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Double Standards

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Renegade:
Zaine posted about MS and Open Source, and this is a related issue. From the same annual report:

We are subject to government litigation and regulatory activity that affects how we design and market our products.     

As a leading global software maker we receive scrutiny from government agencies under U.S. and foreign competition laws. Some jurisdictions also provide private rights of action for competitors or consumers based on alleged anti-competitive conduct.
--- End quote ---

This doesn't apply to other companies and it's a double standard.

The whole "monopoly" thing just doesn't wash for me. There are (and ALWAYS have been) many different operating systems available. If anyone is to blame, then blame IBM and HP for making their OSes insanely expensive so that nobody could ever afford them.

MS has a reasonably priced OS and other products that are constantly under unfair attack.

If anyone else were to develop "monopolistic" software, would they receive the same treatment? Doubtfully.

As an experiment, try developing some software for left-handed hispanic parapalegic lesbians living in Atlanta to keep track of their iguana collections. Then price it at $10,000 and make sure that it's proprietary closed source and that you've used a lot of anti-piracy measures and copy protection along with a file format that is impossible to reverse engineer. Make the license very strict as well. You'll have a monopoly, but nothing would ever happen.

i.e. Scale matters.

Maybe I'm just grumpy today, but I'm just sick of the "let's beat up MS" thing. They've done more good for computing than any other company.

This is the exact same issue as the entire music thing. The RIAA just isn't intelligent to figure it out though.

e.g License your music for ALL devices, the iPod, the Zune, or whatever. But just get whatever they want figured out.

The issue is when you're big and you want to license your product. Ummm... Hasn't this all been done a trillion times?

These issues aren't that hard to figure out. They might involve some thought and a little bit of work, but they are very, very far from difficult.

At the moment I'm negotiating some patent licensing and it's all just pure Hell trying to get anywhere. Again - similar issues. I wish they'd just get their ducks in line...

tinjaw:
If you are a U.S. citizen, join me and vote Libertarian!  :Thmbsup:

Although I openly talk about my personal opinions on politics, religion, philosophy, and other such highly charged topics, I don't often do so in a public forum that isn't devoted to them or as a reply to a direct question. However, I don't think you can discuss this topic without doing so. I believe that the issue you have touched upon directly, and those it overlaps with, are 100% due to government regulation of business. And the only people/party that would do away with almost all regulation of such matters by the  U.S. government, that currently exists as a viable alternative, is the Libertarian party.

I think that is enough for you to understand my reasoning/position on this matter, so I won't contaminate DonationCoder with any more politically charged rhetoric than what's above. If you wish to discuss any of this stuff with me, I would be happy to do so in a more appropriate location/forum/medium. And, as always, that includes a PM or email. I've had my own domain since the mid-nineties so it is already well known by all things spam related, so I always post is openly without obfuscation. [email protected]

Chaim "Tinjaw" Krause

mouser:
I can get mad at Microsoft as good as the rest (see my post attacking IE7 which i dislike more each day), BUT i do agree in the sense that i think the extent to which Microsoft gets attacked for things that others get patted on the back for has entered the realm of the comical.

if you swapped the labels of google and microsoft, and put a google label on everything microsoft did, and a microsoft label on everything google did, nothing would change about the press (same thing if you did it about Apple and Microsoft).  the new "google" would be trumpeted and heralded for creating a groundbreaking mp3 player and changing the world with their devine ribbon and earth shatteringly brilliant Desktop operating system.  Wheras the new "microsoft" would be attacking for releasing so many crappy beta things and engaging in monopolistic practices like pricing their services at below cost to kill the competition.

Microsoft does some good stuff - and i feel bad for them now because they just cannot get a fair break in the public relations world - everyone hates on them, and they are just being kicked down the staircase.  Having said that, I don't think they are helping their case that much with some of their recent mediocre stuff..

mitzevo:
Long live oss.

Renegade:
...their recent mediocre stuff...
--- End quote ---

MS has some real gems, and then again, they do have some real turds. It's almost as if they really want to create some junk to make room for other developers. IE and Outlook are good examples.

Then again, there are others that work well but are underpowered - Notepad. There are a quite few people that make a living off of Notepad being underpowered. (Again - thanks to MS for leaving room for small developers.)

Reading from some insiders, MS has become the IBM that they laughed at years ago - red tape.

But I think you're pretty much right on the money about the Google v Microsoft analogy. It's amazing that these obvious 'violations' from other companies go untouched.

Especially with an Apple v Microsoft comparison. Apple is very closed and does some very anti-competitive things. e.g. OSX runs on Apple hardware...

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