ECIS Provides A History of Microsoft's AntiCompetitive Behavior

Tuesday, April 21 2009 @ 06:13 PM EDT

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 written 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 framed in a context 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. source: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090421111327711 Now you could have known and should have known what you support by buyng M$ software....