U.S. Adds Years To Microsoft's 'Probation'

An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. Justice Department has added another two years to its agreement with Microsoft, extending the protocol licensing program that is part of the company's penance for anti-competitive activities. The organization feels Microsoft is providing documentation too slowly to its licensees." From the article: "At one time, the Justice Department and several state Attorneys General had sought a breakup of Microsoft in order to prevent it from abusing its Windows monopoly. Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson at one point ordered such a move, though his ruling was later reversed on appeal. Ultimately Microsoft settled with the Department of Justice, agreeing to far more modest restrictions, including the protocol licensing program." Relatedly, regulators have cleared Vista of anti-competitive elements. They examined the OS on concerns an added search box may have given the company a home-field advantage.

Probation?

[Trelane]

I thought that probation was about...
well... you know...
keeping you from doing the stuff you got in trouble for .

harsh penalty

[gEvil (beta)]

"You haven't supplied the information you were required to as part of the terms of settlement, so instead of doing something about it, we'll give you more time."

two more years

[Anonymous Coward]

Two more years of looking the other way.

A new concept in software design

[Dunbal]

regulators have cleared Vista of anti-competitive elements. They examined the OS on concerns an added search box may have given the company a home-field advantage.

      First software was designed to do stuff because it was needed.
      Later, software was designed to do stuff that was cool.
      Still later, software was designed to make money.
      Then software was designed primarily by marketing departments
      Now, software is designed by lawyers and the judicial system?

      What a great world we live in.

Bureaucratic waste

[Toby The Economist]

What a complete waste of time.

Has the State involvement in this issue achieved anything?

And how much did it COST?

We're all sitting here paying tax through our noses.

Who's spending this money?

What are we getting for it?

How many millions have been spent on this excercise which has had no significant impact on the MS monopoly?

Re:Windows is fine in one piece, TYVM.

[DragonWriter]

If Google made an OS and integrated Google search technology would everyone cry foul?

No, at least not with the justification they have when Microsoft does it, unless Google, instead of Microsft, had a desktop OS monopoly. The legal objection is based on leveraging a monopoly in one market to negate effective competition in another market. If Google, say, put together their own Linux distribution tomorrow, they could integrate whatever they wanted with it before they established an OS monopoly. If they ever did, though, their ability to leverage it to gain traction in other markets would be constrained by law.

Probably not, the hypocritical zealots.

Its only hypocritical when you are ignoring the central (monopoly) element of the objection.

Microsoft and its so called standards

[camcorder]

I can only dream of a computing experience, which has lack of unknown formats. I would really be a lot more happy to see wmv files to be played without any problem, or office documents openning flawlessly in various applications.

Real question is why should we stick to just one application for any format. If every unique application made their own file format, nobody would be able to share anything, and why does Internet ever exists if we won't be able share our documents.

That's not an open source issue, or free market problem. It's the lack of mentality for sharing of information. People really suffer from these compatibility problems, and if someone made a research about the lost and or wasted time related to these issues, it would be easily seen that it's very huge problem that computer users experience. And with the growing trend of DRM and stuff we will just suffer this more and more.

People should convert, open, edit any format with any application coded for them. To let this, those willing to create a format, should clearly state specifications for these formats, or clearly state that this format is just for a specific application and should not be shared so that users won't use those files for sharing. A .doc file created with 200x version of Microsoft Word is just like the feces of this application. And if we don't want to make Internet or our networks sewer we should definately stop sharing those crap (literally) through the wires.

so, since the DOJ judgement

[yagu]

What I don't understand is that since the DOJ judegement against Microsoft they've had time to rewrite their entire flagship OS from scratch, yet still haven't been able to document it? How naive does the government have to be?

Uh, no.

[jd]

The court case was intended to stop Microsoft designing OTHER people's software by means of lawyers and judges. (That's why they refer to "anti-competitive".)

I don't approve of laws designing software, but I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with stopping people abusing laws to prevent software from being designed. I also have no problem with laws that enforce progress.

(The State of Oregon recently received some thinly-veiled threats from Microsoft's CEO over Oregon's active support for Open Source - both towards Oregon and towards all Microsoft shops in Oregon. Although not a part of the DoJ lawsuit, and therefore probably not a part of this review, I would feel a lot more comfortable if States receiving such threats reviewed their legality. Last I heard, "demands with menaces" was not considered an OK activity.)

What a bunch of Crap

[RedHatLinux]

When the average person violates probation, they go straight to prison. They dont get a trial or a hearing to prove their innocence, nor does the state give them more time to get it right, or get their affairs in order.

Re:Bureaucratic waste

[gEvil (beta)]

Well, things were moving along pretty nicely and for a moment it looked like something was actually going to be done. Then in 2001, everything changed for some inexplicable reason...

Settled

[bblboy54]

The best word in the whole article is "settled" ... Microsoft settled with the government. This means if I get pulled over for speeding, I can settle with the office by giving him $50 and him leaving me alone, right? When you settle in court, you settle with the person you wronged.... You can't settle with the enforcement -- or at least shouldnt be able to. Your punishment is your punishment.

Unjust

[fishbowl]

So, Microsoft violates their probation. What *should* happen is this:

The company should be disbanded, all its assets forfeited and sold at auction. Anyone on the executive committee of the company, and anyone else who knew or should have known that this violation would have occurred, should be sentenced to at least ten years in prison, and their personal assets forfeited and auctioned off.

Nothing less that that would happen to you or me and the company we controlled, if we purposely used our company to violate federal laws. The last thing we'd hear from a judge is "I see you are having trouble complying with the orders of this court. Perhaps if we give you a few more years to work on it you can get back to us on how you're coming with the whole court-mandated actions thing, okay?"

You and I wouldn't get that treatment. We would go to prison, our assets woudl be seized, and it wouldn't make the news.

One word...

[gardyloo]

How naive does the government have to be? ... "nucular".

campaign donations?

[ninjaz]

The cynic in me suspects this is a move to ensure that the huge bribes^H^H^H^H^H^Hcampaign donations keep rolling in from Microsoft at least through the next US presidential election. The only real downside of this ruling for Microsoft appears to be the risk of a less-friendly attorney general taking office -- that is, through a Republican Party loss in the 2008 presidential elections.

Re:Bureaucratic waste

[Anonymous Coward]

If you'll remember, the case changed trajectories dramatically in 2001. Microsoft had been convicted on pretty much all counts and was facing the prospect of some pretty grim (and effective) remedies. But suddenly, in 2001, the Justice Department decided that since they couldn't drop charges after a conviction, they would do the next best thing and surrender via "a settlement".

So, yes, we spent a lot of money on this, and we're not getting any benefit. It doesn't mean government oversight doesn't work. It means that when we pay for government oversight that isn't happening, we're screwed.

Re:Unjust

[BradleyUffner]

Do you have any idea how much this would cost the government, corporations, and small businesses? All their support would instantly vanish, they would all have to do a massive retool of almost every piece of software they own, or have developed independently. Doing what you propose would decimate the US economy. If you thought the unemployment of Tech people after the internet bubble burst was bad, your idea would cause an utter nightmare.

There are bigger issues here to consider then a few people's hate for Microsoft.

DOJ: dumb and dumber

[EllynGeek]

who gives a rip about bundled software? Everyone bundles. Duh. Their biggest crime is their illegal collusion with hardware vendors. That's their biggest lock on the market. Everything else flows from that- all those nice customers to bully and abuse, all those captive devs trapped in lardy Microsoft Foundation Classes, and their giant politician-purchasing war chest. The DOJ doesn't want to punish MS, it's just a big empty show.

"High-Priority Update" forces MS's Harshest EULA.

[Futurepower(R)]

Those who try to document Microsoft's abuses find that there are too many to investigate and explain.

For example, Ed Foster's Gripelog has a story about Microsoft's Harshest EULA [gripe2ed.com]. Windows users who download the "High-Priority Update" called Windows Genuine Advantage Notification are required to agree to a new contract. Ed says, "Not only does Microsoft place restrictions on your right to criticize the software, it won't allow you to uninstall the software or to test it in an operating environment."

EULAs are a unique kind of contract in that they supposedly allow one party to the contract to force new contract provisions on the other. Contract law has always held that forced contracts are illegal.

If you buy, agree to the terms of use, and install Windows for your company and train your staff to use it and applications you buy for it, your total cost is far greater than the cost of Windows. Yet EULAs supposedly allow the software provider to change the contract provisions at any time, with no restrictions whatsoever. Your only option if you don't agree to the new contract provisions is to lose all the money you have invested and stop doing business until you can get new software. This is especially severe when a company has a monopoly on the operating system your business software needs to run.

The concept of fairness is completely absent from EULAs. Those who write EULAs believe that they can do anything they like. If you go to your kitchen and find a Microsoft employee eating your ice cream, check your EULA; maybe Microsoft has decided that Microsoft employees can raid your refrigerator.

Re:Unjust

[fishbowl]

>Do you have any idea how much this would cost the government, corporations, and small businesses?

I don't care. The alternative is to set aside the rule of law, and that's worth the blood of every last able-bodied person in the nation, many of whom have in the past in fact given their lives in order that it can be sustained.

When an entity becomes powerful enough that it can set aside the rule of law, the law has no meaning, and the nation is no more.

Re:I am confused...

[SeaFox]

Do you mean Republican Congress' stance on Bush, or the Justice Dept's stance on Microsoft?

In two years there will no longer be a need for Congress to look the other way at the Bush adminitration's looking the other way at big business's looking the other way at customer security and the NSA looking for every way to look at you!

Re:They called Clinton crazy

[Trelane]

honestly, they did bring innovation (and pushed Apple to innovate), they established a de-facto standard for personal computing, and they made owning computers easy and accessible, which stimulated the demand, driving the prices down.

I disagree. I think it was the heavy competition between equal vendors, coupled with vastly increasing volume that brought prices down.

Re:They called Clinton crazy

[Trelane]

equal vendors

This should be clarified, as it's an important point.

The equality was provided by Windows being so ubiquitous, certainly, but this would also be true with sufficient competition amongst several equal OS vendors (as opposed to one monopoly and two roughly equal bit players). If there weren't Microsoft to dictate APIs, vendors would use a set of standard, cross-platform APIs (e.g. QT, wxWidgets, OpenGL, SDL,) and open standards for drivers would likely also have come into existance and be well-established.

I would arge that the open standards were much more important . If each vendor had their own, proprietary slots instead of USB, firewire, ATA, PCI, etc. history would likely have turned out much, much, much differently. It was the open standards that let you buy an IBM today and a Gateway tomorrow and not have to throw away all of your hardware.

Re:They called Clinton crazy

[m_frankie_h]

Then why would anyone want to become a monopoly?