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Effable Commentary: Boycott Microsoft

Legal Opinions | Editorials | Grass Roots Action

Much of our economy, culture, and lifestyle in the future is going depend on software. Software will be involved in providing your news and entertainment, facilitating your banking and shopping, and controlling your communications with others. How would you feel if that software came from a single dominant, arguably unethical, and largely unaccountable source? Or would you rather have a plurality of equally viable competitors, each struggling against each other to bring you the best value at the lowest price?

We argue that Microsoft has effectively become that single software monopoly depicted in the previous paragraph. Indeed, many people now feel that they have no choice but to buy Microsoft products. Microsoft has mastered public dishonesty, deceptive marketing, manipulation of standards, and business practices well outside what most consider ethical in order to monopolize the most profitable segments of the entire software industry. Indeed, in Microsoft's current position, they don't have to offer superior products or technologies -- they just have to keep sabotaging their competition from their monopoly position.

But many people don't realize how strategically Microsoft has positioned themselves to gain control over a significant portion of our mass media, cultural resources, and economic system. You can already see the influence they have on the computer press, where serious journalists avoid discussing the issues explored on this page, and exposing the mediocracy of Microsoft's products, for fear of damaging their careers.

"Microsoft's goal is domination of the global information business, which is to say all business. Phone companies, cable television companies, post offices, stock exchanges, banks, treasury departments -- all of these are viewed by Microsoft as future competitors."
-- Robert X. Cringely, from PBS Online

There are plenty of sites on the web expressing hate and other negative opinions about the company. Hopefully this one attempts to focus on stuff that actually has some factual value.

Legal Opinions

Information about legal actions against Microsoft.

• The Findings of Fact by Judge Thomas P. Jackson
  A United States district judge made his first in a series of rulings in the U.S. vs. Microsoft anti-trust trial. The U.S. Department of Justice asserted that Microsoft used it's monopoly power in personal computer operating systems to foreclose competition in the web browser market. The Judge finds that Microsoft did this and more...
• The US-DOJ's Evidence Against Microsoft
  A mountain of damning evidence collected by the United States Department of Justice illustrating how Microsoft has abused its monopoly power in order to remain in a dominant industry position and to deny consumers of choice.
• Blue Mountain Arts vs. Microsoft
  Blue Mountain created a web site through which customers can send customized, interactive greeting cards to other Internet users via electronic mail. Because Microsoft has a competing greeting card service, Microsoft's Outlook mailer, which is part of the Internet Explorer application, and WebTV, a TV-set-top internet service and device, were programmed to reject Blue Mountain greeting cards. Microsoft claims this is an error, but refuses to fix it.
• Court Injunction Forces Microsoft to Stop Breaking Java
  This link will take you to the actual text of U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte's injunction prohibiting Microsoft from, "...reproducing, distributing or selling SDKJ 2.0 and 3.0,VJ 6.0, IE 4.0 and Windows98 in their current configurations."
• Reiser vs. Microsoft
  Hans Reiser has filed a civil suite against Microsoft for Illegal Tying of operating system components. This is a rather long page, but it's surprisingly full of damning evidence.
• Court Injunction Prevents Microsoft from Bundling Internet Explorer
  United States District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson orders Microsoft to, "...cease and desist... from the practice of licensing the use of any Microsoft personal computer operating system software (including Windows 95 or any successor version thereof) on the condition, express or implied, that the licensee also license and preinstall any Microsoft Internet browser software (including Internet Explorer 3.0, 4.0, or any successor versions thereof)."
• The U.S. Department of Justice asks for $1 Million per Day Fine
  The United States Department of Justice determined that Microsoft bullied PC makers into delivering Microsoft's web browser as part of Microsoft Windows. This document announces the DOJ's petition to have a federal judge find Microsoft in contempt of the 1995 consent decree.
• Caldera sues Microsoft
  Caldera, a Linux vendor, bought DR-DOS, a superior alternative to MS-DOS. And has filed suit against Microsoft for civil damages relating to Microsoft's actions to shut DR-DOS out of the PC operating system market. The case was settled out of court, with much of the evidence sealed.
  • The Caldera v. Microsoft Dossier
    Andrew Schulman provides an informative recap of the case, reviewing matters that are still in dispute today
    
• Judge Stanley Sporkin's Memo
  The U.S. Department of Justice arrived at an agreement with Microsoft to to get Microsoft to stop certain anti-competitive business practices. In this memo, the judge argues that this agreement didn't go far enough.
• Netscape's Letter of Complaint
  Netscape's complained to the Deputy Attorney General of the United States over Microsoft's attempt to use their dominance in the desktop operating systems market to squeeze Netscape out of business.

Journalistic Opinions

Editorials about Microsoft's (lack of) ethics and its position in the computer industry. In order of the editor's impression of their value.

• The San Jose Mercury News Covers the Microsoft Antitrust Trial
  Award winning daily news coverage of the Antitrust trial US-DOJ vs. Microsoft. Includes links to excellent commentary by Antitrust attorney Rich Gray.
• Making Microsoft Safe for Capitalism
  James Gleick, a New York ISP founder and columnist for the New York Times Magazine wrote this thoroughly insightful analysis of Microsoft and their role in the information age.
• What to Do About Microsoft
  Consumer activist Ralph Nader, and his colleague, James Love, have been studying the damage Microsoft has done to consumer choice for a long time. Here are some of their more recent comments on the subject. They recently organized the Appraising Microsoft conference in Washington, D.C.
• JUSTICE VS. MICROSOFT: The Case of the Missing PC Makers
  In this article from Business Week, commentators Amy Cortese, Susan B. Garland, Steve Hamm explain Why the government couldn't persuade any PC makers to testify against Microsoft.
• Disney boss wary of Microsoft
  This Associated Press article reports on a new book in which the chairman and chief executive of Walt Disney Co. says the Redmond-based software company "may be our most daunting competitor."
• Survival lessons: Skunks, Microsoft, and Bill Gates' 1998 Antitrust Epiphany
  Computer networking pioneer Bob Metcalfe tries to break the news to Bill Gates that he's going to have to have a change of heart because the Department of Justice is not going to let Microsoft continue to get away with being a corporate bully.
• Programs Are Programs (or... How To Make Money In the Software Business)
  Although John Walker's article is now a couple of years old, it presents a chilling picture of a likely future where the big software vendors effectively become extortionists -- charging us for software as a monthly subscription instead of software as a tangible product. (Read this and then see if you still believe it's O.K. to let one company totally dominate the industry.)
• Excerpts from Unauthorized Windows 95
  Andrew Schulman is a senior editor for computer reference book publisher O'Reilly & Associates. In his book he describes a number of techniques Microsoft has used not to improve their product, but to deliberately sabotage competitors.
  Mr. Schulman's reverse engineering of Microsoft Windows has revealed many of Microsoft's gross lies and distortions about their products:
• When it comes to judging Microsoft products, the devil is in the details
  Nicholas Petreley writes a Microsoft watchdog column for Infoworld Magazine called Down to the Wire. In this article he exposes how much Microsoft lies about everything they do.
• Virtual Philanthropy
  Tom McNichol wrote this article in which he explains how Microsoft's corporate philanthropy may be great marketing, but lacks any real generosity.
• Office97 -- Or Office 1984?
  Andrew Leonard loves his new Microsoft software, but he has his doubts about whether it's good for him, us, or anyone.
• Microsoft's Fast Lane to The Internet
  Jonathan Marshall and Jon Swartz, Staff Writers for the San Francisco Chronicle, expose Microsoft's dastardly, anti-competitive plan to use their dominance in desktop operating systems to force a small competitor out of the internet software market.
• He Who Controls the Bootloader
  Scott Hacker explains how the central point of Microsoft's domination over the commodity PC is the boot loader, not the browser. He explains how the DOJ totally missed this most crucial point in its anti-trust case, and how BE could have made a decent federal case of it.

Grass Roots Action

What individual people can do to help save the dwindling alternatives in the software business.

• Boycott Microsoft
  To many this might sound downright heretical. It would be like telling some people to stop eating meat, they wouldn't be able to think of anything else to eat. Indeed, there are people who don't know that there is any other kind of computer than an Intel-based PeeCee running Microsoft Windows. However, the only way to stop them from getting more control over your life is to stop giving them money.

Page updated December 7, 2001. All content on this site is Copyright 1996-2000 by Steve Sergeant, Copyright 2001 by Effable Communications, or owned by the respective member. All rights reserved.