Why I dislike Microsoft

Specifically discussing their business practices - security is a separate topic to rant about another time. Also, I do not intend to disparage the many fine, talented, ethical employees working for Microsoft. This is about high-level market strategy, not the technical people building the products.

I don't begrudge Microsoft their profit-oriented business model - that's what capitalism is all about. I begrudge them their illegal, unethical, predatory, and bullying business practices. Our capitalist market exists within a regulatory structure that should (ideally) create a level playing field in which the best products win. Basically, Microsoft cheats - they don't follow those rules.

For more history on this, a good place to start is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft. A couple of highlights:

- Deliberately tweaking releases of MS-DOS so that competing application products won't run. Particularly, Lotus 1-2-3 which dominated the spreadsheet market while Excel had a very small market share. Google the famous phrase "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run". Similarly, tweaking early versions of Windows to not run on competing versions of DOS like DR-DOS.

- Demanding that hardware vendors (Dell, Gateway, etc) purchase a license for Windows for *every system they sell*, whether or not that system has Windows on it, including "gag clauses" forbidding the vendor to tell anyone that this was the case. This is what killed OS/2, which was by far a technically superior operating system that was real competition for Windows in the early 1990's.

- Threatening to stop making Office for Mac if Apple didn't end its Quicktime development. Google for the famous "knife the baby" story. Similar efforts to control Intel's forays into markets that Microsoft saw as competition.

- Presenting falsified evidence (!) in the antitrust trial. A video of how Windows 98 runs without IE was proven to be a cut-n-paste job from multiple computers rather than the live video of a single computer that Microsoft claimed. I still don't understand how they didn't face criminal charges for falsifying evidence.

- Secretly funding the SCO Group's legal attacks on Linux. SCO alleged massive copyright infringement of code they owned copied into Linux, but refused to detail the alleged infringements. They sued IBM, Novell, Daimler-Chrysler, and many others. This created a lot of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) about Linux's legal status. It was later revealed that the money to fund this came from Baystar capital and was provided to them by Microsoft.

- Current allegations directly by Microsoft of patent infringements in Linux, but refusing to say which patents and which Linux programs were infringing. Again, attempting to create FUD. If they specificed the patents then the OSS community would investigate their validity, and remove or replace any offending code, resolving the issue. Microsoft wants to keep the FUD cloud hanging over Linux as long as possible, so they refuse to specify the patents.

- Most recently, trying to strongarm the international standards process that was evaluating the OOXML document format, by both pressuring come countries to vote yes, and by actively subverting the process by paying others to join the ISO committee votes at the last minute just to vote yes.

- Many many others. these are just seven of the ones I'm personally familiar with.