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ECIS Provides A History of Microsoft's AntiCompetitive Behavior

By Pamela Jones et al.

You have to read this paper! Microsoft - A History of Anticompetitive Behavior and Consumer Harm [PDF], and it's from the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, or ECIS. ECIS has submitted it in support of the EU Commission's recent preliminary findings, on January 15, 2009, that Microsoft violated antitrust law by tying IE to Windows.

It is, to the best of my knowledge, the first time that the issue of Microsoft's patent threats against Linux have been presented to a regulatory body as evidence of anticompetitive conduct.

It presents a history, albeit not totally comprehensive, of some of the notable anticompetitive conduct from the past, like against DR-DOS and Netscape and WordPerfect, but it also presents current issues, including the saga of how ISO/IEC DIS 29500, formerly known as OOXML, got approved as a standard:

The EC is also investigating Microsoft's actions to manipulate the vote of the International Organization for Standardization / International Electrotechnical Commission on the recent standardization of Office "Open" XML ("OOXML"). As reported widely in the press and on the Internet, Microsoft's manipulation of the standards setting process in favor of OOXML included financial inducements, threats, misleading information, and committee-stuffing. These investigations are compelling examples of Microsoft's continued misconduct related to its monopolies in operating systems and other products.

We've been overrun recently on Groklaw with trolls, including some rather prominent ones, insisting that there was nothing wrong with that process or that it did the best it could. Some repeatedly opined that the EU Commission has no authority to even investigate in this area. So this is for you. You know who you are.

The paper mentions the netbook market in the section on the patent threats. Not only are the patents Microsoft claims are infringed not identified, they are of questionable value after recent court decisions, and no one can make sense of the current patent climate in the US to even know if they are or are not violating someone's patents, and that is just as true of proprietary as with Open Source software, the paper notes, ending that section like this:

Microsoft has sought to exploit the current absence of clarity in patent law in order to deter consumers from taking up offerings competing with Microsoft's own products.

I'd be very happy to see raised also the issue of what is happening to Linux in the netbook market. Seriously, try to buy a netbook with Linux preinstalled, even ones that used to be available, from any store you find and see what happens. Then try to buy one with XP on it. Note a difference? Why might that be? Read this paper, I suggest, and you may get some ideas.

Full post as published by Groklaw on April 21, 2009 (boomark / email).