Anti-Microsoft

See also: Anti | Anti-Windows | Microsoft

A term used to refer to people who are against the largest software company in the world. It has gained ire from a number of sources because of years for a variety of reasons.

Criminal

• Its aggressive, deceptive, and illegal business practices which were ruled illegal even on appeal. Microsoft was under litigation for monopolistic violations by the Department of Justice until the Clinton Administraton left office, where it because a non-issue to the John Ashcroft, George W. Bush administration.

Poorly functioning

• Poor reviews of its software
• Poor reviews of its customer support

Good business sense but poor for the industry

• Inability to innovate and discover new markets, generally exploiting other companys’ first-to-market ideas.

Assimilation

• Its quality of buying out competition and creating standards that are for Microsoft and Microsoft alone. Some examples include the Microsoft Word document format, the APIs in Windows that make its own programs run faster, and bundling Microsoft Internet Explorer with Windows to gain browser marketshare over Netscape.

• • Microsoft Acquires Linux Company, Then Discontinues Its Popular Linux Antivirus Product
  • Some scathing reviews of Microsoft’s version of XML

Satiricly, MS has been compared to the fictional Star Trek villain, the Borg, whose quoted line “you will be assimilated” characterized their find-and-take methodology. Similarly, another joke referring to every possible product as aligned with McDonald’s naming tendancy (McRib, McNugget, McChicken, etc): the MS Car, the MS Chocolate, MS Floor Polish etc.

Its inability to continue updating software once it has gained marketshare.

• When Internet Explorer 5 became the dominant browser over Netscape, the following version of Internet Explorer had few improvements and development has slowed significantly. Mozilla continues to grow and innovate in its place.
• When Microsoft Windows 95 became the primary desktop computer, three years later, Windows 98 was only a minimal update.
• Not much has changed in Microsoft Office since version 6 in 1993-’94. See the list of “new features” in Microsoft Office XP. Ask yourself: is this worth the $200 upgrade? (Read the section on voice-recognition carefully.) Also, scary things about Office XP.

Not making any effort to make the Operating System more resistant to viruses, one of the worst problems in Windows.

• While not immune, Linux is at least very resistant, even to a Linux-specific virus. Read: as long as they do not log in as root and run dodgy email attachments. Although Lindows is a distribution that runs as root, this could be a concern but the more popular distributions do not. Interestingly, Lindows has anti-virus software even though there are very few Linux viruses in existance.

NOTE: In their favor, Microsoft created an anti-virus service to offer some free phone support and an anti-virus newsgroup. However, a support service is not as satisfying conclusion to a problem that has existed on its OS since the early 1990s. Also, as to the quality or reliability of this activity, that remains unknown.

While in the end, Microsoft is an immensely successful company, fear and loathing remains. This seems to be the case with many success stories including IBM, who was thought of similarly until its breakup by the US Justice Department in the 1980s. While most anti-microsoft champions give credit for the popularization of computers, and thus a major change in the way the world and it’s people work, many people feel justified in taking a position against them. Often arguements about Microsoft are emotional flame wars for those who have become disaffected and annoyed with average-user complaints.

Microsoft’s business model has included a concept whereby efforts were primarily directed towards those areas of greatest user-concern. While this has been a boon in popularizing the concept of user-friendlieness, this also meant such harsh prioritization as ignoring bug reports and user-requests until a sufficient number came in.

Although anti-microsoft sentiment seems biased towards one company in an industry where consolodation and control is not a unique process, Microsoft is the only company that hurts average computer users doing it. With so much control, small infractions can affect thousands of people. By virtue of their monopolous hold on the market, no other company exists to compete with this reputation.

Contents

• 1 Related
• 2 Links
• 3 Articles
• 4 Microsoft nicknames / satire:

Related

• TD123 section: Microsoft Strategies for Lovers of Freedom and Justice by David Cartwright

• Anti-AOL
• Anti-Windows
• Anti-Linux

Links

• MS Versus – Analysis of Microsoft’s business practices and products
• Gerald Holmes’es Why Micorsoft rules my Univrese
• LUGOD: Reasons to avoid microsoft – Linux User Group of Davis
• FuckMicrosoft.com
• KMFMS – What’s so bad about Microsoft?
• Boycott Microsoft
• Boycott Microsoft
• Microsoft’s dirty tactics against Linux
• Open4Success – Linux vs. Microsoft issues.
• LivingWithoutMicrosoft.org
• Halloween Documents – leaked information about anti-open source tactics.
• Why I Hate Microsoft
• Alternatives to Windows Applications
• Strike that out, Sam – Microsoft’s Word history feature applied on official Microsoft documents shows some interesting changes…
• Humor – Microsoft Purchases Evil From Satan
• MSBC: the MicroSoft Boycot Campaign

Articles

• Microsoft files asinine patent on hard drives for gaming consoles and descriptive file names.
• What’s Wrong With Product Activation
• Dynamic Linking Libraries

Microsoft nicknames / satire:

• Microshaft
• Microsloth
• Micros~1 – A play on how windows 95 introduced “mangled” short filenames
• Micro$oft / (M$)
• “Small and floppy” – a literal Japanese translation in early days.

• US V Microsoft

TakeDown.NET -> “Anti-Microsoft”