A turning point for Microsoft

I am not an Open Source evangelist. I like Open Source technologies, but I also understand the advantages of proprietary solutions.

As much as I want to see Linux and Open Office succeed, at the end of the day I’m still a pragmatist. I will always go with what works best, and many of the tasks I perform on a regular basis work best under Windows. I could perform these same tasks under Linux if I had to, but it would require more time and effort on my part.

One of my favorite quotes is: “Linux is free…if your time isn’t worth anything to you.”

So, like it or not, my primary “fun” computer at home is a Windows machine. I do have other Linux machines (and a Mac) that I use for servers and much of my development work, but for surfing and playing and general computing, I still use Windows.

I don’t much like Microsoft or their attitudes toward consumers. But I have mostly stayed out of the religious wars, figuring the impracticality of making my life difficult by trying to resist overwhelming trends.

I’ve been content just going with the flow…until now. With the release of Vista, Microsoft has embarked on a course that, as a consumer, I can no longer accept. I’ve thought about this for several months now, so this is not a decision made rashly.

Using a monopoly to impose your will on your competition is bad enough (and illegal), but using a monopoly to impose your will on the consumers is cause for boycott.

The first and most obvious problem with Vista is the price. With Vista, Microsoft has increased the price of their OS to rougly $200 for a basic version, and $400 for the good version. This is an era when computers are becoming cheaper and more widely available. Consumers and people all over the world benefit from this. A well-powered desktop machine can be had for $500 these days, and the "One Laptop Per Child" association is working to develop $100 laptop computers to help educate the world's children. In the midst of this wave of inexpensive technology, Microsoft dares to keep rasing prices for the basic operating system. If this were a free market, computer makers and consumers would just abandon Microsoft for cheaper alternatives. But it isn't a free market, because Microsoft has a monopoly and we are painfully locked into to their platform.

We pay higher and higher prices for Microsoft Software, while Microsoft enjoys some of the highest profit margins of any company on earth. Attempts have been made to put legal limits on what Microsoft can do, but they have failed in the U.S. (Thanks largely to John Ashcroft.) So our only choice is to join and support the grass-roots efforts of the Open Source community.

Microsoft (with much assistance from other corporate copyright holders) has undertaken the task of ensuring license compliance through aggressive consumer control. They have adopted the philosophy that they have the right to control how people user their computers.

Microsoft believes that this is the best way to ensure that they get every penny they are legally due under the terms of their software license agreements (that nobody reads).

But I see no precedent in our society for subjugating individual property rights for the sake of guaranteeing corporate remuneration (unless, of course, someone has actually stolen from a company). But just because a few people steal from Wal-Mart does not give Wal-Mart the right to invasively monitor every household that has ever purchased goods from Wal-Mart. There would be public outcry if Wal-Mart tried that. And yet that is exactly what Microsoft is doing, only it is hidden and unnoticed by the general public.

The first noticeable instance of their far-reaching software control policy was their infamous “activation process” that Microsoft used in Windows XP.

Microsoft introduced technology that tied their OS to a specific physical computer, such that both the software and the hardware had to be registered with Microsoft. Any “significant changes” (as arbitrarily defined by Microsoft) to the hardware was considered to be an untrustworthy action by the user that required the user to call Microsoft and answer some questions. If the user had a justifiable reason (as arbitrarily defined by Microsoft) for modifying their own hardware, then Microsoft would issue them another activation code so they could continue to use their computer.

When Microsoft introduced their activation process, there was much outcry among the technical community. But Microsoft calmed the masses with assurances that the re-activation process would be quick and easy, and the questioning would be very light and friendly. Microsoft promised to grant new activation codes in most cases.

I’m not even going to enumerate the many historical examples of the incremental erosion of personal rights couched in assurances that “It’s needed for security. And besides, most of you won’t even notice.”

If you think I’m being too dramatic in comparing Microsoft to a reactionary government, I’ll remind you that Microsoft has several major interlocking monopolies that give them significant control over your lives, both at work and at home. And Microsoft is certainly not a democracy.

Well, it turns out the activation process for Windows XP was a legal foothold which Microsoft has continued to expand with Vista. In the fuzzy and borderless world of digital media and digital computing, Microsoft was allowed to extend their legal control beyond the boundaries of the software they created.

We are entering an era where the government has granted broad rights over all digital content to the legal “owners” of that content. And this is directly at odds with the nature of the digital revolution which thrives on widespread access and easy manipulation of data.

Granting sweeping rights that control all manipulation of digital information was probably a big mistake. DRM (Digital Rights Management) technologies are an even bigger mistake. But Microsoft is compounding this problem by choosing to use its position to be the enforcer of these laws. And like a vigilante, they are answerable to no one, and are not bound by personal rights to property and privacy. Concepts of “property” and “privacy” become complicated and blurry and difficult to legislate in the realm of digital media.

I have witnessed this trend progress incrementally from year to year since the 2000. If it isn’t stopped, it will reshape the very nature of technology and free exchange of information for decades to come.

With Vista, Micrsoft has incrementally further restricted their activation process, so that a larger number of users will be denied new activation codes if significant hardware changes are made. With Vista, you are only allowed to replace or "significantly upgrade" your computer once. After that, you have to buy another copy of Vista.

Microsoft has also increased their control over the hardware in your computer by only supporting media devices (video cards and sound cards) that can enforce the new Digital Rights Management schemes that ensure copyright owners control over how you use their media. They ensure their control to their media by never letting you “have” the media. Rather, the media is stored in a digital “cage” of encryption, and you are granted visitation rights to the media at the discretion of the corporate owners. You are not allowed to take the media out of the cage, and those people who have found or created keys to the cage are pursued to the ends of the earth by law enforcment.

Of course, creating a key in the privacy of your own home is hard to detect, so Microsoft has decided to support technologies that give the copyright holders significant control over how you use your computer. These technologies inconvenience and punish the legitimate users. People who have never stolen a song in their life will still have to pay extra money and lose control over their computer.

Technology is supposed to give us more freedom, not more monitoring. I disagree with Microsoft’s decisions and business practices on the most fundamental levels, and I can no longer support them.

I am currently boycotting all Microsoft products, and I will dedicate time to find alternatives to the things I need for the Macintosh or for Linux. If you have strong feelings about the potential dangers of the direction the computing industry is heading, then I encourage you to do the same.

For those of you who do not have strong feelings, I can understand the desire to stay on Windows. I know we all have to pick and choose the causes we wish to support, and I know the underpinnings of Operating Systems is not a popular cause for most people. There are other problems in the world that loom larger than this. But this happens to be my field and my specialty, and I feel it is my responsibility as a practitioner to take a stand and do my part to shape the future of this profession.

Several good alternatives to Windows and Microsoft Office are starting to take shape with Linux, Google Apps, Open Office, Mac OS/X, Think Free, etc. I will do my best to support these efforts and to bring them to the general public.