[Sussex] A development in the SVO v IBM case

Sun Jan 30 12:22:16 UTC 2005

On Sun, 2005-01-30 at 11:23 +0000, Geoffrey Teale wrote:
> Adrew Guard wrote:
> <snippage>
> > For people who don’t know, once upon a time not so long ago IBM was the
> > big bad wolf in IT from view point of USA government.  
> 
> Less the government, more it's competitors.
> 
> > IBM was the boss of
> > IT, it controlled the mainframe market.  
> 
> A good point, but it's worth noting that at it's peak IBM never 
> controlled the same percentage of it's market as Microsofts Windows 
> enjoyed of its market, IBM had a broader control over IT however - it 
> was in every market and it locked you into using it's software if you 
> wanted to use it's hardware (and visa versa).
> 
> Microsoft has been tring to emulate what IBM had in the last few years.
> 
> > To make long story short they got
> > in lot trouble because of this but it the USA having a monopoly on a
> > market is not a crime.  
> 
> That's an interesting statement.   Monopolies are not inherently a crime 
>   anywhere.  If I start making a device to coat turnips in chocolate I'm 
> pretty sure I'll have a monopoly in that market, and I  wouldn't be 
> comitting any crime (well, maybe a crime against good taste, but who can 
> say what that is).
> 
> Both IBM and Microsoft have been on the receiving end of antitrust 
> actions - these aren't actions that inherently punish them for being 
> monopolies, but rather for the actions they took to become monopolies or 
> the actions they took to maintain those monopolies.
> 
> Monopolies are extremely bad in a free market economy* they completely 
> undermime the foundations that make a free market economy work.  For 
> this reason antitrust laws exist to ensure that where monopolies do form 
> they can be forcebly restricted from using the power they have to stop 
> others taking some of their market share.  It's a very strange area 
> generally - an action that could be perfectly legal if you control 30% 
> of a market may well be deemed to be an antitrust violation if you 
> control 80% of the market.
> 
> This of course all falls down in practice because in free market 
> economoies money equals power and dangerous monopolies have so much 
> money that even their own government rarely matches them for power. 
> Given that Microsoft just announced profits that are roughly equal to 
> the GDP of the state of New York and they have both the US and UK 
> governments (and various others throughout the world) sucking on their 
> tit you have to wonder who it is whose going to take them down.   Right 
> now  our best hope is that the EU has enouh good incorruptable people to 
> push through the antitrust measure in Europe.

I think you're being overly optimistic here Geoff - 

1. The EU - the same organisation that brought us software patents?
2. Incorruptible? European Parliament possibly, Commission - not a
hope!

My view is that monopolies like M$ tend to abuse their position to
ensure continuous growth of their revenue stream and thus profit. This
growth can't go on ad infinitum, but as the monopoly tries to grow, it
has to resort to ever more desperate tactics to maintain growth. Anyone
for a fresh new Microsoft licencing program?

In the end the end user will not support these strategies (i.e. being
fleeced) and will look elsewhere. The alternative in the case of M$ on
the desktop will soon be Linux. Since I've been using it Linux has
advanced from geek interest only to nascent desktop contender. I stated
a while ago that I thought that Linux would be a serious contender as a
desktop alternative around about the time SuSE 10 arrived; this might
have been slightly optimistic, but not by much. And Linux seems to be
maturing at just the right time to take advantage of a fall in M$'s
fortunes......

Of course, getting from being a serious contender on the desktop to
being the dominant desktop OS is another matter.

My current notebook Gentoo install with Gnome desktop is just great, I
prefer it hugely to the patronising, overly eye-candy laden Windows XP
desktop. It does everything my XP setup does bar Sage Line 50 Accounts,
and that could be run under Wine.

> 
> Back on the subject of IBM - the real reason the action against them 
> fell down was that IBM made big errors in the PC market (they basically 
> set up Microsoft as a big player and then Microsoft turned on them along 
> with the clone manufacturers).  By the time IBM's antitrust case came to 
> a head IBM were already on the verge of bankrupcy.  For more info on 
> this period in IBM's history take a look at "Who says's elephants can't 
> dance" by Louis V. Gerstner Jnr available at amazon:
> 
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060523808/qid=1107084033/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/202-4065044-0395857
> 
> 
> 
> Footnotes:
> 
> * Fortunately there are no free market economies in existance on this 
> planet - all government intervene and all governments control 
> centralised elements of the economy, i.e. the NHS, NASA, the police 
> force, etc.. etc..).
> 
> --
> Geoff Teale
> Free Software Foundation <tealeg at member.fsf.org>
> 
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