adrianx
Expert Member
Does that, in your opinion, mean that the EU and the US Justice Dept. also hate capitalism?
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Microsoft warned to cut market share
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BravoDrie
Well-Known Member
The EU is getting really ****** up.
Nobody is FORCING anybody to use anything... if you dont like dont use it, and everybody even the non IT nuts knows about alternatives.
How do you tell a company - which is NOT a 'Non-Profit' - to cut/stop making money.
Complete BS. All it is, they have found an easy target to milk money from. When they need more, they'll tell MS to unbundle say... wallpapers or even the windows explorer... cmon.
Nobody is FORCING anybody to use anything... if you dont like dont use it, and everybody even the non IT nuts knows about alternatives.
How do you tell a company - which is NOT a 'Non-Profit' - to cut/stop making money.
Complete BS. All it is, they have found an easy target to milk money from. When they need more, they'll tell MS to unbundle say... wallpapers or even the windows explorer... cmon.
Holy ****, I've never seen such point missing in my entire life...
You are forced to use Microsoft products... Don't believe me? Try do business with any company that sends you complicated Excel spreadsheets, or Word documents. Sure, you can open them in OpenOffice to a certain extent, but unless they are really simple, the formatting often gets screwed up. If OpenOffice could open every single Office document perfectly, how many people do you think would actually use Office any more?
Not to mention the vast amount of proprietary software that only runs on Windows, and would be near impossible to get running on a different operating system.
And onto your last 'point' about the unbundling. Microsoft were in the business of making Operating Systems, not internet browsers or office suites. They had a dominate position which they abused to kill the competition. An analogy would be that all of a sudden, petrol stations start doing free car maintenance and repair while your car is getting filled up. What do you think is going to happen to repair shops?
I don't think that you understand the meaning of capitalism and free market, nor ethics.
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As you correctly pointed out, MS abused its position, which is one of the reasons why we are forced to use Windows and proprietary software.
But, for most home users, Linux with Open Office would be more than adequate, not to mention a damn site cheaper. But, you can't buy a computer without Windows. Why? Because, MS abused its market position.
risingtide
Senior Member
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To some extent it is a good thing MS 'abused' their position. Remember the days of "standard" CP/M operating system (if you are old enough to do so) where one CP/M machine could not even read the disks of another computer make even if it was also running CP/M? Copying files and disks using Laplink and a serial cable. Wonderfully efficient.
MS's dominance put an end to that situation and the world is much better off for it.
MS's dominance put an end to that situation and the world is much better off for it.
killadoob
Honorary Master
I would rather look like a complete idiot than think for one second when xp was released that there an OS more capable than windows for the average person. Linux at one point needed a degree to use it and was not user friendly at all, so what OS other the MAC which is only to be used on MAC could have been used as easily for everyone as windows?
I fail to see how having the most user friendly easy OS on the market is such a big problem. They have had user friendly OS's since 3.1 basically, what was user friendly about linux back when win95 came out? Did linux even have a graphical interface like it does now or was it more like a dos based system? Microsoft made their os's user friendly which meant everyone who used it did not need a degree in rocket science to work on it. Only recently has linux been so user friendly and by that time microsoft had made windows the standard world wide. What i don't understand is why microsoft are being nailed for having OS's that people use all the time.
Laptops are sold with windows purely because everything will work and they will not have to support the people who cannot get stuff to work on linux and those people having to format and load windows anyway because their software won't run on linux. Desktop your not forced to use windows unless your buying from hp or acer, but only idiots would buy acer/hp/dell desktops anyhow.
Why are they not nailing the major software companies for not making programs that run on linux? Why are the major gaming companies not being told the same thing as they don't develop for linux. Maybe if microsoft had competition then their market share would decline. I am not saying linux is not capable because it is but regardless of what anyone says there are a lot of programs that do not work on linux and many games, is this microsoft's fault? Do they somehow force game and software companies to not develop linux goods?
Ask yourself and maybe you can tell me why major companies in software and gaming do not make linux compatable games, please don't tell me all the games that work because majority of our new games do not run on linux without a lot of tinkering and then still do not run well compared to windows.
To me is seems most of the world uses windows so gaming and software companies develop for the majority which one of the reasons windows is so widely used.
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Breathe deeply.
Did you read the article, or are you really too illiterate?
I posted in response to your question as to why people don't like MS, not as to why MS has the dominant market share (though the two are highly interrelated). You have completely missed the point.
This is not just about Linux. There were / are other highly capable OSs, like DrDos, BEOS; other capable word processors, like WordPerfect; other capable browsers like Netscape.
The market has been stifled through anti-competitive practices by MS. That's why I don't like them, NOT because they have dominant market share. I'm writing not as a Linux fanbooi, but as someone who sees the deep injustices perpetuated by large corporations going unpunished, while we the consumer suffer higher prices (not you, since you don't bother to pay as you so proudly tell us), and stifled innovation (Remember, that MS ceased development of IE after version 6, when it had cornered the market).
Is this really so difficult to comprehend?
killadoob
Honorary Master
So then explain to me what they have done? What did they do since i cannot read maybe you tell me 
Would love to know what they did and just how they stiffled the comp so badly and all the injustices you speak of.
Go ahead and give me a basic run down of microsoft did.
Would love to know what they did and just how they stiffled the comp so badly and all the injustices you speak of.Go ahead and give me a basic run down of microsoft did
.Abe
Expert Member
When you are a monopoly, it's illegal. It's basically using a monopoly in one market to gain a competitive advantage in another. The problem is that monopolies don't use costs to determine their selling price, they base their pricing on the amount people are willing to spend, so we all end up paying a lot more. Just think how much Intel would be charging if AMD was not around.
Abe
Expert Member
So then explain to me what they have done? What did they do since i cannot read maybe you tell me
Go ahead and give me a basic run down of microsoft did
I just gave you one such example. The worst part is that they are now using their MS Office dominance to entrench their OS monopoly as companies wanting to switch to Linux can't because of MS Office.
killadoob
Honorary Master
Yea but open office does not do the best job, i mean is microsoft here to make money or worry about linux? You could say the same about many companies software that does not work on linux and only windows or mac, surely that is just as bad? Corel for instance does not run on linux why are they not being labeled anti competitive? I am not sure i fully understand why microsoft must make their programs available to run on other platforms when majority of software companies do not.
So then explain to me what they have done? What did they do since i cannot read maybe you tell me
Go ahead and give me a basic run down of microsoft did
I for one, really liked WordPerfect. I used 6 for DOS, and it was really a great system. Pity, MS used its monopoly to force it out of the market.
[sarcasm]
I'm really glad that MS abused its position to kill of WordPerfect, not only do we have to pay many thousands more for a copy of Word, but MS no longer has to spend the money on innovating. Oh, yes, I should thank MS for making sure that their standard is the only one, and only works with MS Word, because, who after all wants choice? That's why we all voted for the ANC.
[/sarcasm]
Thank you, Microsoft. I hope you enjoy many more years of stifling the market and screwing the competition and consumers up the proverbial.
It is, however, their fault, that they have systematically used illegal and unethical practices to eliminate any competition.
Moreover, MS's failure to conform with ODF standards fully, will ensure, that no viable competition exists. Already, MS used highly unethical tactics to push through the OOXML as a standard, which, they will ensure is never fully compatible with rival productivity suites. So, in the end, we are forced to use Office, not matter what, despite the fact that a free (and almost as good) office productivity suite exists.
Arthur
Honorary Master
Yes, let's grant for moment that Microsoft was in breach of (some highly tendentious interpretations of) competition law in the USA and EU. That is something very different from being wrong or unethical or immoral. You can use the world 'illegal', but I will to my dying day maintain that there was nothing immoral or unethical in what we did. On the contrary, it was good and moral and ethical, almost to a fault. Aggressive, yes - our shareholders and partners expect nothing less, and rightly so. To the best of my knowledge, hand on heart, I have never seen or even heard of the slightest whiff of unethical or morally questionable behaviour inside Microsoft. If anything, MS was over-scrupulous in every aspect of its business ... there is only one ethically questionable case I know of, and I was involved first-hand: I was once asked to fire an employee for internally forwarding an email with a slightly off-colour joke (I refused and Redmond went over my head and fired him anyway, and that was unjust in my view). For the record, I was part of Microsoft's 'conspiracy' to dominant marketshare in several markets; worse, I actually engineered and drove that very aggressively, including in SA in the early and mid '90s when we outmarketed and out-implemented WordPerfect, Lotus, Ashton Tate and others, who had grown fat and complacent.
I have said it many times on MyBB and elsewhere: people use the word 'force' in this context in a very equivocal way, that bears no relation to the normal understanding of that term. And yes, the US DoJ/court findings and EU rulings are morally wrong, profoundly so ... in the same way that hundreds of laws on statute books might well criminalise certain activities that are in fact morally neutral or even good. It's important to draw that distinction, otherwise you fall into legal positivism and lose sight of real morality and ethics. As happened in SA, for example. Many things under apartheid were (and still are) illegal that are also not immoral or unethical. And in case you think I equivocate or play both sides in a selective morality, I have spent time in prison (in solitary confinement) for opposing apartheid laws and defending people who were criminalised by unjust or immoral laws. What I did might well have been illegal (then). But in my books it was not immoral, unethical, wrong, or unjust. Indeed, a larger and higher standard of morality and justice required it. I mention this only to illustrate the point that illegal is NOT the same as immoral or unethical ... there are numerous unjust and immoral laws in almost all countries. Of course you'll never believe it, but in my experience Microsoft in its business dealings is one of the most moral and ethical companies I've ever seen, and I've seen it from the inside for many, many years (I 'retired' 12 years ago).
What moral or ethical rule requires you to pass your product and business secrets to your competitors?
What moral law requires that you NOT include a browser or media player in your product?
What mora applies to you but not to another?
What moral has two different standards, depending on your size?
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