Dale Malony:
> >What if a big corn farmer convinces (to put it nicely) the local grocery
> >to refuse to sell the produce of some of his neighbors. Lets say he
> >also sells all of his new crop of carrots and tomatoes (which are not
> >very tasty but look nice) at a loss, and even gives them away with each
> >bushel of corn to try to get into the growing vegetable market.

Jay Kirsch:
> To a poor woman, with children to feed, these free carrots and tomatoes
> would be a blessing.

Only until all the competition in town was driven out, of course. Then the price goes up to whatever the big farmer feels like.

Look up ``Standard Oil'' sometime; like they say, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. (That's why it's called `anti-trust'
law; because the prototype, Standard Oil, happened to be a trust.)

> >By the time they realized they would really prefer to taste their
> >tomatoes instead of just adding juice and color to a hamburger, the
> >farmer with the good tomatoes had gone out of business and got a job at
> >the grocery store.
...
> He should get another job. If his ideas were patented, they will be in
> the public domain after seven years. Mr. Big cannot ignore them and
> succeed for long.

Yes he can, if he's big enough. Any new competitor will be small. It's not that much of a problem to drop prices below his costs, sue him for something ridiculous or any number of other strategies, until he runs out of money and is driven out of business.

Mr Big can afford to sell at a loss (especially in a limited area) for far longer than can a new business.

Don't forget also that software has what the sociologists call ``network effects'' - the advantage of a lot of other people using the same brand. You don't get that with corn.

> >Somehow you've managed to miss the stories of Microsoft strong-arming
> >vendors to exclude competitors software from their bundles. You've
> >missed the testimony that vendors feared repercussions from Microsoft if
> >they went against Microsoft's agenda.

> That's better.
[definition of strong-arming]
> This is a rotten thing to do. If anyone from Microsoft did this I'll
> join the posse. We'll hunt 'em do down and hang 'em high.

Read through the finding-of-fact (sorry, I used to have a URL but not off-hand). They did some pretty nasty things to their competitors, and to
their partners. Obviously strong-arming itself is hard to prove in court, because that's the point, but even what was proved was pretty nasty.

> >But more overtly Microsoft created lesser versions of emerging popular
> >products and gave them away for free by adding it to Windows.

> Yes they did, starting with Notepad and Calc. I do not see what is wrong
> with this. Maybe Notepad is OK but a Web browser isn't. How is this
> decided and who decides it?

Mostly by intent, I suspect, what can be proved of it.

If MS forces IE onto Macintoshes, for instance, that can't really be interpreted as improving their own product.

> Shouldn't you hold Linux programmers, who give their software away, up to
> the same standards you apply to Microsoft?

Oh, certainly. Most if not all of the strategies used by SO and MS would seem to be inapplicable, but if somebody does manage to be anticompetitive
using the GPL, they should definitely be called up on it.

Jiri
--
Jiri Baum <[email protected]>
"[Microsoft] cleverly associate the word 'open' with XML. What they don't
mention is that to see the XML file definitions for Microsoft Word, you
have to sign a file license that says you will never use the code."
-- http://www.itworld.com/Man/2685/IDG010503source2/

 

Jiri writes:

>Only until all the competition in town was driven out, of course. Then the
>price goes up to whatever the big farmer feels like.

A businessman cannot do whatever he "feels" like and succeed too. The price of a product cannot exceed what people are willing to pay for it. If he raises the price too much, competitors will be attracted back into the market and the price will drop again ( probably lower than it was
originally ).

In the case of a public corporation like Microsoft, arbitrarily raising prices would result in disaster. If Microsoft announced that Windows would now cost $999.00, investors would immediately realize that almost no one would buy it at that price. In matter of hours, billions of dollars in capital would flow out of Microsoft and into other ventures. The credibility of Microsoft's management would be shattered forever. With no outside capital and no earnings, Microsoft would be near bankruptcy in few months. They would have to sell Windows to someone else. Then a new company would have the dominant desktop OS selling for $99.00 again. You
might like this story, but don't expect the new owners of Windows to run their business any more like a daisy farm than Microsoft did.

I am not an economist but the high-tech marketplace looks to me like a complicated closed loop control system connected to a very powerful
generator. This is the power that drives my little business. So I get a bit anxious when I see politicians and lawyers trying to pry open the
magic box and re-wire the circuits.


>Look up ``Standard Oil'' sometime; like they say, those who do not learn
>from history are doomed to repeat it. (That's why it's called `anti-trust'
>law; because the prototype, Standard Oil, happened to be a trust.)

I wish I knew more about history but here's what I do know 1) there are as many interpretations of the Standard Oil case, or any other historical
event, as there are historians who have written about it 2) any layperson who begins a statement with "History proves..." or makes any similar
inference in the presense of an historian will be instant lunchmeat. (Personal experience talking, they're sticklers about scholarship )

>Don't forget also that software has what the sociologists call ``network
>effects'' - the advantage of a lot of other people using the same brand.
>You don't get that with corn.

Yes, sociologists have turned their attention away from primitive cultures and the laboratory rats we supposedly resemble to share their precious wisdom regarding the high-tech marketplace. Like many of their other theories, this one is suspect, at best.
See http://www.reason.com/9606/Fe.QWERTY.html


>Read through the finding-of-fact (sorry, I used to have a URL but not
>off-hand). They did some pretty nasty things to their competitors, and to
>their partners. Obviously strong-arming itself is hard to prove in court,
>because that's the point, but even what was proved was pretty nasty.

The Constitution is worth reading too. Nowhere does it empower the government to make laws that enable the prosecution an individual or group for engaging in "pretty nasty" behavior.

The finding-of-facts is on the DOJ website:
www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudge.pdf

Many of the conclusions it draws have a more logical explanation than the one presented. For example, it states that Microsoft's monopoly
prohibited Apple from competing evenly. How about the fact that Apple chose a low volume - high markup pricing strategy ( 50% profit
on each unit sold) preventing their own market from substationally growing.

Judge Jackson says, due to lack of competition, Win95 was overpriced at $99.00. How did he divine this knowledge? Nobody knows. The sales tax on many computers is more than $99.00.

There's hearsay evidence about Microsoft luring competitors into going in a direction that Microsoft later blocked off. This smells like
fraud and can be attended to in a criminal or civil court, without the specter of government regulation. If the charges are true, I hope Microsoft gets their caboose kicked. But after Jackson's remarks to the New Yorker, I am not ready to take this at face value.

>If MS forces IE onto Macintoshes, for instance, that can't really be
>interpreted as improving their own product.

Apple's managers would have to be smoking something to agree (there is no force here) to add IE to their product while believing that it
had no benefit.

>Oh, certainly. Most if not all of the strategies used by SO and MS would
>seem to be inapplicable, but if somebody does manage to be anticompetitive
>using the GPL, they should definitely be called up on it.

I can't tell if your in favor of competition or opposed to it. Anticompetitive business ( or person ) is an oxymoron.

...

Microsoft was called "naive" for not involving itself in politics. When the anti-trust action began, the Microsoft lobbyists appeared in Washington. Well there you have it, now Microsoft really is dangerous. Sigh.

Jay Kirsch
[email protected]

 

Jiri:
> >Only until all the competition in town was driven out, of course. Then
> >the price goes up to whatever the big farmer feels like.

Jay Kirsch:
> A businessman cannot do whatever he "feels" like and succeed too. The
> price of a product cannot exceed what people are willing to pay for it.

Certainly with no competition the price can be much higher.

> If he raises the price too much, competitors will be attracted back into
> the market and the price will drop again ( probably lower than it was
> originally ).

You're right that the monopolist has to be somewhat careful not to raise the price too far (and Standard Oil was). Still, any new competitors will be small, and they will have seen what happened to the last guy.

> In the case of a public corporation like Microsoft, arbitrarily raising
> prices would result in disaster. If Microsoft announced that Windows
> would now cost $999.00, investors would immediately realize that almost
> no one would buy it at that price.

Strange, then, the pricing of Office XP...

> >Look up ``Standard Oil'' sometime;
...
> I wish I knew more about history but here's what I do know 1) there are
> as many interpretations of the Standard Oil case, or any other historical
> event, as there are historians who have written about it

No doubt - but some of SO's strategies make interesting reading nevertheless.

> 2) any layperson who begins a statement with "History proves..." or makes
> any similar inference in the presense of an historian will be instant
> lunchmeat.

Of course. History rarely proves something, but it certainly provides examples of what can happen. It can also provide insight into the reasoning behind laws, laws which we perhaps nowadays take so much for granted that we no longer comprehend them.

> >Don't forget also that software has what the sociologists call ``network
> >effects'' - the advantage of a lot of other people using the same brand.
> >You don't get that with corn.

> Yes, sociologists have turned their attention away from primitive
> cultures and the laboratory rats we supposedly resemble to share their
> precious wisdom regarding the high-tech marketplace. Like many of their
> other theories, this one is suspect, at best.
> See http://www.reason.com/9606/Fe.QWERTY.html

This would seem to have limited relevance - and what is relevant is mostly a strawman argument. Few people are claiming that network externalities
make it *impossible* for a new entrant to compete.

They just make it *more difficult*.

> >If MS forces IE onto Macintoshes, for instance, that can't really be
> >interpreted as improving their own product.

> Apple's managers would have to be smoking something to agree (there is no
> force here) to add IE to their product while believing that it had no
> benefit.

That, or there'd have to be a hint that if they don't fall in line there'll be no more MS Office for Mac.

> >Oh, certainly. Most if not all of the strategies used by SO and MS would
> >seem to be inapplicable, but if somebody does manage to be anticompetitive
> >using the GPL, they should definitely be called up on it.

> I can't tell if your in favor of competition or opposed to it.

In favour.

> Anticompetitive business ( or person ) is an oxymoron.

Hmm, getting the railways to not only give you a massive discount but also to pay you whenever they ship a competitor's product is OK? (This was
subject to NDA at the time, to avoid public outrage.)

For competition to flourish, there must be a certain amount of freedom of enterprise. Sometimes this freedom is threatened by governments, but sometimes it can also be threatened by a large business.

It's the point of the Sherman Act, and equivalent legislation elsewhere, to ameliorate this threat to freedom of enterprise. It's not actually illegal to be a monopoly, nor to make the best widget ever and therefore outcompete everyone else. Nor is it illegal to make a lot of money.

It *is* illegal, however, to use a monopoly to curtail others' freedom.

Jiri
--
Jiri Baum <[email protected]>

visit the MAT LinuxPLC project - http://mat.sourceforge.net

 

warning: Long Post

Jay Kirsch wrote:
> A businessman cannot do whatever he "feels" like and succeed too. The
price of a product cannot exceed what people are willing to pay for it. If
he raises the price too much, competitors will be attracted back into the
market and the price will drop again ( probably lower than it was
originally ). <

But to extend this poor analogy further, if the big farmer controls the plates on which we eat, and makes sure that the OpenSeed(tm) Tomatoes will
sit on your plate without spewing tomato juice on your shirt, then you will continue to buy the TomatoXP product to keep your shirts from getting
messed up. Yea, maybe you can get plates that will allow you to eat OpenSeed Tomatoes, but these plates came free with the table, and their
already set up. Besides, those other plates won't let me use any of the other products in the foodXP product line, which of course has been built up in the same manner as TomatoXP, by driving all the other small producers out of the market.

Yes this sounds rediculous, but that is how it works...

>In the case of a public corporation like Microsoft, arbitrarily raising
prices would result in disaster. If Microsoft announced that Windows would
now cost $999.00, investors would immediately realize that almost no one
would buy it at that price. In matter of hours, billions of dollars in
capital would flow out of Microsoft and into other ventures. The
credibility of Microsoft's management would be shattered forever. With no
outside capital and no earnings, Microsoft would be near bankruptcy in few
months. They would have to sell Windows to someone else. Then a new
company would have the dominant desktop OS selling for $99.00 again. You
might like this story, but don't expect the new owners of Windows to run
their business any more like a daisy farm than Microsoft did. <

Obviously it would be ridiculous. Btw, when I had to buy a MS operating system, I had to pay $200. why is my version worth twice as much as yours? I can *GUARANTEE* it isn't because it's twice as good! Why couldn't *I* buy Win98 for $100? Why is Win95 still the same price as it was
originally? Shouldn't the price have come down as the product moves out of the mainstream? Oh, wait. That's only true if there is someone else's
product competing in the same space. If the only competition to me, is me, then I guess I win either way...

>I am not an economist but the high-tech marketplace looks to me like a
complicated closed loop control system connected to a very powerful
generator. This is the power that drives my little business. So I
get a bit anxious when I see politicians and lawyers trying to pry open the
magic box and re-wire the circuits.<

The high tech market place is just that: a market place. Despite what all the PR people try to tell you, there is nothing special about it. It's the same economics that drives the rest of the world. If anything is different, it's that they get away with much more. If your television shut off in the middle of your show, and it took 5 minutes to get it turned back on, would you accept that? Absolutely not! You'd be down at WalMart buying a new TV! Software is the only product that is allowed to ship in an unfinished state. Also, once the software is written, reproduction is very inexpensive. Economies of scale, in a balanced market place, will say
that after the initial development costs are paid back, the price should start coming down, due to competition in the market place. Take a guess
what a copy of Windows 98 would cost me if I went to buy one. (Hint: Look up 2 paragraphs).

>>Look up ``Standard Oil'' sometime; like they say, those who do not learn
>from history are doomed to repeat it. (That's why it's called `anti-trust'
>law; because the prototype, Standard Oil, happened to be a trust.)<<
>
>I wish I knew more about history but here's what I do know 1) there are as
many interpretations of the Standard Oil case, or any other historical
event, as there are historians who have written about it 2) any layperson
who begins a statement with "History proves..." or makes any similar
inference in the presense of an historian will be instant lunchmeat.
(Personal experience talking, they're sticklers about scholarship )<

That's a pretty standard response. If something can be shown as true in the past, question whether the event actualy occured. How about AT&T? Anyone going to try to say that breaking up Ma Bell was a bad thing? I know I enjoy *my* 5USCent per minute long distance....


>The Constitution is worth reading too. Nowhere does it empower the
government to make laws that enable the prosecution an individual or
group for engaging in "pretty nasty" behavior.<

IIRC, the Constitution never allowed for a federal income tax either, originally....Niether does it state that the government should be able to impose the need for government "papers" to allow you to travel alone. This was pretty much frowned upon, yet I have to renew my drivers license every 5 years, or the government will imprison me for transporting myself without
proper documentation. I realize that there are people who do, actually, honestly, and oh-my-God-can-it-be-true live *outside the United States*!!!
Who'd have thought. This is only relevant because Micro$oft is based in US...

Check this link for the appeals court:
http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2001/06/28/microsoft_file/decision.pdf
>Many of the conclusions it draws have a more logical explanation than the one presented.<

Yea, like the following quote (page 58):

"Microsoft lamely characterizes its threat to Intel as 'advice'"

Gotta love when the appeals court, who every agrees is Microsoft-friendly, refers to their "more logical explanation" as "lame". Note, they upheld this point as violation of Sherman Anti-Trust section 2.

>Judge Jackson says, due to lack of competition, Win95
was overpriced at $99.00. How did he divine this knowledge? Nobody
knows. The sales tax on many computers is more than $99.00.<

What kind of equipment do you buy? Or what state do you live in to get that kind of tax on a computer? Besides, Windows is not sales tax, it's
the Microsoft tax. I have to pay it, even if I never use it. And even though the MS license agreement says I can return it for a full refund
($99), try that some time. MS in in the position now of having violated its own license agreement by refusing to reimburse people who do not agree
to the terms of the license..


>There's hearsay evidence about Microsoft luring competitors into going
in a direction that Microsoft later blocked off. This smells like
fraud and can be attended to in a criminal or civil court, without the
specter of government regulation. If the charges are true,
I hope Microsoft gets their caboose kicked. But after Jackson's remarks
to the New Yorker, I am not ready to take this at face value.<

Page 55, section c. Nicely entitled: Deception of Java Developers

-or-

p56, sect d. The threat to Intel

Where Intel was developing a competing software product, and MS agreed to fund AMD hardware development until Intel gave up the software project. Once Intel dropped it, AMD was also left in the lurch.


>>Oh, certainly. Most if not all of the strategies used by SO and MS would
>seem to be inapplicable, but if somebody does manage to be anticompetitive
>using the GPL, they should definitely be called up on it.<<

Although I fail to see how it could happen. Despite what MS says, Open Source is not about trying to force you too give away all your Intellectual Property. On the contrary, it is a way to keep you from stealing mine. The GPL simply is an agreement between you and me, just like any other shrikwrap product. I am saying:" I have this piece of software I wrote. You can use it for free. You can even have the source code with it. If you like it, great! If you feel like taking the software that *I* wrote
and that *I* want everyone to be able to use, and you want to add on to it, wonderful, you just have to maintain my original agreement to any
derivative work." And, by using my code, you agree. Don't like the terms of the GPL, then don't use my code! Write your own code and license it however you want. I am sure you will ask that I respect your license without a lot of whining...

And it is really that simple. If you aren't going to share your stuff, then I'm not sharing mine with you. If you want to take mine for free, you have to give yours for free. You don't want to give yours away for free? Then you can't take mine for free.

>I can't tell if your in favor of competition or opposed to it.
Anticompetitive business ( or person ) is an oxymoron.<

What? Anti-competitiveness is the business Nirvana! The perfect business model is where you have removed all the competition, therby being able to rule a market without having to follow the laws of supply and demand. You can argue whether MS has reached this Nirvana, and to be honest, I don't think they have, completely, but don't try to tell me that businesses *want* competition...

...

>Microsoft was called "naive" for not involving itself in politics. When the anti-trust action began, the Microsoft lobbyists appeared in
Washington.
Well there you have it, now Microsoft really is dangerous. Sigh.<

Microsoft was never "naive". Too many confused naive with arrogant. MS considered themselves too good to involve themselves with the political
process.

Joe Jansen

 

At 10:39 28/06/01 -0400, Jay Kirsch wrote:
&lt;clip>
> A businessman cannot do whatever he "feels" like and succeed too. The price
>of a product cannot exceed what people are willing to pay for it. If he
>raises the price too much, competitors will be attracted back into the
>market and the price will drop again ( probably lower than it was
>originally ).
&lt;clip>
>I am not an economist but ...
&lt;clip>

All right, you're not an economist, but are you willing to accept the word of virtually all serious economists when they tell you that monopolies are bad for an economy? If not, well there are plenty of economics books available in book stores. Monopoly pricing theory is pretty
basic and is covered in any introductory text. I suggest trying a used book store where you will find lots of inexpensive discarded university texts.

To sum up the fundamental points, in a competative market profit maximisation occurs when marginal cost equals marginal revenue. This is also happens to be the point at which the benefit to society as a whole is maximised. The happy result is that everyone's welfare is maximised and resources are used in the most efficient possible manner. Any deviation from this point in either direction is less efficient and wastes resources.

If the market is not competative (e.g. a monopoly was established by some means), then the above is no longer true. A higher price can be established in which the seller's profit is maximised at a lower level of sales.

If this monopoly simply resulted in a transfer of money from buyer to seller, this would not concern economists much as this could be corrected by taxes or some such similar means. The real problem is that the gain to the seller (the monopolist) is less (sometimes much less) than the loss to the buyer (the consumer). In other words, there has been net loss to society as a whole - a net destruction of wealth.

To an economist, it is not really relevent to this argument whether the "monopolist" actually has 100% of the market. What matters is whether they can exert sufficient monopoly power in the market to cause the bad economic effects which result from this.

This by the way is exactly the situation occuring (on a wider scale) in many countries with poorly performing economies. Parts of eastern Europe
in particular have a problem with too many monopolies left over as a legacy of communism.

It is also simply not true that monopoly profits will necessarily attract competitors. This is true even if the monopolist does not or cannot use nefarious means to prevent this. Many markets have barriers to entry which may prevent new competitors from arising except at prices well above the monopoly profit maximisation point. A rational monopolist will not charge a price above that which results in profit maximisation. This means that the monopoly situation could endure indefinitely provided that all parties behave rationally.

Since the "alternative" to Windows increasingly seems to be seen as Linux, I thought I should point out that most of the people who are in favour of open software don't base their arguement on "Windows is a monopoly". Rather, they seem to be saying that there are certain basic software services such as operating systems which are better off being shared and given away.

There simply haven't been any significant genuine innovations in desktop computer operating systems or basic office software (word processing, etc.) in years. There have been incremental improvements in ease of use and reliability, or differences in marketing (e.g. the bundling in of unrelated products), but compared to the software innovation happening elsewhere, these areas have been comparitively stagnant.

Given the stagnation in these areas, it would seem that society would be better off if resources were directed away from these areas to others with more potential. The open source advocates claim this can best be achieved by open source software (I won't go into all the explanations they offer for this). The above argument (which I hope I have summarised correctly) applies whether Microsoft is good or bad, or is a monopolist or not, or whether Windows (or MS Office) is junk or not.

The group of people who are working on the Linux PLC (or MAT or whatever) are doing so for precisely the same reasons (Aha! At last we get
to an automation subject). It is worth noting though that they are not working on a operating system, they are working on a soft logic system. I am not involved with this project, but I am glad to see that they have the drive and initiative to attempt this. Whatever the reasons they may have for making their design decisions, ultimately the finished product will stand or fall on its own merits.

**********************
Michael Griffin
London, Ont. Canada
**********************

 

Micheal is right here on the motivation for Linux not being an anti monopoly thing. Let me explain why I have a problem with the effects of the monopoly. I don't use MS products at all. This means I can't use any of the commercial PLCs or almost any other automation product. Whether you agree or disagree with the fact that MS is a monopoly is moot. In my current sphere of operations they have nearly a complete and total monopoly. I can't do what I need to do with Windows. it's not reliable enough and it's too expensive to develop in and maintain. The low level stuff is all secret and you can only do what MS allows you to do. In the real world, that means Linux is the only way to go.
Unfortunately, if you want to use Linux, none of the big automation vendors wants your business, especially if you also need open protocols
and communications.

The status quo supports no choice with the exception of a few independent IO vendors and they almost always require Windows in some
way, shape, or form. You are probably not aware of that because you haven't tried to work outside this monopoly. Would it be a monopoly if using anything forced you to use Linux? I think you'ld agree that it would.

I have two choices, leave automation or build an alternative. Automation pays my bills and matches my skill set perfectly. Obviously I have chosen the latter and am installing a robotic machining cell this week that replaces a lot of GE proprietary hardware and software with Linux. Not LPLC yet, LPLC will be even better and will save even more time and money because I won't have to do everything myself. And so far, by any measure, Open is far better for the application. And, since there wasn't any reasonable IO hardware for Linux, I designed and built some and donated the design to LPLC. If everyone who uses LPLC gives a little back, we have more resources than any commercial company can put on a project. As long as big automation will only support Microsoft, I'll simply have to design around them. And rather than just solving my problem, I've joined with others who donate their greater skills to solve the problem for everyone. It's not an MS thing, It's that the vendors grant them a monopoly. I simply have no choice. I'd rather they made it possible to use my stuff with their stuff. The scary part was that the Linux route, even with fabricating some hardware, was much faster and easier and much less costly than the traditional route.

We did both and have hard numbers. What's wrong with this picture?

I am not ignoring AutomationX, that is very much overkill for this application and it would be too costly to integrate my vision code. I am looking at it as a replacement for Cimplicity IU that runs on Linux.

In your broader discussion, the question of monopoly is academic. In the automation world, it is simply a matter of fact. The path we are on is the only reasonable solution to the problem. There are many folks who agree and some of them are willing and able to help. In my case it has become a better technology thing and I think it can revolutionize automation and drastically lower costs. Analysts who have nothing to do with the OSS movement agree. It solves my problem and in a little while you will have a choice. I wish I knew why so many people have a problem with that.

Regards

cww

 

Curt Wuollet wrote:
> I have two choices, leave automation or build an
> alternative.

Technically, you have a third alternative - if your customers demand M$ products do like most of the rest of us and use M$.

Davis Gentry
Applications Engineer
Delta Tau Data Systems

 

Michael Griffin writes:
> All right, you're not an economist, but are you willing to accept
>the word of virtually all serious economists when they tell you that
>monopolies are bad for an economy? If not, well there are plenty of
>economics books available in book stores. Monopoly pricing theory is pretty
>basic and is covered in any introductory text. I suggest trying a used book
>store where you will find lots of inexpensive discarded university texts.

That's a great idea, but you should be more specific. I might accidently pick out a book written by someone from the Austrian school of economic theory. In which case, your summary of
monopoly pricing would not be correct.

 

That's strange, I've never run into that. Usually the customer is asking me for the best solution I can provide. The point is moot anyways, I run a Linux consultancy and provide Linux solutions.
MS is irrelevent. There is yet another possibility and that is that vendors could realize that being a popular, if somewhat
unstable, office solution doesn't make something suitable for automation. And their product can never, never, run better than the platform they put it on. If I could up the reliability by
an order of magnitude, I wouldn't hesitate to sell that to the customers. It works for me. But no, MS is not an option for automation or test equipment. Been there, done that, it's
unsupportable, my life is much better now and I have more friends among my customers. Some poeple _know_ it's not the hardware.

Regards

cww

 

Davis Gentry:
> Technically, you have a third alternative - if your customers demand M$
> products do like most of the rest of us and use M$.

In the part you've snipped, Curt explains why it's not an alternative.

Besides, there is such a thing as professional integrity. Your physician won't harm you, even if you ask for it, your engineer, your lawyer, your
accountant, they all adhere to their professional standards. Why then would you expect Curt to use a solution that he believes to be unreliable and
excessively costly?

Jiri
--
Jiri Baum <[email protected]>
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jiribvisit the MAT LinuxPLC project at http://mat.sourceforge.net

 

> The Constitution is worth reading too. Nowhere does it empower the government to make laws that enable the prosecution an individual or group for engaging in "pretty nasty" behavior.
>

HOGWASH!! (I'd use a stronger term, but I'm trying to keep it clean.) The Constitution explicitly empowers the Federal government "to regulate commerce among the several States". This is a very broad power (as those who opposed the clause -- but lost -- pointed out) and it is directly applicable here. The whole point of giving the government the power to regulate something is for it to be able to stop "pretty nasty behavior" by some parties.

> A businessman cannot do whatever he "feels" like and succeed too. The price of a product cannot exceed what people are willing to pay for it. If he raises the price too much, competitors will be attracted back into the market and the price will drop again ( probably lower than it was
> originally ).

The point here is not that a monopolist can charge whatever it wants, but that it can charge a lot more than it could in a competitive market. The difference between these amounts is what economists call "rent" (a somewhat different meaning than the layman's term). As another poster pointed out, this is Econ 101 stuff.

> Many of the conclusions it [the findings of fact] draws have a more logical explanation than the one presented.

Note that Microsoft did not bother to appeal the findings of fact. Also, the appeals court confirmed these plus most of the "findings of law" based on these (but not the remedy, although it did not say that the breakup could not be imposed, just that the court did not go through the correct steps in imposing it).

Curt Wilson

 

>But no, MS is not an option for automation or test equipment. Been there,
>done that, it's unsupportable, my life is much better now and I have more
>friends among my customers.


If I were to put out a Linux solution it would be
unreliable due to my ignorance of the platform. When I put up an NT or Win2000 solution it is very reliable and, unless someone who doesn't know what they are doing makes a change to the system, it will run until there is a hardware failure. But since with NT or 2000 you can lock unqualified people from making ANY changes, that is not a problem too often. I will not claim as much for Win 9x products, of course. My
assumption is that you can do the same thing with your Linux systems.

The bottom line is that you can make a highly stable and supportable system with ANY platform that you know well.

Davis Gentry
Applications Engineer
Delta Tau Data Systems

 

>>Davis Gentry wrote:
>>But no, MS is not an option for automation or test equipment. Been there,
>>done that, it's unsupportable, my life is much better now and I have more
>>friends among my customers.

>If I were to put out a Linux solution it would be
>unreliable due to my ignorance of the platform. When
>I put up an NT or Win2000 solution it is very reliable

Um...

You obviously haven't seen the mess that was made of the General Motors L-6 project. Windows NT and Nematron Open-Controls. Reliability went right out the door. You should see the faces of the production managers when you tell them some critical piece of machinery has to be rebooted and it take the line down for 10 minutes.

Of course, the upper management doesn't think there was any problems with the L-6 project (other than having troubles keeping up with production quota's). No body in GM is brave enough to tell Homie Patel that this little experiment was an absolute diasaster.
-----
Ron Gage - Saginaw, Michigan
([email protected])

Visit the Gastracker website: http://gastracker.rongage.org

 

I, for one, don't expect Curt to use a solution that is unreliable and excessively costly. However, I (and I suspect a large portion of this lists readership) don't believe Windows NT/2000 are as unreliable or excessively costly as Curt would have us believe. Rockwell, Siemens, etc are a different story.

As another person touched on - longevity is also important. I would not use or recommend Linux, because I do not believe it will last as the underdog's darling... the operating system beaten down by the big-bad monopolist [sarcasm intended]. While Linux, in some incarnation, has been around for nearly a decade - it was not until relatively recently that it gained favor
outside the "geeks who write operating systems and books about how to write operating systems" crowd. Sure, there has been a surge or public interest and investments from big names such as IBM and Compaq... but remember that the public is fickle and can turn on a dime; IBM has a history of [effectively] abandoning operating systems (OS/2); and Compaq has shown it's ability to abandon investments that don't make money (Alpha, AltaVista). How long will these companies pour money down a hole? While Linux may never fade
into oblivion, I believe peoples interest and its use will fade. That's reason enough for me not to build an automation solution on top of it.

Jeff
[email protected]
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
- Alan Kay

 

--- Jiri Baum <[email protected]> wrote:
> Why then would you expect Curt to use a solution
that he believes to be unreliable and excessively
costly?

First, I don't expect Curt to do anything - I simply pointed out that he missed an option in his list.

My assumption is that should Curt decide to use M$
products he would then learn them well enough to
develop reliable solutions with them. As to cost, I did not deal with that issue at all in my post. I have never done a cost analysis looking at a system comparing Linux and M$. It is certainly the case that M$ licenses and development tools are far more expensive than Linux. But my customers are happy with M$ both from reliability standpoint and because most,
if not all, of their other systems are M$. They
therefore do not have to retrain anyone to support
another operating system, and the interconnectivity between systems can be easily managed. Data to and from the factory or fab floor flows well (assuming well coded systems). So why change?

I am certain that Linux is a fine product and that
there are problems for which it is the best solution. I am equally certain that, even with its bugs (does Linux have NO bugs? If so, whose distribution? Redhat? ), that Win NT / 2000 is a fine product and there are problems for which it is the best solution. The zealots on both sides of his issue do themselves and their customers a disservice when they badmouth the other side.

Davis Gentry
Applications Engineer
Delta Tau Data Systems

 

Enough all ready. There have been bad implementations of every type of operating system. People successfully implement NT solutions and they do the same with Linux. Just because a project failed that had NT as the
operating system means nothing.

Can we forget about NT and Linux for a while or maybe control.com can start an NT vs. Linux mailing list and get the stuff off of this list.

 

Is this any different than the MAP debacle?

Big corporations are always thinking they can force the world to adapt to them. They are generally wrong and it costs them big. The case of MAP and these flowcharting software packages that people with no experience in actually automating things think are so great, are just one more example of why the power minds should be locked up whenever they try to make a technical
decision that is at odds with the marketplace. The collective wisdom of the marketplace is generally on target.

 

To some extent that is true but I don't think you could make Linux unreliable through omission. I tar my application onto a standard RedHat install and run. That is to say, I don't have to do anything to make it reliable. This is as opposed to NT where there was much busywork. I take the fact that MS advertises W2k as much more stable as significant. Your opinion of supportable and mine probably differ. My customers have my home phone number. And I did at one time know Windows well, I'm feeling better now. As I said, some poeple _know_ it's not the hardware. I'll bet you have never run Linux.

Regards

cww

 

I ditto your response Ron!

I was involved with L-18, in which Nematron was driven down our throats!

What a mess!

It must be nice to have so much money that you can waste it like GM has on Nematron PC based controls.

Just my 2 cents............

 

> If I were to put out a Linux solution it would be
> unreliable due to my ignorance of the platform.

Actually, while it might not work &lt;g>, I'd bet that it wouldn't crash. How do you define reliable?

>When
> I put up an NT or Win2000 solution it is very reliable
> and, unless someone who doesn't know what they are
> doing makes a change to the system, it will run until
> there is a hardware failure. But since with NT or
> 2000 you can lock unqualified people from making ANY
> changes, that is not a problem too often.

Actually, its hard to make Windows NT/2000 100% impentrable to a nosy user. In a past list, I ran a university computer lab. In this lab, we ran
Windows NT. I did my best to lock the systems down so people couldn't run whatever they wanted. However, software for Microsoft platforms is very rarely designed with security in mind. For example, to use Microsoft
Office, the user needed Read/Write/Delete access on the WINNT/SYSTEM32 directory. Microsoft has a technote for it.

Microsoft went from a single-user system and went up, and while their OS guys got it down, a lot of the 3rd party software out there doesn't like not
being able to write files wherever it feels like.

> The bottom line is that you can make a highly stable
> and supportable system with ANY platform that you know
> well.

Without a doubt -- but you can make a stabler and more supportable system with Linux. Remote access in the box with a kernel that doesn't crash -- ever. Its also cheaper.