Someone please defend Microsoft.

[JessB]

I have spent a long time in the 'liberal' world. I am a computer geek and thus, "liberal plus geek equals Microsoft-hater."

I wish to hear some conservative takes on the Microsoft issue. Did they break antitrust law? Are the antitrust laws even moral? On a frequent basis, I face situations where people insist upon receiving files in Microsoft formats (like Word .DOC, which, believe it or not, not even OpenOffice can properly read-- and many businesses, rationally, insist upon predictably 'perfect' reading, which means running Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Word exclusively). My clients demand that I write software using Microsoft software. The whole business world runs on their software, and for a long time I have resented them, because I have perceived them as immoral.

Note well that I am not "jealous" of their riches. Case in point-- Steve Jobs is also many many many many orders of magnitude richer than I am, but I am not angry at Apple. And IBM is just as rich as Microsoft (if not richer!), but I like IBM. (They used to be in Microsoft's shoes monopoly-wise, but things have changed.)

Please, I would prefer to mostly hear from conservative geeks-- not end-users, and not businesspeople. I want to hear from programmers, systems administrators, etc. etc. etc.

 

[Card42]

Please, I would prefer to mostly hear from conservative geeks-- not end-users, and not businesspeople. I want to hear from programmers, systems administrators, etc. etc. etc.

i doubt u will find
many non-businesspeople geeks
in the business & econ forum

 

[InigoMontoya]

Well, I might be a geek! But not a computer geek. Lowly end user here lol

So I guess I won't say much other than,

I personally use Macs, but I think Microsoft is actually pretty cool. Where would pc's be without them? How much of a pain would it be if every piece of software, periphal, etc. had to be set up to run on multiple or just a few OS systems. Sure we're beginning to see some alternative systems now, but imagine during the rush of the nineties haveing to deal with it... couldn't have been anything but slowed down the transformation of a "solitaire machine" to the productive... and also capable of "solitaire" machines we have today.

 

[billwald]

Apple screwed themselves by refusing independants to sell software for their machines. MS didn't care who wrote programs as long as someone paid for using the operating system. No one has to buy MS software to use the machines.

 

[tekwerx]

I was going to reply to this, but I just realized you posted in the wrong spot and did repost in another area. Read my posts there to see what I have to say.

 

[JessB]

Bill: What in the world are you talking about? There is, and always has been, plenty of independent software for Mac OS. To this day, Microsoft does not release any free "IDE"-style (read: graphical, as opposed to merely a command-line compiler) development kits, but Apple did-- years ago, in the pre-Mac-OS-X era! It was called MPW. Apple actively encouraged "independant", third-party software developers! If anything, Microsoft is the one who discourages indie coders. At this moment, MS offers the Visual C++ compiler only -- not the IDE (the nice GUI coding environment)-- for free. That's it! That's hardly comparable

Perhaps you're thinking about how Apple has refused to allow third-party hardware (not software!) manufacturers to make Apple clones (except for a brief window of time in which they did)?

Apple screwed themselves by refusing independants to sell software for their machines. MS didn't care who wrote programs as long as someone paid for using the operating system. No one has to buy MS software to use the machines.

 

[billwald]

You probably correct, I'm probably wrong.

 

[CSMR]

What are your reasons for caring whether Microsoft is immoral or not? (I'm not doubting that you have good reasons.) And what is the accusation from which to defend Microsoft? Anti-trust laws, but what have they to do with use of microsoft formats? As far as competition laws go, they are very important in general for the economy. In the case of software where the economics is very unique (distribution cost is almost nothing; everything is in the research) there are arguments against duplication of research and also arguments for integration of systems which defend a monopolistic company, and have to be weighed against the usual arguments for competition.

 

[Stryper]

Apple screwed themselves by refusing independants to sell software for their machines. MS didn't care who wrote programs as long as someone paid for using the operating system. No one has to buy MS software to use the machines.

Apple is a multibillion dollar company. They did it their way and profited.

 

[AraqirG]

I am not a computer geek, but I am a geek (read lots of philosophy, debater, etc)
I would be happy to argue that the anti-trust laws are illegitimate. You interested?

 

[InigoMontoya]

I would be happy to argue that the anti-trust laws are illegitimate.

You have to enjoy the irony of when someone says a law is unlawful, come on, its the LAW! Atleast for now

 

[CSMR]

AraquirG didn't claim that, only that he'd be happy to argue it. He says he's a debater, so he should be able to argue for anything .

 

[Zach]

Microsoft's competitive strategy may not be ethical at times. However, you gotta admire them for bringing much standardization into the computer industry. Prior to Microsoft, different hardware/software vendors had their own data and protocol implementation. In addition, computer admins had to be pretty good programmers themselves. They often had to tweak the source codes, and re-compile in order to get a particular software to work on their particular system. Microsoft was the one who brought the majority of those different hardware manufacturers and software vendors into an agreeable standard.

 

[JessB]

Re: Zach's "In addition, computer admins had to be pretty good programmers themselves. They often had to tweak the source codes, and re-compile in order to get a particular software to work on their particular system."...

Yeah, and in the post-Microsoft-domination era, you can't even GET source code out of any corporations (e.g.: you cannot get source code to the current ATi or nVidia graphics drivers, nor 99% of other current hardware drivers), and in fact you can't even get SPECS. Making matters worse, about 95% of hardware components don't have ANY Linux support from their makers...

So is this really preferable? "Everything 'Just Works' as long as you run Windows; otherwise, you're really on your own, and we won't e ven give you specs so you can write your own drivers"?

 

[Porthos]

Why do you care if you can get the source code to nvidia drivers? So you can copy some of it and use it for yourself? Not necessarily for personal gain, but for whatever.