Secure Boot, No Thanks [LWN.net]

Secure Boot, No Thanks

Posted Jan 1, 2013 12:41 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Secure Boot, No Thanks by efraim
Parent article: The H Year: 2012's Wins, Fails and Mehs

There are plenty of legitimate reason for demonizing Microsoft's behavior, but including the media player and Internet Explorer as a bundle with OS itself? Come on!

The problem was never a bundled browser. The problem were with incentives to have it as the only browser on preinstalled system. You may not like plethora of crapware on newly sold systems but it's important way to give Joe Average a chance to test your product. Microsoft specifically forbidden OEMs to do that (it only promised some marketing $$ if guys will not install Netscape... and OEMs naturally have chosen $$ promised by Microsoft and not smaller amount promised by Netscape).

Everybody does that nowadays. So, turns out, it's not an anti-competitive behavior but rather an innovation, an example to follow (and do Linux distributions follow it!)

That's quite a statement. Yes, everyone does this but even Android often comes these days with two (or sometimes more) browsers.

I don't believe for a moment that Microsoft won the browser wars because of some monopoly.

Abuse of monopoly was most certainly a factor if it was deciding factor or not... we'll never know.

So yes, I don't think Netscape's whining about monopoly was in any way justified. If they could only build a competitive web browser in time...

It's kinda hard to do without money and Microsoft made sure Netscape will not have these money. Of course Netscape mostly did that to themselves (Complete rewrite of million lines long program? Who's crazy idea is that?) but Microsoft used a lot of illegal tricks too.

You are basically saying that it's Ok to jab someone couple of times with knife in the back if said someone is on a bridge with a stone tied to the neck. No, it's not Ok to do that even in this case.

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Secure Boot, No Thanks

Posted Jan 1, 2013 13:23 UTC (Tue) by efraim (subscriber, #65977) [Link]

>> The problem were with incentives to have it as the only browser on preinstalled system.
Notice that Netscape was NOT preinstalled with earlier Microsoft OSes either. Customers had to go and explicitly get it from Netscape (download, or snail mail)

The fact that with Netscape 4 and Internet Explorer 4 they did not bother tells much more about Netscape 4 then it tells about evil Microsoft's plan.

>> You are basically saying that it's Ok to jab someone couple of times with knife in the back if said someone is on a bridge with a stone tied to the neck. No, it's not Ok to do that even in this case.

I am not saying any of that at all. I just do not thing that what Microsoft did was somehow jabbing a knife into Netscape's back. Yes, they wanted to control what their OEMs put on pre-installed systems. In fact, Apple wanted to do it so hard that they eliminated the OEMs altogether. Nobody is crying anti-competitive behavior on them over the fact (or did I miss it?)

Secure Boot, No Thanks

Posted Jan 1, 2013 16:36 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Notice that Netscape was NOT preinstalled with earlier Microsoft OSes either. Customers had to go and explicitly get it from Netscape (download, or snail mail)

This is where you are wrong. Sure, not all systems had it preinstalled, but enough of them did in 1996-1997. By the 1998 Microsoft managed to squeeze most OEMs and "convinced" then to drop Netscape. Textbook case of monopoly power abuse.

In fact, Apple wanted to do it so hard that they eliminated the OEMs altogether. Nobody is crying anti-competitive behavior on them over the fact (or did I miss it?)

You are 100% correct, of course. Microsoft is pale imitation of Apple when abuse of power is concerned. But the thing is: Apple was not never big enough PC vendor to warrant antitrust investigations.

On the phone side (where it is big enough in certain markets, but not in all of them), oh yeah... Apple gets a lot of attention from different groups. In court and outside of court.