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Revision as of 02:41, 11 September 2006

The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information.

This article was nominated for deletion on 1 January 2006. The result of the discussion was Keep and Move to Criticism of Microsoft. An archived record of this discussion can be found here.

Criticism of Microsoft received a peer review by Misplaced Pages editors, which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

Equality?

We don't have "Common Criticisms of General Motors", "Common Criticisms of Apple" or "Common Criticisms of Thimbles" so why should we have this page? This is a general encyclopaedia, not a technology encyclopaedia.

If you think there is a need feel free to start them.

I agree, someone should at least make an article named "Positive Attributes of Microsoft" or something like that to balance this whole article out. It doesn't take a genius to tell this article is heavily biased against Microsoft. ---AverageAmerican

Merge microsoft tax into this page

This page is already kind of long but the Microsoft tax thing should be merged here since it itself is a common criticism... maybe in the linux opensource section, etc. --RN 06:22, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Merged in legal issues from Microsoft Page

In an effort to clean up the main MS page I moved the legal issues here. Its somewhat lengthy though... eventually it would be nice to shorten it a bit and make it a bit more pithy... RN 24 July 2005

This article is not objective?

This article is clearly biased and quite far from the truth. It is too bad for Misplaced Pages's credibility.

To participate in discussion over wether this article is biased or not , see the 'Microsoft' article talk page. This article is a child page of the Microsoft article. And it might be useful for you to read Misplaced Pages's policy on objectivity (aka. Neutral Point of View/NPOV). But if you're still not satisfied as to wether this article is POV or not then by all means you can just mark this article as an NPOV dispute.

But you might just have a point, there may be a systemic bias happening here in that there's more evidence against Microsoft rather than for (or it might be just that I need better lessons on countering systemic bias^_^); it might serve the cause of neutrality to at least try to put in some evidence in support of Microsoft over the allegations in this article. And might it be usefull to add a 'controversial topic' template on this article?. --Lemi4 19:31, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If you believe the article is biased, please point out some specific parts of the article and explain how they're biased, so that we all can work towards making the article more NPOV. (You can't simply declare the article NPOV without explaining which specific parts you feel are biased.) - Brian Kendig 23:40, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Look at this sentence, for instace: "Many books (such as "Windows for Dummies") and web sites (such as Annoyances.org) have been created to help users navigate Microsoft products."

There are books and websites regarding pretty much widely used program and operating system - OpenOffice, Linux, Mac OS X, etc etc etc. Does this automatically make them hard to use? I'm not saying they are or that they aren't. Just that because there are books written to help users use the software it does not mean the usability is poor. It is a terrible argument to support that view. Anog 14:58, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Name change from 'Microsoft controversy'

This doesn't really seem to be about "controversy", per se, but more about common criticisms. Does anyone object to moving this article to Microsoft/Criticism? - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 17:15, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

Sure, sounds better to me. Brian Kendig 03:12, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Actually, subpages are long deprecated. How about something like Criticisms of Microsoft? Bryan 03:40, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

That sounds fine to me too, or Common criticisms of Microsoft, whichever sounds better to y'all. Brian Kendig 04:35, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Foxpro EULA restrictions

See article about Visual FoxPro

Where is the section on anti-trust? Here is counter paragraph

I removed the following POV rant about anti-trust law being evil from the main Microsoft article (Criticisms section no less), I was planning to move it to this article so it could perhaps add to the anti trust debate, but there doesn't seem to be any anti trust section here??? This paragraph needs a major clean up including POV clean up, see discussion about it on Talk:Microsoft.

There are also critics of the antitrust proceedings against Microsoft, which they believe to be an unjustified assault on a business who held a large market share merely by outcompeting its rivals. It is held by many that the case against Microsoft was the result of collusion between government and Microsoft's competitors in an attempt to gain an unfair advantage by thwarting the free market through government coercion. Nobel economist Milton Friedman believes that the antitrust case against Microsoft sets a dangerous precedent that foreshadows increased government regulation of what was formerly an industry that was relatively free of "government intrusion" and that technological progress in the industry will be impeded as a result. Friedman, moreover, says that antitrust laws do more harm than good and should not exist.

zen master T 03:14, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Microsoft is only used here as an example in the permanent vested-interest campaign against antitrust law. As a generalized defense of MS-sized corporations, it's OT in "... criticisms of Microsoft". Antitrust is settled law that most citizens strongly agree with. Never mind that Friedman is a Nobel Prize winner in the economic sub-field of inflation control ("hold M1 constant"), his opposition to antitrust is ultra-conservative. It really makes more sense to move this rant to an antitrust law article, and link it in the main Microsoft article with say, one sentence under "Defenses". Milo 04:30, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

Tax shelters, political lobbying

Could someone add information about how Microsoft uses a tax shelter in Nevada that lets it avoid about $300 mil in taxes? Also about how Microsoft lobbies on issues that seem anticompetitve and also controversial social issues? Some people think corporations shouldn't lobby on either of these.

I lean towards including wikilinks to corporate governance on both of those issues, since the core discussion is common to every public company. Should a company lobby solely to promote its financial interests (in which case, "anticompetitive" lobbying is good corporate governance where it protects MSFT's market dominance/revenue/shareholder wealth)? Should a company spend shareholders' money on unrelated social issues (charity giving, non-core lobbying activities)? Feco 00:22, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Microsoft notice board

Note: to start this off I'm posting this to a few Microsoft articles.

I have kicked this off as I think we can do a lot better on many of our Microsoft related articles. Windows XP is just one example of a whole bunch of people getting together to fix up issues of NPOV, fact and verifiability of an article. I think that no matter whether you like Microsoft or not that we could definitely do with a review of: a) the articles that we already have, and b) the articles that we should have in Misplaced Pages! - Ta bu shi da yu 02:06, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Contradiction?

Spyglass sued for deception and won a $521 million settlement.

This unreferenced statement seems to contradict Spyglass, which mentions an US$8 million settlement, citing: http://www.winnetmag.com/Article/ArticleID/16683/16683.html -- Beland 08:41, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Suits and settlements

"Suits by private companies". Several interesting cases against Microsoft I'd not heard of, in addition to had-heard-of Apple, Stac, and Sun cases. MS has surely engaged in plenty of settlements, so how about renaming the subhead as "Suits and settlements with private companies".

• Where is a summary of the granddaddy expropriation of CP/M by Microsoft that helped move them into the MS-DOS big time? Even if Digital Research, Inc. only threatened suit before MS paid them off, it is clearly evidence of an early and repeated MS pattern. The Wiki CP/M article does not mention a case.
• I thought I had heard of the "Netscape Communications Corporation" case, and was expecting to see that once famous case summarized. Maybe I really heard of Netscape's "browser war" complaints during the federal anti-trust trial that eventually forced sale of the original Netscape to AOL. The Wiki Netscape Communications Corporation article does summarize an AOL case against Microsoft, that grew out of the federal case.
• "WordPerfect" (case during which of several corporate names?) I hadn't heard of it, and there's no summary yet. The Wiki WordPerfect article does not mention a case.

Milo 04:30, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

Security

I have some comments on the 'Security' section. First I'm not sure if this comment "permitted unless forbidden" is NPOV; it seems like one of those glass half-full / glass half-empty things.

Second, in my view the NT-based versions of Windows (NT3.51 and NT4, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows 2003) have security systems which compare favorably to others. NTFS filesystem permissions with their ACLs consisting of multiple ACEs allow a more granular file/folder permissions set than just about anything else (except Novell). Add to this the easy-to-manage user groups function, and finally the overall security zone of NT4-style and Active Directory domains.

NTFS-style permissions extend to registry entries as well; in linux terms this is as if one could apply specific grant/deny editing permissions to each individual line of a *.conf file - put that in in your security pipe and smoke it! Additionally a subset of NTFS-style permissions can be applied to printers, shares ('exports') and certain system-wide 'user rights'.

Finally, these permissions are applied judiciously during the original install, in a philosophy similar to many *ixes: normal users can use but not delete or change application and OS executables and files.

By now you may be thinking this author is just another MS astroturf specialist, but here's where this well-thought-out security system was basically destroyed by Microsoft: the Windows 2000 installer. Prior to Win2k, Windows NT had a reputation among Windows users as being a real bear to set up and run properly - mainly because it implemented the above described security system. I have no idea how the decision was made or who made it, but during Win2k's install process, one was prompted to create additional users.

With no notice to the person installing the system, these users were given Administrator privileges. This effectively bypasses the entire security design described above.

This was the single worst security mistake MS made in its new family of operating systems, and they have been paying for it ever since. As developers began coding and testing their apps with full admin privs, and thus producing software which had dependencies on Administrator (root) privs, the cycle continued, and produced a 'lock-in' effect of its own. Users, if they bothered to contemplate the situation at all, shied away from demoting their accounts to non-admin levels out of fear that programs would not work properly, or that they would lose various ease-of-use comforts. Without being adversarial I think it's safe to say I have observed this phenomenon in many experienced *nix people who clearly know better. 'Everyone knows' you need Admin privs to properly run Windows, and therefore everyone runs it that way.

Other security mistakes have also been made during the default install process - too many open services mainly - but these are small beer compared to the collosal stupidity of the 'Administrator by default' user creation process during system installation.

I'm not sure what your point is here. The page is named "Criticism of Microsoft", not "Rebuttal of Criticism of Microsoft".

Uh, if you're going to have a Misplaced Pages entry that is so childish and contentious, you have to at least allow rebuttals to be made on the talk page... In reply to the OP in this section, I think the admin-by-default decision was absoutely necessary to get Windows 2000 installed on personal machines rather than only corporate ones. Frankly, until trojan attacks became so common, people had better computing experiences if they could have full access to their machines rather than having to elevate their privileges to perform some actions.

add velvet sweatshop

This was in response to a Microsoft peer review. It might need copyediting and a POV check, though. Ryan Norton 05:24, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Table of Contents on right -- why?

Is there a particular reason why there's a {{TOCright}} tag at the start of the article? If there's no objection, I'll change it to the conventional position. --zenohockey 18:10, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Hiddeness

A section should be added in respects to the hidden aspects of Microsofft Products espesially Windows. When diagnossing a problem it can get quite difficult to figure out what is really goin on because of this. Klingoncowboy4 22:50, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Move back to "Criticism of Microsoft"

The article should be moved back. User:Kilo-Lima's reason for moving it was 'there is more than "one criticism" on this page'. So what? It's still grammatically correct. The AfD closed with a consensus it rename to "criticisms" but if you check the votes, this appears to be a clerical error. Gazpacho 00:10, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Done. —Nightstallion (?) 08:20, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Who expects neutrality in a Criticsm article?

This article is entitled Criticsm of Microsoft. It is for criticsm and controversy about Microsoft. Naturally, it only presents the negative aspects of Microsoft.

Some have asked whether this article should even exist since it is so POV. My opinion is that Microsoft has received so much criticsm and controversy that it would not fit into the Microsoft article. There should be a criticsm of Microsoft article simply to present the facts completely.

Is this article too POV? No, because it is presented in an NPOV and encyclopediac manner (tone), and all the facts are true (OK, since this is a wiki, some might not be). In addition, rebuttals of some criticsms would make the article less POV. For example, "Although Microsoft products are widely believed to lack security, others claim that since Microsoft products are dominant, viruses and spyware programmers naturally target them. However, Microsoft's products' infrastructure has been proven to be less secure than others, and in some fields, while Microsoft does not hold market dominance, their products are still the most targeted."

In addition, various reliable sources cite that Microsoft is involved in shady deals with OEMs to mantain its OS dominance. Is this information included in the article? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 03:12, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

It can be NPOV definately - this article just needs massive cleanup. Just another star in the night 09:30, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

The issue with this article is that it does not include the Microsoft response to the criticisms where such responses exist. Capturing the criticisms is worthwhile, but the article should include more points of view on widely controversial topics such as TCO. I'll see if I can do some research and edits to create a more balanced article. Currently it is too POV. Adding the words "some people say" doesn't automatically make it NPOV. Rnapier 16:11, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes - this analysis is right on the money. Just another star in the night 07:32, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

TCO paragraph removed

I feel bad removing something this large, especially referenced, but:

In August 2004, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) of the United Kingdom ordered Microsoft to stop a run of print ads which claimed that the total cost of ownership of Linux servers was ten times that of Windows Server 2003. According to the ASA, the comparison put the Windows servers on Intel Xeon processors which were less expensive and offered better performance than the IBM z900 mainframe on which it put Linux; therefore the comparison included the hardware, and the ASA believed it was misleading to claim that the cost difference involved only the operating systems.

the only purpose of the above seems to be to add weight to the linux argument and besides that doesn't add anything useful to the main purpose of the section, that is comparing the TCO of linux and windows. Just another star in the night 23:09, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

I disagree somewhat with your removal. While perhaps we don't need to go into such length, if Microsoft's advertising on TCO has been found misleading this needs to be mentioned somewhere in the article. I agree as currently worded, it doesn't fit in the sectiont hat well but it still needs to be mentioned somewhere. This has nothing to do with Linux or whether or whether not Linux TCO is less then Windows. It has to do with Microsoft advertising regarding TCO that has been found to be misleading. I would suggest something like this which I have re-added.

In August 2004, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) of the United Kingdom found print ads run by Microsoft which claimed that the total cost of ownership of Linux servers was ten times that of Windows Server 2003 to be misleading. The comparison included different hardware and therefore the ASA believed the ads were misleading as they suggested the cost difference involved only the operating systems.

A reference would be nice. I suspect a quick check of the ASA website should find one, for someone who has the time (I guess you didn't accidently remove a reference RN?)

Nil Einne 17:26, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Looks good to me, thanks. References already there in links I believe - so I agree with adding it back. The question is, where should it be added - in advertising, or in the TCO section? Just another star in the night 07:31, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

merge in studies related to microsoft

The said article consists of basically one or two studies and would definately benifit from being rewritten a bit and put here, I think Just another star in the night 02:17, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Toward GA

• Especially recently, shouldn't be used as there is no time in encyclopedia (it might not be recently in 5 years from now)
• Recently, the European Union found Microsoft guilty, same thing as above
• This sentence : For example, Windows operating systems released since 1995 hide file extensions by default, which can help malicious programmers trick unwitting e-mail recipients into opening dangerous file attachments which masquerade as harmless files with innocent-looking extensions. sounds POV to me.
• The company also recently started the "Trustworthy Computing" initiative to help with its fight against security., is a sentence that uses recently which should be changed.
• Here, This effect has recently been dubbed the "Microsoft monoculture", by analogy to the problems associated with lack of biodiversity in an ecosystem., the ecosystem and biodiversity words cannot apply to computers, better words should be found.
• Clarification in this paragraph, Some accuse Microsoft's licensing policy of aiding the spread of viruses because the first service pack for Windows XP checked for known pirate keys and refused to patch Windows XP installations which had been pirated. It resulted in a large number of Windows XP systems that were left more vulnerable to exploits. To combat this, Microsoft briefly considered letting Windows XP Service Pack 2 be installable on pirated copies of Windows XP, but later decided against this as it would encourage further piracy., would be helpful.
• Not enough citations, especially when it says people think that or it is said or criticism comes from or stuff like that.
• It is well written, an almost NPOV. Lincher 15:25, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

GA granted. Lincher 17:51, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Winmodems and Winprinters

Could we mention Winmodems and Winprinters? Basically these are examples of computer hardware that usually only works on Microsoft Windows. With these devices, it can be very difficult or impossible to obtain the device drivers to make them work in other Operating Systems such as Linux. Although it's more a case of vendor lock-in, I reckon it's worth a mention in this article.

It is a good idea but I'm unsure how/if to add it. For example, that is mostly criticism of the manufacturers that make those devices, not exactly microsoft specifically. Also, as far as I know, there's nothing preventing someone (and indeed someone probably already has) from making a device like that for Linux or another operating system too. If you have an idea of how to add it and make it sound related to microsoft without getting embroiled into unreferenced conspiracy theories then I'd go for that. Perhaps it would be best just to add it to see also? RN 00:44, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Microsoft didn't create "Winmodems" -- the market did. Microsoft probably doesn't even like them because they add complexity to the driver software and system load where such things used to happily exist on the modem hardware itself. The lock-in to Microsoft is also a decision made by the market, not because of any specific attempt to lock people into Windows. We're talking about cheapskate companies looking to save money by making the hardware less expensive.... who really believes they'd double or triple their development costs by writing software for less common platforms? Warrens 00:52, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Microsoft actually published papers showing when they were a disadvantage Keep soft modems out of retail. . Removing hardware DSPs was more of an Intel push (first called NSP, eventually MMX) than Microsoft because they wanted to justify more CPU speed. It was a huge controversy pre-MMX (1990-1995). Audio and modems were not standard; the aftermarket was huge. Independent hardware vendors thought Intel was out to kill their business. (As you can imagine, Intel’s zeal caused quite a ruckus in the PC industry, so the company quit its aggressive tactics.) SchmuckyTheCat 01:21, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Nice find! thanks for posting that. Warrens 03:32, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Linux revert

Ug - couldn't fit it all in the summary. Anyway, "Linux" refers to the "operating system" article, so in if the user was to click it they would probably be quite confused. I suppose you could do it with wikilinking to the kernel article instead, but as per the discussion about the Linux and Linux kernel articles people seem to believe that Linux refers to the "operating system" itself (not that it makes a whole lot of sense, but anyway...) RN 03:39, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

"Analysis of Microsoft" to "Criticisim of Microsoft"

Hi all,

This article fails to provide an unbiased and complete analysis of Microsoft and so, with its current content, cannot be a good article under the title "Analysis of Microsoft".

I am therefore going to restore the previous title of this article. If you want to move the article back to the title "Analysis of Microsoft", please first remove the article from the good articles list.

Thanks,

Cedars 00:55, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Done - thanks for the heads up! RN 02:41, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

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