Re: [tlug] Re: [OT] Say _no_ to the Microsoft Office format as an ISO standard

["Josh Glover" <jmglov@example.com>]

On 08/07/07, burlingk@example.com <burlingk@example.com> wrote:

> I have always wondered when people talk about Microsoft.
> What have they actually done that was illegal?  I am a bit
> confused. Maybe I missed something somewhere.

As Godwin pointed out, they have repeatedly broken (and been convicted
of breaking) antitrust laws.

Whether antitrust laws are good laws is a completely separate
discussion, but one I would be more than willing to have at a nomikai.

In fact, I really want Steve to be there so he can a) keep me honest,
economically speaking, and b) provide his input on antitrust laws and
competition from a Real Economist's perspective.

> Worse, they are known for producing really nice betas,

You must have tried out different betas than I did. ;) The last MS
beta I tried was a Windows 2000 one back in 1999 or so, and it crashed
more than Windows 98. Which was saying something, 'cause my Win98
installs lasted approximately a month before I had to blow everything
away and reinstall my pristine image.

> and then a crappy
> final release once they add in all the third party crap that
> the judge of the day demands they put in it.

I think you are off-base here. MS is known for putting in the kitchen
sink from the start, and being court-ordered to *remove* some of it
due to anti-competitiveness.

> When they first created DOS, it WAS Gates that did most of
> the work on that project.  He programmed like a man possessed.
> His contract said that if he left IBM, he could take his code
> with him.  That is what he did.  Nothing illegal, and if you
> look at it in a certain light, the immorality of it also comes
> into question.  He had an agreement.  He did a hell of a lot of
> work.  He came to disagreements with his employer, and he left.

No no no, you have it completely wrong. Gates never worked *for* IBM;
he left uni to start Microsoft, and one of their biggest clients was
IBM, for whom they wrote GW-BASIC and MS-DOS. The excellent move on
Gates's part was seeing that IBM's strategy would lead to
commoditisation of hardware, so holding onto a software licence would
be extremely valuable. So Gates negotiated the MS-DOS contract with
IBM so it was not exclusive, and then MS went on to sell DOS to
*every* hardware vendor *ever* (except for Apple and the Clones).

> This slowed down IBM, but it wasn't long before PC DOS was born.
> This was during a time when it did not matter yet what OS your
> computer used.  There wasn't squat for support for software
> outside of the Unix world anyway.

Um... no-one was using Unix on a PC at that time. The popularisation
of the PC made the OS extremely important, because there was not
enough memory or CPU to provide any sort of abstraction that meant
software could be easily ported from one platform to another. Just ask
Microsoft how easy it was to port Excel to the Mac... :)

> That brings us to another issue.  When Windows 3.1, and 3.11
> came out, the cost of a Unix license was insane.

Agreed, though I believe 386BSD hit about that time, but unless you
already used Unix at work or uni, you probably had zero chance of
learning about it.

> Yeah, they made some mistakes when they made the move to
> Windows 95. :P

Are you kidding? Windows 95 was an unqualified success for Microsoft.
The marketing blitz swept the world, and their Windows marketshare
went from 35% to 90% within a year of the release. [1]

> When Windows 95 and 98 came out, they had beautiful betas, but
> too much userland stuff was added into the mix between beta and
> release, and the result was that the release suffered.  They should
> have done more beta testing after the addition of the new features.

I agree with you on 98, but 95 was as stable as 3.11, and supported a
shite tonne more hardware out of the box.

> The community was there, but they did not recruit.

Nor could they, really. Linux was, as anyone who tried it during that
period will attest, for C hackers only.

> The people were cool, but they were
> not always as helpful as they are now.  More often than not the
> response was the cryptic RTFM!

It was RTFS back then, where "S" stands for Source.

> Then there was the issue of documentation... Wow...  A thousand
> packages, all with a copy right notice and a message saying that
> documentation is a neat idea. ^^;;

The code was documentation enough for the users Linux had back then.

> Windows became number one because their people did a hell of
> a lot of hard work, and spent a hell of a lot of money before we
> were ever on the scene.

Yup. If the code was just as good as the marketing, we'd be talking on
the TWUG list right now. ;)

> You can't expect to win long term war with mud slinging and FUD
> either.

Nope. I think Penny Arcade says it better than we ever could:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2002/20020722h.gif

> Look at Microsoft's history.  Look at their records.  Look at
> actual researched and referenced resources, and not just at the
> stuff you find on sites such as BadVista.org.  I am not saying
> that everything they say is bad, but it is hard to deny that it
> is at least biased.

I agree with your sentiment, but you might want to practise what you
preach a bit more. ;)

Cheers,
Josh

[1] Figures completely invented, but that feels right to me. Anyone
have the exact numbers?