9 ms·

The last time antitrust action was taken against Microsoft (United States v. Microsoft Corp., filed in 2001), law folks' tech-illiteracy and Microsoft's slither

by calais 7y ago

The last time antitrust action was taken against Microsoft (United States v. Microsoft Corp., filed in 2001), law folks' tech-illiteracy and Microsoft's slitheriness led to a penalty of merely having to publish API documentation. The aim had been to make Windows an interface that competitors could implement. I hope Microsoft gets served for antitrust again, and that this time a savvier legal community can actually achieve the goal is the first suit.

zepto 7y ago
Why? Who cares about this and how would it be in the public good?
- techntoke 7y ago
  Yet it is probably installed on over 95% of non-mac laptops.
  - dvdcxn 7y ago
    It's less of a walled garden than OSX, which isn't even virtualisable.
    - techntoke 7y ago
      It actually can be virtualized, but it isn't as easy as Windows. I'd argue that neither of them should be used in government though.
      - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
        I'd posit that the primary reason it's not as "easy" to virtualize macOS is because Virtualbox, VMWare, et al haven't poured enormous sums of money into optimizing for macOS performance, as they have Windows.
  - parasubvert 7y ago
    There are 1.5 billion active Windows PCs, including laptops in the world. [1] There are also 1.5 billion active Apple devices including Macs and tablets, and 2.5 billion active Google Android devices. Given Linux and other computing devices to add to the above. Microsoft really has an only (at best!) a 25% share of the world of computing devices. One can split hairs about being the monopoly leader in their niche, but the thing is... PCs and Macs aren’t the main form of computing anymore. It would be hard to argue that Microsoft should be broken up because Windows is the future of the market and is illegally being exploited to sell more Azure, or Xboxes, or Microsoft Office, etc. [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/bigger-than-windows-bigger-than-ios-google-now-has-2-5-billion-active-android-devices-after-10-years/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/bigger-than-windows-bigger-tha...
- calais 7y ago
  So that more secure implementations than MS's can offer a transition for organizations dependent on it.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    Microsoft has one of the best software security teams in the world, one that arguably created the template that Google and Apple used to create the other best security teams in the industry. The idea that a Microsoft breakup would have improved computer security is an extraordinary claim.
    - calais 7y ago
      We can reasonably disagree about the quality of their security. More generally though tech diversity makes a difference in security: Dan Geer did an excellent talk about this.
      - tptacek 7y ago
        What Dan Geer & co wrote about software monocultures is pretty much the last thing anyone seriously wrote about the topic, which hasn't had much predictive power in the ensuing years. The major bastions of software security on the Internet today --- Apple's iOS hardware/software platform, and Google's Chromium --- are both monocultures, and selecting yourself out of either of them will materially reduce your security (this is not a point HN commenters tend to enjoy reading, but it is nonetheless true). Geer & co wrote their paper right after the first "Summer of Worms", in which the insecurity of Microsoft's software was such a hot topic that there were congressional hearings on it. His analysis presumed that Microsoft wouldn't commit itself, organization-wide, to correcting the problem, because no other large organization had. But that's exactly what Microsoft did. On an edict from Bill Gates, the whole company pivoted towards security. They hired a huge number of software security people and contracted out essentially the entire software security consulting industry to assess everything from the TCP/IP drivers to Minesweeper (they now host an internal conference, "Blue Hat", to socialize the results of 3rd party audits from blue-badge vendors and internal researchers). They delayed and re-roadmapped whole projects around security, Longhorn being probably the most obvious example. They trained all their software teams on software security, and enacted company-wide controls on "safe" and "unsafe" library functions. Essentially, Bill Gates did the same thing in reaction to the Blaster worm that Theo de Raadt did with his fork of NetBSD: a site-wide top-to-bottom audit (I was, somewhat peripherally, involved with the OpenBSD audit of the 1990s; I had some findings and wrote the advisories but was very far from the most productive person in the project). But unlike Theo, Gates had a cubic fuckload of money to throw at the project, and it showed. The results, I think, more or less refute Geer's argument. Microsoft was able to (significantly, albeit incompletely) address its security gap because it had the resources to do so. Moreover, each major component of Microsoft's software security risk was, individually, huge: a desktop operating system, an office suite, a browser, etc. All required vast resources, and many were able to effectively share resources between each other. Diverse, (necessarily) smaller organizations could not have pulled this off, and, had they existed in 2004 when Geer wrote about them, they'd have started with approximately the same tech debt Microsoft had. And so today, if you're looking at a desktop operating system and choosing between one secured by the former monocultural bohemoth and another run by a dedicated and passionate band of volunteers, you will in fact usually be better off with the former. If instead of desktop operating systems we look at mobile platforms, the difference is even more stark, to the point where if you're not using either Apple, or Google's flagship supported platform, you're almost surely running something with grave vulnerabilities.
tptacek 7y ago
This is what you'd believe if all you'd known about the Microsoft antitrust case was what Wikipedia records about it it in the short "Settlement" section of the Microsoft Antitrust Case article. In reality, the case broke Microsoft's monopoly on pretty much everything but desktop operating systems (the market broke that later on) and a chastened Microsoft was unable to apply its 1990s tactics to the emerging mobile market, in which it was soundly trounced. The antitrust objectives of the government were essentially accomplished. Microsoft remains a fearsome competitor in the moribund personal computer market, and essentially nowhere else. Its browser, the focus of the case, is an an also-ran fork of Chromium. It has more or less entirely lost the server market, outside of line-of-business applications in the Fortune 500 that it would have retained regardless of its monopoly status. It's been sidelined almost entirely from mobile computing. Microsoft doesn't even control office software anymore! Linux nerds dearly wanted to see Microsoft split up, because that's a theatrical and cathartic ending to a case many of them had (weirdly) personalized. But it's clear now that splitting up Microsoft wouldn't have served any public policy objective, and Jackson was wrong to order it split up.
- calais 7y ago
  What Wikipedia records about it is precisely all I knew about it. Thank you for the exposition and commentary. I don't think Linux nerds' taking the case personally is weird, though: antagonism towards Microsoft specifically is a cultural self definition for many of them. As with any court case that parallels a cultural narrative, it was felt personally.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    OK, "weird" is the wrong word. You're right, I do understand where it's coming from. A thing I'd add is that the Microsoft case didn't just chasten Microsoft, but also the industry as a whole. In at least a couple of FAANG cases, I know firsthand that antitrust concerns altered product decisions (sometimes for the worse!). I don't think the case was, in the industry, widely considered a win for Microsoft.
    - deleted 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

by calais 7y ago

zepto 7y ago

Why? Who cares about this and how would it be in the public good?

techntoke 7y ago
Yet it is probably installed on over 95% of non-mac laptops.
- dvdcxn 7y ago
  It's less of a walled garden than OSX, which isn't even virtualisable.
  - techntoke 7y ago
    It actually can be virtualized, but it isn't as easy as Windows. I'd argue that neither of them should be used in government though.
    - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
      I'd posit that the primary reason it's not as "easy" to virtualize macOS is because Virtualbox, VMWare, et al haven't poured enormous sums of money into optimizing for macOS performance, as they have Windows.
- parasubvert 7y ago
  There are 1.5 billion active Windows PCs, including laptops in the world. [1] There are also 1.5 billion active Apple devices including Macs and tablets, and 2.5 billion active Google Android devices. Given Linux and other computing devices to add to the above. Microsoft really has an only (at best!) a 25% share of the world of computing devices. One can split hairs about being the monopoly leader in their niche, but the thing is... PCs and Macs aren’t the main form of computing anymore. It would be hard to argue that Microsoft should be broken up because Windows is the future of the market and is illegally being exploited to sell more Azure, or Xboxes, or Microsoft Office, etc. [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/bigger-than-windows-bigger-than-ios-google-now-has-2-5-billion-active-android-devices-after-10-years/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/bigger-than-windows-bigger-tha...
calais 7y ago
So that more secure implementations than MS's can offer a transition for organizations dependent on it.
- tptacek 7y ago
  Microsoft has one of the best software security teams in the world, one that arguably created the template that Google and Apple used to create the other best security teams in the industry. The idea that a Microsoft breakup would have improved computer security is an extraordinary claim.
  - calais 7y ago
    We can reasonably disagree about the quality of their security. More generally though tech diversity makes a difference in security: Dan Geer did an excellent talk about this.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      What Dan Geer & co wrote about software monocultures is pretty much the last thing anyone seriously wrote about the topic, which hasn't had much predictive power in the ensuing years. The major bastions of software security on the Internet today --- Apple's iOS hardware/software platform, and Google's Chromium --- are both monocultures, and selecting yourself out of either of them will materially reduce your security (this is not a point HN commenters tend to enjoy reading, but it is nonetheless true). Geer & co wrote their paper right after the first "Summer of Worms", in which the insecurity of Microsoft's software was such a hot topic that there were congressional hearings on it. His analysis presumed that Microsoft wouldn't commit itself, organization-wide, to correcting the problem, because no other large organization had. But that's exactly what Microsoft did. On an edict from Bill Gates, the whole company pivoted towards security. They hired a huge number of software security people and contracted out essentially the entire software security consulting industry to assess everything from the TCP/IP drivers to Minesweeper (they now host an internal conference, "Blue Hat", to socialize the results of 3rd party audits from blue-badge vendors and internal researchers). They delayed and re-roadmapped whole projects around security, Longhorn being probably the most obvious example. They trained all their software teams on software security, and enacted company-wide controls on "safe" and "unsafe" library functions. Essentially, Bill Gates did the same thing in reaction to the Blaster worm that Theo de Raadt did with his fork of NetBSD: a site-wide top-to-bottom audit (I was, somewhat peripherally, involved with the OpenBSD audit of the 1990s; I had some findings and wrote the advisories but was very far from the most productive person in the project). But unlike Theo, Gates had a cubic fuckload of money to throw at the project, and it showed. The results, I think, more or less refute Geer's argument. Microsoft was able to (significantly, albeit incompletely) address its security gap because it had the resources to do so. Moreover, each major component of Microsoft's software security risk was, individually, huge: a desktop operating system, an office suite, a browser, etc. All required vast resources, and many were able to effectively share resources between each other. Diverse, (necessarily) smaller organizations could not have pulled this off, and, had they existed in 2004 when Geer wrote about them, they'd have started with approximately the same tech debt Microsoft had. And so today, if you're looking at a desktop operating system and choosing between one secured by the former monocultural bohemoth and another run by a dedicated and passionate band of volunteers, you will in fact usually be better off with the former. If instead of desktop operating systems we look at mobile platforms, the difference is even more stark, to the point where if you're not using either Apple, or Google's flagship supported platform, you're almost surely running something with grave vulnerabilities.

tptacek 7y ago

This is what you'd believe if all you'd known about the Microsoft antitrust case was what Wikipedia records about it it in the short "Settlement" section of the Microsoft Antitrust Case article. In reality, the case broke Microsoft's monopoly on pretty much everything but desktop operating systems (the market broke that later on) and a chastened Microsoft was unable to apply its 1990s tactics to the emerging mobile market, in which it was soundly trounced. The antitrust objectives of the government were essentially accomplished. Microsoft remains a fearsome competitor in the moribund personal computer market, and essentially nowhere else. Its browser, the focus of the case, is an an also-ran fork of Chromium. It has more or less entirely lost the server market, outside of line-of-business applications in the Fortune 500 that it would have retained regardless of its monopoly status. It's been sidelined almost entirely from mobile computing. Microsoft doesn't even control office software anymore! Linux nerds dearly wanted to see Microsoft split up, because that's a theatrical and cathartic ending to a case many of them had (weirdly) personalized. But it's clear now that splitting up Microsoft wouldn't have served any public policy objective, and Jackson was wrong to order it split up.

calais 7y ago
What Wikipedia records about it is precisely all I knew about it. Thank you for the exposition and commentary. I don't think Linux nerds' taking the case personally is weird, though: antagonism towards Microsoft specifically is a cultural self definition for many of them. As with any court case that parallels a cultural narrative, it was felt personally.
- tptacek 7y ago
  OK, "weird" is the wrong word. You're right, I do understand where it's coming from. A thing I'd add is that the Microsoft case didn't just chasten Microsoft, but also the industry as a whole. In at least a couple of FAANG cases, I know firsthand that antitrust concerns altered product decisions (sometimes for the worse!). I don't think the case was, in the industry, widely considered a win for Microsoft.
  - deleted 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]