Microsoft’s competitors in Europe alleged today that the new Vista operating system continues the illegal practices by Microsoft discovered in Europe 3 years ago. The group complaining includes IBM, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, Adobe, Oracle, and Red Hat.
In 2004, the European Commission determined that Microsoft purposely made Windows software incompatible with competitors’ server software, as well as trying to get makers of audio and video streaming software out of the market.
Microsoft was set to release Vista on Tuesday, but the European Commission said Vista is aimed at increasing Microsoft’s dominance. The company is pushing its XAML markup language so that it may replace HTML, the current standard for publishing on the Internet. Microsoft is also using OOXML (open XML) on the Microsoft Office platform. This dictates how a document is formatted and stored, and competitors are also claiming that Microsoft is using this to increase its monopoly.
Security software makers have complained that Microsoft is denying them access to Vista, which they need to help create their products to protect computers from malicious viruses and software.
Maybe the European Union should fine them millions of dollars and give nothing to the companies they’re representing. I thought people had gripes about closed source and now that Microsoft has opened source code thats bad too. What’s the real issue? Jealous software companies are convincing the European Commission that Microsoft stole their cookie. The European Union happily collects fines, competion is no more, and consumers have to shell out money to companies like Adobe.
I recently bought a computer with Vista pre-installed. It took 36 hours of beating my head against the wall to realize what Microsoft has done. They have introduced an OS that disables or cripples not only competitors’ products but their own legacy products, which many of us still use. Examples of programs that will not run under Vista include:
MS Office 2000
Corel Graphics Suite 12
All Adobe Graphics programs
Symantec Anti-virus and security products
MANY others
Even my Pocket PC from 2000 will not synch with Vista.
I believe this design is clearly aimed at increasing Microsoft.s dominance.
Too bad we have no anti-trust protection left in the US!
BTW, I returned the computer