Opinion: Microsoft must no longer set standards

Moritz Förster has been writing for iX and heise online since 2012. He is responsible for the iX channel and the areas of workstations and servers.

To make it clear right away: this is not only due to the company’s malice. But it’s also because the close interlocking of licenses and the practical bundling of applications make it difficult to choose a different product in just one area. This is undoubtedly intentional. And the regulatory authorities intervene here time and again; due to its pioneering role in Europe, Microsoft has had to unbundle MS Teams and Office at least somewhat.

Everyone is chasing after Microsoft

However, the Federal Cartel Office Bundeskartellamt is also addressing a sore point that is much more fundamental: Microsoft can set standards time and again thanks to its prominent position. And users, developers and competitors have to follow them if they want to play along. But those who have mastered the standard are of course the best at it; just look at Office formats because despite all the open-source progress, the original has remained ahead for decades.

Officially, of course, these are not standards; nobody is preventing third parties from trying to do this without Microsoft compatibility. Enough free software tries this, but success is usually limited to the backend. And it’s also nice to see how difficult Microsoft can suddenly find it with compatibility and feature parity. All this is good, but not enough.

After all, Microsoft does not have to dominate all of IT to be a problem for free competition. Too many areas are under the direct or indirect control of the group. And it won’t help to unbundle individual packages. We finally need free standards that apply internationally and are enforced – completely accessible to all developers. Software must be able to communicate with each other in a way that does not allow one of the competitors to control the standard.

Not a question of technology

This is already the declared goal for messengers. But we have not gone far enough so far. There are plenty of models for achieving this: in the history of technology, institutions such as universities or even public authorities have repeatedly managed to enforce independent standards. Corporations have carried out their own research and then made their results completely public. Technically, none of this would be a problem; the question is how to enforce it.

That would also be in Microsoft’s interest: The company would then no longer have to lock its customers in, but rather convince them of its products through good GUI design, tough security, reliable updates and professional support. To put it politely: So far, there hasn’t been enough – and that’s why Microsoft has to face the antitrust authorities again and again for the same reasons.

(fo)

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This article was originally published in

German.

It was translated with technical assistance and editorially reviewed before publication.

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Publish date : 2024-10-01 14:20:00

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