The fact that FOSS has been so successful in light of how MS have been behaving is testament to the merits of OpenSource. But this was never about opensource vs proprietary it has always been about *open Standards*.Originally Posted by Diello
Nobody is going to ban MS anytime soon, but If MS are forced into following open standards then this is good for everybody as it gives us all options of integrating cheaper and more suitable software into our networks.
Last I checked, Ford and BMW weren't found guilty of abusing their monopolies - oh, that'd be because they aren't monopolies!
You miss the point - the rules were there before MS broke the rules and as such they should be subject to them. Not doing that would simply reduce the overall effectiveness of the EU and EU court rulings!Yes - MS have done things wrong, yes, they can annoy the *@%# out of us at times - but there's a point at which it's no longer redressing any sort of balance, and just having a go at the clever kid.
No, you get idiots who don't understand what is important to the mass market and just like to find fault in everything they look at. I've not seen any key players in the Linux world say Ubuntu is a bad thing.You see it everywhere - Look at Ubuntu, once the darling of the Linux community, now it's so successful, you get the hardened Linux community members rubbishing it, saying it's Linux for wimps.
You can buy BMW's without SatNav too. They don't have a monopoly in the car market or the satnav market. Microsoft has a monopoly in both the OS world and the media player world and the latter is due to them illegally using their monopoly in the OS market.Are the same rules being applied however? I don't see BMW being put through anti-trust because you can buy their cars with SatNav. Surely you shouldn't be able to get SatNav with your car and should have to go out and buy a solution for that feature separately? ....................
The court didn't just come to their conclusions on a whim, the investigation was rather long and complex. As was the US case regarding internet explorer.
@ torledo
They've found as allot of people do that windows runs very well (especially in small setups) the IBM kit was overkill for their needs and very expensive, the move to windows won them allot of new bussiness. When they started this move 5 years ago i suspect most of their small customers would of run a mile of they said it was based on a 'FREE' OS. This is the problem most small and medium bussiness that don't have the in house skills are afraid of free, weather this is misguided or not it's pretty much how it is and it takes a brave tec to stake their reputation with management by going against the grain especially if your team consists of 'just you'.
Though i will add they still have a soft spot for the IBM kit.
Last edited by cookie_monster; 10th April 2008 at 08:27 PM.
Point of order required on this as in education MS do not act as the tendering company. They are a product provider in such that a company can use their software and technology as part of a solution but MS have not taken part in any tender.
This was in reaction to issues raised as far back as 1998 (I would have to check the exact dates but it was prior to W2K being released in beta) with schools wanting MS to come in and sort the school out ... the reaction was that MS could not ... but a company using MS software could. IIRC it was Ian Lynch telling me about it on UK.education.schools-it circa 2001.
This has further changed in light of schools being Microsoft Academies ... it is never MS that does this directly but educational companies that do it with MS products and support ... this has also been targeted as improper and the rules changed again.
Apple gave up one the Apple Distinguished School many years ago and when asked in 2005 if it would ever be brought back one Apple employee told me that there is no point, it would only get blocked in the same way the MS is getting blocked. It is better to have a partner company do stuff ... hence the apple solutions experts and apple distinguished educators.
As of yet I have not seen Sun challenged over anything or any other *nix provider, primarily due to lack of market share.
Should it come round in 10 years time that we are mainly on EduBuntu or using karoshi will we see the same attitude from the EU?
A monopoly would mean there wasn't viable competition - OS: OSX, Linux, UNIX, Media Player: iTunes, Winamp. IIRC from the US IE case, it wasn't that there wasn't competition, it was the other companies griping that if users were provided with something "out of the box", they'd use that as it did the job, and not look at alternatives. Ubuntu comes with OOo as standard, part of the install, yet I can choose to install Abiword if I so choose.You can buy BMW's without SatNav too. They don't have a monopoly in the car market or the satnav market. Microsoft has a monopoly in both the OS world and the media player world and the latter is due to them illegally using their monopoly in the OS market.
Yes, I can choose not to have BMWs SatNav and buy a TomTom - I can choose to install Winamp.
What I'm saying is it's a fine line - I'm not great lover of MS, they've made a rod for their own backs, and if they'd decided not to be kids, and shared out their APIs properly etc., they'd have avoided all the trouble, and probably ended up making more profit in the long run, as 3rd parties could create better products for use on MS's platform.
What I object too is this demonising of MS as the anti-christ, all hail Linux. Reasoned debate of the pros/cons & how each provides viable solutions to system needs is what's needed, not OS fanaticism. The problem with Linux is still getting it out of niche uses & Linux advocates to the mainstream, and a lot of that is down to dissemination of information. e.g. I love my Nagios and NAS setups running on Debian - I recently toyed with the idea of Linux for one of our Music editing suites (15 PCs), but on looking at centralised updates, software deployment, profiles, restrictions, etc., I was left either at a mammoth configuration task, or in the case of centralised distribution of software/updates, not even being convinced if it was possible! There are probably solution to all of these, but even in this day-and-age of Linux adoption, even the simplest of sysadmin tasks are a nightmare to even find out about.
Last edited by Diello; 10th April 2008 at 09:46 PM.
@diello - i don't know what would constitute a monopoly, but is it not the case that until quite recently ALL PC's shipped by OEM's came with a Microsoft Windows version preinstalled. If i'm wrong about that i apologise, but even if it's 99% it constitutes in effect years of collusion between Microsoft and the PC builders, this massive installed base has remained unchallenged for years and today, while i don't know the figures, i'd imagine that even if linux has taken a percentage point or two from microsoft in terms of PC's shipped with either OS then it's a drop in the ocean....and microsoft will contniue to be regulated like mad. So it should be really.
A better analogy would be to use BT.....it's been years since it was a state owned monopoly but it doesn't stop ofcom from heavily regulating aspects of their business. And it won't stop even if we have things like LLU and the regulator will continue to break BT's balls over things like operator access to 21CN - because even though BT are the ones spending 11 billion it's BT who have benefited from being the national telecommunicatons carrier, and BT won't be allowed to use the new and old bits of the infrastructure as they wish. Even if they've paid for the new bits themselves
Microsoft and BT have benefited from their monpolies and still do to a totally unbalanced extent. I can get my phone from someone other than BT but it's still going over BT's wires. Similarly i can install linux on my PC but it'll still be shipped with one of the seven Vista versions.
altough tbf i'm drifting, as this thread is about microsoft in education. And the previos EU rulings are seperate issues
Last edited by torledo; 10th April 2008 at 10:24 PM.
It won't be shipped with windows if you buy a mac ;-)
/me runs for cover!
Diello,What I object too is this demonising of MS as the anti-christ, all hail Linux. Reasoned debate of the pros/cons & how each provides viable solutions to system needs is what's needed, not OS fanaticism. The problem with Linux is still getting it out of niche uses & Linux advocates to the mainstream, and a lot of that is down to dissemination of information. e.g. I love my Nagios and NAS setups running on Debian - I recently toyed with the idea of Linux for one of our Music editing suites (15 PCs), but on looking at centralised updates, software deployment, profiles, restrictions, etc., I was left either at a mammoth configuration task, or in the case of centralised distribution of software/updates, not even being convinced if it was possible! There are probably solution to all of these, but even in this day-and-age of Linux adoption, even the simplest of sysadmin tasks are a nightmare to even find out about.
a question - why can't you do automatic updates to your windows machines from your linuxs server, or apply a group policy to them? - this is the point you miss, you can't do it because MS intentionally write their software with obscure protocols that nothing else can interact with. This is why they were convicted, not because the EU are *nix fanbois.
So do Apple ... it is only their lack of market share for the OS that stops this being an issue. If the market share changed would the EU attack Apple as hard?
If they abused their monopoly, then yes. yes they should.
Before we get too carried away, this is one EU minister posing a question in light of microsofts non-compliance. What is the likelihoood of that being agreed to by the commision...
Also is it not anti-competitive to bar public athorities the option of Microsoft.
This sounds less like a witch hunt more like a EU official moralising. Phew.
a quote from a post on the Groklaw thread:What is the likelihoood of that being agreed to by the commision...
Just to make it clear: this parliamentary question only deals with procurements from the EU-institutions concerning the EU-budget. So, procurements from member-states are excluded. For them, only article 45 of Directive 2004/18/EC applies.
The difference is that the EU Directive (which has to be converted to state-law) states you *may* exclude candidates or tenderers for the reasons stated. The EU Financial regulations cited state that the EU *shall* exclude candidates or tenderers.
So the impact depends on how the directive has been applied nationally. For example, the dutch Besluit Aanbestedingsregels overheidsopdrachten (Directive for procurement of government tenders) makes it optional to exclude exclude tenderers, not mandatory.
Maybe i should get out more, but in practice wtf does that mean ?
Groklaw - Member of EU Parliament asks if Microsoft should be excluded from public procurementMaybe i should get out more, but in practice wtf does that mean ?
Basically that only EU-specific tenders are affected, what, e.g. the UK Gov tenders for isn't covered by any ban..... I think, anyway!
Ah, no. They were charged with abusing their position by the EU and US courts due to the fact they bundled their software and then didn't provide any information on how to create software that did the same thing via the same API's. ie. They didn't allow the same access to the system. *That* is abusing their monopoly.
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