NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Common criticisms of Microsoft

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Microsoft Corporation has been the focus of much controversy in the computer industry since the 1980s. This article explores some of the areas in which it has received frequent criticism. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1024x768, 99 KB) Summary Sparbanken automat screen. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1024x768, 99 KB) Summary Sparbanken automat screen. ... Outdoor ATMs may be free-standing, like this kiosk, or built into the side of banks or other buildings An automatic teller machine or automated teller machine (ATM) is an electronic device that allows a banks customers to make cash withdrawals and check their account balances without the need... Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKEx: 4338) is the worlds largest software company, with 2005 global annual sales of 40 billion US dollars and nearly 60,000 employees in 85 countries and regions. ... The 1980s, in its most obvious sense, was the decade between 1980 and 1989. ...

Public perception

For a long time, Microsoft was widely seen as the "good guy" in the computer software market, providing an inexpensive alternative to the expensive systems provided by the major mainframe and UNIX vendors, and it was admired for the large amounts of money it made in doing so. By the 1990s, however, Microsoft seemed to have become the "bad guy." It was frequently accused of leveraging its market dominance in desktop computing in order to try to exploit its customers unfairly. In recent years, Microsoft has been accused of anti-competitive business practices by the governments of the United States, the European Union and Japan, as well as Microsoft's competitors; this has generated negative perceptions among the general public. Wikibooks has more about this subject: Guide to UNIX Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T Bell Labs employees including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ... Money Money is any marketable good or token trusted by a society to be used as a store of value, a medium of exchange, and a unit of account. ...

Microsoft has been called "the evil empire" by some, a reference to the evil empire in the fictional Star Wars universe. In another sci-fi allusion, Microsoft has also been called "the Borg" after the fictional race of aliens in the Star Trek universe. It reflects the perception that Microsoft tends to acquire technology from competitors rather than developing it in-house, as well as to Microsoft's ability to adapt to and overwhelm its opponents' strategies by having vastly superior resources. Despite Microsoft's advertising focusing on the company's innovation, Microsoft has historically copied ideas after its competitors have paid for their research and development and proven them viable in the marketplace. This practice is certainly not unique to Microsoft, but the sheer muscle of Microsoft's resources makes it harder for any other company in its marketplace to capitalize on a popular idea. The term evil empire was applied to the former Soviet Union (USSR) by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, American conservatives, and Cold War hawks during the 1980s. ... Star Wars began with a 13-page treatment for a space adventure movie that George Lucas drafted in 1973, inspired by multiple myths and classic stories. ... The Borg Collective is a group of telepathically-connected beings in the Star Trek fictional universe. ... http://www. ... The phrase research and development (also R and D or R&D) has a special commercial significance apart from its conventional coupling of research and technological development. ...

Critics decry Microsoft's perceived "embrace and extend" strategy of adding proprietary features to open, de facto standards, thereby using its market dominance to gain de facto ownership of standards "extended" in this way. Microsoft meanwhile depicts its actions as its response to customer demand, and has accused governments of trying to interfere with its desire to innovate and to bring consumers better technology at lower prices. Microsoft has publicly stated that it aims to embrace and extend popular standards and existing work. ...

Microsoft is also frequently accused of using existing computer terms as names for new proprietary technologies it designs and then attempting to control these terms using trademark law and patent law. Examples are computing terms such as ".net", "DNS", and "CLI" which are already in use to mean other things but which Microsoft co-opts as Microsoft .NET, "Digital Nervous System", and Common Language Infrastructure, as well as generic terms such as "Windows" and "Word". They also sometimes change the name of an already-established feature when they incorporate it into their own products; for instance, Web browsers have long used "bookmarks" as the name for saved site addresses, but Microsoft calls them "favorites"; the button to cause the current Web page to be retrieved and rendered again is labeled "Reload" on most browsers, but "Refresh" on the ones from Microsoft. The Bass Red Triangle, was the first trademark registered in Britain in 1876. ... A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a government to an inventor or applicant for a limited amount of time (normally maximum 20 years from the filing date, depending on extension). ... .net is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used on the Internets Domain Name System. ... It has been suggested that Domain name be merged into this article or section. ... Screenshot of a sample Bash session, taken on Linux. ... The . ... The Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) is an open specification developed by Microsoft that describes the executable code and runtime environment that form the core of the Microsoft . ...

Microsoft contributes money to several think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution. These organizations have often been called "shills" by Microsoft's critics, who allege that the groups are paid by Microsoft in order to spread Microsoft propaganda under the appearance of being neutral and unaffiliated, and that they attempt to harm Microsoft's competitors by spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt (for example, by stating that open-source software offers a target for terrorists). [1] [2] [3] [4] The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a think tank founded in 1943 whose stated mission is to support the foundations of freedom - limited government, private enterprise, vital cultural and political institutions, and a strong foreign policy and national defense. ... The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is a Washington, D.C.-based foreign policy think tank. ... The Heritage Foundation, a think tank located in Washington, D.C., is an influential public policy research institute. ... The Cato Institute is an influential libertarian non-profit public policy research foundation (think tank) headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Institutes stated mission is to broaden the parameters of public policy debate to allow consideration of the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, free markets, and... The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (AdTI) (not Institute) is a Washington, DC-based think-tank, named after the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville. ... FUD is an abbreviation for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, a sales or marketing strategy of disseminating negative but vague or inaccurate information on a competitors product. ...

Treatment of employees

While historically, Microsoft has treated employees very well, since the year 2000, Microsoft has received several complaints about their treatment of employees. This includes the use of permatemp employees (employees employed for years as "temporary," and therefore without medical benefits), use of forced retention tactics, where departing employees would be sued to prevent departure, as well as more traditional cost-saving measures, ranging from cutting medical benefits, to not providing towels at the corporate gym [5]. Historically, Microsoft has also been accused of overworking employees, in many case, leading to burnout within just a few years of joining the company. Permatemp is a portmanteau of the words permanent and temporary. ... Forced retention refers to the act of applying pressure to employees to deter them from leaving a company. ...

Velvet Sweatshop

The first instance of the term in reference to Microsoft originated in a Seattle Times article in 1989 [6], and later became used to describe the company by some of Microsoft's own employees [7]. The focus of the idea is that Microsoft provides nearly everything for their employees in convenient place, but in turn overworks them to a point where it would be bad for their (possibly long-term) health. For example, the kitchenettes have free beverages and many buildings include exercise rooms and showers. However, the accusation is that they try to keep employees at the company for unreasonably long hours and working too much. This is detailed in several books about Microsoft, including "Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire."

Vizcaino

In 1996 a class action lawsuit was brought against Microsoft representing thousands of current and former employees that had been classified as "temporary" and "freelance". The case was decided on the basis that such "permatemps" had their jobs defined by Microsoft, worked alongside regular employees doing the same work, and worked for long terms. After a series of court setbacks, Microsoft settled the suit for $100 million.

Ease of use

Microsoft's focus on software usability was a large factor in its early successes. In recent years, however, Microsoft has been criticized for making features more important than usability and for allowing the user interface of its products to become inconsistent and overly complicated, frustrating users by actions which should be simple to perform and requiring interactive "wizards" to function as an extra layer between the user and the interface. Many books (such as "Windows for Dummies") and web sites (such as Annoyances.org) have been created to help users navigate Microsoft products. Many advanced users find that these features get in the way of control and have a difficult time making Microsoft products, particulary Windows, do what they want. This specially becomes apparant when diagnosing a problem or programming. Usability engineering is a subset of human factors that is specific to computer science and is concerned with the question of how to design software that is easy to use. ... A wizard is an interactive computer program acting as an interface to lead a user through a complex task using dialog steps. ...

At the same time, in its efforts to make its products "friendlier" for users, the default settings in some Microsoft software have facilitated the spread of computer viruses and worms. For example, Windows operating systems released since 1995 hide file extensions by default, which can help malicious programmers trick unwitting e-mail recipients into opening dangerous file attachments which masquerade as harmless files with innocent-looking extensions. (See security, below.) 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A filename extension or filename suffix is an extra set of (usually) alphanumeric characters that is appended to the end of a filename to allow computer users (as well as various pieces of software on the computer system) to quickly determine the type of data stored in the file. ... Electronic mail, abbreviated e-mail or email, is a method of composing, sending, and receiving messages over electronic communication systems. ... The term attachment has multiple meanings: An email attachment Psychological attachment: see Attachment theory Attachment as a vice in Buddhism; see Buddhism This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

Total cost of ownership

The full cost of software extends far beyond the purchase of the software itself; it can include costs for support, training, and upgrades. There is an ongoing debate regarding how to accurately measure the cost of software.

Microsoft supporters argue that the position and architecture of Microsoft software results in a lower "total cost of ownership" than competing open-source solutions such as Linux, the Apache web server, or the MySQL database. They contend that: Tux, a cartoon penguin frequently featured sitting, is the official Linux mascot. ... Apache HTTP Server is a free software/open source HTTP web server for Unix-like systems (BSD, Linux, and UNIX systems), Microsoft Windows, Novell Netware and other platforms. ... David Axmark (left) and Michael Monty Widenius, Founders of MySQL AB, at a conference MySQL is a multithreaded, multi-user, SQL (Structured Query Language) Database Management System (DBMS) with an estimated six million installations. ...

Detractors argue that users do not own Microsoft software - it is licensed, forcing the user to have to obey the vendor's licensing agreements, and requiring regular upgrade costs - and therefore "total cost of ownership" comparisons with open source software do not compare like with like. Furthermore:

In August 2004, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) of the United Kingdom ordered Microsoft to stop a run of print ads which claimed that the total cost of ownership of Linux servers was ten times that of Windows Server 2003. According to the ASA, the comparison put the Windows servers on Intel Xeon processors which were less expensive and offered better performance than the IBM z900 mainframe on which it put Linux; therefore the comparison included the hardware, and it was misleading to claim that the cost difference involved only the operating systems. [8] [9] Many current computer systems have a very poor level of computer security. ...

Security

By 2002, several of Microsoft's networking- and Internet-related products had become the subject of intense criticism following several high-profile security lapses. Malicious programmers increasingly exploited weaknesses in Microsoft software by creating and distributing worms, viruses, and Trojan horses designed to spread across the Internet and waste computing resources or destroy data. These exploits targeted Microsoft's Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail programs, Internet Information Server (IIS) Web server, and SQL Server database server software. 2002 (MMII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Many current computer systems have a very poor level of computer security. ... A computer worm is a self-replicating computer program, similar to a computer virus. ... In computer security technology, a virus is a self-replicating program that spreads by inserting copies of itself into other executable code or documents. ... In the context of computer software, a Trojan horse is a malicious program that is disguised as legitimate software. ... ... Screenshot of Outlook 2003 Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, and is part of the Microsoft Office. ... Microsoft Outlook Express is an e-mail and news client bundled with operating systems and the Internet Explorer web browser by Microsoft, and also available as a no-charge download for the classic Apple Macintosh operating system (although not for the newer Mac OS X, where it has been replaced... IIS (Microsoft Internet Information Services or Server) is a set of Internet based services for Windows machines. ... Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system produced by Microsoft. ... A database is an organized collection of data. ...

Microsoft contends that its dominant position in several Internet-related software categories naturally subjects the company's products to more attacks, because the products themselves are so widespread. In addition, Microsoft contends that its security record on critical vulnerabilities has substantially improved and compares favorably to that of its competitors.

Critics counter that these attacks also target Microsoft products that do not hold commanding market shares, and suggest that this is because Microsoft products in general are fundamentally less secure than those of the company's competitors. This problem is compounded by the very ubiquity of Microsoft software. Once a working virus is released, it is almost certain to spread very widely because almost every computer it comes across is able to replicate and spread the virus. This effect has recently been dubbed the "Microsoft monoculture", by analogy to the problems associated with lack of biodiversity in an ecosystem. As an acknowledgement of the problem, the National Science Foundation on November 25, 2003 announced it had granted US$750,000 (Lemos, 2003) to computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of New Mexico to further understand the causes and the (presumably) negative effects of the homogenization of the world's computing platforms (National Science Foundation, 2003). Monoculture describes systems that have very low diversity. ... Biodiversity or biological diversity is the diversity of and in living nature. ...

In January 2002, Gates announced the "Trustworthy Computing" initiative, which he described as a long-term, companywide initiative to make the computing experience as trustworthy as other established experiences such as the telephone. Many people focused on the aspect of trustworthy computing that focused on the new emphasis on security and privacy in all of Microsoft's products. The initiative prompted the company to reevaluate and redesign several of its practices and processes, and delayed the release of Windows Server 2003, the successor to the Windows 2000 Server family of operating systems. Reaction to the Trustworthy Computing initiative has been mixed, with observers lauding Microsoft's increased focus on security but charging that the company still has a lot of work to do. 2002 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December A timeline of events in the news for January, 2002. ... Trusted computing (TC) refers to a family of specifications from the controversial TCPA with their stated goal of making computers more secure through the use of dedicated hardware. ... The successor to Windows 2000 Server, Microsofts Windows Server 2003 (codename Whistler Server, also known as Windows NT 5. ...

Earlier versions of Microsoft products had a security stance of "permitted unless forbidden", which is hard to change, as much Microsoft software relies on this policy. This stance can be taken advantage of to cause security problems. For example, macros embedded in documents or HTML in email can run programs allowing an attacker to take over the user's computer. However, a chief cause in the spread of viruses has been unskilled users failing to apply available patches even months after they have been released. In fact, Microsoft blames the spread of viruses on the very fact that it issues patches to fix security holes; crackers examine the patches, find out what problems they are meant to fix, then create exploits to attack systems which have not been patched. Windows XP Service Pack 2 attempts to address this by encouraging users to automatically apply patches and making the system "secure by default" (for example, by turning on the firewall). In security engineering, your security stance is your default position on security matters. ...

Microsoft's licensing policy has actually aided the spread of viruses, because the first service pack for Windows XP checked for known pirate keys and refused to patch Windows XP installations which had been pirated. This resulted in a large number of Windows XP systems which were left vulnerable. To combat this, Microsoft briefly considered letting Windows XP Service Pack 2 be installable on pirated copies of Windows XP, but later decided against this as it would encourage further piracy, although they didn't update the validation engine in Windows XP SP2. [10] A Service Pack (more commonly, SP) is a software program that corrects known bugs, problems, or adds new features. ...

In February 2004, partial source code from the Windows 2000 kernel was alleged by Microsoft to have been "illegally leaked" and widely distributed on filesharing networks. The leak contains source code for network protocols, parts of Internet Explorer, and certificate handling. Examination of the code revealed flaws (such as a negligence in checking for out-of-bounds values), and some people developed theoretical attacks to show how easily this leaked code could allow current versions of Windows to be compromised, but these flaws are not yet known to have been exploited maliciously. 2004 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December- â†’ // February 29, 2004 Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigns as president of Haiti and flees the country for the Central African Republic. ...

Vendor lock-in

From its very inception, Microsoft defined itself as a platform company and understood the importance of attracting third-party programmers. It did so by providing development tools, training, access to proprietary APIs in early versions, and partner programs. The solutions and plugins built by third-party programmers in turn led to more Microsoft sales. API with 3 clients, using the Unified Modeling Language notation An application programming interface (API) is the interface that a computer system or application provides in order to allow requests for service to be made of it by other computer programs, and/or to allow data to be exchanged between...

Now the ubiquity of Microsoft software allows a user to benefit from network effects. For example, the large installed base of Microsoft Word almost makes MS Word files the de-facto standard word-processor format (in spite of the various versions of MS Word not being file-compatible among themselves), making it essential for most business users. In addition, more potential employees have training in MS Office than on competing products. Hence using MS Office can result in reduced training requirements, especially in the case of temporary employment. The network effect causes a good or service to have a value to a potential customer dependent on the number of customers already owning that good or using that service. ... Microsoft Word is a word processing application from Microsoft. ...

Microsoft software also represents a "safe" choice for IT managers purchasing software systems, in that the ubiquity of Microsoft software allows them to claim that they are following accepted best practices. This is a particularly attractive option for IT managers with limited technical knowledge.

The European Commission quotes Microsoft head of C++ development Aaron Contorer as stating in an internal Microsoft report for senior management:

An Independent Software Vendor (ISV) is a business term for companies specializing in making or selling software, usually for niche markets. ...

Monopoly and legal issues

In a 2003 publication, Dan Geer argued the prevalence of Microsoft products has resulted in a monoculture which is dangerously easy for viruses to exploit. (A response was published in MCP Magazine, which is sympathetic to Microsoft.) 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... To publish is to make publicly known, and in reference to text and images, it can mean distributing paper copies to the public, or putting the content on a website. ... Dan Geer is a former computer security consultant for @stake, a company cooperating with Microsoft. ... Monoculture describes systems that have very low diversity. ...

Critics of Microsoft have accused it of using its dominance in desktop operating system to leverage market share in other sectors of the computer market, such as web browsers (Internet Explorer), server operating systems (Windows NT), office software suites (Microsoft Office), and streaming media (Windows Media). They blame this on Microsoft's tactics of illegally tying software so that a new product can ride on the success of a monopoly product. For example, by including Microsoft Messenger and Windows Media Player with every copy of Windows, Windows users have less need to download and use competing products such as AOL Instant Messenger or RealPlayer, and will stick with the Microsoft alternatives even if the competing products are superior. Critics see this as a clear case of vertical integration based monopoly. This tends to starve the rival companies while giving Microsoft time to adopt their features. Microsoft defends its behavior by stating that it is giving its customers more software for free, and that it is doing the best it can to innovate and compete in a capitalist market. In microeconomics and strategic management, the term vertical integration describes a style of ownership and control. ...

The behavior of Microsoft executives during the United States v. Microsoft case - for example, Bill Gates quibbling over the meaning of simple words, and a Microsoft vice president insisting the judge had told him to ship a version of Windows which did not work - earned astonishment, amusement, and ridicule in the press. United States v. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

Many companies have sued Microsoft over allegations of stolen intellectual property and anticompetitive business practices, and many of these cases have been decided against Microsoft. However, the cases often drag on for years due to appeals and delays initiated by Microsoft, so that by the time a verdict is delivered, the case has long since become irrelevant and the targeted company is no longer a viable competitor.

It has been argued that violations of antitrust and intellectual property laws, as well as of the restrictions which have been placed on Microsoft's behavior, are in fact an intentional business tactic of the company. Even if alleged misbehavior is discovered, bringing a case to court, to a verdict, and through appeals can take several years. Even when Microsoft is hit with penalties, it has never yet failed to negotiate these down to something which has had negligible effect on its operations and finances. Microsoft meanwhile defends itself in the public arena, portraying itself to consumers as a champion of popular software which its jealous rivals are trying to shackle.

Government anti-trust suits

In the 1990s, Microsoft adopted exclusionary licensing under which PC manufacturers were required to pay for an MS-DOS license even when the system shipped with an alternative operating system. It also used allegedly predatory tactics to price its competitors out of the market, and competitors claimed that Microsoft erected technical barriers to make it appear that competing products did not work on its operating system [11]. An investigation by the United States Department of Justice on August 21, 1993 resulted in an opinion stating that this behavior was illegal; in a consent decree issued on July 15, 1994, Microsoft agreed to a deal in which, among other things, it would not "tie" other Microsoft products into its operating system. Justice Department redirects here. ... August 21 is the 233rd day of the year (234th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1993 (MCMXCIII) is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and marked the Beginning of the International Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003). ... July 15 is the 196th day (197th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 169 days remaining. ... 1994 (MCMXCIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International year of the Family. ...

After bundling the Internet Explorer web browser into its Windows operating system in the late 1990s and acquiring a dominant share in the web browser market, an antitrust case was brought against Microsoft. In a ruling by judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, the company was convicted for violating its earlier consent decree and abusing its monopoly in the desktop operating systems market. The "findings of fact" during the antitrust case established that Microsoft has a monopoly in the PC desktop operating systems market: United States v. ... Thomas Penfield Jackson (born January 10, 1937) was a US District Court Judge for the District of Columbia. ... In economics, a monopoly (from the Greek monos, one + polein, to sell) is defined as a persistent market situation where there is only one provider of a kind of product or service. ...

The findings of fact goes on to explain the nature of the "barrier to entry": The fact that there is a multitude of people using Windows makes the product more attractive to consumers. The large installed base… impels ISVs (independent software vendors) to write applications first and foremost to Windows, thereby ensuring a large body of applications from which consumers can choose. The large body of applications thus reinforces demand for Windows, augmenting Microsoft's dominant position and thereby perpetuating ISV incentives to write applications principally for Windows… The small or non-existent market share of an aspiring competitor makes it prohibitively expensive for the aspirant to develop its PC operating system into an acceptable substitute for Windows. (III.39–40)

The proposed remedy (dividing Microsoft into two companies) was overturned on appeal, and Microsoft has since reached a settlement with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and some of the states which brought suit against it, perhaps because with a new administration the DOJ changed its attitude. Meanwhile, several class-action lawsuits filed after the conviction are still pending.

In early 2002, Microsoft proposed to settle the private lawsuits by donating $1 billion USD in money, software, services, and training, including Windows licenses and refurbished PCs, to about 12,500 underprivileged public schools. This was seen by some as a potential windfall for Microsoft, not only in educating schoolchildren on Microsoft solutions but also in collecting additional license fees if the schools ever wanted to upgrade. After protests from Apple Computer, which feared further loss of its educational market share, a federal judge rejected the proposed settlement. [13] 2002 (MMII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States. ... The Apple II was introduced on April 16, 1977 at the first West Coast Computer Faire. ...

In 2003–2004, the European Commission investigated the bundling of media player software into Windows, a practice which rivals complained was destroying the market for their own products. Negotiations between Microsoft and the Commission broke down in March 2004, and the company was subsequently handed down a record fine of €497 million ($613 million) for its breaches of EU competition law. The ruling is subject to appeal in the European courts. Separate investigations into alleged abuses of the server market were also ongoing at the same time. On December 22, 2004, the European Court decided that the measures imposed on Microsoft by the European Commission would not be delayed, as was requested by Microsoft while waiting for the appeal. Microsoft will thus have to pay the €497 million fine, ship versions of Windows without Windows Media Player, and license many of the protocols used in Microsoft's products to developers in countries within the European Economic Area. 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The European Commission (formally the Commission of the European Communities) is the executive of the European Union. ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... December 22 is the 356th day of the year (357th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Windows Media Player is a freeware software media player used for playing audio and video on personal computers running Microsoft Windows. ...

Other suits and rulings by governments

In March 2004, during a consumer class-action lawsuit in Minnesota, internal documents subpoenaed from Microsoft revealed that the company had violated nondisclosure agreements seven years earlier in obtaining business plans from Go Corporation, using them to develop and announce a competing product named PenWindows, and convincing Intel to reduce its investment in Go. After Go was purchased by AT&T and Go's tablet-based computing efforts were shelved, PenWindows development was dropped [14] [15]. GO Corporation was founded in 1987 to create software for mobile computers and personal digital assistants. ... AT&T Inc. ...

In May 2004, a class-action lawsuit accused Microsoft of overcharging customers in the state of California. The company settled the case for $1.1 billion USD. A California court ordered Microsoft to pay an additional $258 million USD in legal fees (including over $3,000 per hour for the lead attorney in the case, more than $2,000 per hour for colleagues, and in excess of $1,000 per hour for administrative work). A Microsoft attorney responded, "Somebody ends up paying for this. These large fee awards get passed on to consumers." [16]. The total bill for legal fees was later reduced to just over $112 million USD. [17] Because of the structure of the settlement, the law firm which sued Microsoft may end up getting more money from the company than California consumers and schools, the beneficiaries of the settlement. In law, a class action is an equitable procedural device used in litigation for determining the rights of and remedies, if any, for large numbers of people whose cases involve common questions of law and fact. ...

In July 2004, Japan's Fair Trade Commission warned Microsoft to remove a provision from its licensing contracts whereby PC makers would not be allowed to file patent infringement suits if future versions of Windows add features similar to their own technology. Microsoft plans to appeal the warning.

Suits by private companies

The Apple II was introduced on April 16, 1977 at the first West Coast Computer Faire. ... Be, Incorporated was the company that developed the BeOS operating system and BeBox computer. ... BeOS was an operating system for personal computers which began development by Be Incorporated in 1991. ... Eolas is a United States company and patent licensee. ... The University of California (UC) is a public university system within the State of California. ... The SCO Group, Inc. ... Pseudocode is a generic way of describing an algorithm using the conventions of programming languages, without using language-specific syntax. ... An assembler is a computer program for translating assembly language â€” essentially, a mnemonic representation of machine language â€” into object code. ... In software engineering, development stage terminology expresses how far through the development sequence things have progressed and how much further development a product may require. ... Netscape Communications Corporation was the publisher of the Netscape Navigator web browser as well as many other internet and intranet client and server software products. ... â€¹ The template below has been proposed for deletion. ... Sendo was a British manufactuer and supplier of mobile phones founded in 1999. ... Look up Spyglass in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Note: This article is about Spyglass, Inc. ... Stac Electronics was an engineering company founded in 1984 by four friends at Caltech. ... Sun Microsystems, Inc. ... A screenshot of WordPerfect 12 running on Windows XP WordPerfect was also the name of a road bicycle racing team. ...

Linux and open source

The open source movement is traditionally at odds with Microsoft over: Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ...

Microsoft characterizes open-source software as being "potentially viral" [25] and the GNU General Public License itself as a "viral license" which "infects" proprietary software and forces its developer to have to release proprietary source to the public. [26] NTFS or New Technology File System is the standard file system of Windows NT and its descendants Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. ... Windows Media is a framework for media creation and distribution for Microsoft Windows. ... FUD is an abbreviation for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, a sales or marketing strategy of disseminating negative but vague or inaccurate information on a competitors product. ... The GNU logo The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project. ...

The Halloween documents, internal Microsoft memos which were leaked to the open source community beginning in 1998, indicate that Microsoft perceives open source software in general (and the freely available Linux operating system in particular) as a growing long-term threat to Microsoft's dominance of the software industry. In marked contrast to the company's public statements, which tend to downplay or ignore open source software, the Halloween documents acknowledge the technical superiority of Linux and outline a strategy of "de-commoditiz[ing] protocols & applications"; in other words, basing networks and documents around proprietary standards so that they can only interoperate with other computers which use Microsoft products. Opponents of Microsoft have dubbed this strategy "embrace, extend, and extinguish". The Halloween documents is the name used outside Microsoft for a series of confidential memoranda on potential strategies related to Open source software and to Linux in particular. ... Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ... 1998 (MCMXCVIII) is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ... ... Tux, a cartoon penguin frequently featured sitting, is the official Linux mascot. ... Microsoft has publicly stated that it aims to embrace and extend popular standards and existing work. ...

At the same time as Microsoft has been fighting the open source movement, it has tested the waters with its own concept it calls shared source. A shared source license generally allows someone to see code, but not to modify or reuse it. Microsoft has tried to use this to attract mind share, but shared source is generally criticized within the open-source developer community for leaving too much control in the hands of the shared-source code's owner. Shared Source is an open source-like form of code sharing which is generally more restrictive than true open source, but less so than proprietary code. ... One of the main objectives of Advertising and promotion is to establish what is called mind share (or share of mind). ...

A far more serious concern is that Microsoft is using the distribution of shared source programs to harvest names of developers who have been exposed to Microsoft code; these developers could someday be the target of lawsuits if they were ever to participate in the development of competing products. This question was addressed in April 2004 by the American Bar Association in a published paper, Open Source Software - A Legal Framework (page 26): April is the fourth month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of four with the length of 30 days. ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... American Bar Associations Washington, DC office The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary bar association of lawyers which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. ...

That paper quotes another paper, titled "Shared Source: A Dangerous Virus" [27], released by the Open Source Initiative: The Open Source Initiative is an organization dedicated to promoting open source software. ...

In business, a Chinese wall is a metaphor used to refer to the practice of making sure that different parts of the firm are kept apart so that information does not circulate freely and to prevent conflicts of interest. ...

Microsoft Tax

Microsoft tax is a term used to describe the cost of Microsoft Windows, by people who want to purchase a computer but don't want to purchase a copy of Windows preinstalled. This generally annoys people who prefer to use free operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, or NetBSD. Microsoft Windows is a series of operating environments and operating systems created by Microsoft for use on personal computers and servers. ... Tux, a cartoon penguin frequently featured sitting, is the official Linux mascot. ... FreeBSD is a Unix-like free software operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) branch through 386BSD and 4. ... NetBSD was the second freely redistributable, open source version of the BSD Unix-like computer operating systems to produce a formal release (after 386BSD) and continues to be actively developed. ...

All large computer vendors in the USA, with the exception of Apple Computer, and the majority in other countries, bundle Microsoft Windows with their personal computers. Some free software advocates speculate that this bundling has occurred because of secret agreements between Microsoft and the large computer vendors (Dell, HP, IBM). The 2002 settlement in the United States v. Microsoft case prohibits Microsoft from giving special prices to select vendors. Instead the price list is public and based on volume sold with discount for 'features'. Features can include the provisioning of components that Microsoft want (such as FireWire ), or the placement of Microsoft logos on the computer as a sticker (or, for more money, embossed into the keyboard). These market development funds are a source of controversy with both Microsoft and Intel. While they can be used to cover the cost of adding new features to the system, they can also bias PC OEMs towards Microsoft/Intel products. In particular, the co-funding that Intel and Microsoft provide for PC advertising, make it cheaper to advertise a Microsoft/Intel PC than a Linux/AMD system. The Apple II was introduced on April 16, 1977 at the first West Coast Computer Faire. ... Free software, as defined by the Free Software Foundation, is software which can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed without restriction. ... Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKEx: 4338) is the worlds largest software company, with 2005 global annual sales of 40 billion US dollars and nearly 60,000 employees in 85 countries and regions. ... Dell Inc. ... The Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ), commonly known as HP, is a very large, global company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. ... International Business Machines Corporation (IBM, or colloquially, Big Blue) NYSE: IBM (incorporated June 15, 1911, in operation since 1888) is headquartered in Armonk, NY, USA. The company manufactures and sells computer hardware, software, and services. ... 2002 (MMII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... United States v. ... A 6-Pin FireWire 400 connector FireWire (also known as i. ... The following article is about the multinational corporation; intel is also an abbreviation for intelligence, used in reference to military intelligence and espionage. ... Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. ...

The Microsoft tax can be avoided by purchasing a computer without Windows, or by buying a white box machine. Some vendors, such as IBM and HP, now sell certain models bundled with Linux, although these are primarily high-end "workstations" or "Enterprise Systems". Many servers are sold without an OS. High-street retail chains in various countries (such as Dick Smith Electronics) have also been known to offer machines bundled with Linux from time to time. In computer hardware, a white box is a personal computer assembled from off-the-shelf parts which can be purchased separately at retail. ... A computer workstation, often colloquially referred to as workstation, is a high-end general-purpose microcomputer designed to be used by one person at a time and which offers higher performance than normally found in a personal computer, especially with respect to graphics, processing power and the ability to carry... Dick Smith Electronics is an Australasian electronics retailer founded in 1968 by Dick Smith. ...

The Microsoft tax can also be avoided by refusing to agree to the Microsoft EULA. (End User License Agreement - which Microsoft requires its users to accept, before allowing the use of the product.) The EULA specifically mentions that if you do not agree to the license you can return the product for a full refund. Unfortunately, some vendors, such as Toshiba, have a shrinkwrap sales contract that specifically voids the clause of the EULA that allows one to return the software for a refund. Toshiba Corporation (æ±èŠ, TÅshiba) (TYO: 6502) is a Japanese high technology electrical and electronics manufacturing firm, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. ...

Controversial statements and actions

On October 1, 2004, at an appearance at the Computer History Museum in northern California, Bill Gates was asked about a possible threat from Linux and was quoted as replying: "Microsoft has had competitors in the past. It's a good thing we have museums to document this stuff." [28] October 1 is the 274th day of the year (275th in Leap years). ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Computer History Museum in Mountain View. ...

Contents

Public perception

Treatment of employees

Velvet Sweatshop

Vizcaino

Ease of use

Total cost of ownership

Security

Vendor lock-in

Monopoly and legal issues

Government anti-trust suits

Other suits and rulings by governments

Suits by private companies

Linux and open source

Microsoft Tax

Controversial statements and actions

See also

References

External links

Contents

Public perception GA_googleFillSlot("encyclopedia_square");

Treatment of employees

Velvet Sweatshop

Vizcaino

Ease of use

Total cost of ownership

Security

Vendor lock-in

Monopoly and legal issues

Government anti-trust suits

Other suits and rulings by governments

Suits by private companies

Linux and open source

Microsoft Tax

Controversial statements and actions

See also

References

External links

Public perception