Please see comments embedded below.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Tinker" <jtinker(a)coin.org
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org
Sent: Monday, January 15, 2001 8:28 PM
Subject: Re: Nuke Redmond!
Richard Erlacher wrote:
> So ... aren't there things that you want? You certainly can't blame MS,
as
> a corporate entity, for doing what it does in
order to get what it
wants,
> can you? Why do you think you should make what
MS wants YOUR problem?
They
haven't
done that. You have.
I just don't get why you are so into defending a company that engages in
vicious, predatory and generally uncivil behavior. It is obvious that
Microsoft
has violated what many people consider norms of decent
behavior, even as
applied
to corporations. That they have violated the spirit of
the law seems
fairly
clear by now, but we're not sure what is going to
be done about it.
Why not let these criticisms air, and stand on their own merits? The best
you
seem to be able to answer is that other companies are
as devious. I don't
deny
that, but I fail to understand why it is being offered
as a justification.
It is
not a justification, although it might be an
explaination. However I don't
think
folks on this list need explainations about it. People
are pissed, not
bewildered. I think we should expect companies to be decent, and should be
outraged, to some degree, when they are not.
It's because, not only are other companies as devious, in fact ALL other
surviving companies are, in their way, as devious, but that's what they're
SUPPOSED to be.
I agree generally with the observations you have made about putting ones
money
where ones mouth is. I just don't understand your
defense of what seems to
me to
be indefensible behavior. Are you opposed to making
moral or ethical
arguments,
per se? When you suggest that nothing a corporation
does to "get what it
wants"
can be blameworthy, you seem to take such a position.
I don't mind rational and balanced arguments based on facts and not
folklore. In general, however, it's not up to the corporation to do
anything an individual wouldn't, i.e. the corporation is no more bound to
base its actions on altruistic motives than you and I. The decision-makers
have a fiduciary responsibility to produce value for their owners. Most
companies do that by providing goods or services. I've read a lot of "I
don't like Microsoft ..." but I haven't seen any realistic positive
constructs.
The fact of the matter is that Microsoft is in a unique position in the
market because they proceeded, initially, to do what no one else brought
off. They produced an operating system AND a set of what most folks find to
be a highly useful set of office automation and communication applications
that people buy in great quantity. It's possible that some of their
strategizing might have gone off the deep end a mite, but, unlike General
Motors, Ford, or Firestone, they've killed no one and mad little effort to
prevent people from knowing it. Nobody's been killed as a result of buying
a software suite that cost a week's pay every month, crashed and caused
their customer to die. Unlike the auto industry, Microsoft has actually
improved things for most of its customers, has taken relatively little of
their money, made computers and computing a household thing where it was
only for the nerds a couple of decades ago, and if they endeaver to kill and
eat their competitors, that's really what they're paid to do.