Bonum Certa Men Certa

Reader's Article: What Makes Microsoft's Business Unethical

[Skip to the end for the Executive Summary]

With the further recent action taken against Microsoft by the EU antitrust investigators - who Microsoft "supporters" denounce as "scum", for having the audacity to enforce the law against these gangsters, it seems the nature of Microsoft's unethical business practises needs to be spelled out in the simplest terms, so that these "supporters" might finally understand the "problem".



“They spread lies that Free Software alternatives to their software is "unamerican" and "communist" in nature...”I'll omit any arguments relating to proprietary licensing, since I think I've already covered that quite adequately elsewhere, so instead I'll just concentrate on how Microsoft runs its business in general, regardless of the nature of the "product".

So here's a simple breakdown:



“Businesses should provide products, then advertise those products honestly, and allow consumers to choose whether or not they like them.”For those who may be having difficulty conceiving of alternative business methods to the above (i.e. the morally deficient thugs) let me give you a clue. Businesses should provide products, then advertise those products honestly, and allow consumers to choose whether or not they like them. Products should sell on their own merit, and not rely on devices such as deception and sabotage to guarantee sales. The former is a Free Market Economy, the latter is a bunch of animals ripping each other to pieces out of greed. Let's be humans, not animals. Microsoft needs to be caged or put down, and it's the European Commission's job to do it, since the DOJ seems to have relinquished the task out of a misguided sense of loyalty ("unamerican"). If aspiring to gangsterism is what it means to be "American", then I'll proudly count myself as one of the "EU scum", a Free Thinker, and a Free Software advocate.

Executive summary for the attention-deficient:



Channel and Partner racketeering (market saturation of Windows). Lock-in dependencies on proprietary software and standards. Corporate guerilla terrorism using false advertising and shills. Thuggish "enforcement" using bribery, blackmail and sabotage.

The four walls of Microsoft's monopoly.

Footnote: I wonder if Miguel de Icaza will ever be bold enough to actually state his position on these antitrust investigations and rulings against his friends in Redmond. Well that might be a bit tricky, because he'd either have to condemn or condone their criminal behaviour, and thus take one of those dreaded "black or white" positions that he's so terrified of. Quite a dilemma, but I think the dilemma is not so much in the choice, as in exposing his true nature - officially that is.

Article by Slated.

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