Microsoft Hatred FAQ

[Mike Meyer]

"David Schwartz" <davids at webmaster.com> writes:
> "Steven D'Aprano" <steve at REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote in message 
> news:pan.2005.10.22.09.12.53.825745 at REMOVETHIScyber.com.au...
>> On Fri, 21 Oct 2005 21:47:27 -0700, David Schwartz wrote:
>>>> That's basic economics. Something which can be allowed or ignored or 
>>>> even
>>>> encouraged when done by small businesses in a competitive market can
>>>> easily become harmful and bad for the economy when done by a monopolist 
>>>> or
>>>> duopolist in an uncompetitive market.
>>>     Microsoft goal is and should be their own success, not the success of
>>> the economy or the market in general.
>> Neither I, nor you, nor the government of any nation, should care a
>> monkey's toss specifically for Microsoft's success. Microsoft is one
>> special interest, out of a potentially unbounded number of possible
>> players in the economy of a country and the world.
>     No, not at all. It is the gravest act of self-contradiction to maintain 
> that one should be allowed to pursue one's own interest while denying that 
> same right to others.

Not at all. No one is denying anyones right to purssue their own
interest. What's being denied is the right to use illegal means to do
so. If MS restricted themselves to legal means, no one would have a
problem with them.

>> Unless you or I are specifically shareholders in Microsoft, we should not
>> care about their specific success; and the government should be entirely
>> agnostic about who are the winners and losers in an economy.
>     We should certainly care that Microsoft be allowed to pursue their own 
> success. The government should be agnostic about who the winners and losers 
> are, but must respect each entity's right to attempt to be that winner.

Nice thought. Unfortunately, the government doesn't work that
way. They believe that a practical monopoly is a bad thing, and limit
the things such a company can do, and have been known to disassemble
companies they believe are harming the economy in general.

>> The
>> government's role should be to ensure a level playing field, and minimum
>> levels of health, safety and environmental standards. There is no place
>> for government giving special-interests like Microsoft favours.
>     The problem is, people complain when the playing field is in fact level. 
> For example, Microsoft's "exclusionary" Windows agreements didn't ask for 
> more than Windows was worth (or nobody would have agreed to them). Yet they 
> are considered examples of the playing field not being level.

No, they didn't ask for more than Windows were worth. They tilted the
playing field against MS competitors by causing consumers to pay MS
money for products they didn't receive. In most countries, taking
money from unwilling victims without giving them anything in exchange
is called "theft".

>> Microsoft's behaviour over-all has been just as anti-social,
>> anti-competitive and harmful to the over-all running of the economy as a
>> hypothetical Walmart or Safeway that regularly parked their trucks in the
>> middle of the main road for a few hours while they unloaded.
>     The problem is, the government does not own the economy. So it does not 
> get to manage it the way it gets to manage the roads it in fact owns.

Sorry, but you're wrong. The government *does* own the econnomy. Who
do you think originally created all the money that is flowing through
it? The government charges you for the privilege of participating in
their economy - it's called "income tax". 2000 years ago Christ knew
who owned the economy, and said "Render unto Ceaser that which is
Ceasers."

>> Maybe, just maybe, if Mom & Pop's Corner Store tried it once or twice, we
>> could afford to turn a blind eye, especially if the disruption caused by
>> towing their delivery van was greater than the disruption caused by their
>> double-parking. Thousands of people break the law by double-parking for a
>> few minutes, and society doesn't collapse. But something that we can
>> afford to ignore when done by M&P's Corner Store becomes a serious problem
>> if done by somebody with the economic power of Walmart, with their
>> thousands of deliveries by 18-wheelers every day across the country.
>     Again, the analogy fails. You are comparing the government's right to 
> manage its own property with the government's "right" to interfere with 
> other people's right to manage their property.

Sorry, but nobody but the government actually owns property. In most
places, you can't make non-trivial changes to "your" property without
permission from the government. They even charge you rent on "your"
property, only they call it "property tax".

>>> Microsoft's status of a "monopolist"
>>> is only meaningful if you define the market as "desktop operating systems
>>> for 32-bit x86 computers".
>> That is *precisely* the market we're talking about. Not "any item that
>> runs off electricity", not "orange juice", not "pork bellies", not "all
>> computing devices", but desktop PCs. What did you think the Justice
>> Department's investigation was about? Motor vehicles?
>     I thought it was about operating systems, actually. And I thought that 
> both OSX and Linux competed with it.

I guess it hasn't sunk in yet that the existence of competition
doesn't keep a company from being a monopoly. But it does. Companies
that owned less of their market than MS owns of it's market have been
broken up. A classic monopoly behavior is to want the competition to
survive "just barely", because that gives them leverage in
court. Which is why MS has helped out Apple in the past.

>>> There is no way Microsoft could have expected the
>>> market to be defined in this way and no way to argue that Microsoft had 
>>> any
>>> reason to believe their conduct was illegal.
>> Microsoft have lawyers. Microsoft destroyed emails and at least one senior
>> manager perjured himself in court. Microsoft created a fake video
>> demonstration which they then gave as evidence. Do you really believe that
>> Microsoft's executives are so incompetent that they don't get legal advice
>> before writing up contracts? Or that nobody in authority at Microsoft
>> realised that destroying evidence and lying to a judge are crimes?
>     When a criminal willing to use force points a gun at your head, you lie 
> to him.

You sound like an anarchist to me. This wasn't a criminal, this was
the government. Lieing to random individuals isn't a crime. Lieing to
the government is.

>> In any case, even if you are right that Microsoft had no ideas... so what?
>> Ignorance of the law never has been an excuse for criminal behaviour. It
>> has always been every individual's responsibility to make sure that they
>> do not act illegally, and that goes for companies as well.
>     I am not saying Microsoft did not know the law. I am saying that no 
> rational person could have expected the law to be applied to Microsoft that 
> way it was. The law *must* put a person on notice of precisely what conduct 
> it prohibits. However, in this case, the law's applicability was conditioned 
> on an abritrary and irrational choice of what the relevant market was.

MS has a long history of dancing with the DOJ, and has been repeatedly
warned about the legality - or lack thereof - of their behavior. No
rational person who knew of that history could expect the law to be
applied to MS in any way other than the way it was.

   <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.