Nochex open letter disses eBay and bans

[nichomach]

OK, last point first; can you tell the difference between a company with 95% market share and one with 5%? Well, that's the difference between a company that has a monopoly and one that doesn't.

IE is now an inseparable part of Windows because that's what MS decided to make it, and that had nothing to do with functionality. ActiveX has nothing to do with processing HTML; it's an engine for processing executable code, like the Java virtual machine. That's a minor point, however - yes it's impossible to get rid of IE, but that's not because IE does anything for Windows that couldn't have been done another way, and perhaps better; it's because MS wanted to make the argument in court that IE was an integral part of Windows, and therefore could not be stripped out without breaking Windows. Same with Media Player, although the EC have quite rightly stuck two fingers up at that.

Bundling and tying ARE anticompetitive when you're a monopoly player; it denies other companies equal access to the market. When you plug in your shiny new Dell, you have IE installed which takes you to MSN, where you can find stuff to play in Windows Media format on Windows Media Player...and you don't think that freezes competitor products out from the start? Sure, you can download alternatives, but you are less likely to by a long way, and you can't get rid of the stuff that MS decided to integrate. That's anticompetitive.

Look at it this way; say you don't like IE and WMP. You think they are insecure, so you want to use alternatives. You download Firefox, and maybe start using Realplayer or something. Now you don't have to worry about IE and WMP security anymore, right? Wrong, because purely to secure a commercial advantage MS have decreed that both must be so tightly woven into Windows that you'll still have the same vulns and still have to download the same patches even though you never want to use the damned applications.

[Spud1]

Ok we are going to have to agree to disagree here I think

Apple have a monopoly on running OS's on their hardware don't they? Using the above logic, if you buy a mac you get OSX on it. Sure you can run linux on it if you want, but almost everyone will stick with OSX, yes? [NB talking about PPC based macs here, x86 is a different kettle of fish]

Just because they are smaller they are exempt? hmm ok I can accept that if you view apple as being in the same market as windows that this could be true, although surely anti-competitive practices don't rely on how big your company is.

With respect to the activeX thing - I wasn't talking about activeX in general, I was specifically talking about a component of it that requires IE to be installed, and is used extensivly in many 3rd party applications (I have used it myself recently). I don't think that Microsoft deliberately integrated IE in windows purely to stop competitors - it simply makes logical sense. If you have some code that can deal with multiple things, why not re-use it elsewhere in the system? It may not be the best thing for the job, but if it works, and keeps development costs down then of course they will do it.

It's a fair point about when you buy, say a dell and what you explained happens, but that doesnt mean microsoft should stop bundling WMP and MSN with windows, just that it shouldnt be automatically set up to do such things..

But like I say we will have to agree to disagree here

[Xaneden]

Bundling and tying ARE anticompetitive when you're a monopoly player; it denies other companies equal access to the market. When you plug in your shiny new Dell, you have IE installed which takes you to MSN, where you can find stuff to play in Windows Media format on Windows Media Player...and you don't think that freezes competitor products out from the start? Sure, you can download alternatives, but you are less likely to by a long way, and you can't get rid of the stuff that MS decided to integrate. That's anticompetitive.

Very true, but in fairness, is Johnny No-Experience going to appreciate that simple streamlined start, or having to venture out and find software he doesn't have a clue how to use, or indeed, how to get hold of? We have to remember that Microsoft is after all selling a product, and they can't keep giving up their real-estate to give other companies the chance of invading their territory. Although as a primarily enthusiasts forum, most of us know what we like to use and how to do it, the majority of users do not, and rely on what's easily available to them; having such features/programs available from the start is useful to them.

Personally, I think with Vista's psuedo-compartmentalisation of what were previously 'key' components of windows, the option to install WMP etc during installation (and not with such tools as nLite) would appease many parties. I for one, as a user of an open source media player, would appreciate the ability to remove Windows Media Player from the start in a simple fashion, thus allowing me to install WMP Alternative or similar software. In doing this, the more experienced users with their own preferences can pick and choose as they wish, whilst new computer users and inexperienced users can have the features they want available from the start.

[dangel]

IE is now an inseparable part of Windows because that's what MS decided to make it, and that had nothing to do with functionality. ActiveX has nothing to do with processing HTML; it's an engine for processing executable code, like the Java virtual machine.

Not entirely true - it's used throughout explorer itself (the shell) for example and in itself is embeddable which can be quite useful to us poor devs. The problem is, MS want to leverage _functionality_ that a embedded browser provides (which is understandable) and people expect a browser of some sort to be there when they install the OS. I agree that choice is a good thing but I do wonder whether the end-user would of better been served by offering choices at the purchase point - i.e. someone like Dell - where it would of made more of a difference. Interestingly, you can strip IE from windows quite easily, it's just that then certain things stop working - i've got a stripped out install of XP that sits on 50mb post boot; it's pretty dull looking but it (mostly) works. Can't use windows update tho... and surfing the web to download another browser is er.. impossible

ActiveX and Java live in different worlds - an activeX control is just a COM component with an IDispatch interface (I assumed you'd meant this in the context of talking about IE) - it's native code. Java isn't (AFAIK) and is far more analogous to .NET in that no executable code exists, rather it's converted to executable code in real time by the virtual machine.

[dangel]

Personally, I think with Vista's psuedo-compartmentalisation of what were previously 'key' components of windows, the option to install WMP etc during installation (and not with such tools as nLite) would appease many parties. I for one, as a user of an open source media player, would appreciate the ability to remove Windows Media Player from the start in a simple fashion, thus allowing me to install WMP Alternative or similar software. In doing this, the more experienced users with their own preferences can pick and choose as they wish, whilst new computer users and inexperienced users can have the features they want available from the start.

I like this approach - but I would caution that 99% of people would just install everything regardless and live with it (unless it's really bad or there's enough press [rare] about the alternatives) particularly with IE7 shaping up to be more than good enough compared to firefox.. I want to hate IE7 but it's pretty good really - and i'm an Opera user..

[Bob Crabtree]

All a bit odd, to me, but that's the story (as nichomach already pointed out earlier in the day - and I missed!).

Check it out.