Microsoft Hoist by its Own Anti-Anti-Competitive Petard

At least Glyn Moody said it out loud (wrote it in public) rather than just snickering about it and giving MSFT a free pass, which most of the "IT trade press" will do.

You can say "Big deal, all businesses do this" or "Big deal, all lawyers blow hot and cold from the same mouth", but I think that publicly noting a contradiction at the core of a corporate entity's PR flack is important.

Agreed, phsolide. Plus it's a cheap and incorrect excuse to say 'everyone does it'. Because it's not true.

Quoting:The European Commission, in its March 24, 2004 decision on Microsoft's business practices,[1] quotes, in paragraph 463, Microsoft general manager for C++ development Aaron Contorer as stating in a February 21, 1997 internal Microsoft memo drafted for Bill Gates:

"The Windows API is so broad, so deep, and so functional that most ISVs would be crazy not to use it. And it is so deeply embedded in the source code of many Windows apps that there is a huge switching cost to using a different operating system instead...

"It is this switching cost that has given the customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high TCO, our lack of a sexy vision at times, and many other difficulties [...] Customers constantly evaluate other desktop platforms, [but] it would be so much work to move over that they hope we just improve Windows rather than force them to move.

"In short, without this exclusive franchise called the Windows API, we would have been dead a long time ago."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in

I'm certainly no expert on Shakespearean figures of speech, but shouldn't the title be "Microsoft Hoisted by Its Own..." ?

I doubt it. The hoisting is not yet finished, I'm sure.

Whether it's meant to be past tense or not, I don't think it's grammatically correct to use the verb "hoist" the way it is being used in that title.

I think it's like the expression "He painted himself into a corner." If you want to say that someone is currently doing that, you say, "He is painting himself into a corner" -- not "He paint himself into a corner."

with the exception, that you are using hoist in its modern connotation, rather than in this case, hoist meaning done in by, petar(d) being an old fashioned siege weapon used to breach wall. They had an unfortunate side effect, being packed full of gun powder, of going off rather much like a bomb. Not doing much to the wall, but if you were nearby, you were most definitely done in.

I understand what the expression means -- I just don't think that the grammar of its usage is correct.

And I suspect that that's the result of a modern-day writer trying to look more intellectual by using an obscure Shakespearean literary allusion.

... sigh. it was a joke...

*sigh* if your insisting on tense's then no I dont think you quite grasp that the word has drifted in both definition and usage. By insisting that it deserves tense, your insisting that the word is to be used then as it is now.

enough english though, it may be my native language but it's horribly convoluted in the present, subtracting 402 years of lingual drift and it really starts to get messy.

Let's just go all John Wayne and say "strung up."

Now maybe someone knows what a petard is?

si senorita TC, iz sort of a cannon, goes boom to break wall defenses, or goes boom at your feet. Either way, it go BOOOOM.

Someone please re-write MS' diatribe as if it were GNU/Linux writing about MS. The whole argument is a perfect viewpoint on MS locking everyone else into Windows/Office, so turn that document around.

Ask, and ye shall receive:

http://gus3.typepad.com/i_am_therefore_i_think/2010/03/micro...

Someone please send me enough money to allow me to spend all day, every day, experimenting with Linux, posting on forums, writing articles and working on my Web sites.

Com_Bob, it is in fact "hoist" even though it should be "hoisted", sorry.

Actually, the quote is "Hoist with his own petard", not on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petard#.22Hoist_with_his_own_pe...

Shakespeare, Hamlet,

There's letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows, Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd, They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way And marshal me to knavery. Let it work; For 'tis the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his own petar; and 't shall go hard But I will delve one yard below their mines And blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet, When in one line two crafts directly meet.

@Bob_Rob - Thanks for the clarification.

And if the article's writer had been writing for readers of that particular era, such a reference might have been more appropriate.

But in this case, it looks to me like an "I'm smarter than you are" reference that would really only be relevant to contestants on the TV game show, "Jeopardy!"