Truth can hurt, but it will hurt only him who wants to hurt the truth.

I have come across lots of web sites devoted to anti-MS propaganda. But far too often, you won't be able to find any serious reason why these people don't like Microsoft. All they seem to say is: 'Look, Microsoft sucks. Windoze sucks. Linux rulez.' Well, here's a non-fanatical, and logical description of what makes me hate Microsoft.

This document is still under construction, and I am collecting material. It was prepared with Netscape Composer. I have tried to give sources wherever possible, but unfortunately, in some instances, I lost them.

Another note: I am not the original author of most of the contents of this file. I have only collected them. In a few cases, I saved the original URL where I got them, but in most others I couldn't. Special mention needs to be made of Boycott Microsoft Campaign, Yamoo! and many other Anti-Microsoft Web-rings.

History of Microsoft

An insight into Microsoft's history, and how it became such a giant in software industry, will prepare you to change your mindset.

DOS is not Microsoft's Work

In 1980, IBM was preparing to release its much-hyped personal computer. They lacked an operating system, however, and knew that they could not release one in time for their computer's debut, so they seeked to find one from another firm. Although several companies were developing one, the only company which possessed an operating system that would run on IBM's new 16-bit computer was the Seattle Computer Products. Its operating system was basically a 16-bit copy of Digital Research's CP/M operating system, written in 1975 for computer hobbyists. Seattle Computer's CP/M take-off was named QDOS (for Quick and Dirty Operating System, which sums it up just right). Microsoft, having chanced upon QDOS, bought it for $50,000, renamed it MS-DOS, and immediately licensed it to IBM for use in its computers.

Although MS-DOS was the dominant operating system being used in the clones, it was not the only one, and certainly never the best (remember, it was a copy of an operating system designed in 1975 for computer hobbyists using 8-bit computers, and it was now the mid-80's with its 16-bit computers). But Microsoft made sure that their dominance in the OS market for IBM PCs quickly turned into a near-monopoly. They devised a licensing agreement that required any company which desired to use MS-DOS on some of their computers pay Microsoft for each computer they sold, regardless of whether MS-DOS was on that specific computer.

Since MS-DOS was already the dominant operating system, the business model of the majority of the IBM clone manufacturers depended on selling it with some of their computers. They were therefore left with no choice but to agree to Microsoft's licensing plan. But now that they had agreed to it, they were required to pay for two operating systems when they wanted only to put a non-Microsoft operating system on their computer. This, of course, made it rare to find a computer which did not come with MS-DOS, establishing Microsoft's monopoly in the IBM PC operating system market. It wasn't until 1994 when the US Justice Department ordered Microsoft to stop this anti-competitive behavior, but the damage was done.

Windows was Stolen

Then, in 1984, Apple Computer released the Macintosh computer, which used a graphical user interface to represent a desktop metaphor, with folders, files, and a trash can, among other things. It is common belief that Apple stole the idea from Xerox. This is not true. Apple bought the interface from Xerox for a rather hefty amount of Apple stock, and the final resultwas very different from the one that Xerox invented.

By 1985, Microsoft had become quite a large company. They were the dominant software provider for IBM clones as well as for the Macintosh. Although Microsoft was putting down the Macintosh by claiming that it was for lazy people and that it was less powerful than MS-DOS, they were at the same time well aware of its superiority in both ease of use and functionality, and seeking to mimic it in their own operating system.

Microsoft came to Apple, requesting to license some of the key interface elements from them for use in what was to be called Windows. Apple, of course, declined. So Microsoft again used its dominance in one market -- this time Macintosh software -- to force the industry to bend to itss wishes. It threatened to discontinue development of Macintosh applications unless Apple licensed portions of the MacOS. This would have been a major blow to Apple, since Microsoft was the dominant software provider for the Mac. So Apple was forced into licensing parts of their OS to Microsoft. Windows 1.0 was introduced later that year.

In 1990, Microsoft released Windows 3.0. By this time, Microsoft had clearly gone far beyond its licensing agreement with Apple, and was obviously stealing patented intellectual property. Apple took Microsoft to court, and many industry experts thought Apple had a very strong argument and was going to nail Microsoft. Apple lost the case.

Microsoft released Windows 95 on August 24, 1995, completing their theft of the Macintosh look and feel, but the change was only one of appearance. Deep down, Windows 95 is still QDOS. Despite this fact, Windows 95 was a wild success, and is used today by 85% of all computer users, with another 5% of consumers using its expensive cousin, Windows NT. A few months later, Bill Gates finished writing his "visionary" book, The Road Ahead.

Bill Gates: a Visionary?

It wasn't until the latter half of 1995 that Microsoft noticed the Internet, and Bill Gates ordered a complete corporate turnaround -- as well as rewriting The Road Ahead -- to address it. Lots of people will cclaim that this turnaround is proof of Bill Gates's visionary characteristic, but I see it another way. The fact that it took Bill Gates that long to notice the Internet and that his "visionary" book required a complete rewrite one year after its release shows us just how little of a visionary Bill Gates really is. Is this the kind of company we want leading our industry and providing all of our "innovation" (a term Microsoft uses so casually)?

Microsoft proves one can come in five years late and still beat them all. Every single feature in every Microsoft operating system or application is stolen. They must have a Macintosh and an Amiga somewhere and take their ideas from those systems. Except for the "Start" bar there isn't a single original idea Microsoft ever came up with themselves.

NeXT Step has the only original user interface in the world. Amiga came with localization. Xerox was the first to introduce the graphical user interface.

OOPS is the buzzword in computing industry today. In 1990, Bill Gates reckoned object-oriented programming would be a non-event. Today, Microsoft Visual Basic's latest release is close to being completely object-oriented. Borland started OOP with Pascal 5.5, and produced a far-superior product with Delphi than VB. Microsoft sought the chief architect of Delphi, and bought him over. Gates, the Visionary! Contributed by: Mike Barton.

The Story of Microsoft's Unending Greed for World Domination

The Browser War

Then there was this browser war. Netscape was the first company to introduce the concept of a 'browser', and its Communicator browser was very popular. Microsoft, having just seen the profitability of the Internet, began to code its own browser, the Internet Explorer. Windows 95 came with Internet Explorer, but nobody used it. Microsoft was frustrated, and its next Windows operating system -- Windows 98 -- came fully 'integrated' with IE. Users were forced to think that Internet Explorer is the software used to browse the World Wide Web, and Netscape suffered an irreparable setback. Have you tried 'Windows Update' in Netscape? The plan was a total success.

Microsoft customers upgrading their copies of Microsoft Office at the Microsoft website, but using the competition's web browser, are greeted with a message insisting on the use of MSIE for the "full edition" of the update. Or does it? It's all just a simple and unintentional misunderstanding, says a Microsoft spokesperson: The "limited edition" Office update offered to non-MSIE users "contains links to all Office updates [but] the full edition of Office Update has many more features... to experience the benefits of the full edition of Office Update, you'll need to use Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.01 or above." Got that?
SOURCE: CNET.com

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Attempting to access so-called "premium" services on Microsoft's web site requires users to accept "cookies," a condition some people don't entirely appreciate, because cookies amount to personal data recorded and accessed on their hard drives by a remote web server, and without their knowledge. So it's quite common for web surfers to switch off automatic cookie acceptance in their browsers.

Refuse a cookie, and Microsoft asks you to download Internet Explorer. All browsers handle cookies, for your information.

Even today, Microsoft has continued to bundle its browser, Internet Explorer, with all its Windows operating systems: 2000, ME, and XP. Of course, XP goes even one step ahead: it is a bundlehouse of all Microsoft products: Media Player, MSN Messenger, MSN Explorer, and all of its .NET tools. By the way, do you know what it means to the end-user? Your machines are all controlled by a server at Microsoft, and you are giving full powers to Microsoft.

Then came the need to have a prominent Web presence with a portal. Microsoft came up with MSN, bought Hotmail from an Indian called Sabeer Bhatia for millions of dollars, and started something called 'Passport'. It developed the ASP technology, and all its pages are coded so that they look better only in Internet Explorer.

Media Player: To Stamp Out Competition

There was the media war. Microsoft's Media Player that originally came with Windows 98 was a piece of crap, and many users ran WinAmp, RealPlayer and such other alternative software. Again, Microsoft began to realise the importance of media in the future computing, and started to bundle and give away for free its Media Player. Real Networks and many other companies were left in the dark. Have you seen the Media Player in Windows ME or XP? It's a classic example of Microsoft Bloatware.

Think it over: whenever Microsoft has released or bundled some software, it is to drive away a competitor. It happened for Netscape, it happened for Media Player. Has Microsoft released at least a trial version of Microsoft Office? Of course, no.

Java: Crushing Original Goals

Microsoft obtained licence from Sun Microsystems to include their proprietary Java software in Windows, but modified it to such an extent that the Java software could run only in Windows. Java was built on one principle: 'Write once, run anywhere'. This ideal itself was destroyed due to Microsoft's determination to crush out competition, and Sun took Microsoft to court.

Using Hardware Market to Improve Domination

Microsoft even eyes upon hardware market to retain its stronghold. It makes X-Box, and then codes games so that they play well only in X-Box. It adds an extra key (the 'Windows' key) and calls it Microsoft Natural Keyboard: users are expected to run Windows to make use of this key. It allows manufacturers to make cheap hardware, like Win-Modems and Win-Printers, and then asks users to run Windows in order to use them.

Linux and Samba: Get off, Morons!

Microsoft's stealth war against Linux and Samba opened with the release of Service Pack 3 for Windows NT 4. With this release, Microsoft implemented a subtle change to NT's communications protocols, making it incompatible with Samba. An adjustment to the Windows NT registry can reverse the incompatibility, but at the same time Microsoft eliminated the instructions for this fix from their website. In fact, they went several steps further -- by erasing from the website every reference to Samba and a previously posted technical article.

Palm Pilots and Palm PCs

After experiencing disappointing sales of their keyboard-driven portable computers running the WindowsCE operating system, Microsoft decided in late 1997 to market tiny, hand-held computers operated with a stylus, placing them in direct competition with the popular, and functionally similar, Palm Pilot personal information manager. After conducting what was termed "original marketing research," Microsoft dubbed its new product the Palm PC. Palm Computing Inc., a division of the 3Com Corporation, quickly filed a trademark infringement suit in Europe, complaining that Microsoft was deliberately attempting to confuse consumers by borrowing the first five letters of their product's name.

Bill Gates scoffed at Palm Computing's claims, labeling them "beyond bizarre." In April, Microsoft agreed to cease using the infringing "Palm PC" name.

Now, let's move on to other contemporary issues.

Privacy Concerns

The new Microsoft XP operating system has an online registration process, which sends all sorts of information about the computer to the Microsoft server. Office XP also does the same job. Microsoft also released a 'fix' to this, but who can believe anything when we don't get to see the source code?
SOURCE: CNN, July 27 2001

Microsoft polls WebTV boxes nightly to collect customer web surfing and viewing habits -- statistics which in turn are sold to advertisers. Its Windows CE television boxes extend the database by at least 5 million more homes.
SOURCE: USAToday, ZDNet

Paying for Crimes

Several cases are already costing Microsoft billions: AOL Time Warner (parent company of Netscape), RealNetworks (Real Player), and Sun Microsystems (Java). Apple Computer had already sued Microsoft, but unfortunately, lost it. There are also antitrust suits by 18 states of the USA, European countries, and even private individuals, small companies, and organisations. An agreement proposed was rejected by 6 states in early November 2001.

Internet Explorer Can Be Easily Removed

Microsoft claims that Internet Explorer cannot be removed from Windows 98. But Princeton University Professor Edward Felten demonstrated (December 1998) a program to Judge Jackson that removes IE from Windows 98 and actually runs Windows 98 minus the Internet Explorer. The only loss of functionality was the Windows Update feature. This was again, due to a change in the Update web site, after the program was shown (September 1998) to MS before in a discovery process. (It had worked prior (spring of 1998) to this.)
SOURCE: ZDNet, 15 Dec, 1998

Office XP: No Internet? F*** off!

Microsoft Office XP functions only for 50 attempts unless the user 'registers' his software by letting Microsoft know whatever it wants to, with its 'Online Registration' program. If this doesn't happen, it will cease to function.
This even if the customer has legitimately paid for the product. Did you talk about privacy invasion?
SOURCE: CNN, 12 Nov. 1998

Journalists: Beware!

San Jose Mercury technology reporter Dan Gilmore recently discovered he's been assigned a special "owner" at one of Microsoft's public relations firms, Waggener-Edstrom. These spin-masters are attached to troublesome journalists like Gilmore who have the temerity to write uncomplimentary articles about the company or its products.

The really irksome reporters, according to documents spirited from the Waggener-Edstrom offices, are also assigned "buddies" at Microsoft itself. John Dodge, the editor of PC Week, has a special buddy at Microsoft, and Mary Jo Foley at Smart Reseller, is the subject of a "Mary Jo six month plan."

Forcing Academicians into Microsoft Software

According to a special report on Microsoft's presence in the academy, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that computer science professors mentioning Microsoft products in scholarly presentations are eligible to apply for a $200.00 reward from the company. To hear both the company and some professors defend this practice, you'd have to believe that the sum is too small to be regarded as corporate payola. Which only makes one wonder why Microsoft bothers to offer the program, and why the professors bother to collect on it.

Unethical Trading Practices

Microsoft's favorite marketing practices are also the most obnoxious: preannouncing products long in advance, overstating their capabilities, and occasionally even announcing products they have no intention of shipping. However, these lies are only the beginning; Microsoft also uses an even dirtier trick of raising the entry cost for small companies into the marketing arena.

Around 1993, a software developer who produced a product for the OS/2 Warp platform wanted to advertise in a computer magazine. The developer was told that if he advertised a product for Microsoft's Windows NT, the cost would be $10,000 per page. If he chose to advertise his OS/2 product, the cost would be $60,000 per page.

Why the difference? Because Microsoft would subsidize all Windows NT advertisements in that magazine, making them far cheaper in comparison. The net effect was to give the computer magazine a huge financial incentive to discriminate against non-Microsoft platforms, effectively censoring the information about superior products.

• Dumping: Dumping is illegal, but Microsoft is dumping Internet Explorer only to destroy Netscape market share.
• Licensing: Computer manufacturers must pay Microsoft for licenses of Windows, even if they don't sell it with all their computers. You think it is free, but in fact, it is included in the price. It is why Microsoft has become so big.
• Making competing products incompatible: It has happened a few times in Microsoft history, one of the most recent is DR-DOS 6.0, that was taking away sales from Microsoft's MS-DOS. So Microsoft make Windows 3.1 and make it incompatible with DR-DOS 6.0, effectively killing it, even if a later patch solved the problem. You will see this again very soon with Internet Explorer...
• Vaporware: Microsoft announces products years before they hit the market, telling how will it be good, will solve all problems, and that it will be out soon. The only reason is to make users and developers wait and prevent them from looking at other possibilities or platforms.

New Versions: Innovations?

Microsoft releases new version numbers early and often, but these are not innovations. Their products do not make significant leaps in performance (often the reverse), and they do not make significant improvements in capabilities. However, the constant flood of new incremental versions keeps people so busy maintaining compatibility and keeping updated, they have no time or money left for investigating the alternatives.

In addition, the preloading of Microsoft products gives people the distinct impression that they are free. Why would people rush to your door to buy the world's best mousetrap, when the Microsoft mousetrap is already free and delivered to their doorstep?

This push-pull arrangement of controlling the supply of software and also controlling the demand for software is highly effective. It is as if Microsoft keeps people on a constant treadmill, chasing updates to try to fix what they got for free. This keeps them out of the market for what really works, while denying capital to innovative competitors.

In the long run, this practice actually prevents innovation by keeping money out of the hands of deep thinkers. Yes, Microsoft has found the way to stop innovation: they make it unprofitable.

Small Companies Always Lose Out

Microsoft sets the standards, they control speed of progression in the computer industry. Developers can either follow Microsoft and stay in business or progress by developing for a very small market (i.e. no Windows-based computers)

Microsoft offers only inferior products, and with its money imposes them as standards, blocking better products in order to gain marketsshare.

Microsoft invented nothing -- it copies (Macintosh, DOS, Stacker, Wordperfect, Netscape) or buys (FoxPro, SoftImage, Norton Backup, Central-Point Anti-Virus) ideas from others. Small companies make innovations, and then their ideas are taken by Microsoft. When Microsoft has no competition in a given market, there is no more innovation...

TV Host
When the tiny startup company TV Host, developer of the first television program guide for PCs, was invited to partner with Microsoft, they were understandably enthusiastic. But when licensing talks broke down, Microsoft abruptly announced their intentions to integrate Microsoft's own TV program guide into Windows 98, undercutting TV Host's budding market. It was a move made all the easier by Microsoft having gained access to TV Host's product and business plan during negotiations.

BSA Investigation
The Business Software Alliance is ostensibly a trade association that tracks down pirated software on behalf of its members in the software industry. But the BSA mainly does Microsoft's bidding, according to an investigation conducted by Mother Jones Magazine. According to the magazine, the BSA files suits against offending organizations, but quickly drops them when they agree to sign deals to purchase Microsoft software exclusively.

Eyeing Exotic Collections

In 1995 a virtually unknown company called Corbis purchased the Bettman Archives, the world's largest private collection of historical and newspaper photographs. Corbis, a company founded in 1989 and owned by Bill Gates, is also actively negotiating with museums worldwide for exclusive licenses to electronically reproduce works of art held in their collections. Since that time, the Corbis "collection" has swelled to over 20 million images.

The apparent purpose is to provide Microsoft with access to a huge supply of exclusive cultural "content" for its web sites and multimedia CDs, and to prevent others from obtaining similar access. The rub is that Corbis now holds exclusive reproduction rights to images which are not copyrighted, but are in held in the public domain. Gates has seduced these museums, presumably with promises of future residuals, into veering from their missions as trustees of our cultural legacies, and into exploring the murkiest areas of "fair use" practices and curatorial ethics.

How Microsoft Reduces Your Productivity

NT is No Good

All of the places where I have been, where Microsoft products are used, experience reductions in productivity as a result of the shortcomings of Microsoft products. The most frequent productivity drainer is the common gray box which announces an error or the "Dr. Watson" fatal error in Windows NT.

Microsoft claims that OLE is object oriented, and the average user believes that this is as good as it gets. For a good example of how OLE reduces productivity, try this little experiment. Create a table in a Microsoft Word document. Now create a Microsoft PowerPoint document and insert the Word document, which has the table, into the Power Point document. The result is a mess. The Word table does not fit the Power Point slide. The user is forced to recreate the table by hand in the Power Point document. The purpose of OLE was that you could reuse objects which were created in other applications. NeXTStep allowed this, Microsoft does not.

SOURCE: Dan Peterson, MIS Director of a Company, describing his experiences with NT

Windows is the Buggiest OS

Windows 9x and NT top the list at the number of operating systems crashes in ZDNet's TOOT (Tool Of Objective Truth), and also is the suckiest OS as per ZDNet's Operating Systems Sucks-O-Meter.

How You Are Harmed By Windows

• Paying a "Microsoft tax" on a computer with Windows pre-installed even though you didn't want it
• Losing your work due to a system crash or "illegal error"
• Wasting time waiting for Windows to boot
• Upgrading your hardware because the performance of Windows or another Microsoft program is so slow
• Adding more hard drive space to accomodate Microsoft bloatware
• Re-installing Windows to fix problems because Microsoft tech support told you that was the best solution
• Spending money to upgrade Microsoft software
• Being forced to use Microsoft software at school or work
• Seeing a "Server Too Busy" error when attempting to connect to a Windows NT server
• Waiting for a Microsoft program to be released only to find it is inferior to the competition that has already been available.
• Using a Microsoft program so you can read documents in proprietary formats sent to you by others
• On a daily base people spend more time troubleshooting Windows than actually using an application.
• On an average an NT server has an uptime of two weeks or less before crashing.

There's a golden rule in computing that says "the user friendlier a system, the less possibilities - and the other way around". Windows 95 is one extreme, UNIX the other. Windows 95 may be what most people want, but it is nerd un-friendly.

Single applications do everything ten applications did before. The downside is that the user cannot choose anymore. Typing text in WordPerfect 4.2 and doing layout in a DTP package isn't done. Now everything must be done in, for example, MS-Word, which is too big for a word processor and too little for a DTP package. The user cannot choose which word processor, layout package, font engine and graphics package to use anymore. A web browser shouldn't do e-mail, news, FTP and gopher. Those should be separate programs so the user can choose which to use. This may be handy for a newbie, but it is like working with inferior tools for the computer expert.

This document needs contributors, and you can be one. Do you know something about Microsoft which you don't like? Do tell me. Remember, we can protect our rights only by raising our voice.