4 ms·

I don't want to defend MS, and yes, proprietary formats are evil. But as I remember, every big company did it that way, it was just the understanding at that ti

by greyman 17y ago

I don't want to defend MS, and yes, proprietary formats are evil. But as I remember, every big company did it that way, it was just the understanding at that time.

robin_reala 17y ago
It might have been the understanding, but (as I understand it) that’s still blatantly monopolistic behaviour which has been illegal for a lot longer than the last 10 years.
- byrneseyeview 17y ago
  I'd be interested in how that law works! I'm pretty sure lots of companies do this kind of thing, all the time. Apple, for example, likes to sell hardware and software that only works with their proprietary operating system. Lego likes to sell bricks that fit into Legos rather than other toys. Etc. It would be pretty hard to create a law that bans what Microsoft did, without banning what lots of other people do, too.
  - robin_reala 17y ago
    There’s nothing illegal about keeping things proprietary, but as I understand it (and I am most certainly not a lawyer) it becomes a monopolistic practise to do that when you already have a monopoly in the market. That is, it’s not having a monopoly that’s bad, it’s leveraging it to keep you in a monopoly that’s the issue.
  - abrahamsen 17y ago
    Anti-trust laws basically says that if you have a practical monopoly on one area, you are not allowed to tie your products in that area with products in other areas. This is how Microsoft can violate anti-trust laws despite usually being more open than their competitors. Lego has nowhere near a monopoly on toys (or even on building bricks), and Apple is not in a monopoly situation on computers or operating systems. However, Apple's traditional closedness do bring them in trouble with regard to music distribution, where the iTunes store is in such a dominating position that tying it too closely to the iPod has brought Apple in the spotlight of EU anti-trust control.
    - qeorge 17y ago
      Anti-trust laws basically says that if you have a practical monopoly on one area, you are not allowed to tie your products in that area with products in other areas. Its not that simple. Monopolies are not inherently illegal, they only become illegal when they are maintained artificially. Also, the Sherman Antitrust act is usually applied more subjectively than most statutes, with the final decision turning on whether or not the alleged violation is "harmful" (to the consumer or the market as a whole). In other words: if your product is simply better and you have a de facto monopoly as a result, that's legal. If you protect your monopoly by making competition itself impossible, that's illegal (but hard to prove).
    - byrneseyeview 17y ago
      Anti-trust laws basically says that if you have a practical monopoly on one area, you are not allowed to tie your products in that area with products in other areas. And I suppose we can all agree that Microsoft has a monopoly on -- what, exactly? The idea of a monopoly is inherently slippery. I could write a memo in word, or I could write it in Emacs, or I could send it via Skype, or I could use any of a basically infinite variety of methods to communicate. Lego has a monopoly on their exact product set, a dominant mind-share in their general category, and an extremely valuable brand name -- if you define toys as narrowly as you define office software, it's easy to claim that they have a monopoly. But even if they do, the worst you can say about them is that they're keeping a large fraction of the economic value they produce. The most harm a monopolist can cause is for their product to be as good a value as the next-best product, and to extract excess profits to the extent that it's a more valuable product for which they can charge a higher price. Which doesn't sound especially worrisome (especially since they invest the extra profits in things that ought to make us happy -- I heard a talk by a Microsoft employee who was willing to claim, in front of journalists, lawyers, and two Google employees, that Microsoft was responsible for 2-3% of all US R&D spending).
      - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
        The worst I can say about monopolies is that they destroy economic value. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Monopoly_and_efficiency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Monopoly_and_efficienc... Microsoft has removed Billions from the economy, even above the Billions they transferred from others to themselves. In more prosaic terms, monopolies "make articles scarce, make them dear and make them bad". All in all, not good and while it is generally recognized that Microsoft makes things shoddy and expensive compared with a free market, I find it a shame that it's not better recognised that they have limited the spread of computing technology.
  - pohl 17y ago
    Why would it be hard? All you need to do is express it conditionally: if you have a monopoly in some market, then you can't... This is exactly what the Sherman Antitrust Act did. If your interest is genuine, you can always read the Conclusions Of Law document from the case. http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f218600/218633.htm http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f218600/218633.htm If you're also curious how the conditional was met, read the Findings Of Fact. http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm
    - byrneseyeview 17y ago
      Because you have to define a "market". If a product has no substitutes at all, you're right that it's a monopolized market -- but it's also clearly a market that couldn't exist without the company that's producing the product, and didn't exist until that company did produce the product -- so no matter what they charge, the change in consumer utility must be zero or positive.
      - pohl 17y ago
        Don't take my phrasing too literally. "Market" was my term. I wasn't quoting the law and I am not a lawyer. From scanning the FoF document that I linked to, it appears that the appropriate jargon is "relevant market", and it appears that an utter lack of substitutes is not the criterion. Rather, look at the following from section III: "33. Microsoft enjoys so much power in the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems that if it wished to exercise this power solely in terms of price, it could charge a price for Windows substantially above that which could be charged in a competitive market. Moreover, it could do so for a significant period of time without losing an unacceptable amount of business to competitors. In other words, Microsoft enjoys monopoly power in the relevant market."
        rbanffy 17y ago
        "it could charge a price for Windows substantially above that which could be charged in a competitive market" Weren't people complaining exactly about 7's pricing?
gaius 17y ago
proprietary formats are evil. Microsoft's "proprietary" formats are just the in-memory COM/OLE objects representing your document serialized onto the disk. They change in every release because the code changes. It's not a conspiracy (and you have a very odd definition of "evil").
- cia_plant 17y ago
  It is a conspiracy, as has been proven in court more than once.
- astine 17y ago
  and you have a very odd definition of "evil" It's not that odd. An evil is anything that is damaging or causes harm, (regardless of malicious intent.) Propriety formats are troublesome, so they are an evil.

by greyman 17y ago

I don't want to defend MS, and yes, proprietary formats are evil. But as I remember, every big company did it that way, it was just the understanding at that time.

robin_reala 17y ago

It might have been the understanding, but (as I understand it) that’s still blatantly monopolistic behaviour which has been illegal for a lot longer than the last 10 years.

byrneseyeview 17y ago
I'd be interested in how that law works! I'm pretty sure lots of companies do this kind of thing, all the time. Apple, for example, likes to sell hardware and software that only works with their proprietary operating system. Lego likes to sell bricks that fit into Legos rather than other toys. Etc. It would be pretty hard to create a law that bans what Microsoft did, without banning what lots of other people do, too.
- robin_reala 17y ago
  There’s nothing illegal about keeping things proprietary, but as I understand it (and I am most certainly not a lawyer) it becomes a monopolistic practise to do that when you already have a monopoly in the market. That is, it’s not having a monopoly that’s bad, it’s leveraging it to keep you in a monopoly that’s the issue.
- abrahamsen 17y ago
  Anti-trust laws basically says that if you have a practical monopoly on one area, you are not allowed to tie your products in that area with products in other areas. This is how Microsoft can violate anti-trust laws despite usually being more open than their competitors. Lego has nowhere near a monopoly on toys (or even on building bricks), and Apple is not in a monopoly situation on computers or operating systems. However, Apple's traditional closedness do bring them in trouble with regard to music distribution, where the iTunes store is in such a dominating position that tying it too closely to the iPod has brought Apple in the spotlight of EU anti-trust control.
  - qeorge 17y ago
    Anti-trust laws basically says that if you have a practical monopoly on one area, you are not allowed to tie your products in that area with products in other areas. Its not that simple. Monopolies are not inherently illegal, they only become illegal when they are maintained artificially. Also, the Sherman Antitrust act is usually applied more subjectively than most statutes, with the final decision turning on whether or not the alleged violation is "harmful" (to the consumer or the market as a whole). In other words: if your product is simply better and you have a de facto monopoly as a result, that's legal. If you protect your monopoly by making competition itself impossible, that's illegal (but hard to prove).
  - byrneseyeview 17y ago
    Anti-trust laws basically says that if you have a practical monopoly on one area, you are not allowed to tie your products in that area with products in other areas. And I suppose we can all agree that Microsoft has a monopoly on -- what, exactly? The idea of a monopoly is inherently slippery. I could write a memo in word, or I could write it in Emacs, or I could send it via Skype, or I could use any of a basically infinite variety of methods to communicate. Lego has a monopoly on their exact product set, a dominant mind-share in their general category, and an extremely valuable brand name -- if you define toys as narrowly as you define office software, it's easy to claim that they have a monopoly. But even if they do, the worst you can say about them is that they're keeping a large fraction of the economic value they produce. The most harm a monopolist can cause is for their product to be as good a value as the next-best product, and to extract excess profits to the extent that it's a more valuable product for which they can charge a higher price. Which doesn't sound especially worrisome (especially since they invest the extra profits in things that ought to make us happy -- I heard a talk by a Microsoft employee who was willing to claim, in front of journalists, lawyers, and two Google employees, that Microsoft was responsible for 2-3% of all US R&D spending).
    - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
      The worst I can say about monopolies is that they destroy economic value. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Monopoly_and_efficiency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Monopoly_and_efficienc... Microsoft has removed Billions from the economy, even above the Billions they transferred from others to themselves. In more prosaic terms, monopolies "make articles scarce, make them dear and make them bad". All in all, not good and while it is generally recognized that Microsoft makes things shoddy and expensive compared with a free market, I find it a shame that it's not better recognised that they have limited the spread of computing technology.
- pohl 17y ago
  Why would it be hard? All you need to do is express it conditionally: if you have a monopoly in some market, then you can't... This is exactly what the Sherman Antitrust Act did. If your interest is genuine, you can always read the Conclusions Of Law document from the case. http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f218600/218633.htm http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f218600/218633.htm If you're also curious how the conditional was met, read the Findings Of Fact. http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm
  - byrneseyeview 17y ago
    Because you have to define a "market". If a product has no substitutes at all, you're right that it's a monopolized market -- but it's also clearly a market that couldn't exist without the company that's producing the product, and didn't exist until that company did produce the product -- so no matter what they charge, the change in consumer utility must be zero or positive.
    - pohl 17y ago
      Don't take my phrasing too literally. "Market" was my term. I wasn't quoting the law and I am not a lawyer. From scanning the FoF document that I linked to, it appears that the appropriate jargon is "relevant market", and it appears that an utter lack of substitutes is not the criterion. Rather, look at the following from section III: "33. Microsoft enjoys so much power in the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems that if it wished to exercise this power solely in terms of price, it could charge a price for Windows substantially above that which could be charged in a competitive market. Moreover, it could do so for a significant period of time without losing an unacceptable amount of business to competitors. In other words, Microsoft enjoys monopoly power in the relevant market."
      - rbanffy 17y ago
        "it could charge a price for Windows substantially above that which could be charged in a competitive market" Weren't people complaining exactly about 7's pricing?

gaius 17y ago

proprietary formats are evil. Microsoft's "proprietary" formats are just the in-memory COM/OLE objects representing your document serialized onto the disk. They change in every release because the code changes. It's not a conspiracy (and you have a very odd definition of "evil").

cia_plant 17y ago
It is a conspiracy, as has been proven in court more than once.
astine 17y ago
and you have a very odd definition of "evil" It's not that odd. An evil is anything that is damaging or causes harm, (regardless of malicious intent.) Propriety formats are troublesome, so they are an evil.