Talk:Microsoft Dirty Tricks history

From Grokdoc

lkcl added the following remark on 6 Feb 2007
(lkcl6feb2007: not true as a statement, and also not true to the CLI developers (whom i spoke to in 1998) goals which are to have CLI development environments and bindings for every common programming language. see iron python and mono. someone rewrite this paragraph to conform to wikipedia guidelines! this statement added here not to the discussion page so that people reading it are aware of the problems with this paragraph)

I think there is a misunderstanding. First, the text did not refer to the design of CLI/C#, but to the standardization effort. The standard is only a subset of what is implemented by MS. Moreover, there are a lot of legal pitfalls attached to the standard. As a result, MS can use programs developed for mono (good), but mono cannot run programs developed on MS (except when extreme caution is taken). The recent patent threats against Mono are evidence of the patent quicksand surrounding C#/CLI. Another difference with Java that is notworthy is that Sun tried to get good Java implementations on every platform. MS not only did NOT supply good implementations for *nix, they actually always threaten those who do code for mono with patent suits. I have added some qualifications to the text
--Winter 06:53, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

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I think the page will alreaedy be too long if we restrict ourselves to standards questions. If we add all the other criminal activity of MS, we could open up a new site (but I think GL MS-in-the-courts page already covers a lot of it) So if you like, you could start another page with this type of information.--Winter 02:24, 7 February 2007 (EST)

I don't know if it belongs here, but what about Microsoft's IP theft?

Internet Explorer was trademarked, and MS knew about it but released their browser under that name anyway:

http://www.exn.ca/Stories/1998/07/03/59.asp

Synet Inc., a small Internet-related company which was based in Chicago's northwest suburbs, claimed it began using the term Internet Explorer in 1994, a year before Microsoft began marketing its World Wide Web browser with the same name. Synet had received a trademark for the name in the state of Illinois, and filed for both Illinois and US trademarks a month before Microsoft's Internet Explorer hit the market.

Rana said he declined a $75,000 offer from Microsoft in 1995.

But since the case was filed, Synet had to file for Chapter 11 protection from its creditors, debt partly to blame on mounting legal fees in the Microsoft case, according to Rana.

But in court, Microsoft did not argue the name was Microsoft's, taking the tack that the name is not a brand name at all, and that anyone can use it freely.

And their floppy disc compression which duplicated what stacker did:

http://www.vaxxine.com/lawyers/articles/stac.html

for patent infringement.

I don't think it was dishonest statistics

Thanks for citing my article on the Office Open XML stuff, but I disagree with the statement that I was "not quite honest about the statistics" - there is absolutely nothing dishonest about the statistics - I based the math exactly on what Rick Schaut actually said. I suppose my ironic intent wasn't quite as obvious as I originally thought, but that isn't dishonest, nor is it bad math. Take care, Andrew Shebanow

Removed. Thanks for warning me.

MSMPEG-4

Someone familiar with the history should do a write-up of MPEG-4 and MS' sort of but not quite compatible MSMPEG4v1/2/3, their insistence on using asf as container, and their eventual support of ISO-Mpeg4 (but only baseline profile).