-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Friday 14 September 2007 09:49, Janani Gopalakrishnan wrote: > Microsoft is criticised much by the FOSS community -- one or the > other aspect of it. Their software, their ways of doing business, > their attitude, whatever. My belief is that whenever somebody > criticises they will also have a potential solution in mind -- and I > felt, why is it that the solution aspect is barely discussed wrt the > Microsoft issue :-) So, I am throwing this question open to you... > > "Is there some aspect of Microsoft that you do not like? If so, what? > And more importantly, how do you think they can correct this flaw of > theirs (if you think they can)?" > [snip]
I don't really object to MS, all I object to is their way of doing business. The biggest flaws that come to mind are: 1. Deprecating security in favour of features and publicity. I'm sure you've heard about the Storm worm, which has created botnets of (depending on your sources) 5 to 50 million PCs worldwide. These botnets are only possible because of the weak security in MS' operating systems. If MS had spent more money and effort on securing their OSs instead of adding (IMO) useless features perhaps we would not have a situation today where the amount of spam on the Inetrnet (from those same botnets) is doubling every week and credit card and identity theft are rife with various mafias controlling one tenth of the world's computers. 2. Using unethical practices to railroad their demands through. The most recent example of this is the one where MS has been blatantly lobbying and buying support in various countries in order to get its OOXML approved as an ISO standard. We (India) were lucky enough to not fall for it, but many other countries just capitulated to the favours and money thrown at them by a desperate MS and voted against their best interests. This is only the latest in a long list of documented unethical practices by MS. 3. Using monopoly and FUD to suppress competition. As an example, the whole software patents game is basically an effort by a group of companies (with MS in the lead) to maintain its monopoly position in the OS market. Everyone with half a clue knows software patents are bad for innovation, and cannot be equated with patents in any other field in any meaningful way. However the question of introducing software patents keeps cropping up from time to time everywhere, purely to pander to monopolistic concerns. Similarly the ``Linux violates 235 MS patents was extreme FUD by MS, backed up by zero information or facts makes it difficult to classify any of their claims except into the FUD folder. 4. Pandering to business partners. The only reason Vistula contains heavy amounts of DRM is because Sony, MGM, Apple Records and their ilk want it. DRM doesn't help the consumer at all -- in fact it prevents the consumer from performing actions on her content that are actually legitimate. Why anyone would buy an OS that sets out to deprive them of their rights is a question I have not been able to fathom. How can they improve? By giving up unethical practices and becoming consumer centric; if becoming ethical and catering to their consumers means they die as an OS vendor, let them do it with grace. I don't really have any great hopes of that (grace from MS), though. Regards, - -- Raju - -- Raj Mathur [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kandalaya.org/ Freedom in Technology & Software || September 2007 || http://freed.in/ GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F PsyTrance & Chill: http://schizoid.in/ || It is the mind that moves -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFG6hX2yWjQ78xo0X8RAl00AJ4uCfhBMpk6Ai3vQinrK6FuPd8SAQCggDC7 6Omz0uIdW3HSdBR7OePKwyg= =5rJ2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Next Event: http://freed.in - September 28-29, 2007 Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org/
