Posted on 12/19/2007 9:56:55 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
fyi
Wait a minute. We’re getting down to the wire on the decision to extend the order and the amount of information required is almost doubled within a month when this has been ongoing for years. Sounds like somebody is playing dirty to me.
Funny, in the end this might actually help Microsoft.
That this is so difficult shows that Microsoft never fully documented their APIs at all. Now their internal people will have them to work with.
ROFL!
Correct -- and that's a good thing. Maybe they won't b!tch it up so badly if they know where they're aiming for. Maybe.
Of course, this line from the article is bullcrap:
> ...the aim of making its market-dominating software products more compatible with those of competitors.
No, documenting the APIs doesn't "make software products more compatible with competition" -- that would require changing the software products. I don't think anybody is requiring changes in the code, and this is not a source release requirement. Microsoft must DOCUMENT how to call functions, and only at a fairly high level, too. What's the big freakin' deal?
Oh I know. Microsoft is embarrassed to have to show the competition how lame, redundant, spurious, confused, and bogus its APIs really are...
The claim is that Microsoft has lots of APIs that nobody else knows about. Thus their products can use the APIs to get better functionality than the competition. So if Microsoft makes monopoly-power Client A and someone else makes Server B, Microsoft will have an unfair advantage when they release Server C that functions better with A than B does because it uses the secret APIs (and any variation on that theme).
Ah, yes... "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run." The SOBs never change.
Nor do their apologists. ;-)
Of course, they're increasingly subtle about it these days. Microsoft's compatibility testing is legendary, and deserves praise, Vista notwithstanding.
OTOH, it's perfectly clear that WHEN THEY WANT TO DO SO, they cut the competition off at the knees using their proprietary secret advantage.
A variation of this allegation has been made that doesn't even involve Microsoft apps. Say third party vendor X agrees not to sell a Linux version of their app. Then they are given access to the "secret" calls that make their Windows product work better than one from some other less cooperative vendor who is forced to code to the published API.
I remember when NT code was leaked. People who reviewed it said it was full of application-specific hacks. Good that they do this for compatibility, bad that they do it for stability and clean code. But they were in a corner -- if an app didn't work, people blamed the OS instead of the app. Unfortunately the solution was a PR one, not a technical one.
But I do remember something about the early days of the browser wars, where Microsoft shipped a modified DLL with a version of IE that was also required by Netscape, and the new DLL broke Netscape.
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