Software Makers Lobby EU Against Microsoft 324
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Adobe and Symantec are lobbying EU regulators for action against Vista, the Wall Street Journal reports. Adobe is calling for Microsoft to be barred from building into the OS free software that competes with Acrobat. From the article: 'Adobe and Symantec have told EU regulators that Vista has put them squarely in Microsoft's cross hairs. Symantec is concerned that Vista will direct consumers toward a Microsoft-designed security console, or box that shows what level various security functions, such as an Internet firewall, are set on. The rival company wants to be able automatically to override the Microsoft template with its own design and features, as it has been allowed to do in the past.'"
Microsoft is doing the right thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Symantecs OS invading suite of crappy tools just sucks.
Integrating PDF generation into applications and office suites ist also a MUST.
Microsoft is doing the right thing here. And i won't whine for symantec, they just made all the veritas products more sucky.
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1) Adobe made PDF an open standard, and now they are mad its being used?
2) Adobe has been sitting on PDF as a money maker for years without much innovation. Time to shake up the industry!
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Re:Microsoft is doing the right thing (Score:4, Interesting)
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This is incorrect. Adobe says you can freely write software that will create PDF format documents as long as you don't break the spec and give them copyright credit on it.
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As for a security centre, how much easier will it make life if you can tell *every* Vista user "Go Start, Control Panel, Security Center, and read what it says"? The one in XPSP2 was a good start, hopefully Vista will hook it into onecare so it really is a one-stop point.
You guys don't get it. (Score:2, Informative)
Microsoft is not integrating its own PDF creation software into Vista. Microsoft is building software into Vista that reads and writes a Microsoft-created file format called XML Paper Specification (XPS). This is what Adobe is protesting. Adobe would prefer that it was PDF.
Adobe made PDF a standard because it was counting on people integrating it into their apps. What Adobe wasn't counting on is Micro
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Seconded. If you make a standard open (PDF) you should expect people to integrate it with other apps. Adobe have shot themselves in the foot with this.
If you publish a free recipe for cheese, you should expect the telephone company to start illegally bundling it with your phone service too, huh?
This isn't about open standards, this is about illegal, anti-competitive bundling to drive competitors out of a market, regardless of whether or not they have a better product. Which is better PDF or XPS? Which o
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And OS X. Oh, and OpenOffice.org.
In this analogy Apple is the supermarket and the Open Office team is the convenience store. They can bundle anything they want because they aren't a monopoly providing you a monopoly service. If Apple bundles PDF and you don't want it, buy a Dell or a Lenovo. If the Open Office team bundles PDF, buy Wordperfect or download Koffice. If MS bundles it, you're screwed, because most software only runs on Windows and it is not practical (economically) for most people to switch
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Re:Microsoft is doing the right thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Andn as far as PDF conversion goes, it's been free as part of PDFcreator for ages. Adobe's commercial versions are in fact more fragile, bulkier, produce less reliable PDF, and have a terrible tendency to stuff your system with "features" that you never asked for. The free PDFcreator, riding on top of Ghostscript's history of robustness and reliability rather than pursuing "business plans" that break features, has been outperforming it in automatic print services for years.
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Re:Microsoft is doing the right thing (Score:4, Insightful)
People need to remember that competition law exists to protect competition, not to protect competitors. Thanks to Microsoft's desire to keep one step ahead of the competition in those areas which matter to their customers, customers have benefited from easier to use software, both from Microsoft, and from alternative os suppliers.
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Why you haven't been modded +1 'funny' for the comment is beyond me.
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Symantec wasnt only complaining about their own software, but _all_ security products. They are saying (true or not is a different story) that no other security software except microsoft's own will run well on vista.
Integrating PDF into apps is a must? Seriously? It took me less than 10 secs on google to find three different
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Microsoft programmers have said many times on various MSDN blogs that a lot of the undocumented APIs that Norton and others use will be closed in Vista to be replaced with documented APIs. I believe some of the posts even invited software developers to get in touch with them if they haven't found a suitable replacement for a private API that your software used in the past.
So basically, Symantec sounds like they are being lazy. "I have to chang
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And apparently I'm also free to pay for these bundled apps as well. Now tell me why I should pay for Windows Vista + MS Defender and then just not use Defender and but and install Norton? I've already paid for MS Defender why would I buy Norton too?
This is Netscape all over again. What Symantec is complaining about is that Windows Defender will be installed automatically. If someone installs Norton, Norton will have to disable Windows De
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non-MSFT programmers have the same APIs as, say, MSFT Office programmers. Otherwise
that would be an unfair advantage.
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Of course there are plenty of undocumented APIs, but this doesn't just apply to MS-Windows. Typically you have two sets of APIs: public and private. The public ones are generally considered stable and support will be provided if something goes wring. The private ones are subject to change and you have to work to keep up with those changes. Other than system components, nothing should be using those private APIs unless they have to.
The problem th
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As for any API, Win32 is the external layer of an onion. The internal layers are also organised sometimes in smaller private "APIs". Most of the time you don't see them and you cannot access them (eg: statically linked) but with in specific area you can call undocumented private function by selecting an entry in a dll or by updating some undocumented memory structure.
Needless to say that those function are highly susceptible to change from one security fix/patch to an
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So far that is crap, I've been able to run other security software on the Beta/RC builds of Vista. And if other security products won't work, it will be because of _them_ using undocumented API calls, which MS is under no obligation to support.
Not to mention, what Symantec is really upset about
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WHo's to say that the Security Center hasn't just fooled the third party app
You cannot trust anything done by Microsoft on windows anymore. Especially after they showed just what their real priorities were when they p
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Not to mention that Microsoft are now not talking about integrating PDF (which would be good) but rather integrating a *competitor* to PDF, owned by Microsoft. This point
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If Microsoft generates PDF's then they will be readable on lots of OS'es with any PDF reader software.
First, we have no real guarantee they won't intentionally break PDF the same way they intentionally break HTML. Second, I believe the previous poster was referring to XPS [wikipedia.org], MS's proprietary, patented, closed competitor to PDF, which they are planning on bundling with Vista.
Either way, you seems very upset abotu things that are not real.
Nope, you're just not as informed as the previous poster.
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You expect a Microsoft provided anti-virus or spyware removal tool to be any better? The fact is that it is anti-competitive to the n-th degree. This sort of lock-in is what has gotten Microsoft in trouble in the past by providing users with their own solutions for things and making them embedded into the system. The EU is the only one who has thus far proven to have the balls to actually make them do anything about it or pay for it.
Integrating P
Re:Microsoft is doing the right thing (Score:4, Insightful)
So Symantec's tools suck. Fine. But if Microsoft is allowed to integrate an equally sucky version into its OS, it'll win by default, and we'll be stuck with suckiness forever.
Let Microsoft bring out their own software, very welcome! But as a seperate product, sold in a box. If there's special hooks for it in Windows, they should be openly documented.
Then, both Symantec and Microsoft will have an actual reason to make a _good_ product!
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So Symantec's tools suck. Fine. But if Microsoft is allowed to integrate an equally sucky version into its OS, it'll win by default, and we'll be stuck with suckiness forever.
That was exactly my thought. I don't like Symantec's software so much anymore, but at least I still have the choice to go with someone else. If security companies are saying that they've been locked out of Vista, that means I'm stuck with whatever Microsoft puts out, and they haven't been known for their success in security. I'm no
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Why should Microsoft have to exclude basic security in their operating system, that is a standard part of Linux and OSX?
Because they are a monopolist. Neither Apple nor Linux disto creators are allowed to bundle products from any market with a product from a market they have monopolized. That is the law MS is breaking. If that law did not exist, IBM (one of the biggest Linux contributors) would have bundled OS2 with their machines and locked out Windows in the first place, and MS would have died before t
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Business is a game where the playing field,
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Let's see. Symantec's business model is selling products that work around Windows's brokenness. Now Microsoft is trying to fix Windows (though I doubt they'll be successful), and so Symantec is whining.
Adobe made and advertised PDF as an open standard. Now they're complaining that the standard is being implemented.
Personally, I'd enjoy seeing Microsoft barred from providing security fixes and PDF support, but that's just because I think Windows is already a hopeless shipwreck that will benefit the w
Nah, just nail them to a 32 bit platform. (Score:2)
I'd nail 'em to the 32 bit platform and have an unfetered and uncluttered space for the 64 bit platforms.
In time Microsoft would die and we'd just get over it.
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But, then, every other application should have generation of Word/Office formats as a must. And I don't see Microsoft being keen on letting everyone create things in their own formats.
In this case, Adobe is saying "Hey, that's our format, and you're not allowed to do that". As much as everyone has treated PDF as a 'standard' document interchange format, it still belongs to Adobe. Why should they roll over to allow Microsoft to
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In this case, Adobe is saying "Hey, that's our format, and you're not allowed to do that". As much as everyone has treated PDF as a 'standard' document interchange format, it still belongs to Adobe.
You are 100% wrong. This has nothing to do with the PDF format and everything to do with anti-competative bundling. MS is free to do anything they want with PDF, that is not illegal for them to do with any other open format. Here's an analogy. It is legal to carry a gun. Someone pulls a gun and shoots someone
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OK, fair point. I hadn't realized Adobe had opened it up for royalty-free usage.
In which case, if MS implements it, it is fair game.
Cheers
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Well, let me say I'm not the greatest fan of Symantec or Adobe, but the truth of the matter is that, as the illegal monopoly that it is, Microsoft should not be redistributing the kinds of software it wants to distribute with Vista. Of course Adobe's not exactly in need of charity here, but thousands of ISVs just might not considering developing on a platform which, while proprietary and l
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From a technical standpoint, yes but you're fail to account for the effect this is going to have on the market.
This will virtually destroy the ability of ANY company to make revenue selling competing products.
In the short term it will be good since you get shiny new software, but the market for this software will be destroyed. In the long term, facing no competition, MS offering will stagnate and generally suck a la MSIE.
The only real counter is OSS as it op
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PDF is also an OPEN format. Adobe didn't develop PDF, so if Microsoft wants to use PDF then Adobe can go suck a big fat nut.
And i won't whine for symantec, they just made all the veritas products more sucky.
I hear you on that one.
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Actually, i'm with microsoft on this one. Symantecs OS invading suite of crappy tools just sucks. Integrating PDF generation into applications and office suites ist also a MUST.
I agree Microsoft should immediately spin off half of their OS development division into a separate company with full rights to the Windows code, so that there is competition in the market and it is legal for them to bundle crap with it.
Oh wait, you meant you think they should break the law and illegally bundle software without t
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Break what law?
The Sherman Antitrust act in the US. I'm not sure what the antitrust law in the EU is called.
PDF is an open format.
Yes, it is. What is your point and what does that have to do with MS bundling a competing format?
LOL!!! Edumacate urself!!!
Umm, did you miss your meds today? Take a deep breath and sit down for a while. Maybe later you'll be able to handle reality.
I Don't Think Adobe or Symantec Have Anything... (Score:2)
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They shouldn't have anything to worry about.... Unless they're afriad that a potentially poorly done Microsoft product is going to outdo them at what they do best - which appears to be their thinking, I suppose?
Sigh, you miss the point. Adobe can't do anything about MS fairly competing with them. What MS is doing, however, is unfairly competing. Suppose you have to buy Windows (like most people). It is after all, the only OS that will run most programs. Windows ships with a PDF creation tool. You paid fo
Amazingly... (Score:2, Insightful)
PDF is a standard that Linux and OS X are well brought into. While I worry about my documents turning up mangled if I send them as an OO.o produced
While I'm happy to see Adobe get a competitor
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Non-portability of PDF (Score:2)
"if I send them as a PDF I know it's going to work."
I keep getting PDF files that won't render in Acrobat Reader ("the viewer is unable to decript this document") but will render fine in old versions of "gsview". Adobe may be shooting themselves in the foot with badly implemented DRM.
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Adobe tossed a fit, Microsoft removed the feature.
Why should consumers suffer from Adobe being a spoiled brat? We are considering their rights here, as is necessary from the point of view of regulating a monopoly dominated market (the market of pre-installed document readers, on which Microsoft exerts monopolist influence - or will do if they ever release a functional replacement fo
So M$ bad Apple good, eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
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When you are deemed a monopoly, you have to play by different legal rules.
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Microsoft is not a monopoly. It is competing with, and losing ground to, Linux and OSX. Microsoft is the biggest player on the market, but they are not a Monopoly. They have been punished by governments for participating in anti-competitive buisness practices, but no government has ever actually accused them of being a monopoly. Microsoft is not a mono
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The things Apple continually receives praise for and advertises about, included applications and higher security, Microsoft gets sued over. Yeah, that's fair.
Oh, you mean Apple bundles a product from a different market with their monopoly? Okay, I'm with you. They are scum and should be dragged into court. Umm, what monopoly do they have again?
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It's not an incoherent position. I would claim very strongly that OEMs should be free to bundle whatever software they like. If Dell wants to offer a security suite and PDF generation program bundle, pre-installed on delivery, I don't think anyone would complain. In fact, Dell does exactly that. The only difference is that Apple makes the software that they bundle with their systems.
Make no mistake-- iLife is commercial software. Last I checked, it was $80. Apple has also had a history of bundling no
silly, (Score:3, Interesting)
Beware the monoculture! (Score:2)
It's the same with computers, even though the "vermin" is man made. The more computers run on the same OS, office suit, picture and document viewers and even security software, the more those products become a target for malware. Simply because you can gain a lot of impact with a single piece of malware. You c
Symantec has no argument (Score:3)
I can understand adobe's reasoning.
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Adobe said PDF is an open standard and anybody can make a reader/writer for it if they want. Now that Microsoft has, they're trying to renege on that and say it's proprietary? Doesn't work that way, Adobe.
PDF is an open standard. Anyone can make a reader and writer for it. The recipe for cheese is open too and anyone can make and sell cheese. So you don't mind if the electric company (a monopoly) raises your rates by $20 a month and gives you some slightly sub-par cheese do you? And you don't think chees
See: Irony (Score:4, Insightful)
Now MS is trying to fix this with Vista.
So basically, the logic being put forth is: Our business model is based on your inability to put out a secure product. Your attempt at putting out a secure product is going to break our business model, and thus our business.
- Roach
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Trend Micro runs on Vista [trendbeta.com]
Computer associates runs on Vista [my-etrust.com]
Avast runs on Vista [avast.com]
AVG Runs on Vista [grisoft.com]
Mcafee runs on vista [mcafee.com]
Hell, Symantec runs on vista [symantec.com]
mixed feelings on this one (Score:2)
For Symantec's complaint. I think MS should be allowed to have a firewall integrated into the system. If they make a shitty one than turn it
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When did I say MS shouldn't be able to provide their own products in this market space? I said I think it should be implemented external to the system. Microsoft is quite welcome to provide their own anti-virus product, I just don't want it embedded in the kern
Waste of resources (Score:2, Insightful)
Vista is insidious (Score:2)
Apple next? (Score:2)
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So will Adobe be going after Apple with regard to Acrobat and PDFs?
Why, is Apple bundling PDF generation tools with some product they have a monopoly on? If so, what product?
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Yes - OSX.
Wow! OSX's market share must have jumped lately. I did not realize they had taken over more than 70% of the desktop OS market, crushing Windows. It is strange the press has not bothered to report on this. Strange indeed.
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It's just going to get worse (Score:4, Interesting)
It's only going to get worse for companies like Symantec and Adobe. Building software on the Windows platform brings the advantages of a large market. The disadvantage is that Microsoft is not in the business of creating a platform for developers, they're in the business of selling software licenses. The licenses get sold because people are addicted to the platform, not because people can protect it with Symantec products.
And Adobe's complaints really surprise me. OS X has been able to export anything to PDF - a relatively open format - for years, and I can do the same thing on KDE.
Windows is a shaky foundation to build a business on - albeit a potentially profitable one until Microsoft decides to assimilate your functionality.
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It's only going to get worse for companies like Symantec and Adobe. Building software on the Windows platform brings the advantages of a large market. The disadvantage is that Microsoft is not in the business of creating a platform for developers, they're in the business of selling software licenses.
Microsoft is in the business of selling software, but they are also in the business of breaking the law to do it. Adobe has every right to take them to court when they do blatantly violate the law, like they
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Adobe is objecting to Microsoft's inclusion in Vista of its own software for creating and viewing digital snapshots of documents, known as XML Paper Specification, or XPS. XPS competes with Adobe's widely used portable document format, or PDF.
While Adobe earns money by selling its Acrobat software to create PDF documents (while giving away the software to read such documents), Microsoft will include both reading and writing software as part of Vist
More lawyers than engineers.... (Score:2, Troll)
No one will make the claim that MS has the best product out there for anything except maybe Office and Visual Studio. Certainly NOT the best OS available when rated by security or stability
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Here's the thing. It's not too late. Fire some lawyers, hire more engineers, and mostly STOP MAKING MS SOFTWARE. Support Novell or work out some sort of corporate alliance to co-brand a commercial distro of something open source. get off the MS playing field and take your ball with you.
Hell, if they really wanted to, they could roll their own. Adobe in particular has enough resources and enough popular software that, if they can't find a Linux distro they like, they could make their own specifically to su
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A while back, in the early 90's there was a statistic being bandied about, how there were gonna be far more lawyers in this country than engineers. And I recall someone (my Dad, prolly) saying "Yeah, we wont be able to invent anything new but we sure will be able to sue each other over it." That's whats happening here.
Bullshit. Antitrust law has been being enforced since the 1800s. Microsoft would not even exist if it was not enforced against IBM in the 70s.
See, if Adobe and Symantec wanted to put an e
I've said it before .... (Score:2)
If I were president of ANY general purpose software company, I would not tie my income flow to anything that requires M$ anything. I would fire any employee suggesting that the company should.
In Fact, if I had enough capitol, I would design a whole new breed of computers, from the CPU up. One that wasn't tie
I have whatever rights I claim... (Score:2)
Not fair (Score:3, Interesting)
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PDF is a public format(anyone may create applications that read and write PDF files ), OO.org can export to pdf, why M$ should not be allowed to use it?
Adobe makes PDF generation tools. Microsoft makes PDF generation tools. the OpenOffice team makes PDF generation tools. All of this is legal. What is illegal for any company to bundle PDF generation tools with a product they have monopolized the market for. For example, Microsoft cannot bundle PDF generation tools or tools that generate a competing format
No win situation for MS?!? (Score:2)
1) Continue to produce a less than optimally secure product. Symantex thrives, and the world still bashes MS for putting out an insecure OS. Except now since Symantec legally FORCED them to release an insecure OS which they KNEW to be Insecure they can be sued for producing a known faulty product.
2) Integrate better security to show you're trying to fix the problems in the OS (which is what Symantec has made it's livelihood doing for MS) and have Symantec sue you for being evil e
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The problem is that Microsoft isn't fixing the OS. They are simply bundling their own software that does the same thing that Symantec (or McAfee, or NOD, or Trend, or...) does. The problem is that from what I've seen of the betas, OneCare sucks, bi
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Microsoft has two options.
This is a false dichotomy. They could also just fix the the underlying security problems in the first place.
As for the Adobe part... If Adobe makes PDF an open standard, and MS implements the open standard then Adobe doesn't have a leg to stand on. Or will we see a new version of GPL licensing that says "anybody can use this, except Microsoft".
Who planted this idea in people's heads? This has nothing to do with file formats. MS can make PDF creation tools. MS can make sports
If Symantec can replace Security Centre... (Score:2)
Perhaps some things *need* to be hard or impossible to replace, to prevent bad guys from replacing them?
My take on this (Score:2)
PDF is an open format, used by many people. Being able to read, and less importantly to write to it is a value to their users. It's kind of difficult to get angry at MS for supporting an open standard, especially if they support it correctly. If they don't, I hope Adobe comes down on them at least as hard as Sun did over Visual J++.
Anti-virus software is necessitated in large part by bugs in Windows or security vulnerabilities in Windows. I'd rather MS fix the bugs than
Doesnt bother me. (Score:2)
I didnt mind IE being bundled, I didnt mind Media Player either.
I really dont mind MS bundling some kind of security suite because if it works I'd use it and if not ill get something else. The ability to use PDF's without having to download another program would be nice too and again if a 3rd party app does it better then chances are I'll use it.
What I do mind is a company like S
In related news... (Score:2)
In related news, aftermarket car alarm manufacturers sue car makers for including car alarms with their cars and making them harder to disable.
Didn't it ever occur to Symantec that a business model that's based around fixing problems in someone else's product isn't sustainable?
Didn't it ever occur to Adobe that, by making their product a commodity, someone might do it cheaper and better?
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Your argument is horribly flawed. Yes, let's all refuse to buy Vista. How many desktops do we account for? 10% maybe. Most people are going to buy from Dell and HP/Compaq (or heaven forbid, Gateway). The fact i
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If I want any office-type of job, whether computer-related or simply sales, I'd better know how to operate windows/office, otherwise: no job. If I want to be able to work from home from time to time, I'd better have at least one windows/office machine at home, whether company paid or by myself. If I choose to use OpenOffice, I'd better be humble when something goes wrong in cooperating. Although it is accepted that office fucks up itself from time to time, it's not accepted of any other app. By th
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No. This is a basic fallacy, the "Windows ecosystem", of various ISPs making money off of stuff that runs on Windows. This is not how things actually work.
What actually goes on, is that Microsoft treats the ISPs as unpaid employees working on 'market-testing' projects. Adobe make money off of PDF stuff? Then Microsoft will add PDF tools to their OS next time around. Somebody has a b
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While I think you might be on to something there about MSs business practices in general, I'm not sure this is the case here.
Its not like PDF export is a hugely complex feature that would take hundreds of millions of dollars to implement. Its just another document format. So why didn't MS implement it like 10 years ago?
Well if you had a choice to attach a word document or a PDF document what would you do? The PDF document is much more portable so that's what you do. But MS wanted everyone attaching Wor
DOJ is doing nothing so you need the EU (Score:5, Informative)
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"Adobe is calling for Microsoft to be barred from building into the OS free software that competes with Acrobat." When a document format is open... wouldn't what Adobe is asking for be anti-competitive instead of what Microsoft is doing?
No. Competition is when two companies each make a product and the buyer chooses whichever is best for him. The free market is broken when a buyer is forced to buy one product because they need a completely different product, thus they don't choose the product that is best