« SUPPORT OUR NON-FARMERS | Main | THE MORE THE MERRIER PART I: OPEN UP THE BORDER »

March 28, 2005

THE MICROSOFT "MONOPOLY"?

What does it mean to call Microsoft a monopoly? The term is thrown around unthinkingly by many people in the free software community. Yet it's worth asking exactly what Microsoft have a monopoly on.

All companies and individuals are, in some small way, monopolies. The Coca-Cola company is rarely called a monopoly because they are the only company that produces Coke. I am rarely called a monopoly because I own exclusive rights to the thoughts and labour of people named Lewis Collard living in West Norfolk. Yet, this is little different to the kind of monopoly Microsoft has.

Microsoft are not without competition in any area of their operation, because they are unable to stop rivals from springing up and forcing them to improve their products. They have no monopoly on easy-to-use desktop systems, since Apple have been gaining market share recently (and the KDE and Gnome desktops for Unix are improving rapidly). Their much-maligned bundling of Internet Explorer has not stopped Firefox and Opera from taking a noticable market share. They certainly haven't got the server market cornered, which is still dominated by Unix and its clones. There are countless other examples of this, and I needn't go on. The point is, Microsoft do not have a monopoly on anything but Microsoft products.

There are, of course, disadvantages in using operating systems other than Microsoft's. Unix-like systems are more difficult to install and use. Apple systems are more expensive because of the cost of hardware. Both types of systems suffer from not being able to run most off-the-shelf software. But should Microsoft be punished because people prefer a different sets of trade-offs to the ones government wants them to?

There is a real risk of Microsoft gaining a monopoly: by force. Since it has no power in a free market to compel anyone to use its products, it must resort to the government. Laws like the Digital Millenium Copyright Act in the United States, user interface copyright and software patents give them that power. Such government intervention should be scrapped to deprive software companies of the ability to form real monopolies.

Posted by Lewis at March 28, 2005 01:11 PM