ECIS Provides A History of Microsoft’s AntiCompetitive Behavior

“The paper mentions the netbook market in the section on the
patent threats. Not only are the patents Microsoft claims are
infringed not identified, they are of questionable value after
recent court decisions, and no one can make sense of the current
patent climate in the US to even know if they are or are not
violating someone’s patents, and that is just as true of
proprietary as with Open Source software, the paper notes, ending
that section like this:

“”Microsoft has sought to exploit the current absence of clarity
in patent law in order to deter consumers from taking up offerings
competing with Microsoft’s own products.”

“I’d be very happy to see raised also the issue of what is
happening to Linux in the netbook market. Seriously, try to buy a
netbook with Linux preinstalled, even ones that used to be
available, from any store you find and see what happens. Then try
to buy one with XP on it. Note a difference? Why might that be?
Read this paper, I suggest, and you may get some ideas.

“To any who might be tempted to imagine there is a “new”
Microsoft, I would like you to read this sentence from the section
on WordPerfect:

“”Microsoft also used its monopoly power to control industry
standards, thus requiring WordPerfect to implement proprietary
technology or risk incompatibility with Windows.”

Complete
Story