http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/01/26/HNrivalsslamvista_1.html
As Microsoft Corp. gears up for the consumer launch
of Vista, rivals slammed the new product, claiming that it breaks the very same
European antitrust laws that its operating-system predecessor, XP, fell foul of
in 2004, and that it will be riddled with bugs.
"Microsoft has chosen to ignore the fundamental
principles of the Commission’s March 2004 decision," said Simon Awde, chairman
of the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) in a statement
Friday, adding that the new product goes even further, by leveraging its desktop
dominance to compete on the Internet.
ECIS filed a formal complaint about Vista to the European
Commission's antitrust division a year ago. The Commission said at the time that
it would examine the complaint carefully. That examination is understood to be
still ongoing, however Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd wasn't immediately
available to comment.
On Friday the ECIS described Vista as "the first step in
Microsoft's strategy to extend its market dominance to the Internet." Microsoft’s XAML
markup language inside Vista was designed to replace HTML (Hypertext Markup
Language), an industry standard used for publishing material online, it claimed.
XAML is designed to be dependent on Windows, and therefore
not interoperable with other systems, ECIS said.
In addition, Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 will introduce
the Open
XML file format called OOXML in a move to replace the ODF industry standard.
My problem with issues like this is that they sound good
however, they are bad for business. I don't know these ECIS people in Europe,
but they have no right to run around and attempt to controls features in
products. I have a fundamental problem with it. If MS wants to put a feature
or not put a feature into their product, it is based on whether or not the
marketplace will accept the product. Their dominance in the marketplace is
based on the fact that their customers are paying for the products, nothing
more.