FTC opens wide ranging investigation into Microsoft and it's practices
- Thread starter Bryank75
- Start date
Wouldn't it be super funny if the FTC managed to reverse the Activision Blizzard acquisition after all these years?
Even though, I don't think anything will come from it. I'm definitely happy and ready to throw a party 
It'll get squashed once Trump's appointee replaced Lina Khan but this is long overdue.
Sweet! But the next administration probably isn’t going to follow through since Microsoft is buddy buddy with the government especially with the department of defense and intelligence services. They should have started this 2 yrs ago.
It’s all a waste of time. Microsoft can donate money to politicians, and any legal problem in the US will disappear. Bribery is legal here.
We don’t know who trumps ftc head is yet do we? It’s not like Trump and big tech have gotten along in the past so I wouldn’t assume his ftc won’t stay vigilant against big tech.
OP
OP
Lol glad all my repeating posts about MS being bribing, shilling, corrupt fucks isnt unwarranted
Ill keep posting this:
I have some more for later lol
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23342664/VRG_Illo_5102_Kristen_Radtke_Micosoft_Bribe.jpg)
www.theverge.com
www.datacenterdynamics.com
theweek.com
Did Microsoft bribe foreign governments for software deals?
The tech giant is under investigation for allegedly giving kickbacks to overseas officials
theweek.com theweek.com
Microsoft licensing corruption scandal - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
From a Linux reddit post - not mine
“””
The sordid history of Microsoft or alternatively, why people are still sceptical.
So. I thought of this post when I saw a couple of the posts on the front page about Microsoft. One was RMS attacking MS, and one was about Microsoft joining the open source initiative. And it struck me that people might actually not know the sheer scope of Microsofts scummy behaviour over the years. Some asked for clarifications and others for sources for claims about these things. So I figured I'd do people a favour and collect as much of Microsofts bad behaviour as I can. So people can have some semblance of understanding as to why people don't quite trust them.
We'll start with the easiest to find, the "Halloween Documents". The Halloween Documents were internal memos leaked to Eric S. Raymond in 1998, which is pretty much dinosaur age in internet years. [Here's the Wikipedia link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents)
Some notable things to take away from it:
- Document I revealed that "FUD" (spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt) was a traditional Microsoft marketing strategy, acknowledged and understood internally
- Document I suggests that one reason that open source projects have been able to enter server market is its use of standardized protocols. The document then suggests that this can be stopped by "extending these protocols and developing new protocols" and "de-commoditize protocols & applications." This policy has been nicknamed "embrace, extend, extinguish". Document I also suggests that open source software "is long-term credible ... FUD tactics can not be used to combat it," and "Recent case studies (the Internet) provide very dramatic evidence ... that commercial quality can be achieved / exceeded by OSS projects."
(Quick sidenote: Microsoft knew in 1998 that they needed something else to fight open source.)
- An e-mail from consultant Mike Anderer to SCO Group's Chris Sontag, also known as Halloween X: Follow The Money. The document describes, among other points, Microsoft's channeling of US$86 (equivalent to $109.05 in 2016) million to SCO.
Now, I'm going to bring up another thing, which is the Sun vs Microsoft lawsuit regarding Java. What happened was that there was an actual Microsoft implementation of Java that shipped with Windows, originally made so that IE3 could run Java applets. However, Microsoft tried to extend Java with proprietary extensions making Suns "write once ~~debug~~ run everywhere" claim broken. They settled this case after some time in court, but it was referenced in the antitrust trial. Here's some information from that:
- In short, Microsoft feared and sought to impede the development of network effects that cross-platform technology like Netscape Navigator and Java might enjoy and use to challenge Microsoft's monopoly. Another internal Microsoft document indicates that the plan was not simply to blunt Java/browser cross-platform momentum, but to destroy the cross-platform threat entirely, with the "Strategic Objective" described as to "Kill cross-platform Java by grow[ing] the polluted Java market."
[Source from Wikipedia regarding Microsoft Java](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine)
And now, some fun fact from the antitrust trial.
- Intel Vice-President Steven McGeady, called as a witness, quoted Paul Maritz, a senior Microsoft vice president, as having stated an intention to "extinguish" and "smother" rival Netscape Communications Corporation and to "cut off Netscape's air supply" by giving away a clone of Netscape's flagship product for free
- Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued his findings of fact on November 5, 1999, which stated that Microsoft's dominance of the x86-based personal computer operating systems market constituted a monopoly, and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to that monopoly, including Apple, Java, Netscape, Lotus Software, RealNetworks, Linux, and others.
- Judge Jackson's response to this was that Microsoft's conduct itself was the cause of any "perceived bias"; Microsoft executives had, according to him, "proved, time and time again, to be inaccurate, misleading, evasive, and transparently false. ... Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect. It is also a company whose senior management is not averse to offering specious testimony to support spurious defenses to claims of its wrongdoing."
Remember this when talking about Bill Gates: He's a criminal mastermind, running a mobster-like organization. His ill-gotten gain is the result of systematic criminal behaviour from him and his company. While he's of course not at Microsoft today, he built the corporate culture there. [Wikipedia source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.)
They also tried to shaft another contractual partner. They licensed a browser from Spyglass which became Internet Explorer. Now, at this point in time, usually browsers cost money. Netscape Navigator cost money, and so did most others. In their contract with Spyglass for IE they agreed that Microsoft would pay a percentage of the sales from IE to Spyglass. However, Microsoft then gave away IE for free with Windows(You know, "cutting off the air supply" to Netscape) and then claimed they didn't have to pay royalties because they were giving it away. A technicality? Maybe. Legal? Uncertain. Immoral? Most definitively. [They settled before it ever made to court though.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyglass,_Inc.)
In earlier days, they also obfuscated API access to try and hamper both other versions of DOS and WordPerfect. Unfortunately the antitrust lawsuit between Novell and Microsoft got dismissed in 2012. There were several problems with DR-DOS and WordPerfect on MS-DOS and Windows. The jury is still out on whether or not it was intentional, but I'll leave this quote from Jim Allchin here:
- Microsoft Co-President Jim Allchin stated in a memo, "If you're going to kill someone there isn't much reason to get all worked up about it and angry. Any discussions beforehand are a waste of time. We need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger."
- Microsoft Senior Vice President Brad Silverberg later sent another memo, stating: "What the [user] is supposed to do is feel uncomfortable, and when he has bugs, suspect that the problem is DR-DOS and then go out to buy MS-DOS."
This is a lot of history though, and I understand that people don't automatically believe this is the case today. However, I will make a case that this kind of thinking and corporate culture breeds the same type of people. It's not like Microsoft was made up of upstanding people and just a few bad eggs, it was probably the other way around.
But then, let's take a look at "Get The Facts", which is a bit newer, only 13 years old. It was Microsoft using Microsoft-funded "studies" claiming that Linux was insecure, it was bad for servers, unstable, no commercial support etc. This is the one I remember most of myself, because everywhere I went I got that incredibly annoying "London Stock Exchange uses Microsoft Windows"-ad. They lied about the security even if you followed their own lax standards for themselves. It was a smear campaign, hilariously though, the LSE switched to Linux when Accenture and Microsoft brought them down in flames. [I managed to find a youtube video of a "Get The Facts" commercial.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwSM55bsCrM)
[And here's an example of the "Highly Reliable Times"](http://www.microsoft.com/library/media/1033/windowsserver/facts/graphics/images/ncsoftbanner.jpg)
This campaign didn't work either. Both SUSE and RH kept going strong, and the community distributions as well. So the next path of attack was patents. They claimed Linux breached 235 patents. Weirdly specific number. But oddly, they were never more specific than numbers:
- The numbers and locations of the alleged violations break down as follows: 42 violations within the Linux kernel itself, 65 within the "Linux GUI," though the article doesn't specify whether these infringements apply to one GUI or apply equally to all the Linux desktop environments. OpenOffice allegedly violates an additional 45 patents, e-mail programs infringe on another 15 patents, and an unspecified array of "other" OSS programs violate a further 68 patents.
You will notice though, that they never said **which** patents. Just the number. Unfortunately, Novell entered into a patent agreement with Microsoft about these, and gave them some extra ammunition. Luckily, Red Hat wasn't having anything of it, and offered patent protection to their customers.
Lastly, I almost didn't want to mention it, because I hate those fuckers that started this lawsuit so incredibly much. But Microsofts bullshit detector had to have been non-working when they funded the SCO lawsuit, they probably programmed it themselves. Either way, they sent upwards of 50$ million dollars to the criminal scumbags at SCO. Funding what amounted to the most pointless lawsuit ever. First of all, there was no copyright infringement, secondly, SCO didn't even own the copyright they were suing about. It got into a petty contract dispute with IBM in the end, and IBM is not one to be taken to the cleaners by legal trolls.
What I am saying there though, is not that Microsoft can't change. And not that they don't "love" open source and Linux. But a few good moves does not erase a lifetime of criminal and unethical behaviour. So when you want to sling insults at someone being sceptical of Microsofts intentions, keep this quote in mind:
- "We need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger."
If it doesn't give you even a little bit of a chill, then I put it to you that you didn't fully understand the quote.
EDIT: I just realized I forgot loads of shit. Secure boot, OOXML ISO corruption, claiming open source as a target for terrorists, conspiring with NSA for surveillance, and just a funny bit: [They photoshopped a black man white, but forgot his hands](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/26/microsofts-ad-in-poland-p_n_269366.”””””
Ill keep posting this:
I have some more for later lol
Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes, whistleblower alleges
“I don’t want you to be a blocker,” his manager told him.
www.theverge.com
Microsoft accused of spending hundreds of millions on bribes to win business deals
Whistleblower alleges culture of corruption in Middle East and Africa
www.datacenterdynamics.com
theweek.com
Did Microsoft bribe foreign governments for software deals?
The tech giant is under investigation for allegedly giving kickbacks to overseas officials
theweek.com theweek.com
Microsoft licensing corruption scandal - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
From a Linux reddit post - not mine
“””
The sordid history of Microsoft or alternatively, why people are still sceptical.
So. I thought of this post when I saw a couple of the posts on the front page about Microsoft. One was RMS attacking MS, and one was about Microsoft joining the open source initiative. And it struck me that people might actually not know the sheer scope of Microsofts scummy behaviour over the years. Some asked for clarifications and others for sources for claims about these things. So I figured I'd do people a favour and collect as much of Microsofts bad behaviour as I can. So people can have some semblance of understanding as to why people don't quite trust them.
We'll start with the easiest to find, the "Halloween Documents". The Halloween Documents were internal memos leaked to Eric S. Raymond in 1998, which is pretty much dinosaur age in internet years. [Here's the Wikipedia link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents)
Some notable things to take away from it:
- Document I revealed that "FUD" (spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt) was a traditional Microsoft marketing strategy, acknowledged and understood internally
- Document I suggests that one reason that open source projects have been able to enter server market is its use of standardized protocols. The document then suggests that this can be stopped by "extending these protocols and developing new protocols" and "de-commoditize protocols & applications." This policy has been nicknamed "embrace, extend, extinguish". Document I also suggests that open source software "is long-term credible ... FUD tactics can not be used to combat it," and "Recent case studies (the Internet) provide very dramatic evidence ... that commercial quality can be achieved / exceeded by OSS projects."
(Quick sidenote: Microsoft knew in 1998 that they needed something else to fight open source.)
- An e-mail from consultant Mike Anderer to SCO Group's Chris Sontag, also known as Halloween X: Follow The Money. The document describes, among other points, Microsoft's channeling of US$86 (equivalent to $109.05 in 2016) million to SCO.
Now, I'm going to bring up another thing, which is the Sun vs Microsoft lawsuit regarding Java. What happened was that there was an actual Microsoft implementation of Java that shipped with Windows, originally made so that IE3 could run Java applets. However, Microsoft tried to extend Java with proprietary extensions making Suns "write once ~~debug~~ run everywhere" claim broken. They settled this case after some time in court, but it was referenced in the antitrust trial. Here's some information from that:
- In short, Microsoft feared and sought to impede the development of network effects that cross-platform technology like Netscape Navigator and Java might enjoy and use to challenge Microsoft's monopoly. Another internal Microsoft document indicates that the plan was not simply to blunt Java/browser cross-platform momentum, but to destroy the cross-platform threat entirely, with the "Strategic Objective" described as to "Kill cross-platform Java by grow[ing] the polluted Java market."
[Source from Wikipedia regarding Microsoft Java](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine)
And now, some fun fact from the antitrust trial.
- Intel Vice-President Steven McGeady, called as a witness, quoted Paul Maritz, a senior Microsoft vice president, as having stated an intention to "extinguish" and "smother" rival Netscape Communications Corporation and to "cut off Netscape's air supply" by giving away a clone of Netscape's flagship product for free
- Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued his findings of fact on November 5, 1999, which stated that Microsoft's dominance of the x86-based personal computer operating systems market constituted a monopoly, and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to that monopoly, including Apple, Java, Netscape, Lotus Software, RealNetworks, Linux, and others.
- Judge Jackson's response to this was that Microsoft's conduct itself was the cause of any "perceived bias"; Microsoft executives had, according to him, "proved, time and time again, to be inaccurate, misleading, evasive, and transparently false. ... Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect. It is also a company whose senior management is not averse to offering specious testimony to support spurious defenses to claims of its wrongdoing."
Remember this when talking about Bill Gates: He's a criminal mastermind, running a mobster-like organization. His ill-gotten gain is the result of systematic criminal behaviour from him and his company. While he's of course not at Microsoft today, he built the corporate culture there. [Wikipedia source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.)
They also tried to shaft another contractual partner. They licensed a browser from Spyglass which became Internet Explorer. Now, at this point in time, usually browsers cost money. Netscape Navigator cost money, and so did most others. In their contract with Spyglass for IE they agreed that Microsoft would pay a percentage of the sales from IE to Spyglass. However, Microsoft then gave away IE for free with Windows(You know, "cutting off the air supply" to Netscape) and then claimed they didn't have to pay royalties because they were giving it away. A technicality? Maybe. Legal? Uncertain. Immoral? Most definitively. [They settled before it ever made to court though.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyglass,_Inc.)
In earlier days, they also obfuscated API access to try and hamper both other versions of DOS and WordPerfect. Unfortunately the antitrust lawsuit between Novell and Microsoft got dismissed in 2012. There were several problems with DR-DOS and WordPerfect on MS-DOS and Windows. The jury is still out on whether or not it was intentional, but I'll leave this quote from Jim Allchin here:
- Microsoft Co-President Jim Allchin stated in a memo, "If you're going to kill someone there isn't much reason to get all worked up about it and angry. Any discussions beforehand are a waste of time. We need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger."
- Microsoft Senior Vice President Brad Silverberg later sent another memo, stating: "What the [user] is supposed to do is feel uncomfortable, and when he has bugs, suspect that the problem is DR-DOS and then go out to buy MS-DOS."
This is a lot of history though, and I understand that people don't automatically believe this is the case today. However, I will make a case that this kind of thinking and corporate culture breeds the same type of people. It's not like Microsoft was made up of upstanding people and just a few bad eggs, it was probably the other way around.
But then, let's take a look at "Get The Facts", which is a bit newer, only 13 years old. It was Microsoft using Microsoft-funded "studies" claiming that Linux was insecure, it was bad for servers, unstable, no commercial support etc. This is the one I remember most of myself, because everywhere I went I got that incredibly annoying "London Stock Exchange uses Microsoft Windows"-ad. They lied about the security even if you followed their own lax standards for themselves. It was a smear campaign, hilariously though, the LSE switched to Linux when Accenture and Microsoft brought them down in flames. [I managed to find a youtube video of a "Get The Facts" commercial.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwSM55bsCrM)
[And here's an example of the "Highly Reliable Times"](http://www.microsoft.com/library/media/1033/windowsserver/facts/graphics/images/ncsoftbanner.jpg)
This campaign didn't work either. Both SUSE and RH kept going strong, and the community distributions as well. So the next path of attack was patents. They claimed Linux breached 235 patents. Weirdly specific number. But oddly, they were never more specific than numbers:
- The numbers and locations of the alleged violations break down as follows: 42 violations within the Linux kernel itself, 65 within the "Linux GUI," though the article doesn't specify whether these infringements apply to one GUI or apply equally to all the Linux desktop environments. OpenOffice allegedly violates an additional 45 patents, e-mail programs infringe on another 15 patents, and an unspecified array of "other" OSS programs violate a further 68 patents.
You will notice though, that they never said **which** patents. Just the number. Unfortunately, Novell entered into a patent agreement with Microsoft about these, and gave them some extra ammunition. Luckily, Red Hat wasn't having anything of it, and offered patent protection to their customers.
Lastly, I almost didn't want to mention it, because I hate those fuckers that started this lawsuit so incredibly much. But Microsofts bullshit detector had to have been non-working when they funded the SCO lawsuit, they probably programmed it themselves. Either way, they sent upwards of 50$ million dollars to the criminal scumbags at SCO. Funding what amounted to the most pointless lawsuit ever. First of all, there was no copyright infringement, secondly, SCO didn't even own the copyright they were suing about. It got into a petty contract dispute with IBM in the end, and IBM is not one to be taken to the cleaners by legal trolls.
What I am saying there though, is not that Microsoft can't change. And not that they don't "love" open source and Linux. But a few good moves does not erase a lifetime of criminal and unethical behaviour. So when you want to sling insults at someone being sceptical of Microsofts intentions, keep this quote in mind:
- "We need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger."
If it doesn't give you even a little bit of a chill, then I put it to you that you didn't fully understand the quote.
EDIT: I just realized I forgot loads of shit. Secure boot, OOXML ISO corruption, claiming open source as a target for terrorists, conspiring with NSA for surveillance, and just a funny bit: [They photoshopped a black man white, but forgot his hands](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/26/microsofts-ad-in-poland-p_n_269366.”””””
Unfortunately your right
But there not meant to do it lol
Commitment to Anti-Corruption and Anti-Bribery | Microsoft Legal
Learn about our commitment to anti-corruption and anti-bribery. Microsoft runs on trust and does not tolerate violations of our standards and policies.
www.microsoft.com
This thread still doesn't have a sony too comment.
Last edited:
OP
OP
