Competition Killer: European Commission Documents 20 Years of Microsoft Anticompetitive Behavior
The Groklaw legal forum has provided a document under European Commission sponsorship that demonstrates Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior during the last 20 years.
The European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS), part of the European Commission, has compiled a detailed report claiming Microsoft's monopolistic and unlawful conduct. In its introduction the paper explains, "For more than two decades, Microsoft has engaged in a carefully designed and extremely successful campaign to protect and extend its monopolies. Microsoft has repeatedly made market allocation proposals to its competitors and has used a broad range of other anticompetitive and unlawful tactics to eliminate potential rivals, including tying, predatory product design, and intentional deception." Among the paper's topics are Microsoft’s "Campaign of Patent FUD against Linux and Open Source
Software," its manipulation of votes for ISO certification of its OOXML standard, its ongoing campaigns to destroy DR-DOS, discriminate against IBM and boycott Intel, and attempts to eliminate Netscape and WordPerfect.
The lawyers at Groklaw have long warned about Microsoft's attempts to converge with Open Source. They see this confirmed in the ECIS document and quote from it:
"Even when Microsoft claims to be implementing a standard, the reality is that Microsoft's implementations routinely either only partially conform or else somehow extend the standard, so that software developed to work with Microsoft's version of the standard will not work with other vendors' implementations of the same standard."
Pamela Jones, who runs the Groklaw website, is pleased with the confirmation from an official source, especially in light of some recent opposition. She writes:
"We've been overrun recently on Groklaw with trolls, including some rather prominent ones, insisting that there was nothing wrong with [the OOXML certification] process...."
The evidence from the ECIS document did not come as a surprise to her: "There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to Microsoft." The document stems from March 31 2009, comprises 33 interesting pages as PDF and is entitled "Microsoft -- A History of Anticompetitive Behavior and Consumer Harm." The version at the Groklaw site also includes Jones's commentary.
Comments
comments powered by DisqusIssue 272/2023
Buy this issue as a PDF
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
News
-
An All-Snap Version of Ubuntu is In The Works
Along with the standard deb version of the open-source operating system, Canonical will release an-all snap version.
-
Mageia 9 Beta 2 Ready for Testing
The latest beta of the popular Mageia distribution now includes the latest kernel and plenty of updated applications.
-
KDE Plasma 6 Looks to Bring Basic HDR Support
The KWin piece of KDE Plasma now has HDR support and color management geared for the 6.0 release.
-
Bodhi Linux 7.0 Beta Ready for Testing
The latest iteration of the Bohdi Linux distribution is now available for those who want to experience what's in store and for testing purposes.
-
Changes Coming to Ubuntu PPA Usage
The way you manage Personal Package Archives will be changing with the release of Ubuntu 23.10.
-
AlmaLinux 9.2 Now Available for Download
AlmaLinux has been released and provides a free alternative to upstream Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
-
An Immutable Version of Fedora Is Under Consideration
For anyone who's a fan of using immutable versions of Linux, the Fedora team is currently considering adding a new spin called Fedora Onyx.
-
New Release of Br OS Includes ChatGPT Integration
Br OS 23.04 is now available and is geared specifically toward web content creation.
-
Command-Line Only Peropesis 2.1 Available Now
The latest iteration of Peropesis has been released with plenty of updates and introduces new software development tools.
-
TUXEDO Computers Announces InfinityBook Pro 14
With the new generation of their popular InfinityBook Pro 14, TUXEDO upgrades its ultra-mobile, powerful business laptop with some impressive specs.
ECIS is a lobby group