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FSF Europe on Microsoft ruling
"Those who value freedom and competition have received two nice Christmas gifts this week. First, new EU member Poland does not allow the introduction of innovation- and job-killer software patents through the diplomatic back-door. And now the European Court decides that Microsoft should not get another four years to further harm its competition" says Georg Greve, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). Bo Versterdorf, President of the European Court, has today rejected Microsoft's appeal to delay execution of the sanctions. Microsoft has been forced by European Commission to publish technical information about the interfaces of their Windows operating system to enable competitors to reach interoperability between their systems and Windows. While the software giant claimed that following the tradition of the technical industry to publish formats and standards will do irreparable harm to them judge Bo Vesterdorf agreed with European Commission and FSFE that this was not a convincing thesis. Legal and technical competence brought in by the Samba Team and FSFE in the process helped the European Commission to resist to the attack of the most important law firms in Europe. The Free Software community, represented by lawyer Carlo Piana, kept defending european consumers and the interests of European citizens and of all companies that base their business on Free Software. "Microsoft now will have to explain how they have arbitrarily modified public standards they use in their servers and work hard to re-establish competition in the small server market. On the other end we are sure that it is an opportunity for the market to compete on quality of code and services, respecting interoperability" says Carlo Piana. "This is a great success of an international community that is really able to coordinate and obtain excellent results: technical, legal and political. We have always thought that Microsoft's arguments were poor and we are glad we were able to explain this to the judge so well" says Stefano Maffulli, Italian Chancellor of the FSFE. But this success did in fact cost something: the FSFE, who played an important role in the decision, was only able to put this much resources into these cases due to the ongoing financial support from the Free Software community as well as from several companies. "The more donations we get, the more we will be able to extend our engagement for Europe's freedom from monopolisation", Stefano Maffulli concludes. About the Free Software Foundation Europe: The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a charitable non-governmental organisation dedicated to all aspects of Free Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate in a digital society. Therefore the Freedoms to use, copy, modify and redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition- allow equal participation in the information age. Creating awareness for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are central issues of the FSFE. The FSFE was founded in 2001 as the European sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation in the United States. Further information: http://www.fsfeurope.org When you would like to receive our press releases regularly please subscribe to our mailinglist at http://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/press-release. Thank you very much for your interest. -- Joachim Jakobs <jj@office.fsfeurope.org> Press Speaker - FSF Europe (http://fsfeurope.org) In der Roede 24, 64367 Mühltal (Tel: +49-179-6919565) (Log in to post comments)
FSF Europe on Microsoft ruling Posted Dec 22, 2004 18:26 UTC (Wed) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link] As a former, strong advocate of Microsoft software in my workplace, I very much applaud the court's decision.
I would much prefer if Microsoft would have to explain these things on its home turf as well. Their attitudes have spawned an arrogand, illiterate, often incompetent culture of "IT" button-pushers, the managers of whom will behave religiously against the use of anything not pre-packaged, often only pre-packaged by Microsoft. This is hurting the evolution of Information Technology in the United States in ways that only sytem administrators and software developers are able to see sometimes.
In particular, I have seen far too many "web development teams" who can't seem to produce Web access software that will work universally across all platforms and browsers. This is a shame, because often these Internet service facilities are *public*.
Nowadays, I very much regret my former support and advocacy for Microsoft products in the workplace. Microsoft has a long, long way to go if they want me back as a supporter.
FSF Europe on Microsoft ruling Posted Dec 24, 2004 8:23 UTC (Fri) by tres (guest, #352) [Link] Welcome to the Light Side! (At least the side where the internals are illuminated.) I agree with your statement that some of the more complex issues can only be seen by people who truly understand the way that the bits move throughtout the system. Do you have a proposal for how we should go about explaining these issues to the computer quasi-literate people around us? I have tried to explain them to Mother and she doesn't get it, nor does she really want to. The deeper issues of control vs. freedom seem beyond the realm of a quick explanation.
I have another friend, who is an excellent self-taught programmer, with the skills to get around alot of Windows' restrictions but he has no desire to do so. He sees the world through a pair of MS goggles; he also believes in capitalism to the point that he thinks MS should be allowed to do anything non-violent to dominate the market. I have tried to explain to him that everytime MS steps on a competitor, or to a lesser extent -- buys one, changes/extends a protocol, or otherwise installs a roadblock, that they are removing a source of innovation by forcing them, their product, or MS' replacement product to conform to the windows paradigm. He's smart enough to realize that MS innovates via their massive corporate checkbook but doesn't see the loss when a beast like Windows swallows up an independant application. I showed him how to use telnet (years ago) to check things like a POP3(110) account, determine the mail server via SMTP(25), or get a web page(80). ex: telnet my.host.TLD 80 GET /index.htmlI also showed him how to automate things like this using expect and perl and how to link various tools together to get the results needed. Two days later he had to show me something: some little tool he wrote to do something so trivial I can't even remember what it did. What I do remember was that he had not only found a library to automate these tasks in Windows but had purchased a developer's license for it. That library was supposed to work with all versions of Windows and had specially licensed code from MS. (Now, since MS' IP stack used to be BSD, that code could have been free code to begin with.) It was more valuable to him that he have access to purchasing a proprietary library than it was to have free access to the formats and protocols used by MS (which should be standards compliant but aren't). In his defense, he codes for a very vertical market, and standards compliant software isn't his concern; he just wants his development libraries/platforms to work for his audience.
If I can't get the above mentioned developer to see the light, how am I going to get the computer illiterate people to see the light? I'm sure I'm not alone here. How do you get the purchasing manager to get it if you can't the project leader to? How do you overcome MS' multi-million dollar
FSF Europe on Microsoft ruling Posted Dec 22, 2004 21:33 UTC (Wed) by Felix.Braun (subscriber, #3032) [Link] The Court's press release is a bit more informative on the reasons for its decision. Specifically the court concedes that Microsoft may have a case to ask for an anullment of the Commission's order. However, Mircosoft has been unable to convince the court that implementing that order until a final decision has been reached would cause irreparable damage. The full text of the court's order can be found here. (Haven't read it yet)
FSF Europe on Microsoft ruling Posted Dec 22, 2004 22:15 UTC (Wed) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] This may sound a little ruff on the edges, but...
I can bet that "Microsoft SMB stack of Longhorn" is going to be again *incompatible* (somehow) with older versions of Windows and with other OSes.
Their "cultural" business tactics resides not only in the push of pre-packaged software, but also in *some! ignorance* or *complaisance* of major market players, both sellers and buyers, that results in a snowball of pushing incidents of every order down into a "pain chain",... and where Microsoft at the top always has managed to get out unharmed...
Did the world forgot that IT is a Engineering Science, to embrace MS tactics this way ? ... has complex or heaven more complex than the Rocket Science that drives the space industry ?...
Well, the European Comission is going to have a tough job demonstrating that MS Longhorn is not complying with the resolutions... they will say that is a total new *thing*, that they are being persecuted...
In the end the results to be expected are those that always has been : - the destruction of a so called public world accepted standard,... and i'm not degressing, i belive.
FSF Europe on Microsoft ruling Posted Dec 22, 2004 23:42 UTC (Wed) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link] I know this is probably an unpopular viewpoint, but I am very disappointedwith the FSF being involved in this case. I am no friend to MS, I do not use their software unless I am forced to (only rarely at the office), and then I usually complain loudly. I do not see any convincing arguments about what MS is doing that they should not be able to legally do. All the things mentioned in this article seem like valid complaints against MS from a business standpoint, but not from a legal standpoint. The FSF should be lobbying against these governments for using MS software, not against their business practices. I don't like their business practices any better than anyone else, but they are simply that, business practices. If you don't like them, do not do business with them. If you interfere legally with their business, expect them to interfere with yours. This business of beating up on monopolies is bogus. It is hypocritical for a government to punish a company for being a monoply, especially if they are enabling the monoply. Stop enabling it instead; don't buy their products; don't require use of their products by others; and ultimately, don't give them a government granted monopoly on their products (copyright) in the first place! By supporting these governments' fights against MS's monopoly, we are simply justifying any MS attempt to try to undermine free software with laws.
FSF Europe on Microsoft ruling Posted Dec 23, 2004 3:58 UTC (Thu) by pyellman (guest, #4997) [Link] Perhaps you need to give some time to studying the history of monopolies and the conclusions that have been reached (based on such study) regarding how best to maintain competitiveness in other markets which the monopolist may target. If you're a free-marketer like me, remember that competition is one of the pillars of any functional free market economy. It is by this time well known that a company with a monopoly over a key asset/technology can use that monopoly to alter the basic rules of competition in its own favor to the extent that what you have can no longer be described as a competitive free market. In this country (the U.S.), having a monopoly is not illegal; it is using that monopoly to extend control into other markets and product areas that has been determined to be contrary to maintenance of a free market and the public good (at least until the last 3 years or so).
A typical scenario looks like this: Monopoly company A determines to dominate another market, and uses a combination of (a) financial resources provided it by its monopoly, and (b) the market power of its monopoly, proceeds to choke off the air supply of any competitors in target market. Often, Monopoly company A will give away or heavily subsidize consumer products in this new market in order to remove a competitor's revenue stream, as such competitor does not have a monopoly cash cow to fall back on. Does this sound at all familiar? Very recently, Microsoft made exactly this move in the music downloading space, with agreements with content providers by which Microsoft will help those content providers (financially) to offer a product at a much lower cost than Apples ITunes. The price? A lock in to Microsoft's secret, protected, proprietary media formats. Inevitably, once it has established dominance over this emerging market, Microsoft will find a way to recoup its investment by charging monopoly rates on other, related products.
Unfortunately, despite your protestations, there is little or no "business" defense against such an assault; nor is the consuming public generally in a position to "reject" en masse the products of the monopolist. Generally the only recourse is public policy. School yourself up, it's a big deal.
Peter Yellman
Fundamentals of free markets Posted Dec 26, 2004 3:10 UTC (Sun) by shuvam (guest, #26871) [Link] Peter, that one was lucid. :)
Reminds me of the sort of things I had to understand from my economist friends --- I'm an engineer --- before I could comprehend "free markets." One of them relates to the role of government and legislation in the success of the "free" market. After all, the "free" market should be totally uncontrolled, given its very name, shouldn't it?
As far as I've understood, there are some basic areas where government roles, including legislation and their implementation, are needed, in order to protect the "free-ness" of a free market. It is not possible to have a totally free market unless there is government involvement and suitable legislation to protect this free-ness.
Some of these areas include (i) protection of property rights, (ii) quick and effective implementation of the rule of law, (iii) investment in the production, maintenance, and protection of public goods, e.g. protection of the environment, building of roads, etc, and (iv) protecting "small" layers in the business, economic, or social sense from predatory practices of "larger" or more powerful players. This last point may sound like socialism, but it is not. The point here is not to advocate state ownership or control of the forces of production, or to have a "controlled economy", etc. The point relates to just ensuring sufficient government intervention to protect the relatively weaker against direct attacks from stronger entities.
Obviously a sense of balance is needed... too much government involvement may result in a market where the basic market forces are interfered with. One area where aggressive government implementation of point (i) has resulted in hot debates in the FSF circles is the entire idea of property rights applied to intellectual property.... some say that the US Govt is going too far in protecting the owner's interests in the case of IP.
But to hope that a free market can remain free without legislative intervention and government support is probably naive.
However, in the Real World(TM), I find that "free" markets are rarely free, once the product or industry segment becomes big. Powerful business interests often "persuade" governments to shift the emphasis of laws or their implementation one way or other. In such situations, the only hope is to get opposing "persuasion" from other big companies. A Microsoft can be held in check by an IBM if one attacks the other; I sometimes feel that this is the only reason that Microsoft has not managed to outlaw the concept of free software itself in the US by now. :) But this mutual deterrence does not work when the entire business community decides to attack the customer, e.g. in the case of cartels. See the diamond industry for instance. The end-customer simply lives with high price of diamonds, take it or leave it. And governments of "free" countries are very effectively "persuaded" to look the other way. I think this is sort of what the original poster was apprehensive about.
I know I'm out on a limb here... economics is not _AT_ALL_ my area of expertise, so feel free to shoot these words down. :)
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