digital end

A lot of people ask me why I don’t like Microsoft. It has nothing to do with their products, which, although are occasionally irritating, buggy, etc, are generally quite good. It’s their business practices.

Today I came across an article on Slashdot and I quickly realised that this concerns BlueJ, a Java program used to teach beginners to programming all about Object Orientation and the basics of the Java language. I used this program at the University of Kent, where one of it’s designers, Michael Kölling, lectures. It’s clearly a small world, I thought. Michael lectured me only last month.

Then I read the article that Michael himself wrote about Microsoft patenting BlueJ. Ok, it’s not as literal as that - they’re patenting the basic ‘workflow’, if you like, that BlueJ uses, claiming it as their own. If you don’t believe me, have a look at a direct comparison of the workflows.

I first used BlueJ in 2003. At the time Microsoft had nothing similiar. In fact, as you can read from Michael’s article, the ‘Visual C# Product Manager’ (now ‘Lead Product Manager - Visual Studio Express’) even admitted that the ideas were explicitly taken from BlueJ after Visual Studio customers mentioned its functionality. So Microsoft admitted they’ve stolen the idea… and then patented it. I’m incensed, so I can only imagine how Michael and the rest of the BlueJ team feel.

Microsoft has done similiar things to this before; patenting ideas they haven’t created and generally abusing their position as the market leader.

I’ve decided: I’m never buying an MS product again. Maybe I’m being a little over the top, but this sort of behaviour goes entirely against the core of my being. I was planning on buying a laptop soon - I’ll be buying one without windows, or getting a refund. Luckily I’m already familiar with Linux and it’s going from strength to strength and hey, although I don’t really like the hardware lock-in on Mac’s, Macbooks are damn sexy and Apple are actually innovating. I’ve raised this point before, but what have MS actually invented? What innovation have they ever, actually, brought to the market? Can you think of anything? It seems to me that MS have only really lumped other people’s inventions together into a package (Windows 95? Office anyone?). It looks like, even with the stupid money MS now have, that isn’t about to change.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 28th, 2007 at 9:58 am and is filed under Computing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.