4 ms·

>Microsoft may have had a dominant share in the PC operating systems market, but I don't think they were ever a monopoly. Thats the definition of a monopoly. A

by ralfn 14y ago

>Microsoft may have had a dominant share in the PC operating systems market, but I don't think they were ever a monopoly. Thats the definition of a monopoly. At least in my language. (Dutch).. Dominant market share. Not all monopolies are bad, but any market with high margins and a single vendor with 90+% maketshare is a monopolistic market. Thats just how words and definitions work. Thats not an opinion. Now here comes the opinion part: consumers had little to no choice. Why? Because the core functionality, is compatibility. Who would buy a car that you cant drive on the common road? I make the road analogy, because the difficult aspect of the OS market is that its infrastructure. Imagine a world where cars, gas stations, oil supply and roads were completely unregulated except for the upholding of IP laws (in particular: patents) that enable certain types of incompatibilities to get legal protection. You are driving in a MS car, with special patent-protected tires, that only work on MS roads. They are also the only type of car allowed to drive on those roads. They have a special patent protected triangle shaped gas supply, that only MS fuel stations can resupply. Now, on this road you will only find exits to MS shopping malls, not those of competitors. This could go on and on. Im not in the MS is evil boat, but market regulations in the IT are about 1% of what we actually need. And compared to traffic, snailmail, phone systems, electricity its extremely unregulated. And maybe, if they are all truly forced to compete on quality, we would no longer have this "everything is broken and nobody seems to mind" problem. Because nobody minds, because it is not about getting customers: it is about how to hijack them. How to lock them in. And this is even more true for a connected world ... I cant just move a social life to another social network. I do not have the freedom to do that. If we can not pick indiviually, we should be picking democratically. Or at the very least, regulate it all until there are enforced common fileformats, including application-containers, open communication exchanges and full data liberation. The only other alternative is complete exploitation by a monopolistic bully.

greenyoda 14y ago
A monopoly means that there is no competition. For example Wikipedia defines it this way: "A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity." [1] A good example would be an electricity provider that owns the only power transmission lines in a given area. (This would usually be a legal, government-regulated monopoly.) In contrast, it was definitely possible to use Macs as an alternative to PCs, even in large business environments. At some point, I even worked on developing an enterprise software product that ran on Macs. "If we can not pick individually, we should be picking democratically. Or at the very least, regulate it all until there are enforced common fileformats, including application-containers, open communication exchanges and full data liberation." There's a lot of software available that allows Windows machines to exchange data with all sorts of other machines. Most Microsoft products that I've ever seen allow you to export or import your data in open formats (e.g., Excel allows you to export data as CSV format). Not to mention that many third-party products can read and write Microsoft file formats. So I don't see how Microsoft is locking up people's data. All this interoperability was created by the free market (e.g., Microsoft's influential customers demanded it), not by government regulation. Think about what kind of a mess bureaucrats and courts with no technical knowledge have already made of our patent system. Do you really want government regulators and courts to also dictate what our standard file formats should be? I'd much rather take my chances with the free market. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(economics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(economics)
- ralfn 14y ago
  >A good example would be an electricity provider that owns the only power transmission lines in a given area The only legal implementation of the win32 api. The only legal implementation of FAT. The only legal implementation of doc'95. The only legal implementation of directx. Example after example, not of innovation (comparable solutions exist) but of intentionl incompatibility. The intent was demonstrated, not just in encrypted file formats but actual email correspondence where the intent was made explicit. Yes. Legal action, pressure and illegal (from a ToS perspective) reverse-engineering allowed some people to overcome parts of their prison. This was not the result of the free market, but a political and social campaign. And although it liberated some, these people paid a hefty price of digital exclusion, and this war took almost a decade, which many players only survived because they chose to pay Microsoft "protection" money. From Novell, to TomTom. Your coloring of events, is far removed from reality. Just ask any linux desktop user foot soldier in the 90ties. There were times they were updating MSN protocols as often as possible, just to make sure people using linux would be socially isolated, with their "illegal" clients.. The biggest shame, is that with all this focus on the oppression in the last decade, we fail to discuss, the even bigger risks in our new cloud based world, and the consolification of computing devices. Things are going to get even worse, without regulation... Microsoft was a kind dictator compared to how Apple or Amazon tend to operate. And just because politicians may be corrupt, that does not mean, that there is a solution to all of this that does not require the right types of regulations. Like data liberation. If we need to fix politics before we can fix this we better get started.

by ralfn 14y ago

greenyoda 14y ago

A monopoly means that there is no competition. For example Wikipedia defines it this way: "A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity." [1] A good example would be an electricity provider that owns the only power transmission lines in a given area. (This would usually be a legal, government-regulated monopoly.) In contrast, it was definitely possible to use Macs as an alternative to PCs, even in large business environments. At some point, I even worked on developing an enterprise software product that ran on Macs. "If we can not pick individually, we should be picking democratically. Or at the very least, regulate it all until there are enforced common fileformats, including application-containers, open communication exchanges and full data liberation." There's a lot of software available that allows Windows machines to exchange data with all sorts of other machines. Most Microsoft products that I've ever seen allow you to export or import your data in open formats (e.g., Excel allows you to export data as CSV format). Not to mention that many third-party products can read and write Microsoft file formats. So I don't see how Microsoft is locking up people's data. All this interoperability was created by the free market (e.g., Microsoft's influential customers demanded it), not by government regulation. Think about what kind of a mess bureaucrats and courts with no technical knowledge have already made of our patent system. Do you really want government regulators and courts to also dictate what our standard file formats should be? I'd much rather take my chances with the free market. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(economics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(economics)

ralfn 14y ago
>A good example would be an electricity provider that owns the only power transmission lines in a given area The only legal implementation of the win32 api. The only legal implementation of FAT. The only legal implementation of doc'95. The only legal implementation of directx. Example after example, not of innovation (comparable solutions exist) but of intentionl incompatibility. The intent was demonstrated, not just in encrypted file formats but actual email correspondence where the intent was made explicit. Yes. Legal action, pressure and illegal (from a ToS perspective) reverse-engineering allowed some people to overcome parts of their prison. This was not the result of the free market, but a political and social campaign. And although it liberated some, these people paid a hefty price of digital exclusion, and this war took almost a decade, which many players only survived because they chose to pay Microsoft "protection" money. From Novell, to TomTom. Your coloring of events, is far removed from reality. Just ask any linux desktop user foot soldier in the 90ties. There were times they were updating MSN protocols as often as possible, just to make sure people using linux would be socially isolated, with their "illegal" clients.. The biggest shame, is that with all this focus on the oppression in the last decade, we fail to discuss, the even bigger risks in our new cloud based world, and the consolification of computing devices. Things are going to get even worse, without regulation... Microsoft was a kind dictator compared to how Apple or Amazon tend to operate. And just because politicians may be corrupt, that does not mean, that there is a solution to all of this that does not require the right types of regulations. Like data liberation. If we need to fix politics before we can fix this we better get started.