Microsoft Wants Sit-Down With OSS Advocates 553
bonch writes "Microsoft is reaching out to the OSS community and wanting a sit-down to discuss how to better to interoperate with them. At a conference sponsored by the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) in Cambridge, Md., Microsoft's Brad Smith extended an olive branch to its competitors, including the OSS community. 'We're going to have to figure out how to build some bridges between the various parts of our industry,' he said. Eric Raymond responds, saying the first steps Microsoft could do are to open their file formats and support open standards."
Vlad the Impaler... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Vlad the Impaler... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Vlad the Impaler... (Score:4, Insightful)
So why all the publicity? Their stock is flat, their earnings are no longer in double-digit growth, their future OS is thoroughly unimpressive, their Office suite is prohibitively expensive, they have no diversification that can support their profit margins in the long-term, they are the last to endorse OSS for commodity products, their competitors are innovating like mad, and what does Microsoft have to show for it? Publicity. Keep their name out there while they scramble to stay relevant.
I think Microsoft is in trouble, and they are desparately seeking ways to stay in business for a decade more while their competitors eat their lunch. Unfortunately, there just is no way that Microsoft can compete with IBM and Sun in their current form. Microsoft is too dependent on revenue from proprietary software to continue without complete reform of the company, which includes no longer being the largest software company in the world. I expect to see a period of significant negative growth for them some time in the years ahead.
Re:Vlad the Impaler... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but does Netcraft confirm it?
Re:Vlad the Impaler... (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft's problem isn't proprietary software, but rather shrink-wrapped software. There's tons of room for proprietary software in the real world (as far as I know, /. isn't open source) and there are lots of people still making money off of it. The ASP model says that it's not the software that's important, but the service that goes along with it. Ever wonder why IBM is throwing its weight behind Linux? They never made a lot of money selling OS/2, and probably even lost some money on it, but they did make money servicing it after the fact. Kind of like printers - sell the printer at cost and then sell ink cartridges at a big markup. Retailers understand the concept of "loss leader". It's better for IBM to throw a few bucks into Linux and sell support on the back end. The problem is that Microsoft just doesn't get this concept because it's never made any real money off of service. Try looking for service revenues on their yearly reports. It's a real hard number to find, and it's very, very small relative to product revenues.
Re:Vlad the Impaler... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Vlad the Impaler... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Vlad the Impaler... (Score:5, Interesting)
At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, there was an incident involving Chamberlin, Stalin and a few other dignitories in the 1930s...
Re:Vlad the Impaler... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Vlad the Impaler... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Vlad the Impaler... (Score:4, Funny)
But this isn't Vlad .... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Vlad the Impaler... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Vlad the Impaler... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Vlad the Impaler... (Score:5, Informative)
A repeatable theme in history.
A new founder of a dynasty will eliminate rivals from previous dynasties, so no throne claimant will emerge.
One way of doing this, was to have a banquet, then no one leaves alive.
One such occurance was Mehmet Ali Pasha of Egypt. He was sent by the Ottoman Sultan to Egypt (1805?), after the French Expedition there (1799?). He invited all the Mameluke commanders to a banquet, and then when they were in a passage, soldiers in muskets showered them with bullets. Only one Mameluke survived, after he jumped off the Citadel, his horse taking the shock.
Also, when the Abbasid dynasty replaced the Umayyad dynasty in the early 700, Al Saffah (The Butcher), invited the dignitaries from the Umayyad clan to a banquet, and had them massacred. All who attended were killed. One scion of the Banu Umayya survived, after swimming across a river somewhere in the Levant. He fled to Iberia and established the Umayyad dynasty there.
One other custom was for Ottoman sultans to have their brothers killed as the first act of succession to the throne. This fratricide was to ensure no rivalry will ensue as claimants to the throne would threaten civil war. This system was established after bitter civil wars caused ruin. One such war was between Bayazid II and Cem (late 1400s), both sons of Mehmet the Conqueror.
Anyway, I digressed a lot. I am sure there are lots of other examples, but off the top of my head, the above are the ones that I remember offhand.
Re:Vlad the Impaler... (Score:3, Funny)
or make "Szechuan Deep-Fried Friends"
or make "Poached Friends in White Whine [sic] Sauce"
Watch out when they say "I'd like to have you for dinner next Friday."
It's a trap!!!! (Score:4, Funny)
(oh wait, that was Dr. Who this week. Never mind....)
Re:It's a trap!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's a trap!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, it's been a long day.
Re:It's a trap!!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's a trap!!!! (Score:4, Funny)
1. Tell Stallman that Microsoft has bought the company that does all of the FSF's web hosting, and that the paper Stallman signed that morning wasn't actually a legal form related to his latest fight, but a contract signing over all his projects to Bill Gates. Before he can explode, tell him that Bill wants to seal the deal with a handshake in person at this address...
2. While Stallman is driving to the meeting at Mach 4 with a chainsaw, a ball-peen hammer, and a skinning knife, tell the other two guys that Stallman is going to meet with Bill Gates and sell the FSF to him, along with the rights to the phrases "Free Software", "Open Source", and "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" (which is going to be made into an X-Box fighting game). Ask them if they're just going to let that happen, or if they're going to head him off and deal with the Microsoft swine that talked him into it.
3. Sneak to the meeting location and watch through the window. My money's on Mr. Stallman; he looks pretty cagey. I bet he wipes out the whole Microsoft contingent before the others get off the expressway...
Re:It's a trap!!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Leaders??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft cannot get the OSS community to agree to anything. They can't say: "Do xxx we have a signed agreement from your CEO".
Even Linus can only speak for 10% or so of the Linux code base.
Re:It's a trap!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
They look at him almost as blankly as the reader does this post.
"Petals About the Rose." [borrett.id.au]
Re:It's a trap!!!! (Score:3, Funny)
in a related headline: (Score:5, Funny)
In a related headline,
Lucy promises to hold football with finger, Charlie Brown to kick.
Ackbar says... (Score:4, Funny)
The last time Gates spoke of peace I was a boy... (Score:5, Funny)
It goes a little like this...
Brad Smith: The king desires peace.
Eric Raymond: Longshanks.. er.. Gates desires peace?
Brad Smith: He declares it to me, I swear it. He proposes that you withdraw your attack. In return he grants you file formats, patents, and this chest of gold which I am to pay to you personally.
Eric Raymond: File formats and patents. Gold. That I should become Judas?
Brad Smith: Peace is made in such ways.
Eric Raymond: Slaves are made in such ways. The last time Gates spoke of peace I was a boy. And many open-source nobles, who would not be slaves, were lured by him under a flag of truce to a barn, where he embraced and extended and extinguished them. I was very young, but I remember this Gates notion of peace.
Maybe. (Score:2, Funny)
NO! Now freedom matters more than ever... (Score:3, Insightful)
One more thing, if it's only about the technology, and not freedom. Then what's to keep Microsoft from offering key people money and benefits
Re:Maybe. (Score:2, Funny)
Please be serious (Score:3, Insightful)
When they're ready to cut the BS and be serious, all they have to do is publish their API. After that, let's talk.
Enemies (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What?! (Score:3, Funny)
2. Derision
3. Accusation
4. PR
5. Inviting everyone to sit down together at table
6. Get goods on Stallman, blackmail
7. Patent everything at the table
8. Toss everyone off the table
9. Profit!
10. Sue 2000 IRS employees simultaneously, get IRS to declare Microsoft a religion
11. Try to enable Kirstie Allen's comeback
wait, got stories mixed up here...
Re:What?! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Support for Linux in Virtual PC existed long before Microsoft bought it from Connectix. In fact, at one stage you could buy it with an OS pack that had Red Hat Linux pre-installed. That is not available now.
And glancing through the web site product specs [microsoft.com] to research my post, there is no mention of Linux. Since Virtual PC emulates a hardware PC, they'd have to purposely somehow disable emulation for Linux (if that is even possible, it's like Intel making a CPU that wouldn't run an OS).
In other words, I don't think Virtual PC is an acknowledgment of Linux as an alternative OS that PC users would want to run.
The FUD that they pay "research" companies to publish is though...
Ho hum, again? (Score:5, Interesting)
And, for my more serious post.... Microsoft has "reached out" before. Seemingly not many remember their big PR campaign when they first released NT circa 1992. One of the big claims, one of the big selling points of their "new technology" (not what NT stands for, btw) was NT's POSIX compliance.... Microsoft purportedly was then about to "join" the open architecture community. They even convinced me to go work for them. But, it turned out they didn't do complete POSIX (only implemented the API, not the User Utilities), and only did the POSIX at all to get government contracts (I know this, I was at an internal presentation where "Margaret" prefaced the presentation with the comments, "We are only doing POSIX as a checkbox, so we can get government contracts..." (I am not making this up.))
Re:Ho hum, again? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not? [microsoft.com]
Re:Ho hum, again? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ho hum, again? (Score:3, Informative)
Like I said, hearsay.
Re:Ho hum, again? (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically they invited a staunch Palm OS advocate (who incidentally was a *BSD/UNIX advocate) to ask about the state of PDAs/handhelds and what could be done to improve it.
He was really excited, as it would allow him to give direct input into the designers of what would be the next Windows CE. When he came back he was sporting a new PDA, and indicated that overall he had a great time. That is, until he talked about the time when they met with the group that wanted their input.
Basically, everything that was asked for was corrected, and the outside "experts" were persuaded, conjoled, and flat out told what they wanted was a windows-like interface that acted like Palm OS, but in a more windows-98 like way.
Funny thing is, it worked to some degree. Many of the staunch Palm fans were very busy the next three or so months trying to get the most out of their newly accquired Windows products. Some "converted" whole-heartedly, but a bit-by-bit they eventually drifted back to the Palm-side.
It could be much harder to make this work in FOSS circles, as MS really doesn't have anything to offer them, yet. But it may be just as disruptive.
Re:Ho hum, again? (Score:4, Funny)
Hookers.
Free Hookers.
For about 30 seconds, linux was sexy and guys wearing red hats stuffed with shares could pick up the chicks.
Then the
But MS still has boatloads, freaking tanker-loads, of cash.
Do not underestimate the power of free with beer poon to halt all progress in the Free software world.
Re:Ho hum, again? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ho hum, again? (Score:4, Funny)
With poison in 'em. Can't forget the poison.
Re:Ho hum, again? (Score:3, Informative)
The download is free, but I found it a nightmare to install and get running... it had numerous side-effects (unexpected ones), and I never really got it to work right.
And that was only for my XP Pro machine... SFU requires Pro, so for my XP Home (I don't see why all of the XP machines in a household should have to be Pro) machine the free download would first require a $100 (or more?) upgrade....
As for this being some "
Just say Dr. No (Score:3, Funny)
"You expect me to talk, OSS?"
"No, Mr. Gates, I expect you to die."
Michael. [michael-forman.com]
Re:Just say Dr. No (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just say Dr. No (Score:3, Informative)
It was the evil villain bent on world domination who uttered the words you've assigned to OSS. Flip them around and the post is still funny though.
Even more so since later in the movie, Goldfinger gassed all his cooperating partners to death.
Microsoft's knee-jerk response. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Microsoft's knee-jerk response. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is it that Microsoft is always on the 'innovate or die' line when they're making billions of dollars? It's all well and good to point out a projection that didn't quite make it but when you're attaching it to a 2.56 billion dollar net profit, it sounds a little ludicrous. You could say that it is a 'sign' of Microsoft's future demise, but people have been pointin
Re:Microsoft's knee-jerk response. (Score:4, Funny)
The irony in all of this is that neither death nor innovation seem to make their way into the picture.
Re:Microsoft's knee-jerk response. (Score:2, Informative)
28 days late.
-- Your friendly neighborhood pedant
Re:Microsoft's knee-jerk response. (Score:2)
That, my friends, is why Microsoft missed its quarterly revenue projection
You are making the mistake of disregarding the rest of the story. [thestreet.com]
But in fairness, /. isn't a site for MBAs or accountants.
Re:Microsoft's knee-jerk response. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with you that, for example, it doesn't make much sense for a average consumer to upgrade from office 2000 to office 2003. And obviously they haven't had a bump on consumer OS sales, given that Longhorn is still off in the horizon.
That said, these same product lines are still quite succesful in the corporate world. I'm talking the large companies with thousands of employees to deal with. In this envirnoment windows 2003 is attractive, even when linux is free, because it is jam packed with things to help in enterprise wide server administration. Let's not kid ourselves, it takes alot to be a good linux/unix system admin, and you guys can wear that badge with pride. Since the market is not exactly flooded with experts like yourselves, companies like it that a less experienced person can still keep a win2k3/XPSP2 network up and running, and can apply rules to machines company wide, using tools like active directory with pretty UI. Thanks to win2k3 and SP2, which turn off most services by default, and generally are more solid secure products, disasters like code red are much less likely.
Plus win2k3 and Office 2003 both have a slant towards collaboration, which isn't that attractive to consumers but intriguing for businesses. win2k3 has share point, and office has lots of collaboration tools (which will probably expand significantly thanks to the groove aquisition). They are also doing big pushes into the small business market with retail management systems, point of sales products, and even an accounting software in the works.
So it seems that while Longhorn has been in it's long development, MS has concentrated their vision towards the corporate world. This makes it easy to think they are absent from the consumer market, and hence somehow failing. But they still seem to be raking in the dough.
Publicity stunt (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Publicity stunt (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Publicity stunt (Score:4, Insightful)
"If this is a publicity stunt, someone in Microsoft's marketting department's getting fired. This move won't sway many to stay with Microsoft products. If anything, it acknowledges OSS as a real force in the marketplace, bringing more people consider OSS."
Well said. But that's not the end of the stupidity. Microsoft cannot allow this kind of talk to gain credibility. FOSS advocates have nothing to lose and everything to gain by being perfectly frank and honest. Add to this the credibility and exposure they'd earn from being treated as equals by Microsoft, and they'd represent more of a threat than ever before.
These are not marketing folks they'd be sitting down with. FOSS geeks don't come out of the boardroom talking about synergies and new paradigms, they come out saying, things like 'MS has refused to budge on their third-rate security measures, their proprietary file formats and closed APIs. As a result, you the consumer will continue to suffer, in spite of our best efforts to mitigate the damage.'
Microsoft has a pathological streak a mile wide when it comes to partnership and dialogue. IBM, Lotus, Stack Technologies and Novell have all been victimised by their blindly opportunistic avarice. They all left it to the lawyers to do the talking, and never expressed their full and frank opinions on MS' business practices - likely because in many cases it would leave them open to pot-and-kettle accusations.
FOSS advocates aren't (typically) officers of publicly owned corporations, so they don't have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders that requires that they 'play nice'. If they're given a pulpit to preach from, you can count on some fairly frank discussion that corporate powers-that-be would find quite difficult to address. That's why even 'good guys' like IBM tends to avoid open discussion about the principles of Free Software.
No, no... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No, no... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:No, no... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:No, no... (Score:2)
---
With the bathtub girl as co host?
What she, shoots it into him?
eiwww.
What is the old saying? (Score:4, Interesting)
Bridges? (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft doesn't have a problem with building bridges... As long as they're toll bridges...
What is MS doing? (Score:2)
smack my bitch up (Score:3, Insightful)
Mohandas Gandhi
Re:smack my bitch up (Score:2, Insightful)
Quick retraction after OSS community accepts (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Quick retraction after OSS community accepts (Score:3, Insightful)
Nice and cozy there, under your rock, ain't it?
Easy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Easy (Score:2, Interesting)
Please implement the RFC entitled "English grammar: a proposal for a unified language" dated 1476. I'm having trouble decoding your proprietary file format.
Oh, and I'll let you in on a little secret: saying "M$" was extremely funny in the early nineties...
Holy Disengenuity Batman! (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft wants to interoperate? Go ahead! Just quit *not* interoperating.
Microsoft wants to reach out to the Open Source community? Uh, they really don't get it, do they. There aren't any leaders to reach out to! There are leaders, but it's not a labor union or a PTA.
We'll judge you by your actions, not by what you say to our leaders.
Maybe not leaders, per se... (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember, you only need consensus, not unanimity.
Maybe the EU Threats are having an impact (Score:5, Insightful)
One room (Score:2)
uh oh [imdb.com]
btw, great movie :)
Reminds me of someone else.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Um, yeah. When's that starting again?
Actions always speak louder than words, in both cases.
Microsoft KNOWS what to do (Score:2)
This is just free advertisement. They know perfectly what to do. They can hire people who can tell them what to do.
I can just imagine (Score:3, Funny)
MSFT: What can we do to better interoperate with OSS?
OSS: How about allowing Office to work with OSS file formats, or use an open standard that other programs can interoperate with.
MSFT: Um, uhh, We'll get back to you on that one. What else?
OSS: How about using standard video file formats such as MPG instead of the perverted version of MPG called WMA that only works with WMP.
MSFT: Uh, ehh, I don't think so! Anything else?
OSS: Well, how about using a file system that is open, publishing your own, or working with OSS file systems.
MSFT: This is crazy! I'm outta here!
Very Inaccurate Title (Score:5, Informative)
Pattern of Conduct (Score:4, Interesting)
Now take all these OSS groups. Many programmers want lots of people to use their software. They work for free, but they still get credit. Microsoft can give them all the credit in the world. All they have to do is bow down and worship
Don't do it! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would any company ask its competition how they could get along better, if the real motivation wasn't to be more competitive? Am I missing something?
We DO support open standards (Score:3, Insightful)
MS does support open standards. They can read and write to them just fine. They just like to "enhance" them, and "innovate" to add functionality that, sadly, leaves open software hopelessly out of date and incompatible.
If you want full featured software, come over to the dar..., uh, our side of the street.
What about HTML with CSS that conforms. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you include ignoring the standard definition and doing whatever you please, yes, they read it. By that definition, my toaster reads it, too.
Do you really think they wanted to control the browser market for any purpose than to destroy it, because it was free and open?
Unfortunately for them, even after abandoning their users and code base for several years after they thought their opposition was dead, they find they have to come back to it once in a while.
If they would implement and support W3C and oth
Partners (Score:2)
(heh heh heh)
"A Rising Tide... and Barriers to Entry" (Score:5, Interesting)
If I could get an ear within MS I'd try to get them to admit to themselves that the Internet made them more money and the Internet was entirely structured from Open Standards... ethernet, TCP/IP, sockets, HTML over HTTP and on and on... They profitted enormously from NOT fighting these standards... no dial-up MSN only.
The reason for this is the Rising Tide effect.
More investment is poured into a market and most companies benefit in some ratio to their marketshare... there's some shifting but the big winners accelerate adoption and don't fight the new standards that are causing the explosive growth.
Microsoft saw the benefits and only tried minor hacks to the standards (DHTML for example).
When microsoft realizes that having your only significant competitor cost almost nothing they should have the next big Eureka moment. The way to destroy the Sun, HP, and IBM Unix businesses is to accelerate the enterprise adoption of Linux.
Oracle got it... if they spend less on Sun, HP and IBM hardware they have more budget for our products... duh. IT budgets are finite... growth comes from getting more of the budget.
Sun, HP and IBM could be effectively driven out of the Enterprise software business. Enterprise deployments of big applications goes crazy based upon new cost models and Microsoft's boat rises on that new high tide.
The logical extension is commercial Linux versions of their higher margin products (MS SQL, Visual Studio) and even more growth as a company when
the only other significant alternative is an OSS project with little revenue to help it compete for Enterprise requirements.
That's what I might tell this guy to explain to Bill gates and Bill of course would sob gently...
"You mean we've already won? There's no one left to kill? Just mine the veins we already own?."
Well... there is Oracle still.
Bill will likely develop an interest in politics where dirty tricks still mean something.
McD
two things (Score:2, Insightful)
All cynicism and paranoia aside, if Microsoft is serious about wanting to interoperate (with anybody, not just the FOSS community), here's the input I'd give them:
Bizzaro world (Score:2)
Someone hold me, I'm scared...
Did they volunteer to bring the Koolaid? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, what could be wrong with that?
Name a good software company that has had a serious relationship with Microsoft as a competitor and has come off better over a 5-year period as a result of trying to cooperate with them (OK, IBM lasted a bit longer, but most are dead).
IBM has demonstrated any number of ways of showing some level of cooperation with the open or free software communities. Apple, too, has earned some good karma, basing their OS and browser on open code and architecture, even if they keep a lot proprietary. Sun has been involved as well, and it hasn't kept them from keeping other things private. So why can't Microsoft think of something like most other major companies have, without calling a conference of competitors that sounds too much like looking for a target to attack, much like SCO's supposed invitation to IBM and the open source community to sit down and work things out?
Stop being so evil. Microsoft has enough money in the bank to be able to afford business ethics and earn trust.
In unrelated news (Score:3, Funny)
Start with Openness (Score:3, Insightful)
3 things: (Score:4, Insightful)
-Full CSS2/XHTML 1.1 in IE7 with no proprietary extensions
-As stated, open the file formats.
It's their second attempt (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/28/ms_mugs_t
It's all about the devs. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sun caught on to this not too long ago, and psudo open sourced Solaris in the hopes that developers would flock to it, fix it, maintain it, and innovate on it. Sun realized that by open sourcing solaris it could, in theory, triple maybe quadruple its development and enginnering efforts for free! Oh, yeah, and it still owns and can sell Solaris!
Now MS sees that it can kill Linux, OpenOffice and other competetors by drawing it's developer base into the MS flock. I'm not talking about Linus and Stallman here, but I'm talking about the applications developers. People don't run any OS to stare at it, they use it to run programs.
I don't see MS open sourcing hardly anything, but what I do them doing is building an MS type source forge, some sort of MS exclusive [psudo] open source license, and maybe open sourcing it's development tools under that [psudo] open source license. They think they can give away free tools, and sponser a collaboration site and perhaps a few hundred or thousand OSS developers will start coding software that adds value to Windows for free.
I hope they are wrong.
desperation ? (Score:4, Insightful)
In the past MS didn't even give a phukene reach around as they embraced the competition, and now they are offering to reach out ?
I just don't really care have microsoft reach out. They carved out their solitude with monopolistic practices, and now they can deal with the consequences.
what stallman sez will help (Score:5, Informative)
The following is Mirrored from: http://linuxtoday.com/stories/4999.html [linuxtoday.com]
Richard Stallman proposes three remedies that would help enable free
software operating systems such as GNU/Linux compete technically while
respecting users' freedom. These three remedies directly address the three
biggest obstacles to development of free operating systems, and to giving
them the capability of running programs written for Windows. They also
directly address the methods Microsoft has said (in the "Halloween
documents") it will use to obstruct free software. It would be most
effective to use all three of these remedies together.
1. Require Microsoft to publish complete documentation of all interfaces
between software components, all communications protocols, and all file
formats. This would block one of Microsoft's favourite tactics: secret and
incompatible interfaces.
To make this requirement really stick, Microsoft should not be allowed to
use a nondisclosure agreement with some other organization to excuse
implementing a secret interface. The rule must be: if they cannot publish
the interface, they cannot release an implementation of it.
It would, however, be acceptable to permit Microsoft to begin
implementation of an interface before the publication of the interface
specifications, provided that they release the specifications
simultaneously with the implementation.
Enforcement of this requirement would not be difficult. If other software
developers complain that the published documentation fails to describe
some aspect of the interface, or how to do a certain job, the court would
direct Microsoft to answer questions about it. Any questions about
interfaces (as distinguished from implementation techniques) would have to
be answered.
Similar terms were included in an agreement between IBM and the European
Community in 1984, settling another antitrust dispute. See
http://www.essential.org/antitrust/ibm/ibm1984ec.h tml [essential.org].
2. Require Microsoft to use its patents for defense only, in the field of
software. (If they happen to own patents that apply to other fields, those
other fields could be included in this requirement, or they could be
exempt.) This would block the other tactic Microsoft mentioned in the
Halloween documents: using patents to block development of free software.
We should give Microsoft the option of using either self-defense or mutual
defense. Self defense means offering to cross-license all patents at no
charge with anyone who wishes to do so. Mutual defense means licensing all
patents to a pool which anyone can join -- even people who have no patents
of their own. The pool would license all members' patents to all members.
It is crucial to address the issue of patents, because it does no good to
have Microsoft publish an interface, if they have managed to work some
patented wrinkle into it (or into the functionality it gives access to),
such that the rest of us are not allowed to implement it.
3. Require Microsoft not to certify any hardware as working with Microsoft
software, unless the hardware's complete specifications have been
published, so that any programmer can implement software to support the
same hardware.
Secret hardware specifications are not in general Microsoft's doing, but
they are a significant obstacle for the development of the free operating
systems that can provide competition for Windows. To remove this obstacle
would be a great help. If a settlement is negotiated with Microsoft,
including this sort of provision in it is not impossible -- it would be a
matter of negotiation.
This April, Microsoft's Ballmer announced a possible plan to release
source code for some part of
Microsoft needs to put out a dictionary (Score:3, Funny)
"Extend an olive branch" - (vb)
(1) To attack with IP lawsuits, especially when the lawsuit is very weak, but the party being sued does not have the resources to fight it.
(2) To fund 3rd parties to attack with IP lawsuits. "Microsoft extended and olive branch, through SCO, to IBM and Daimler-Chrysler "
"Build some bridges" (vb)
To sit down with a party to decide how to most effectively extend an olive branch. (qv)
"Collaborate" (vb)
To protect one's monopoly by destroying ones opponents by any means, fair or foul. Especially of political bribery to effect legal changes that make the modus operandi of potential competitors illegal.
"Open up one's file formats"
(1) To obscure one's file formats, especially formatting, so that competitors products look buggy when viewing files.
(2) To send malformed files when ones servers are communicating with one's potential competitors. "Microsoft's web servers have opened their file formats to the Opera web-browser"
Re:Darth Vader offers olive branch to rebels (Score:2, Funny)
Re:This Is What Our Congress Thinks? (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, the statement is mostly correct; the law itself is mostly just fine. What's horribly broken is the patent examination and granting process. The examiners have done a shameful job in maintaining the integrity of patents by allowing patents on trivial "inventions" or re-purposing of existing inventions; by allowing patents that do not fully describe how to re-implement the claimed invention(s); and by allowing patents that are nearly unreadable with legalese and deliberately vague language.
Fix the examination and approval process, and the patent system will almost certainly sort itself out again without any legislative changes.
Schwab
Re:This Is What Our Congress Thinks? (Score:3, Insightful)
Doubtful.
Forget about silly patents. A big problem with patents today is cross-licensing and patent-pooling. In a nutshell it works like this:
Big companies join together in "co-ompetition" and pool their patents, if a company want access to any of their patents the price of entrance is that the new company's patents go into the patent pool and are all automaticall
Re:MafiaSoft (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not too optimistic.