Microsoft Makes Massachusetts Mad

by Jeff Tash, ITscout

Massachusetts -- the Bay State -- one of the original thirteen colonies -- where the Pilgrims landed -- home of the Red Sox, the Celtics, the Bruins, the Patriots known far and wide for Harvard, Cape Cod, Tanglewood, baked beans, clam chowdah -- and many more marvelous miraculous memorabilia -- has always been an oddity. Its contributions to America and the world have forever been way out of proportion to its tiny size. But, Massachusetts has also always been a feisty, rebellious, little revolutionary place. After all, it was the Boston Tea Party that first ignited the spark that led to the American Revolution. Back in 1775, it was the Massachusetts Minuteman militia in Lexington and Concord who fired the “shot heard round the world.” Throughout the 19th century, it was Massachusetts which led the movement to abolish slavery in America. Almost a hundred years later, it was Massachusetts that became the first and only state to ever send a non-WASP favorite son to the White House, JFK. Two administrations after Kennedy, back during Nixon’s Watergate scandal, the citizens of the Commonwealth proudly displayed bumper stickers that read, “Don’t blame me -- I'm from Massachusetts,” referring to its status as the only state that cast its electoral votes for George McGovern. Most recently, it is Massachusetts, and Massachusetts alone, who adamantly has refused to settle its antitrust litigation against Microsoft

If you recall, Microsoft was found guilty of violating antitrust laws in the original decision handed down by Judge Thomas Jackson in the U.S. Department of Justice v. Microsoft lawsuit. Judge Jackson had ordered the breakup of the company into two parts. One half was to become the Windows monopoly while the other half was supposed to be split off into an Office monopoly. Had this ruling not been overturned, do you suppose Microsoft Office would be running on Linux desktops today? One can only imagine what impact that might have had on the Windows operating system monopoly.

Windows’ monopoly is still exclusively a desktop phenomenon. The server marketplace has lots of competitors, especially coming from Linux vendors. But, Microsoft has set its sights on becoming a monopoly on the server side too. It bundles software into its operating system, like its web server and application server. Heaven forbid Microsoft ever consider offering those products, or others like its SQL Server DBMS, on any platform other than Windows.

In its pursuit of attaining yet another monopoly, Microsoft is coming after Linux with all its guns a blazing. Chutzpah, a Yiddish word usually defined anecdotally by the story of a man who kills both his parents and then pleads for mercy because he's an orphan, is a term many open source advocates feel applies to Microsoft’s ‘Get the Facts on Windows’ advertising campaign. These anti-Linux attack ads claim that Windows is more cost-effective and has a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) than the “free” Linux open source operating system. One of the most appealing aspects of Linux, if you’re an IT manager, is that you don’t have to pay a separate license fee for each and every copy running on multiple servers in a distributed computing environment. It will be interesting to see how successful Microsoft is in persuading people that Windows, which requires a separate paid license for every box, is cheaper than Linux.

Sometimes Microsoft’s grab for power, aggressively promoting its own monopoly, borders on the absurd. For example, Microsoft has currently applied for patents seeking to prevent other applications from interpreting the XML dialect Office uses to describe and organize information in documents. One can only hope these patents will not be accepted.

Microsoft’s monopolistic behavior is not always limited to its operating systems and office automation suites. For instance, Microsoft has just published a detailed critique of the Object Management Group’s (OMG) Model Driven Architecture (MDA) and Meta-Object Facility (MOF). MDA and MOF are critical industry standards intended to help move forward the field of enterprise IT automation -- IT automating itself. This emerging discipline is often referred to as either ITSM (IT Systems Management) or ERP4IT (Enterprise Resource Planning for IT). The obvious question is whether Microsoft’s disdain is valid, or simply another case of Microsoft FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) intended to legitimize why Microsoft, once again, cannot support an open standard agreed upon by the rest of the IT industry.

Is Microsoft guilty of violating antitrust laws? I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer. But I’ve never heard anyone dispute the guilty findings of Judge Jackson, only his proposed remedy. I personally tend to believe that the final settlement reached between Microsoft and DOJ (and eventually accepted by all the states except Massachusetts) was little more than a slap on the wrist. I must admit I tend to trust the Attorney General of Massachusetts more than John Ashcroft. From my vantage point, I’d say that since the case was settled, Microsoft has changed precious little in its corporate behavior. Watch out though. Massachusetts may be tiny, but ultimately it could win out by proving itself to be right. It won’t be the first time. I’m proud to call this place my home.