Either I'm having come kind of cognitive failure or the EU is verging on Banana-Curvature stupidity again. Let's leave whether or not it was anti-competitive for Microsoft to bundle Internet Explorer with windows and take a look at what any ruling against Micrsoft may imply.
It's inconceivable today to think of acquiring an OS without a few useful utilities. Some kind of command shell and a basic text editor are required to get anywhere at all. A way of getting software onto the system is handy as well, and frequently this happens via a web browser. How much of a pain in the arse would it be to have to go and find a web browser separately? For me, the first use of IE on any windows PC is to find a better browser.
Did anyone actually buy the versions of Windows that were made available without Windows Media Player? They weren't any cheaper, so consumers bought the product that had more in it.
So what about putting a value on a web browser or media player? Force MS to charge a set price for IE and WMP? Market forces would most likely cause rival products to sell for similar prices. But what if someone else wants to give a browser away? Is it only a crime if you happen to be the vendor with the biggest market share?
Suppose we outlaw shipping an OS with a web browser, we outlaw selling an OS with a media player. What else has MS bundled with an operating system? Notepad. Solitare. A graphical user interface? That doesn't need to be built into the OS, unix-like systems seem to exist quite happily with one of a number of partially interoperable graphics servers, and more desktop environments than you can shake a billboard reading 'WTF?' at. If we push towards this conclusion we run into the question of where the OS starts and where application software begins. And then we hit the grim reality: An OS is entirely useless without other software. Strip away everything that can be bundled in and you have something next to useless.
What's everyone else doing? Apple's OSX ships with a browser. Solaris ships with a browser. Whatever OS every mobile phone I remember owning except my very first, which I think was a Motorola D520 which resembled a brick. And every Open Source software distribution I have ever encountered ships with a browser. Most come with a whole lot more. Somewhere I have the disks for SuSE 6 which appeared at about the same time as windows 98. It appeared to ship with everything imaginable. There was probably a kitchen sink in there. Significantly there was a whole load of proprietary software amongst the 6 CD-ROMs included in the distribution. Star Office instantly springs to mind. I was quite fond of it. Was this also an illegal practice? Was this good or bad for consumers?
StarDivision, the makers of Star Office, were bought by Sun. It probably cost Sun less to buy them than buying a licence for Microsoft Office for every employee. Sun chose to give Star Office to the world, it's Open-Source counterpart Open Office is available under the GNU LGPL. Was this 'giving away' of a product an attempt to gain a foothold in the office automation market? Yup.
Is there a fair rule for the giving away or bundling of software that doesn't horribly penalise consumers?
Ok, forcing every Operating System producer to Open-Source EVERYTHING they bundle with their OS would be great for consumers. It would probably be very harsh on more than a few companies. Awesome, but harsh.
So what about forcing Operating System vendors to ship just a network capable software installer with their OS? An installer that resellers and PC vendors can add their lists of software to. A user gets to pick and choose exactly what goes onto their PC and where it comes from. Wait, I've seen that before. The Debian network installer. 4 floppy disks and a net connection and users can put just the software they want on their pc. I quite like it. But then we'd need to allow vendors to create a 'recommended' set of software otherwise inexperienced users would be completely stuck. And we get right back to the bundling of probably optional software with the OS.
The EU is either being very brave or very foolish in the way it's going about the ongoing scuffle with ms. Of course it would help if organisations like the BBC didn't seem to be so overwhelmingly pro-Microsoft, but I think the problem here is the people involved don't even seem to see the problem.
