03.31.13
Posted in Antitrust, BSD, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 3:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Further commentary about the UEFI Restricted Boot complaint and a new interview with the lawyer behind it
The Microsoft-friendly press has been trying to demonise the group which complained about UEFI Restricted Boot. Some links were given in IRC and it would be wiser not to feed them further. Many of the responses are ad hominem in nature.
In IRC, one reader pointed out that the FreeBSD project, despite its attempts to catch up, is having problems with UEFI (not Restricted Boot yet), so it works on implementation.
Whereas OpenBSD complained early on, FreeBSD says:
UEFI Support
The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce that Benno Rice has been awarded a grant to implement the ability to boot FreeBSD in the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) boot environment.
The work to be done includes a new version of the loader, kernel modifications to support starting from a UEFI environment and the ability to create install media for pure UEFI systems.
“UEFI support is critical for FreeBSD’s future on the amd64 platform and I’m really pleased to be able to ensure that FreeBSD gains support for it,” said Benno.
This project is expected to be completed in March 2013.
“Here’s an example of the headaches that restricted boot causes end users,” writes the aforementioned reader. “It’s probably what Microsoft had in mind when forcing it on the OEMs.”
This new thread starts as follows:
Every Nightly Build of 13.04 has recently been Failing the DELL UEFI Security Check A.K.A. Secere Boot, and I refuse to Disable Dell UEFI Secure Boot just to run the Latest Nightly Build of Ubuntu, as I would be putting myself at a huge Security Risk if I were to get some kind of Virus/Malware that Targets Linux, Just FYI. I will return to Ubuntu Nightly Build Testing just as soon as Canonical fixes their Secure Boot Problem.
This is the type is story which shows why it’s essential to file a complaint. Even those who tried to go along with Microsoft’s anti-competitive scheme (e.g. Canonical) are being burned quite harshly.
Many articles about the antitrust complaint have been mentioned in IRC, but only one — a piece by Sam Varghese who spoke to the lawyer behind this complaint against UEFI — is worth noting. The introduction says: “The lawyer who has filed a complaint with the European Commission against secure boot in Windows 8 on behalf of some 8000 Linux users in Spain says the complaint takes “an user and developer perspective, it is an unprecedented approach to the problem of monopoly in operating systems in Europe”.”
Microsoft-friendly press mostly dances around these issues and tries to portray Microsoft as a poor victim, quoting Microsoft officials and selected European officials. It is their professional role to help the monopolist, so be careful and check whose words are being selectively presented. █
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03.28.13
Posted in Antitrust, Europe, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 8:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
A form of protest, not just legal action
Summary: How a formal complaint about Microsoft’s abuse of hardware assemblers is already helping, irrespective of the outcome of this belated complaint
Nearly a year of OOXML corruptions had taken place before the European Commission took note (when it was too late to do much). Around the same time Microsoft tried to impede Linux booting, drawing complaints which apparently had the company dodging the original plan. The press did play a role. Time is critical. This time passage or delays let Microsoft get away with criminal deeds. Just see the WordPerfect case, which is still ongoing decades later. What about the Web browser abuses? Justice was never served. The implicit message is that it pays off to play dirty.
“Maybe someone will stop Secure Boot,” said one reader of ours, who wrote to drop this link about the formal complaint and Posgon wrote:
I hope the EU orders restitution to damaged computer-buyers and a 10% of revenue fine or whatever their maximum is. With a serial psychopath like M$ there is no use being gentle with them. This will be the third case of anti-competitive activity in a decade. I think M$ should be banned from doing business in any country that values a free market in PC operating systems and everything else in IT.
A complain is filed after we wrote about 50 posts on the topic, urging for antitrust action by big vendors. There is a lot of press coverage which itself is good publicity for the controversy and some coverage publicises the complainer, too. Not just Linux sites did this. Meanwhile we learn that UEFI itself is proving to be an issue for some. Jamie Watson wrote:
So, here is the summary. LMDE does not support EFI Boot out of the box, but there are ways to get around that. It also does not support GPT partition tables, and there is no way around this other than wiping the disk and changing it to DOS BIOS/MBR partitioning. I’m quite sure this is what Clem meant when he wrote in the FAQ “you could do it but it would require wiping the disk”. There is actually a slim chance that you could install successfully to a GPT disk, but that would require simple partitioning and a good bit of luck.
Dr. Garrett, says LWN, is saying that the source of trust is the issue. “I think the FSF’s definition is a useful one,” he writes, “Secure Boot is any boot validation scheme in which ultimate control is in the hands of the owner of the device, while Restricted Boot is any boot validation scheme in which ultimate control is in the hands of a third party. What Microsoft require for x86 Windows 8 devices falls into the category of Secure Boot – assuming that OEMs conform to Microsoft’s requirements, the user must be able to both disable Secure Boot entirely and also leave Secure Boot enabled, but with their own choice of trusted keys and binaries. If the FSF set up a signing service to sign operating systems that met all of their criteria for freeness, Microsoft’s requirements would permit an end user to configure their system such that it refused to run non-free software. My system is configured to trust things shipped by Fedora or built locally by me, a decision that I can make because Microsoft require that OEMs support it. Any system that meets Microsoft’s requirements is a system that respects the freedom of the computer owner to choose how restrictive their computer’s boot policy is.”
In practice, however, PCs are being shipped with Microsoft in change (control at stake), even if you boot BSD or Linux. Hence it is anticompetitive. █
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03.26.13
Posted in Antitrust, GNU/Linux at 5:40 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The ludicrous notion of “Windows 8 PCs” to be peeled off like a sticker
Summary: UEFI antitrust action is on its way if a group gets its way
The Web abuses of Microsoft got Microsoft fined in Europe very recently. In fact, a Microsoft fan site tells us that Microsoft’s Web abuses are causing trouble to Microsoft itself and Mr. Pogson says that Microsoft hacks the Web again. Internet Explorer pretends to be Firefox now, so Pogson writes:
I think this is tantamount to false advertising or besmirching the brands of the competition. It’s just another dirty trick of M$, the purveyor of the worst malware on Earth.
Internet Explorer, which Microsoft illegally embedded in Windows, is malware on top of malware. And now there is another layer of malware being put at the bottom of Windows, specifically Vista 8 with perpetually garbage interface that nobody needs, wants, or likes (the Microsoft boosters try to do it PR). The latest malware is Restricted Boot. It kicks in when a machine is powered on.
Short of the possibility of banning Restricted Boot in Europe or the requirement that it must always be switched off by default (hence enabled only by those who drink the Microsoft Kool-Aid) OEMs may be required to explicitly state the existence of Vista 8 malware on the hardware (Microsoft control) or provide clear instructions on a leaflet to show how this can be disabled (an option they would have to facilitate and test).
Here is then latest news about action against what Microsoft is doing:
Spanish Linux group Hispalinux has filed a competition complaint with the European Commission over the implementation of UEFI Secure Boot for Windows 8.
IDG, with its promotional, pro-UEFI tone all along, continues to describe Restricted Boot UEFI as a feature, even in Linux (Torvalds would beg to differ). “Hackers can easily ‘brick’ computers with malicious firmware. UEFI effectively blocks that attack vector and costs nothing,” Roger A. Grimes writes. That’s overrated. Germany banned this in government because it is actually a national security threat. At IDG, Microsoft’s more shameless boosters come out from the woodwork (evoking ridiculous notions such as “Windows 8 PCs” as if the hardware is part of the software). IDG also gave a platform to UEFI officials. For shame.
Here what seems to be the original report. Here is another report about the latest news:
A Spanish association representing open-source software users has filed a complaint against Microsoft Corp to the European Commission, in a new challenge to the Windows developer following a hefty fine earlier this month.
The 8,000 member-strong Hispalinux, which represents users and developers of the Linux operating system in Spain, said Microsoft had made it difficult for users of computers sold with its Windows 8 platform to switch to Linux and other operating systems.
This looks serious; they have got lawyers and everything, as stated here:
A Spanish association representing open-source software users has filed a complaint against Microsoft Corp to the European Commission, in a new challenge to the Windows developer following a hefty fine earlier this month.
The 8,000 member-strong Hispalinux, which represents users and developers of the Linux operating system in Spain, said Microsoft had made it difficult for users of computers sold with its Windows 8 platform to switch to Linux and other operating systems.
Lawyer and Hispalinux head Jose Maria Lancho said he delivered the complaint to the Madrid office of the European Commission at 0900 GMT on Tuesday.
Red Hat and Canonical with their cowardly complicity will stand in the way of this action and potential lawsuit. SUSE. which is more or less just a Microsoft-funded proxy now, clearly played a role too, including a role of implementation (former Novell staff). █
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03.24.13
Posted in Antitrust, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Samsung at 9:59 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Image via SCALE
Summary: Dr. Matthew Garrett explains that not Microsoft’s imposition of UEFI but Samsung itself is to blame for the bad name Linux got from a recent technical cockup
“The problem with Samsung laptops bricking themselves turned out to be down to the UEFI variable store becoming more than 50% full and Samsung’s firmware being dreadful,” Matthew Garrett wrote after he had defended UEFI Restricted Boot. It is rather embarrassing for the UK that support for UEFI or Microsoft apologism comes from him. This news was noted by this London based site:
In a blog post describing the use of UEFI variables for debugging purposes, Matthew Garrett mentions that the memory for UEFI variables being filled up by more than fifty per cent is thought to be the reason why Samsung notebooks will no longer boot and may require repair in certain conditions – for example after starting some Linux distributions with UEFI, or after executing a Windows test program that stores information in the UEFI firmware. The Linux kernel developer and UEFI specialist investigated why even booting some Linux distributions can sometimes cause device failure and has written a Windows program that will brick certain Samsung notebooks.
Here is another British article:
Former Red Hatter Matthew Garrett, who cleared Linux’s name when the open-source kernel appeared to cause shiny new Samsung laptops to destroy themselves, has offered a survival guide to avoid similar catastrophes.
Nebula programmer Garrett this week warned that Samsung laptops may brick themselves if the computer’s UEFI firmware variable storage space is more than 50 per cent full.
The firmware is the first thing that executes when the computer is switched on; its job is to power up the hardware and start the operating system, be it a Linux distro, Windows, Mac OS X, BSD or alternatives. But if the Samsung UEFI firmware’s variable storage is less than half empty, apparently the machine will end up refusing to start. The trigger? “Writing a crash dump to the NVRAM [non-volatile random access memory],” Garrett said.
Let’s remind ourselves why UEFI was used there in the first place. It was Microsoft’s idea and it has given some GNU/Linux users a bricked computer. It gave many others a hard time and gave GNU/Linux a bad name. Microsoft executives must be laughing deep inside. Nobody filed a complaint against them. Once again they get away with it.
UEFI has become somewhat symbolic of the power Microsoft got over OEMs, even when people are fed up with the latest versions of Windows and OEMs explore their possibilities with GNU/Linux. To play by Microsoft’s rules is to handicap our own judgment and to perpetuate the power play of thuggish executives inside the software monopolist. █
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03.21.13
Posted in Antitrust, Microsoft, Vista 8, Windows at 4:59 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Anticompetitive elements of Microsoft’s latest OS version and why it’s worth minding
The fiasco around UEFI as an instrument of control through Restricted Boot is not benefiting from companies like SUSE or Canonical. Their complicity is noted to give the illusion that UEFI is openly accepted in the Linux world. It’s a lie. GNU/Linux users hate it. Here is a new press release from UEFI stakeholders:
The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) Forum, a world-class, non-profit industry standards body of leading technology companies that promotes firmware innovation by creating specifications that enable the continual evolution of platform technologies, is gaining momentum as use of UEFI specifications increases in Linux-based operating systems, such as Ubuntu 12.10, Fedora 18 and OpenSUSE 12.3.
UEFI specifications enable cross-functionality between devices, software and systems. By design, UEFI technology lends itself to utility and applicability across a range of platforms. Including UEFI Secure Boot in Linux-based distributions allows users to boot alternate operating systems without disabling UEFI Secure Boot. It also allows users to run the software they choose in the most secure and efficient way possible, promoting interoperability and technical innovation.
Nonsense and hogwash. This was published elsewhere too. What UEFI promotion basically does is it ensures that PCs come with Vista 8 lock-in and Microsoft control. This is clearly abusive, but not as abusive as Vista 8 itself. Will Hill shares a claim that “Vista 8 wipes chromium browser, scribus, AV and a host of other user installed software with the “optimize tool”. Vista H8 is optimized for Microsoft. Please boycott Microsoft and dump Windows.” (source)
Here is the full rant, which says:
The optimize your PC tool, which comes with Windows 8 is very dangerous.
I ran the tool earlier today, and without asking for confirmation it optimized my system by removing Google Chrome Browser, Avast! Antivirus, PDF Creator, LibreOffice 4, OCR Software by IRIS, HP Photosmart driver and applications, Scribus, Skype and Posterazor.
At the same time all icons except the desktop was removed from the Metro page. This optimizer tool is VERY dangerous!
The other day we saw this review of Vista 8 from a GNU/Linux user. He says:
It has been a few months since Windows 8 came out, so a lot of enthusiasts have messed around with it and found out what it’s all about. Many people have feared that Windows 8 would be an entirely new experience, and that our traditional workflow would be disrupted. Some people have even claimed that Windows 8 may cause them to abandon the operating system family and switch to Linux so that they can run up to date code without upgrading Windows. However, is any of this really the case?
See the comments. A lot of people are rightly pissed off these days because there is more pressure on people to pay for and use something they reject. Windows is losing market share, but not as quickly as it deserves.
Take a look at what happened in the Falkland Islands, a country with a farming/fishing population and few NATed PCs. There are only a few thousand people.
They seem to be leaving Windows, but that’s not the most important data point. As a whole, Windows is losing its grip, but Microsoft continues to use an illegal grip on this market. Just because Microsoft is going away doesn’t mean it should be allowed to get away with criminal behaviour as last noted in the previous post.
For Microsoft to say that OEMs actually want to embrace Vista 8 with UEFI lock-down would be a lie. OEMs already try to escape Vista 8 and this affects Intel’s x86 monopoly too. As Pogson put it last ight:
There goes the Wintel monopoly. It’s foundation is crumbling. Wintel has only one leg upon which to stand now, that restrictive EULA. Fortunately, that’s easy to get around. JUST DON’T BUY THEIR DAMNED OS!
Microsoft has made that difficult though. And it is becoming ever more aggressive in its hardware tying and applications bundling. Where is the antitrust action? █
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03.08.13
Posted in Antitrust, Europe, Microsoft at 10:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
J. P. Morgan assaulting photographers
Summary: Rebuttal to Microsoft spin which can be found embedded in many articles about the EU fine; reason for the fine is breaking the law and failing to obey penalties, not an attempt to increase competition in the Web browsers market
The fines which Microsoft is required to pay will hardly do much damage to Microsoft, which can always just take some more loans. Yes, the company has had some debt and not too long ago it publicly reported losses. Here is the news from yet another source:
The European Commission has fined Microsoft €561 million (£484 million/$732 million) for dropping the Browser Choice Screen in a Windows 7 update. This is the first time ever that the Commission has had to fine a company for non-compliance with an anti-trust commitment.
Well, a former Microsoft employee who keeps covering this saga with some Microsoft talking points embedded inside, does it yet again. Others who are soft on Microsoft say:
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, you know that open source browsers–especially Firefox and Google Chrome–have been leading browser innovation for a long time. That’s why it may seem unbelievable to some that Microsoft has just been hit with a whopping $731 million fine by European officials for allegedly not playing fair in the browser races. Microsoft agreed to terms with Europe on making browser choices available in Windows years ago….
As a little bit of background:
In December 2009, the Commission made Microsoft commit to address competition concerns in the browser market by ensuring that for the next five years it would offer users a choice screen of browsers so that they could make an “informed and unbiased” selection for their web browser. In March 2010, the Browser Choice Screen went live in Windows and users who had Internet Explorer set as their default, and users performing new installs, were presented with it. Between March and November 2010, 84 million browsers were downloaded.
As the OSI President explains:
EU punished Microsoft for its history, not its crime
The real reason the EU fined Microsoft (a relatively small sum) at all: Because the company is a scofflaw
A pro-Linux site added its views:
The EU Competition Commission, which levied a fine on Microsoft, had indicated long before the announcement what was in store, so “EU fines Microsoft” was expected. What we did not know was how much the fine was going to be.
[...]
Knowing Microsoft, you know that there was no glitch or technical error. It was just business as usual. In late 2012, Microsoft was notified by the EU Commission about the possibility of a fine, which based on agreement, could be as high as 10% of a year’s revenue. Based on Microsoft’s revenue in 2012, that could have been about $7.4bn USD. Instead, the commission settled for $731m USD, or 561m euros.
[...]
By the way, over here in our America, it’s still business as usual.
The main reason for writing this article is to highlight what effect, if any, Microsoft’s “technical error” has had on its Web browser’s market share in Europe and elsewhere. Did the “glitch” enable Internet Explorer to remain the dominant Web browser? And was it necessary to make Microsoft pay?
No, but this is irrelevant. As we explained repeatedly in prior years, this is punishment for crimes, not an attempt at corrective market intervention. Microsoft has PR talking points, and it is important to resist portraying the criminal as a victim. The victims here are many people/families who lost their jobs so that criminals high up in Microsoft can amass more billions of dollars (personal wealth) and plenty of power over the Internet, the broadest communications hub. █
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03.06.13
Posted in Antitrust, Microsoft at 8:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A $730,000,000 fine for Microsoft’s Web browser abuses and refusal to obey the law (or comply with penalties)
AS EXPECTED, a fine for Microsoft to pay for its abuses was to be announced today, as even the state media (in the United States) stated today:
On Wednesday, the European Union is expected to impose a large fine on Microsoft for failing to give users of the company’s Windows software a choice of Internet browsers. It would be the first time that European regulators had punished a company for neglecting to comply with the terms of an antitrust settlement, and it could signal a tougher approach to enforcing deals in other antitrust cases, including one involving Google.
Microsoft and officials at the European Commission reached an antitrust settlement in 2009 that called on the company to give Windows users in Europe a choice of Web browsers instead of pushing them to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. But Microsoft failed to offer users such a choice for more than a year — apparently without anyone at the company or the commission noticing.
The fine is now known, and it’s less than a billion dollars, far less than Microsoft has gained owing to this illegally-obtained monopoly:
Europe hits Microsoft with $730M fine over browser choice ‘error’
Microsoft was naughty and got caught, and now it has to pay handsomely. Here’s the rundown on what happened, why it mattered, and why it may not happen again in quite the same way.
Be prepared for Microsoft apologists and PR folks to vilify the European authorities over it. As a little bit of background, consider reading:
- Huge Fines for Microsoft Browser Offences
- Cablegate: European Commission Worried About Microsoft’s Browser Ballot Screen Being Inappropriate
- Microsoft’s Browser Ballot is Broken Again and Internet Explorer 8 is Critically Flawed
- Microsoft’s Ballot Screen is a Farce, Decoy
- A Ballot Screen is Not Justice, Internet Explorer Still Compromises Users’ PCs
- Microsoft Not Only Broke the Law in Europe, So Browser Ballot Should Become International
- Browser Ballot Critique
- Microsoft’s Fake “Choice” Campaign is Back
- Microsoft Claimed to be Cheating in Web Browsers Ballot
- Microsoft Loses Impact in the Web Despite Unfair Ballot Placements
- Given Choice, Customers Reject Microsoft
- Microsoft is Still Cheating in Browser Ballot — Claim
- Microsoft Does Not Obey the Law
As justice is too slow, the fine is too little and it’s too late. Just watch this decades-old antitrust case still going on, as Groklaw noted the other day:
A date for oral argument in the WordPerfect antitrust battle, Novell v Microsoft, has been set. It’s May 6, at 9 AM in Courtroom II at the Byron White US Courthouse in Denver, Colorado.
Yes, long after WordPerfect had been made virtually dead judges failed to rule indefinitely and no justice was ever restored. Microsoft has made many billions using the office suite monopoly it illegally obtained. And Novell has been robbed naked by Microsoft since then, rendering one side in this legal battle a lot less potent.
The moral of the story is, if you are a big corporation like Microsoft or Goldman Sachs, the cost of committing crimes is just a minor cost of doing business and it pays off in the long run. Crime is like an investment and nobody ever goes to jail if you are “too big (or groomed) to fail”. The following caricature (no attribution known) expresses this well. █
Update: Linking to reports like this one about the fine, the FSFE’s president says:
Microsoft just can’t avoid getting into trouble with competition watchdogs.
Today, the European Commission slapped the company with a fine of EUR 561 million (ca. USD 731 million) for breaching a 2009 settlement over the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows. Under this agreement, Microsoft promised to display a “browser choice” screen on Windows installs in Europe, inviting users to choose other browsers besides the company’s own program.
[...]
Faced with a blatant breach of the agreed settlement, the Commission had no choice but to act decisively. The alternative of doing nothing, or imposing a minimal token fine, would have made European competition regulators look like paper tigers.
As Microsoft has now, again, learned to its cost, the EC demands to be taken seriously on such things.
Yet while large in absolute terms, the fine amounts to 1% of the company’s revenue in 2012. There is a danger that companies of this size see regulatory interference as a mere cost of doing business, rather than as an impulse to mend their ways. To achieve this, more forceful measures may be necessary, such as excluding offenders from public procurement for a limited amount of time.
A punishment “such as excluding offenders from public procurement for a limited amount of time” may be an interesting option, but still, it is too soft on people who knowingly abuse the law. Why not suggest jail terms? Is it too radical a suggestion to put white-collar criminals in prison in the age of rampant financial abuses and illicit wars? Have we lost a sense of moral by putting only poor people in jail (class incarceration)?
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03.05.13
Posted in Antitrust, Europe, Microsoft at 12:26 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Critique of the “too little, too late” action that addresses Microsoft’s abuses against the Web
So Microsoft is engaging in anticompetitive behaviour again. A petition has been set up to protest UEFI restricted boot, but not many people are signing it because of low awareness. Something is clearly not working because Microsoft can do almost anything it wishes without facing consequences, at least not immediately. A better regulatory system is urgently needed; it’s the same in the financial sector.
As part of a story that was mentioned here recently, we wish to mention this summary of 4 sources about Microsoft antitrust:
Unnamed sources are saying that the EU plans to levy fines against Microsoft, perhaps before the end of March. The EU said Microsoft recently failed to comply with a settlement that required it to offer EU consumers a choice of browsers.
Foo Yun Chee with Reuters first broke the story, reporting, “EU competition regulators plan to fine Microsoft Corp before the end of March in a case tied to the U.S. software giant’s antitrust battle in Europe more than a decade ago, three people familiar with the matter said on Thursday…. ‘The Commission is planning to fine Microsoft before the Easter break,’ one of the sources said, adding that it is possible that procedural issues could push back the decision.”
All Things D’s John Paczkowski confirmed the report, writing, “And sources familiar with the matter have confirmed to AllThingsD that this is indeed the case at this time. No word yet on the size of the fine, but given EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia’s public threats over the misstep, penalties could be severe. Whatever they are, sources say the EC will likely announce them sometime in March.”
Generally speaking, purely financial (and belated) penalty is not the answer; they should send people to prison, prevent anticompetitive action when it happens, make remedy by forcing the firing of particular members of staff, etc. A writer in Forbes said, “Microsoft To Be Fined By The EU Again? And The Problem With Governments Being Able To Fine Companies” (no link on purpose).
He said: “Yes, we do need to have some means of stopping companies breaking the law and money seems the best way to do it.”
A more immediate penalty would have worked better. Many people lost their jobs when Microsoft did its crimes. They’ll never get justice. █
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