Microsoft Hatred FAQ

[David Schwartz]

Roedy Green wrote:

> On Thu, 27 Oct 2005 00:49:27 -0700, "David Schwartz"
> <davids at webmaster.com> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone who
> said :

>>    I guess I don't understand what you're saying. Are you saying that
>> Microsoft demanded you pay them per machine you sold under the table
>> in the absence of a written contract that said that? Or are you
>> simply saying that they changed the terms of your agreement when it
>> came up for renewal?

> They were demanding I sell a copy of windows with every machine I
> constructed, whether the customer wanted or not, even if the customer
> had us install some other OS.

    Right I understand that. You could have complied simply by only selling 
computers with Windows preinstalled. In other words, you could have treated 
this the same as a demand for franchise or exclusivity if you had wanted to.

> The threat was that I did not comply, they would put me out of
> business by arranging that my wholesalers would stop selling any MS
> product to me, with veiled threat of even worse strangulation.

    Well shit, how surprising that they wouldn't want to do business with 
you if you broke your agreements with them.

> What I don't think you understand this threat would was just as
> effective in putting he out of business as threatening to sending in
> goons every week to smash my shop to pieces.

    I understand that it is just as effective, but that's not the issue. If 
I'm hungry, a person who refuses to give me a loaf of bread for free may be 
just as effective at killing me as a person who shoots me. But that doesn't 
change the fact that there is no obligation to feed a person and there is an 
obligation not to shoot them.

> I could at least have a chance of legal recourse with the vandals.

    Only because their actions are unreasonable and Microsoft's are not.

> It will be very hard to prosecute MS for their crimes because they
> commit them much the way the Mafia does.

    Right, they send gun-wielding thugs to use force against people. That's 
a lot like refusing to do business with people who won't uphold their 
contractual obligations.

> No one has any paper. Everyone  was terrified of MS and would never
> dream of going public.  I have talked about this publicly many times
> because it always looked as if I were going to die in a few years
> anyway.

    I think you're starting to go off the deep end.

> To put this in perspective, IBM's salespeople made much nastier
> threats in their heyday.  Dick Toewes, head of Inland Natural Gas, was
> in charge of a tender for a new mainframe to do billing.  I was
> working on the Univac bid at the time.  He said that the IBM salesman
> said to him, "We know you have an eight year old little girl.  We know
> she walks along X street every day on her way to school.  It would be
> a terrible thing if somebody hurt her."

    Yep, way off the deep end.

> I wrote a tender for about $1 million in computer equipment for BC
> Hydro gas. There were many bidders hoping to get a foothold in a
> solidly IBM shop.  IBM sent a weird chap to see me, dressed as a
> gangster, talking in a gangster accent, with a strange tic like Dustin
> Hoffman's  Ratso Rizzo in midnight cowboy. He made no specific
> threats, but his act was straight out of Hollywood,"you knows what I
> means" warning me about the "consequences" of picking anything but
> IBM, how I might get the reputation as unreliable..."

> There were the standard tactics on $1 million contracts. Imagine the
> dirty tricks for the big ones. Mind you, back then $1 million was
> serious money, especially when you considered the no-bid followons
> over the years.

    If that kind of thing ever happened (which I seriously doubt), it's 
absolutely reprehensible. I find it almost possible to believe that 
individuals on commission might do this kind of thing with no knowledge of 
their corporate higher ups, or perhaps even that people one level up or so 
might do it if they are also on commission. But I find it almost impossible 
to believe that any major corporation could do this as a policy.

    Of course, the individuals who use actual force or threats of fraud (and 
blacklisting because they didn't buy from you is fraud), deserve to be 
prosecuted and imprisoned.

    Do you have any documentation or evidence to support these claims? Or am 
I supposed to take your word for it? (Honestly, it seems like you're just 
trying to mess with me.)

    DS