M i c r o s o f t W o r l d D o m i n a t i o n
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A critical position in the year 2001
by The Paranoid and Luebke of Paranoia
Preface
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First I'd like to point out that this article has mainly been written because
the chief-editor of this magazine, ST Survivor, asked me to. Second it should
be mentioned that some people might be offended by this article. This is not my
intention, however, when talking about Microsoft and their doings today, it is
hard to not offend somebody. Thanks to Luebke and Der Komtur for additional
points.
Chapter 1: The anything but glorious past
-----------------------------------------
Microsoft is quite old by now. As most other companies at that time, they
started off as a small company serving a relatively small, but growing market.
However, Microsoft soon found a relatively secure position on the market,
serving the manufacturers of computers directly instead of competing on the
ordinary customer market.
Meaning, most of the favourite 8-bit computers featured a built-in Basic by
Microsoft. Commodore Basic V2, famous from the C64, is indeed a Microsoft Basic
in disguise while the Atari 8-bit series featured a copy of Microsoft's
advanced Basic. In fact, the only exceptions I know of are the Sinclair home
computers (Basic by Sinclair Research) as well as the Amstrad CPC (Locomotive
Basic).
This enabled Microsoft to have a relatively safe foot to stand on while
competing on a professional market around the operating system named CP/M.
Microsoft produced its own version of CP/M but never got near the market
leader in sales - Digital Research.
Microsoft also offered software packages for CP/M computers such as Microsoft
Multiplan, an early versions of Excel, or Microsoft Bookshelf. But as initially
said, Microsoft was neither famous nor very strong on the CP/M market. Digital
Research always was a bit ahead with their version of CP/M and the competitors
in the customer software market were usually ahead of Microsoft : DBase by
Ashton-Tate, XXXXXX by YYYYYYY etc.
Finally, the market moved on from 8080/Z80 based machines to Intel 8086
(initially the 8088) processors when IBM announced the "open standard", the PC.
To get this straight : IBM had _never_ declared the PC standard a free one
if they hadn't been forced to. IBM was under control by the Anti-trust department
of the US government by this time as IBM was considered a monopolist company.
IBM therefore _had_ to announce the specifications for a PC compatible computer
as a free standard to prevent even more restrictions from the Anti-trust department.
IBM on the other hand never expected the personal computer segment to deal a
lot of money so they never really focussed on the long-term effects of what
they did. They just focussed on using as many third party components as
possible on their Personal Computer : The CPU from Intel (instead of an IBM
production), the operating system from Microsoft (instead of an IBM production)
and so forth.
Microsoft was just lucky to have gotten into the PC business together with IBM
at this time instead of its competitors. And it was surely not because
Microsoft had the best operating system for 8086 - they didn't even have it by
then. They bought QDOS from XXXXXXXX in a hurry and continued development on
that. Digital Research migrated from CP/M to DOS as well and produced DR-DOS
for quite some time with growing success (but failed in the end). Again,
Microsoft managed to have a safe basis for their continued existence by this
deal with IBM and was "out of competition" in some sense since original IBM PC
computers were primarily shipped with MS-DOS.
But yet again, Microsoft only had a good position when it came to operating
systems. In the consumer software market, Microsoft had a lot of products that
however, never managed to achieve market leadership. The word-processor market
was dominated first by Word Star, then by Word Perfect, the most popular
spreadsheet was first VisiCalc, then Lotus 1-2-3 with Frameworks in a pretty
good position as well. The most common database of this time was surely DBase
by Ashton Tate.
Microsoft had Excel, Word and later also Access in the race, but never really
got famous for those. They also continued Q-Basic (guess where it got its name,
the Q is not a Microsoft invention), also offering a compiler for it and also
continued the original CP/M based software Multiplan and Bookshelf.
To sum up this chapter : Microsoft was never very innovative nor very good at
producing software. They have just been lucky. They never invented anything new
nor did anything better than everybody else did. They have just been lucky.
Chapter 2: The depressing today
-------------------------------
To cut a long story short: Microsoft is everywhere.
Microsoft's operating system "Windows" is running on roughly 95% of all PCs
used at semiprofessional offices on stand-alone computers or on home computers.
It is by now running on roughly 90% of all network-based workgroups that deal
with user interaction in form of "Windows NT".
If you look for a "standard" in word-processing, the name will be Microsoft
Word. The most popular spreadsheet is Microsoft Excel while the most commonly
used database is Microsoft Access. The browser market is not solely ruled by
Microsoft with its Internet Explorer but since the (sane) development of
Netscape has more or less stopped, Microsoft's Internet explorer is becoming
more and more popular - today it is being used by about 60% of all web-surfers,
amount increasing - not to mention that Microsoft Outlook is the most famous
Internet mail-program.
Even when it comes to developing on x86 platforms, Microsoft's Visual C and
Visual Basic - for any other language Microsoft Visual studio - dominates the
market with only a relatively small amount of developers sticking to Borland
Delphi or Visual C Builder, amount decreasing.
There are other markets where Microsoft does not dominate as well. These are,
however, niche-markets that Microsoft did probably not expect too much money to
be made in: Like for example HTML-editors (Microsoft FrontPage Express, which
is popular, but not in a monopolism position) as well as picture retouch
software etc.
Whenever computers appear on TV (not in movies), it's usually a Windows system
(in movies, the Macintosh still dominates). When you get a CD-ROM for free with
a magazine, the installation and user guide as well as the software will be for
Windows only - only if you're very lucky, you will find either Macintosh or
Linux software on it.
Several ISPs have started to give out their own connection software - usually
it's Windows only - and if it includes a browser, it's most probably the
Internet Explorer. Only behind the scenes you will find non-Windows systems -
computers that are expected to work flawlessly and not interact with a user
directly are either Unix machines or - getting more and more popular - a Linux
system.
The evil (?) schemes and the reasons for them
----------------------------------------------
So what is Microsoft up to this time ?
The problem that Microsoft mainly suffers from is that they by now really sold
a copy of Windows to anyone whoever dared thinking about buying a computer -
not once but at least 3 times.
The home- and semipro-office market is therefore not growing anymore as rapidly
as Microsoft needs. This has already happened once again with the result named
"Windows NT" to get a foot into the workgroup and networking market as well. So
what market are they planning to enter this time ? This is what I call the 3
evil schemes of Microsoft :
a.) The Dot-Net framework
b.) The diffamation and slow demontage of the Open-Source community
c.) The forced registration procedure and the "software leasing" scheme
The Dot-Net framework
----------------------
According to Microsoft, the Dot-Net framework is supposed to finally
incorporate the internet in operating systems, user interfaces and even
programming languages (C-Sharp, written C#). How this will look in detail is
so far not very well described, not even by Microsoft.
The real reason behind this however is obvious: Microsoft wants to get into the
router, gateway, firewall, proxy-server and backbone business. So far, the
Internet is really held up by Unix machines - After all, the TCP/IP standard
originated from the Unix platform and is already "fully" implanted into every
commercial Unix (and therefore Linux as well) - even internal communications of
Unix subsystems often work by using the TCP/IP subsystem.
This is not valid for Windows systems. Neither the DOS-sequels 95, 98 or ME nor
the "workstation" operating system Windows NT exploit the possibilities of a
TCP/IP support the way that Unix does (in the case of Windows NT this
possibility is mainly violated by the User interface and the API which has been
transfered from Windows 95). This is a great loss for Microsoft since the
market for computers not as Internet-terminals but as Internet-internals is a
large - and in the near future - growing one.
The dot-net framework is therefore intended to get a start in this direction.
And it serves another purpose as well which is even more evil :
Currently, you can connect to the Internet with whatever computer and operating
system you like : Atari, Amiga, Macintosh or Linux or even C64, it makes no
differences - All you need is a software supporting TCP/IP (resp. PPP) which is
a free standard and software like a browser or terminal software. This renders
the operating system kind of unimportant and "neglectable" - a thorn in
Microsoft's eye.
The dot-net framework will of course support TCP/IP for quite a while. At least
as long as Microsoft does not dominate the market and the internet does not
heavily rely on Microsoft's servers and routers. As soon as this is the case,
the dot-net framework will most probably not support the common TCP/IP-standard
anymore but require a windows specific standard.
This change will most probably not be visible to Windows users. They will be
able to continue to use the internet just as before. This change will most
probably also lock out any non-Windows users from the dot-net framework, making
Windows (and maybe the Apple Macintosh) the only computer systems capable of
working with the dot-net framework.
In fact, obviously Microsoft is cooperating with the Linux community this time
about the dot.net-framework. However, this has to be looked at carefully as
well. They cannot beat the Linux-community the Microsoft way (sueing and buying
out) but "cooperating" with Linux might open Microsoft a whole new perspective
of getting the dot.net-framework into a Linux dominated market.
This may sound paranoid ;-) and hysteric, however, the past showed how
Microsoft treats "open standards" once they have enough influence to push their
own (RTF is just one example). I therefore doubt the dot-net framework will in
the end benefit all - Microsoft hardly ever did anything everybody took profit
from - and consider my explanation of dot-net framework's purposes much more
reasonable.
The diffamation and demonatage of the Open-Source community
------------------------------------------------------------
Like said at the end of the previous chapter, Microsoft currently does its best
to throw mud at the Open-Source community. Why is that ? The reason is very
simple: They have no other solution. Usually, Microsoft does not win any kind
of competition by producing better products. They never did. They win by
working behind the schemes of competition, they sue their competitors, make
hardly legal contracts with computer manufacturers and retailers (mind you,
some parts of their license agreements on their packages are illegal in some
countries and therefore not valid) and most importantly, they buy their
competitors out (Borland, Symantec to name but a few). This scheme does not
work with the Open-Source community.
The cannot sue the Open-Source community. They may end up sueing a few of the
main actors on this stage, but they cannot harm the Open-Source community by
that and besides that, since basically everything the Open-Source community
does is free, it's hard to argue on a level that Microsoft accuses of other
people using their innovations for profit. Then again, the Open-Source
community is impossible to buy out. They can probably lure a few people (they
have to make a living, too) and maybe even the good ones, they can never make
the Open-Source movement extinkt though. It just does not work.
And finally, the "pushing off the market" by the contracts with manufacturers
and retailers does not work either. Since Open-Source products can usually be
obtained totally free, no one, not even computer manufacturers can force the
user not to use Open-Source products.
And so far, Microsoft did not dare to proclaim in court that any software
either has to be commercial (hence not free) or to be authorised by the
operating system authors to be run on a system with that operating system.
This way or other, in the long term, Microsoft sees no way to get rid of the
Open-Source community. They know how to get rid of the commercial competition,
but they do not know how to fight one that is not based on money.
And this is why they try to spoil the public opinion about open source products
that much. Calling Open-Source software "insecure" in the first place, then
"unreliable" and "badly tested", "difficult to install, handle and operate" and
best of all "easy to destroy" since the source code is free is ridiculous.
To have a go on the "source-movement" (open source is hip and cool currently),
Microsoft called its old scheme of "we own everything and you're getting none
of it" shared-source.
The scheme is as simple as this: You want the source, you have to pay for it.
If you have the source and work on it, you won't receive any credit, but your
product is owned by Microsoft just the same. In 8 words: What's ours is ours,
what's yours is ours.
As a show of "good will", they released the source-code to Windows CE. Which is
a joke since Windows CE has been a failure and is not worth supporting any
longer. Besides that, you of course need a special developers environment to
"use" the source-code and changes can only be done in a limited way. This
developers environment is - of course - not free.
The forced registration and software leasing scheme
----------------------------------------------------
Microsoft looks at the currently decreasing sales of Microsoft products with
fear. They tried to get into every niche that has been hyped and was running
well for a while: First Works, then Office, HTML-Editors, Active-X instead of
Java, now Windows Media capable of playing MP3 and MPEG-movies, Internet
Browsers etc. things and stuff and yet they had to realise that none of these
niches grow forever. So Microsoft tries to do what everybody does - offer
service on the internet and charge money for it.
This is where "Hailstorm" and the "internet passport" comes in. If you want
access to a Microsoft service, for example Hotmail or MSN, you have to register
for a passport.
This passport is unique and is stored centrally at Microsoft. If you wish (and
probably even if you don't) they collect additional data about you : Your
account-number, CPU-model, harddisk, age, address, legal status and your
favourite TV show.
The official reason is that Microsoft tries to offer you a "better" service by
having this data at hand and to "take work off you" by doing for example money
transactions when you buy on the internet for you - keeping things secure this
way as well.
Now, Microsoft is not only known for not being able to keep things secure for
more than two minutes, they are also known for having a very friendly
relationsship with the NSA, the National Security Agency of the USA.
In the end, it looks like Microsoft is trying to establish some kind of an
internet government in its own - and for its own good. They are giving away
passports you can be identified with - they are capable of identifying you if
they like, they collect data about you. And the key is - once again - the
operating system Windows XP. By now they did not dare to make such a passport
a must for using Windows XP, but the registration scheme when booting Windows
XP sounds like you have to have a Microsoft passport for accessing the internet
in general, even if that's pure bull. Only Microsoft services (for example the
purely Microsoft-oriented portal Hailstorm requires that) actually need you to
have an inernet passport and other services even can't use or work with this
passport because it would violate the "security" factor if Microsoft offered
the data about the passports to other companies as well.
Meaning, companies that want to offer a certain service that would function
nicely with the passport have to be under contract with Microsoft again and
this is where the circle closes: The user has to have a passport for accessing
certain (soon maybe vital) Microsoft services (for patches, registration etc.),
companies of course want to collect data about the users as well so they have
to deal with Microsoft just the same, making Microsoft the central service of
transactions on the web again.
And speaking of registrations. To register Windows XP, you do not only have to
be online but you also have to transfer a lot of data about your computer - to
"affix" the license you agreed to to your system. This is allowed to happen
twice. If you have to register a third time (meaning you have changed vital
hardware for example), you have to call a Microsoft (non-free) number, they
will then enable you to register again after having a close look at your data
and after having had a monologue about software piracy, license agreements etc.
the usual Microsoft crap.
Obviously, to prevent software piracy from happening, Microsoft decided to
treat the ordinary customer as a criminal. Having faulty or experimental
hardware makes the usage of Windows XP kind of hard if you ask me, if you have
to reinstall Windows XP and register anew, every time you change your GFX card
or motherboard. But that's not what Microsoft cares about, Microsoft cares
about monitoring your movements. They do like to know how often you change
hardware, how often you install or register for software and especially if and
where you paid for it.
(This is not possible to find out by the current registration scheme, but just
wait, they will find a way to implement that, too). One certain institution
monitors Microsoft's way of collecting data about the users with delight - Once
again the NSA.
A small funky sidetrip
-----------------------
There are quite some stories around Microsoft products.
Just collected a few from my memory:
IBM for example considered to use the Motorola 68000 in the PC initially and
had to decide between the 8086 (8088) and the 68000. However, the 68000 was
considered too powerful and therefore maybe harmful to the sales of IBM
mainframes - The PC was intended to be a rather low-end single-user system and
the 8086 seemed more suitable (also for other reasons).
Like said above, MS-DOS was not written by Microsoft. They simply bought QDOS
(according to some people short for Quick-and-Dirty OS since it was one of the
first operating systems for 8086 at all). Up until MS-DOS 5.00 it is supposed
to feature routines for cassette operation (like the C64, Atari 8-bit and ZX
Spektrum) since IBM initially considered to have the PC work with a cassette
drive as well (no affirmation on that though).
Microsoft Windows was announced in 1984 as a reaction to the Apple Macintosh's
user interface "Finder" - with no routines existing at all for a graphical
user-interface. Windows 1 and 2 even had the surname "DOS executive" since it
was just seen as an engine to run DOS-programs more comfortable. Windows 1 and
2 didn't even feature real graphics but a character based graphical user
interface like seen in many DOS programs at this time. Windows 2 for example
still didn't allow to overlap Windows, they could only be next to each other.
According to insiders, Bill Gates didn't like that when he saw that and
explained that this was not what the Macintosh offered - He is supposed to have
said "I want the Macintosh on the PC". Microsoft needed until 1995 to get a
decent copy of the Macintosh user interface working on the PC.
Microsoft was also involved in the X11 consortium in the beginning and had
influence in the Motif Window manager (MWM). This is why Windows 3.x and Motif
feature similarities like Hotkeys, icon functionality and other, minor things.
Microsoft Internet Explorer has not been written by Microsoft either. They
bought Mosaic from the N.C.S.A. (National Congress for Supercomputing
Applications), redesigned it (a little) and called it Internet Explorer. Funny
enough, Mosaic has been written by Netscape main programer and founder Marc
Andresen.
And even though the name "Explorer" is now a highly hyped name, Microsoft did
not introduce that either. AIX 3.1 - the IBM Unix - already featured an
"Information Explorer" that was capable of reading an IBM-internal textformat
with tutorials and informations about the computer usually supplied on CD-ROM.
In AIX 4.0 this information explorer was also given the possibility to display
HTML and to connect to the internet subsystem. It was no longer supported in
AIX 4.1 though.
Microsoft Windows did not run on DR-DOS not because of incompatibility, but
because Windows checked for the DOS version. Originally, this was planned to
give out a warning message on anything but MS-DOS like "You are not running
MS-DOS, this could cause incompatibilities we cannot be held responsible for".
Microsoft obviously was shocked by the fact that Windows and most applications
ran quite nicely on DR-DOS so they changed this "feature" to a forced crash
under DR-DOS.
Windows did not crash on DR-DOS because of incompatibility, but because
Microsoft wanted it to. Microsoft has been sued by Caldera, who bought Digital
Research, for sabotage of DR-DOS this way. The trial was settled out of court
with Microsoft paying over 20 Million Dollars to Caldera.
There never was a Microsoft Word 3.x, 4.x or 5.x. Microsoft word jumped from
2.0 to 6.0 to get on the same level with WordPerfect, the market leader in
wordprocessing in the beginning of the Windows 3.x era.
Microsoft DOS 6.22 was not a real update from 6.20. Microsoft had to remove
MS-DOS 6.20 from the market and replace it by another product because the
DoubleSpace software bundled with it (DBLSPACE) to compress the harddisk
content for larger disk-capacity was copyright Symantec and was used without
permission.
Microsoft released 6.22 shortly after 6.20 because of this, including its own
- and much more buggy - DriveSpace software.
Microsoft was being carefully eyed by the Antitrust department for quite a
while now. To prove that Microsoft does not only support its own operating
system but others also, they produced nonsense programs for other platforms
that never really sold - and never were intended to sell. There is for example
an Atari ST version of "Microsoft Write", a simple wordprocessor bundled with
Windows 3.x that was really no competition at all for the highly advanced
wordprocessors available for the Atari ST by then.
The final move in "supporting other systems" was the acquisition of shares in
Apple Computer of $170.000.000 - without the possibility to vote in shareholder
meetings - when Apple computer was on the verge of bankrupt. This move secured
the financial stability of Apple computer and made sure that not the only
non-Windows platform Microsoft is supporting dies.
Somewhen around 1987, 1988, Apple Computer bundled a Works-package, including a
small wordprocessor, a database (more an addressbook combined with a personal
organizer), a simple spreadsheet and communication software, named Apple Works
together with their Macintosh computers.
Microsoft sued Apple for doing this with the reasoning that the computer
manufacturer is not supposed to give away "application software" for free with
the computers they produce. This behaviour would, according to Microsoft, put
the computer manufacturer in a "monopolist position" which non-computer
manufacturers cannot achieve. Additionally, the need for software and therefore
the market for software developers would dramatically be tightened if
application software was given away for free.
Microsoft won this lawsuit, Apple outsourced the Works-software department,
named it "Claris" and charged a -relatively- small fee for the Works package,
which didn't really count when you spent a few thousand dollars for a new
Macintosh.
In 1995, Microsoft decided to bundle a fully capable browser software into
Windows 95 with the effect that the largest trial so far has been started
against Microsoft. The points are :
a.) Microsoft abuses a monopolist position as OS-manufacturer that
non-OS producing companies cannot achieve or defend against.
b.) Microsoft destroys the whole commercial browser software market
by giving away a fully operational browser for free with the
Operating system.
Microsoft pleads non-guilty and defends by saying that no one is allowed to
tell Microsoft which software to include into an operating system and which
not.
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