring market is what they are trying to prevent.
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So, If I invent a device that everybody wants, and hold a patent and copyrite on it, and Joe doesn't like my device, but wants a different one that does the same thing, the Courrts are obligated to invalidate my patents and copyrites, so that there can be a competitor.
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Not exactly...

If you look at the analogy or example given by tsg, he isn't just talking about the products that "everyone wants". He specifically pointed out that ford "made all the roads", and that it somehow gave them an unfair advantage. He's not saying ford is bad because they made cars that sold well; he's saying ford is bad because somehow the Ford Roadbuilding division was somehow helping Ford crappy car manufacturing division with some inside information.

Of course, the problem with this analogy is that nobody can really imagine what inside information a 'road building' company might have that would be so secret.

So here's a slightly better analogy...

Lets say Ford, Honda, Chrysler, GM, and Toyota all merged into one company. Call it ToFhu. (Short for Toyota, Ford, Honda...)

ToFhu sells cars. In fact, they've done such a good job at it that they've gotten 100% market share (or at least a virtual monopoly). Now, there is nothing at all wrong with that (assuming it was done legally). Perhaps they really do make good cars.

ToFhu also runs service centers where cars can get fixed. Again, nothing wrong with that. But, there is also Joe's Garage, who also wants to fix cars. Now, lets say that ToFhu, in their desire to increase profits, decided to install a hood lock, so that only ToFhu service centers could get at the engine. This means that Joe's garage will be unable to compete fairly with ToFhu. Joe's garage may provide better or cheaper service, but they won't be able to fix Ford engines. And they can't make it up by fixing other types of cars, because (as I've said before) ford has 100% market share.

That's the problem with Microsoft... they are like the super car manufacturer who has 100% market share when it comes to Operating Systems. Again, nothing wrong with that. But if I'm trying to write (for example) a new word processor to compete with Word, I probably won't be as successful as Microsoft. Why? Because, one of the programmers working on M.S. Word can go to one of the programmers working on M.S. Windows and ask "are there any hidden features in the Operating system that I can use to make my program work better"? (That's the equivalent of the "locked hood" on the car.) And I, as an independent programmer, would not have a similar ability to gain such 'inside' information. I'd be stuck with the information that Microsoft decides to publish publically (which may not even be complete, or accurate.)
 
In that case, does the US law allow something that the EU law doesn't ?
 
Tokorona said:
No.

A more accurate analogy is this:

Let's say we invent maglev lines. Microsoft and Netscape both operate trains. Then Microsoft buys out the lines and changes how they operate, but does not tell anyone, forcing competitors off.
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You're getting better--
Although that analogy doesn't quite fit the situation...
Now, If Microsoft (in the above hypothetical case) swears that the lines still meet the old standard, you have a case.
But in such a case, they would get their butts justifiably nailed to the wall for something entirely different.
Falsly stating that you meet a standard, or that your meeting such a standard will cause your device to work properly, when in fact that is totally wrong is a case of fraud, false advertising, and the like.
The appropriate penalty is complete refunds, reparations, withdrawal of such claims, public admission of the guilt, and a fine--which can be very large.
But part of the penalty cannot be the revealing of propriatary information to competitors, or the negation of intellectual property rights
 
Gazpacho said:
I'm very familiar with the DOJ litigation. Microsoft has never prevented anyone from installing a browser other than IE or a media player other than WMP on Windows.
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What about when they charged Gateway extra money for each Win98 license because they refused to use IE on their corporate intranet?
 
rwguinn said:
But part of the penalty cannot be the revealing of propriatary information to competitors, or the negation of intellectual property rights
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I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Microsoft could have instead opted to stop selling their OS altogether or somehow ensure full standard compliance on all installed systems.
 
rwguinn said:
Let's say we invent maglev lines. Microsoft and Netscape both operate trains. Then Microsoft buys out the lines and changes how they operate, but does not tell anyone, forcing competitors off.
Click to expand...
You're getting better--
Although that analogy doesn't quite fit the situation...
Now, If Microsoft (in the above hypothetical case) swears that the lines still meet the old standard, you have a case.
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First of all, that is (in a sense) what Microsoft has done, when they have published 'standards' that are incomplete.

Secondly, there is another issue... many countries think that, in order to be optimally competitive, Microsoft maglev train company should be competing with Netscape maglev train company, where each company offers its best service/pricing. But if Microsoft controls all the rail lines, and they do something which affects Netscape's trains, then netscape isn't exactly going to be able to compete properly, regardless of whether false claims were made by Microsoft. (Even if microsoft said "We've changed the standard, but we're not telling you what the changes are", the damage to competition is done.)

But part of the penalty cannot be the revealing of propriatary information to competitors, or the negation of intellectual property rights
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The existence of anti-trust laws predate the existence of Microsoft. If they wanted to avoid such penalties, then perhaps they should have structured their business better... providing proper separation between the application and Operating system portion of their business.
 
Ok, all y'all have convinced me that:
1. The Law (anywhere) is an Ass.
2. Some times the idiocy of various laws manages to cancel out.
3. I still can't buy a Ford at the Chevy dealer
4. I have not a clue as to a better way to do it, nor does anyone else.


Avarice conquers all...
 
Tokorona said:
Reverse engineering software is illegal.
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So is speeding on the highway but people do it. The methods for reverse-engineering software are well-studied and it's not difficult to find out whether a given program makes a rogue call into the operating system.

Almo said:
What about when they charged Gateway extra money for each Win98 license because they refused to use IE on their corporate intranet?
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I'd need to see some documentation of that. If the idea was that Gateway would deploy IE across their network and then make a press release saying how great IE was, and get paid for the press release, then that's a standard cross-promo. And it doesn't prevent anyone at Gateway from using another browser.
 
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Segnosaur said:
The existence of anti-trust laws predate the existence of Microsoft. If they wanted to avoid such penalties, then perhaps they should have structured their business better... providing proper separation between the application and Operating system portion of their business.
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Application developers at Microsoft use the same OS documentation that is available to the rest of the world. Aside from an experienced person pointing an inexperienced person to the public documentation that addresses a particular question, there is no "inside track."
 
Gazpacho said:
Application developers at Microsoft use the same OS documentation that is available to the rest of the world. Aside from an experienced person pointing an inexperienced person to the public documentation that addresses a particular question, there is no "inside track."
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Yeah, right.
 
tsg said:
Yeah, right.
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I worked at Microsoft as a software developer for a year. (1/2007-1/2008, my contract ended, but I intend to work there again. It's a great place to make software.)

There were many occasions where mythical "secret API documentation" would have made my job much easier.

It doesn't freaking exist.
 
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Ah, but it does exist. The problem is that it isn't shared. I.e. it's in the heads of the various teams and they're not encouraged to make it widely available.
 
Nick Bogaerts said:
Right. So what did Samba pay Microsoft 10,000 Euro for? Their secret stash of Harry Potter slash-fic?
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System-to-system interfaces. (PS: You're not funny.)

cyborg said:
Ah, but it does exist. The problem is that it isn't shared. I.e. it's in the heads of the various teams and they're not encouraged to make it widely available.
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Are you being sarcastic? The API documentation is public. The problem is the learning curve, and in that regard God helps those who help themselves. There's no magic route to learning the APIs.

(There are people outside Microsoft with years of Windows development experience too.)
 
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Gazpacho said:
Microsoft has never done either of these.
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Yes, actually, it has. It has on a number of occasions altered APIs that broke the ability of third-party software to work on it's systems; while still leaving its own software completely functional.

In fact, it still does this. Just a week or two ago, it introduced a sevice pack for Vista which caused several popular security software suites to cease functioning; and several others to have "severely reduced functionality". Microsoft claimed that these security software suites cause Vista to become "unreliable". Of course, the fact that they're pushing their own built-in security software has nothing to do with it, I'm sure. :rolleyes: The patch also disables a number of other third party utilites for various hardware components, such as Fujitsu's laptop hard-drive utility.

Their response to complaints was an excessively verbose version of "tough ◊◊◊◊".
 
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