Criticism of Microsoft

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Criticism of Microsoft has followed the company's existence because of various aspects of its products and business practices. Ease of use, stability, and security of the company's software are common targets for critics. More recently, Trojan horses and other exploits have plagued numerous users due to faults in the security of Microsoft Windows and other programs. Microsoft is also accused of locking vendors into their products, and of not following and complying with existing standards in its software.^[1] Total cost of ownership comparisons of Linux as well as Mac OS X to Windows are a continuous point of debate.

The company has been in numerous lawsuits by several governments and other companies for unlawful monopolistic practices. In 2004, the European Union found Microsoft guilty in a highly-publicized anti-trust case. Additionally, Microsoft's EULA for some of its programs is often criticized as being too restrictive as well as being against open source software.

Criticism of the company has resulted in it being deemed "the evil empire" by some.^[2] In a sci-fi allusion, Microsoft has also been called "The Borg" after the fictional race of aliens in the Star Trek universe. It reflects the perception that Microsoft often acquires technology from other companies rather than developing it in-house^[3], as well as to Microsoft's ability to adapt to and overwhelm its opponents' strategies. ^{[4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]}

[edit] Products

[edit] Ease of use

The Office Assistant from Microsoft Office. Many users strongly disliked this feature, and Microsoft eventually abandoned it.

Microsoft is often criticized for making features more important than usability. This can lead to the user interface of its products becoming inconsistent and overly complicated, frustrating users by actions which should be simple to perform and requiring interactive "wizards" to function as an extra layer between the user and the interface.^[10]

The default settings in some Microsoft software are often criticized for facilitating the spread of computer viruses and worms. For example, Windows operating systems released since 1995 hide filename extensions by default, which can help malicious programmers trick unwitting e-mail recipients into opening dangerous file attachments which masquerade as harmless files with innocent-looking extensions.^[11]

[edit] Stability

A blue screen of death on Microsoft Windows 95

Older versions of Windows, and later the Windows 95 kernel, were widely panned for their instability, such as displaying a blue screen of death, or abruptly terminating applications arbitrarily. ^[12] The transitory Windows ME (Millennium Edition) was particularly unstable, leaving many users with an essentially unusable computer out of the box unless an upgrade was purchased.^[13] After the adoption of the Windows NT kernel in consumer versions of Windows, the operating system saw a vast improvement in stability, but problems still arise^{[citation needed]}. Some argue that a well-designed operating interface should "sandbox" applications in a way that does not permit them to impact on the OS or GUI^{[citation needed]}. Microsoft has sometimes taken the opposite approach, such as integrating Internet Explorer into the operating system^{[citation needed]}.

Shared libraries in the operating system are inconsistently used and lack an enforced policy^{[citation needed]}. In some cases this can make it impossible for certain applications to co-exist on the same computer^{[citation needed]}. The result is sometimes known as DLL hell^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Security

By 2002, several of Microsoft's networking- and Internet-related products had become the subject of intense criticism following several high-profile security lapses. Malicious programmers increasingly exploited weaknesses in Microsoft software by creating and distributing worms, viruses, and Trojan horses designed to spread across the Internet and waste computing resources or destroy data^{[citation needed]}. These exploits primarily targeted Microsoft's Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail programs, Internet Information Server (IIS) Web server, and SQL Server database server software^{[citation needed]}.

In February 2004 some source code of Windows 2000 was leaked and distributed on filesharing networks. The leak contains source code for network protocols, parts of Internet Explorer, and certificate handling^{[citation needed]}. Some people developed theoretical attacks to show how easily this leaked code could allow current versions of Windows to be compromised, but these flaws are not yet known to have been exploited maliciously.^{[citation needed]}

A screenshot of a malicious website attempting to install spyware via an ActiveX Control.

Microsoft contends that its security record on critical vulnerabilities has substantially improved and compares favorably to that of its competitors, and that its dominant position in several Internet-related software categories naturally subjects the company's products to more attacks^{[citation needed]}. The company also recently started the "Trustworthy Computing" initiative to help with its fight against security issues. However, critics argue that the attacks also target Microsoft products that do not hold commanding market shares, ^[14] and suggest that this is because Microsoft products in general are fundamentally less secure than those of the company's competitors. This problem is compounded by the very ubiquity of Microsoft software^{[citation needed]}. Once a working virus is released, it is almost certain to spread very widely because almost every computer it comes across is able to replicate and spread the virus. This effect has recently been dubbed the "Microsoft monoculture", by analogy to the problems associated with lack of biodiversity in an ecosystem. ^{[15] [16] [17] [18]} The National Science Foundation on November 25, 2003 announced it had granted US$750,000 (Lemos, 2003) to computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of New Mexico to further understand the causes and the (presumably) negative effects of the homogenization of the world's computing platforms (National Science Foundation, 2003)^{[citation needed]}.

Insecure software configuration has been another criticism levelled at Microsoft. When Windows is installed, by default it is pre-configured to be in an insecured state^{[citation needed]}. Even capabilities many users won't need will be activated, thus leaving the system in an unnecessarily vulnerable state. This trend has continued with poor security configurations in the 2007 release of the Windows Vista operating system. With the software being insecure by default, unless a knowledgeable user takes explicit action, the software remains insecure. Even if a user activates security features, the system will still have vulnerabilities, because the security software does not offer protections commonly offered in other operating systems. ^{[19] [20] [21] [22] [23]}

[edit] Vendor lock-in

From its very inception, Microsoft defined itself as a platform company and understood the importance of attracting third-party programmers. It did so by providing development tools, training, access to proprietary APIs in early versions, and partner programs. The solutions and plugins built by third-party programmers in turn led to more Microsoft sales. Although the resulting ubiquity of Microsoft software allows a user to benefit from network effects, critics decry what they consider to be a "embrace, extend and extinguish" strategy by Microsoft of adding proprietary features to open standards, thereby using its market dominance to gain de facto ownership of standards "extended" in this way. ^{[24] [25] [26] [27]} For example, the large installation base of Microsoft Word makes Word files the de-facto standard word-processor format. In addition, more potential employees have training in Microsoft Office than on competing products. Hence using Office can result in reduced training requirements, especially in the case of temporary employment. However, the file formats of Word and other programs were not an open standard, and even the introduction of XML-based format of the program is sometimes criticized as not being open as the OpenDocument format, which is used by OpenOffice.

Microsoft software also represents a "safe" choice for IT managers purchasing software systems, in that the ubiquity of Microsoft software allows them to claim that they are following accepted best practices^{[citation needed]}. This is a particularly attractive option for IT managers with limited technical knowledge. In an internal memo for senior management Microsoft's head of C++ development, Aaron Contorer, stated:

The Windows API is so broad, so deep, and so functional that most Independent Software Vendors would be crazy not to use it. And it is so deeply embedded in the source code of many Windows apps that there is a huge switching cost to using a different operating system instead... It is this switching cost that has given the customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high TCO [total cost of ownership], our lack of a sexy vision at times, and many other difficulties [...] Customers constantly evaluate other desktop platforms, [but] it would be so much work to move over that they hope we just improve Windows rather than force them to move. In short, without this exclusive franchise called the Windows API, we would have been dead a long time ago.^[28]

Winmodems and Winprinters have been criticised as a form of vendor lock-in since they only work in Microsoft Windows.^[29] Creating device drivers for Winmodems and Winprinters to work on other operating systems is very difficult and requires reverse engineering.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Business practices

[edit] Intellectual property

One of the earliest criticisms of Microsoft stemmed from its decision to market its software independently of the hardware it ran on by asserting copyright to the software and licensing it under terms similar to music^{[citation needed]}. Software copyright was a legal novelty at the time, and controversial. When Microsoft discovered that its first product, Altair BASIC, was subject to widespread illegal copying, Microsoft founder Bill Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists urging them not to use software without paying for it^{[citation needed]}. Some computer hobbyists who received the letter believed it was a betrayal of the hacker ethic that was essential to the growth of the hobby. This disagreement over whether software should be proprietary continues into the present day under the banner of the free software movement, with Microsoft recently characterizing open-source software as being "potentially viral"^[30] and the GNU General Public License itself as a "viral license" which "infects" proprietary software and forces its developer to have to release proprietary source to the public.^[31]

The Halloween documents, internal Microsoft memos which were leaked to the open source community beginning in 1998, indicate that Microsoft perceives open source software — in particular, freely-available Linux kernel-based operating systems — as a growing long-term threat to Microsoft's dominance of the software industry. In marked contrast to the company's public statements, which tend to downplay or ignore open source software, the Halloween documents acknowledged that parts of Linux are superior to the versions of Microsoft Windows available at the time, and outlined a strategy of "de-commoditize[ing] protocols & applications"; in other words, basing networks and documents around proprietary standards so that they can only interoperate with other computers which use Microsoft products.^{[32][24][25][26][27]} Opponents of Microsoft have dubbed this strategy "embrace, extend, and extinguish"^{[citation needed]}.

Another concern of critics is that Microsoft may be using the distribution of shared source software to harvest names of developers who have been exposed to Microsoft code, as some believe that these developers could someday be the target of lawsuits if they were ever to participate in the development of competing products. This issue is addressed in published papers from several organizations including the American Bar Association and the Open Source Initiative.^[33][34]

Starting in the 1990s, Microsoft was accused of maintaining "hidden" or "secret" APIs: interfaces to its operating system software that it deliberately keeps undocumented to gain a competitive advantage in its application software products.^[35] Microsoft has, in response to court orders, published interfaces between components of its operating system software, including components like Internet Explorer, Active Directory, and Windows Media that sell as part of Windows but compete with application software. Its employees have denied the use of secret APIs in Microsoft's own application software products.^[36][37]

[edit] Intellectual property violation

Microsoft used a cracked edition of Sony Sound Forge 4.5 to make the sound files for the Windows Media Player tour. At the end of all the files in C:\WINDOWS\Help\Tours\WindowsMediaPlayer\Audio\Wav it has "LISTB INFOICRD� 2000-04-06 IENG Deepz0ne ISFT� Sound Forge 4.5 ", DeepzOne is a cracker. ^[38]

[edit] Attempt to patent features copied from BlueJ

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 included an 'Object Test Bench' feature. Michael Kölling, creator of the BlueJ integrated development environment, used side-by-side screenshots to show that Object Test Bench had been copied from BlueJ. ^[39] Visual Studio Express lead product manager Dan Fernandez confirmed in his blog that Microsoft had indeed copied BlueJ.^[40]

A year and a half later, Kölling found out that Microsoft was in the process of patenting Object Test Bench, despite having already admitted it was copied. ^[41] Following public outcry, Microsoft retracted the patent.^[42]

[edit] Licensing agreements

A common complaint comes from those who want to purchase a computer without a copy of Windows preinstalled because they intend to use a free operating system such as Linux or BSD instead. With the exception of Apple Inc. and Dell, all large computer vendors in the United States, and most in other countries, bundle Microsoft Windows with their personal computers. The Findings of Fact in the United States v. Microsoft case established that "One of the ways Microsoft combats piracy is by advising OEMs that they will be charged a higher price for Windows unless they drastically limit the number of PCs that they sell without an operating system pre-installed. In 1998, all major OEMs agreed to this restriction." [6]

The 2002 settlement in the United States v. Microsoft case prohibits Microsoft from giving special prices to select vendors, which resulted in the price list becoming public and based on volume sold with discounts for features from the distributor. These features can include the provisioning of components as specified by Microsoft, such as FireWire, or the placement of Microsoft logos on the computer as a sticker. Market development funds such as these are a source of controversy with both Microsoft and Intel, as while they can be used to cover the cost of adding new features to the system they can also bias PC OEMs towards Microsoft/Intel products. In particular, the co-funding that Intel and Microsoft provide for PC advertising make it cheaper to advertise a Microsoft/Intel PC than a Linux/AMD system.^{[citation needed]}

This problem can be avoided by purchasing a computer without Windows or by buying a white box machine. Some vendors, such as IBM and HP, have recently started to sell certain models bundled with Linux, although these are primarily high-end workstations or enterprise systems. Often, servers are sold without any operating system at all. In various countries, high-street retail chains (such as Dick Smith Electronics) have also been known to offer machines bundled with Linux. This can greatly reduce the cost of purchasing a computer; for example, in the UK the Comet chain of electrical stores in summer 2006 started selling a base unit bundled with Red Hat Linux for around £150 (about $280 US$), much cheaper than most other new base units. In some cases the user can return Windows for a refund by refusing to agree to the Microsoft End User License Agreement that Microsoft requires its users to accept before allowing the use of several products. The EULA specifically mentions that if you do not agree to the license you can return the product for a full refund. Some vendors, such as Toshiba, have a shrinkwrap sales contract that specifically voids this clause of the EULA.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Acquisitions

Microsoft has acquired several companies (including many competitors), and thereby their products, during its history.^[43] Such acquired assets include MS-DOS, Microsoft FrontPage, WebTV, Hotmail, Direct3D, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Visio, and most recently, Windows Defender. Microsoft rebrands the primary products of the companies it acquires, and in many cases offers them for free or bundles them with their operating system. This has led to a criticism that Microsoft misrepresents the products as its own creations^{[citation needed]}. For example, former Sun Microsystems chief executive Scott McNealy occasionally remarked that Microsoft never produced technology except by buying it: "Name one thing they've ever invented on their own? Seriously, name one! If you think of any, send me an e-mail, and I'll research it to find out who they bought it from.... R&D and M&A are the same thing over there."^[44]

An acquisition nearly took place in 1995 when Microsoft announced its intent to conduct a hostile takeover of Intuit, Inc., the maker of Quicken, which competed with its own product Microsoft Money. After a campaign by attorney Gary Reback and complaints to the Federal Trade Commission, Microsoft eventually dropped the takeover plans.^[45]

[edit] Market power

There is little argument that in most mass-market desktop software application markets, Microsoft is a dominant player. However, this dominance has attracted widespread resentment, which is not necessarily restricted to the company's competitors. In a 2003 publication, Dan Geer argued the prevalence of Microsoft products has resulted in a monoculture which is dangerously easy for viruses to exploit. However, numerous defences have been waged against this argument, including the idea that if machines can be patched from the threats it has much less of an effect.^[46]

Critics of Microsoft have accused it of using its dominance in desktop operating system to leverage market share in other sectors of the computer market, such as web browsers (Internet Explorer), server operating systems (Windows NT), office software suites (Microsoft Office), and streaming media (Windows Media)^{[citation needed]}. They blame this on Microsoft's tactics of tying software so that a new product can ride on the success of a monopoly product. For example, by including Microsoft Messenger and Windows Media Player with every copy of Windows, they claim that Windows users have less need to download and use competing products such as AOL Instant Messenger or RealPlayer, and thus will stick with the Microsoft alternatives even if the competing products are superior^{[citation needed]}. Critics see this as a clear case of a monopoly based on vertical integration, which tends to starve the rival companies while giving Microsoft time to adopt their features^{[citation needed]}. Microsoft defends its behavior by stating that it is giving its customers more software for free, and that it is doing the best it can to innovate and compete in a capitalist market^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Government anti-trust suits

In the 1990s, Microsoft adopted exclusionary licensing under which PC manufacturers were required to pay for an MS-DOS license even when the system shipped with an alternative operating system. Critics allege that it also used predatory tactics to price its competitors out of the market and that Microsoft erected technical barriers to make it appear that competing products did not work on its operating system.^[47] An investigation by the United States Department of Justice on August 21, 1993 resulted in an opinion stating that this behavior was illegal; in a consent decree issued on July 15, 1994, Microsoft agreed to a deal in which, among other things, that the company would not "tie" other Microsoft products into its operating system.

After bundling the Internet Explorer web browser into its Windows operating system in the late 1990s and acquiring a dominant share in the web browser market, the antitrust case United States v. Microsoft was brought against the company. In a series of rulings by judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, the company was found to have violated its earlier consent decree and abused its monopoly in the desktop operating systems market. The "findings of fact" during the antitrust case established that Microsoft has a monopoly in the PC desktop operating systems market:

Viewed together, three main facts indicate that Microsoft enjoys monopoly power. First, Microsoft's share of the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems is extremely large and stable. Second, Microsoft's dominant market share is protected by a high barrier to entry. Third, and largely as a result of that barrier, Microsoft's customers lack a commercially viable alternative to Windows. (III.34)^[48]

The findings of fact goes on to explain the nature of the "barrier to entry":

The fact that there is a multitude of people using Windows makes the product more attractive to consumers. The large installed base… impels ISVs (independent software vendors) to write applications first and foremost to Windows, thereby ensuring a large body of applications from which consumers can choose. The large body of applications thus reinforces demand for Windows, augmenting Microsoft's dominant position and thereby perpetuating ISV incentives to write applications principally for Windows… The small or non-existent market share of an aspiring competitor makes it prohibitively expensive for the aspirant to develop its PC operating system into an acceptable substitute for Windows. (III.39–40)^[48]

The proposed remedy (dividing Microsoft into two companies) was overturned on appeal. While new penalties were under consideration, the Clinton administration ended and the Bush administration took office. The new administration announced that in the interest of ending the case as quickly as possible, it would no longer seek to break the company up, and that it would stop investigating claims of illegal tying of products. ^[49] Microsoft subsequently reached a settlement with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and some of the states which brought suit against it. Several class-action lawsuits filed after the conviction are still pending.

In early 2002, Microsoft proposed to settle the private lawsuits by donating $1 billion USD in money, software, services, and training, including Windows licenses and refurbished PCs, to about 12,500 underprivileged public schools. This was seen by some as a potential windfall for Microsoft, not only in educating schoolchildren on Microsoft solutions but also in collecting additional license fees if the schools ever wanted to upgrade. After protests from Apple Computer, which feared further loss of its educational market share, a federal judge rejected the proposed settlement.^[50]

In 2003–2004, the European Commission investigated the bundling of Windows Media Player into Windows, a practice which rivals complained was destroying the market for their own products. Negotiations between Microsoft and the Commission broke down in March 2004, and the company was subsequently handed down a record fine of €497 million ($666 million) for its breaches of EU competition law. Separate investigations into alleged abuses of the server market were also ongoing at the same time. On December 22, 2004, the European Court decided that the measures imposed on Microsoft by the European Commission would not be delayed, as was requested by Microsoft while waiting for the appeal. Microsoft has since paid a €497 million fine, shipped versions of Windows without Windows Media Player, and licensed many of the protocols used in its products to developers in countries within the European Economic Area.

[edit] Other suits and rulings by governments

In March 2004, during a consumer class-action lawsuit in Minnesota, internal documents subpoenaed from Microsoft revealed that the company had violated nondisclosure agreements seven years earlier in obtaining business plans from Go Corporation, using them to develop and announce a competing product named PenWindows, and convincing Intel to reduce its investment in Go. After Go was purchased by AT&T and Go's tablet-based computing efforts were shelved, PenWindows development was dropped.^[51]

In May 2004, a class-action lawsuit accused Microsoft of overcharging customers in the state of California. The company settled the case for $1.1 billion, and a California court ordered Microsoft to pay an additional $258 million in legal fees (including over $3,000 per hour for the lead attorney in the case, more than $2,000 per hour for colleagues, and in excess of $1,000 per hour for administrative work). A Microsoft attorney responded, "Somebody ends up paying for this. These large fee awards get passed on to consumers."^[52] The total bill for legal fees was later reduced to just over $112 million.^[53] Because of the structure of the settlement, the law firm which sued Microsoft could end up getting more money from the company than California consumers and schools, the beneficiaries of the settlement.

[edit] Suits by private companies

Microsoft has also fought numerous legal battles against private companies. The most prominent ones are against:

• Alcatel-Lucent, which won US$1.52 billion in a lawsuit which alleged that Microsoft had infringed its patents on playback of audio files. ^[54]
• Apple Inc. (known as Apple Computer Inc. at the time), which accused Microsoft in the late 1980s of copying the "look and feel" of the graphical user interface of Apple's operating systems. The courts ruled in favor of Microsoft in 1994. Another suit by Apple accused Microsoft, along with Intel and the San Francisco Canyon Company, in 1995 of knowingly stealing several thousand lines of QuickTime source code in an effort to improve the performance of Video for Windows. ^{[55] [56] [57] [58]} After a threat to withdraw support for Office for Mac, ^{[59] [60]} this lawsuit was ultimately settled in 1997. Apple agreed to make Internet Explorer the default browser over Netscape, and Microsoft agreed to continue developing Office and other software for the Mac for the next 5 years, and purchase $150 million of non-voting Apple stock. ^{[61] [62]}
• AOL, on behalf of its Netscape division. Netscape (as an independent company) also was involved in the United States v. Microsoft antitrust suit.
• Be Inc., which accused Microsoft of exclusionary and anticompetitive behavior intended to drive Be out of the market. Be even offered to license its BeOS operating system for free to any PC vendors who would ship it pre-installed, but the vendors declined due to what Be believes were fears of pricing retaliation from Microsoft: by raising the price of Microsoft Windows for one particular PC vendor, Microsoft could price that vendor's PCs out of the market.^[63]
• Burst.com, which claims that Microsoft stole Burst's patented technology for delivering high speed streaming sound and video content on the internet. Also at issue in the case is a 35-week period of missing emails in the evidence Microsoft handed over to Burst which was discovered by Burst.com's lawyers. Burst accuses Microsoft of crafting a 30 day email deletion policy specifically to cover up illegal activity. Microsoft settled with the company for $60 million in exchange for an agreement to license some of the company's technologies.^[64][65][66]
• Eolas and University of California, which accused Microsoft of using some of its software patents in their web browser, won $521 million in court.^[67]
• Caldera, which accused Microsoft of having modified Windows 3.1 so that it would not run on DR DOS 6 although there was no technical reason for it not to work.^[68] Some claim that Microsoft put encrypted code in five otherwise unrelated Microsoft programs in order to prevent the functioning of DR DOS in pre-releases (beta versions) of Windows 3.1.^[69] Microsoft settled out-of-court for an undisclosed sum.
• Opera, which accused Microsoft of intentionally making its MSN service incompatible with the Opera browser on several occasions.
• Sendo, which accused Microsoft of terminating their partnership so it could steal Sendo's technology to use in Windows Smartphone 2002.^[70]
• Spyglass, which licensed its browser to Microsoft in return for a percentage of each sale; Microsoft turned the browser into Internet Explorer and bundled it with Windows, giving it away to gain market share but effectively destroying any chance of Spyglass making money from the deal they had signed with Microsoft; Spyglass sued for deception and won a $8 million settlement.^[71]
• Stac Electronics, which accused Microsoft of stealing its data compression code and using it in MS-DOS 6.^[72]
• Sun Microsystems, which held Microsoft in violation of contract for including a modified version of Java in Microsoft Windows that allowed applications written with Microsoft proprietary extensions to the Java language to run; Microsoft lost this decision in court. Microsoft responded by not shipping a Java Virtual Machine at all, and since then users have had to download one from the Internet on all new Windows installations.
• WordPerfect
• Many other smaller companies have filed patent abuse and predatory practice suits against Microsoft.

[edit] Microsoft's investigations and suits of other entities

In 2006 Microsoft initiated an investigation of Lithuanian government institutions for determining whether they choose long-term strategies of the software they use correctly. The investigation, funded by Microsoft itself, will be performed by the Vilnius State University (a governmental institution itself) together with the Lithuanian Institution of the Free Market (which is a Think tank organization^{[citation needed]}).^[73]

[edit] Labor practices

The entrance to Microsoft's Redmond campus

While Microsoft has historically treated employees very well, Microsoft has received several complaints about their treatment of employees. This includes the use of permatemp employees (employees employed for years as "temporary," and therefore without medical benefits), use of forced retention tactics, where departing employees would be sued to prevent departure, as well as more traditional cost-saving measures, ranging from cutting medical benefits, to not providing towels in company locker rooms.^[74]

Historically, Microsoft has also been accused of overworking employees, in many cases, leading to burnout within just a few years of joining the company. The company is often referred to as a "Velvet Sweatshop", a term which originated in a Seattle Times article in 1989,^[75] and later became used to describe the company by some of Microsoft's own employees.^[76] The focus of the idea is that Microsoft provides nearly everything for its employees in a convenient place, but in turn overworks them to a point where it would be bad for their (possibly long-term) health. For example, the kitchenettes have free beverages and many buildings include exercise rooms and showers. However, the accusation is that they try to keep employees at the company for unreasonably long hours and working too much. This is detailed in several books about Microsoft, including "Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire."

More to the point, in 1992 a (US) state lawsuit was brought against Microsoft representing 8,558 current and former employees that had been classified as "temporary" and "freelance", and became known as "Vizcaino v. Microsoft". In 1993, the suit became a US Federal Class Action in the United States District Court Western District Of Washington At Seattle as No. C93-178C. The Final Settlement^[77] came in 2005. The case was decided on the (IRS-defined) basis that such "permatemps" had their jobs defined by Microsoft, worked alongside regular employees doing the same work, and worked for long terms. After a series of court setbacks including 3 reversals on appeal, Microsoft settled the suit for about US $92.730 million. A side effect of the permatemp lawsuit is that now temporary workers are prevented from participating in team morale events and other activities that could be construed as making them "employees". They are also limited to one year contracts and must leave after that time for 100 days before returning as a permatemp again.

[edit] Advertising and public relations

Microsoft contributes money to several think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution. Critics allege that while giving the appearance of neutral third parties these organizations work to undermine Microsoft's competitors, for example stating "open-source software may offer [a] target for terrorists".^[78][79][80]

In August 2004, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) of the United Kingdom ordered Microsoft to stop a run of print ads that claimed that the total cost of ownership of Linux servers was ten times that of Windows Server 2003. The comparison included the cost of hardware, and put Linux at a disadvantage by installing it on more expensive but poorer-performing hardware compared to that used for Windows.^[81][82]

Microsoft issues press releases that often include misleading statements. "We have a game we play around the office here with Microsoft press releases. The game is called 'Find the words that make the headline true'... Microsoft has a long history of using press releases to promote their product momentum in shall we say interesting ways, using words like 'fastest growing' (meaning, the number we started with was really really small) to redefining words such as 'sold.'"^[83]

On 24 January 2007, Rick Jelliffe revealed on his blog that a Microsoft employee offered to pay him to make corrections in Wikipedia articles concerning Office Open XML. Microsoft spokesperson Catherine Brooker expressed the belief that the article had been "heavily written" by IBM employees who supported the rival OpenDocument format, though she provided no specific evidence. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales described Microsoft's offer as unethical.^[84]

[edit] Censorship in mainland China

Microsoft (along with Google, Yahoo, Cisco, AOL, Skype, and other companies) has cooperated with the Chinese government in implementing a system of Internet censorship.^[85] Human rights advocates such as Human Rights Watch and media groups such as Reporters Without Borders criticized the companies, noting for example that it is "ironic that companies whose existence depends on freedom of information and expression have taken on the role of censor."^[86]

[edit] Total cost of ownership

Main article: Studies related to Microsoft

There is ongoing disagreement regarding how to accurately measure the cost of software^{[citation needed]}. The full cost of software extends far beyond the purchase of the software itself; it can include costs for maintenance, support, training, and upgrades^{[citation needed]}. Microsoft supporters and Microsoft itself argue that the position and architecture of Microsoft software results in a lower "total cost of ownership" than competing open-source solutions such as Linux, the Apache web server, or the MySQL database.^[87] They contend that:

• Microsoft software is designed to be easy to configure, allowing companies to hire lower-paid non-expert systems administrators.
• There is a large pool of trained and certified Microsoft administrators available to help in deploying and managing Microsoft systems.
• The Microsoft software ecosystem is designed to work well together since many products come from the same vendor.

Detractors argue that users do not own Microsoft software: it is licensed, forcing the user to obey the vendor's licensing agreements and requiring regular upgrade costs^{[citation needed]}. Therefore "total cost of ownership" comparisons with open source software do not compare like with like^{[citation needed]}. They further contend that:

• Lower base staff competence can create more problems^{[citation needed]}.
• Reducing computer insecurity requires highly trained systems administrators, regardless of the operating system in use; insecurity can result in large additional costs and losses^{[citation needed]}.
• Increased system instability may substantially increase total cost of ownership by requiring significantly more maintenance^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] See also

General mechanisms at work:

• Path dependency
• Embrace, extend and extinguish
• Network effect
• Vendor lock-in
• Appeal to fear
• Fear, uncertainty and doubt
• Open source vs. closed source
• Marketing ethics

Specific cases:

• Digital rights management
• Criticism of Internet Explorer
• Criticism of Windows XP
• NSAKEY
• DLL hell

[edit] References

• Charles, John. "Indecent proposal? Doing Business With Microsoft". IEEE Software. January/February 1998. pp. 113-117.
• Clark, Jim with Owen Edwards. Netscape Time: The Making of the Billion Dollar Start-up That Took on Microsoft. New York, Saint Martin's Press, 1999
• Cusumano, Michael A.; Selby, Richard W. Microsoft Secrets: How the World's Most Powerful Software Company Creates Technology, Shapes Markets and Manages People. New York: Free Press, 1995.
• Edstrom, Jennifer; Eller, Marlin. Barbarians Led by Bill Gates: Microsoft from inside: How the World's Richest Corporation Wields its Power. N.Y. Holt, 1998.
• Goldman Rohm, Wendy (September 1998). The Microsoft File: the secret case against Bill Gates. New York, NY 10022: Times Books. ISBN 0-8129-2716-8. 
• Lemos, Robert. (2003). U.S. funds study of tech monocultures. Retrieved December 20, 2003, from http://news.com.com/2100-7355-5111905.html?tag=nefd_hed
• Moody, Fred. I Sing the Body Electronic: A Year With Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier. New York: Viking, 1995.
• National Science Foundation. (2003). Taking Cues from Mother Nature to Foil Cyber Attacks. Retrieved December 20, 2003, from http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/03/pr03130.htm
• Bozman, Jean; Gillen, Al; Kolodgy, Charles; Kusnetzky, Dan; Perry, Randy; & Shiang, David (October 2002). "Windows 2000 Versus Linux in Enterprise Computing: An assessment of business value for selected workloads". IDC, sponsored by Microsoft Corporation. White paper.
• In an article published by BusinessWeek, Dan Kunsnetzky suggests that study was stacked against Linux.

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] External links

• Discussions of Microsoft's business practices:
  • Citizen Microsoft (Seattle Weekly)
  • Microsoft's Sacred Cash Cow (Seattle Weekly)
  • CNN.com - Microsoft: Flaw left millions at risk (Flaw Discovered by Faisal Danka)
  • Microsuck.com - a parody site with a lot of information
  • http://www.vanwensveen.nl/rants/microsoft/IhateMS.html
  • Radsoft.com news and information
  • http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm
  • Dissecting Microsoft - Analyzes Microsoft's business practices and software
  • Get Off Microsoft weblog by Tony Bove, author of "Just Say No to Microsoft" book
  • FAQ on the Microsoft Antitrust case by The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism
  • Sourcewatch about Microsoft
  • Novell/SuSE Response to Steve Ballmer's Letter to the Linux Community
  • Why not Windows? on GetGNULinux.org
• TCO
  • Windows 2000 Versus Linux in Enterprise Computing (Microsoft)
  • Study: Linux Is Still Cheaper Than Windows (PCworld.com)