The Trial Part 2

Microsoft was asked to offer a version of Windows without IE. Microsoft replied that the company would offer the consumers either “one version of Windows that was obsolete, or another that did not work properly”. The judge stated “It seemed absolutely clear to you that I entered an order that required that you distribute a product that would not work?” David D. Cole, another Microsoft Vice-President, replied, “In plain English, yes. We followed that order. It wasn’t my place to consider the consequences of that”. Both the prosecution and the defense called upon the professors of MIT to serve as witnesses for their cases. Microsoft defended itself in the public “Consumers did not ask for these antitrust actions … rival business firms did. Consumers of high technology have enjoyed falling prices, expanding outputs, and a breathtaking array of new products and innovations. … Increasingly, however, some firms have sought to handicap their rivals by turning to government for protection. Many of these cases are based on speculation about some vaguely specified consumer harm in some unspecified future, and many of the proposed interventions will weaken successful U.S. firms and impede their competitiveness abroad.”

Judge Jackson issued his conclusions that Microsoft had committed monopolization and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to that monopoly, and his opinion was that Microsoft must be broken into two separate units, one to produce the operating system, and one to produce other software components.

Ironically the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals anulled Judge Jackson’s rulings against Microsoft because in their view the Appellate court had adopted a “drastically altered scope of liability” so his suggestions were not viable, and also because of his interviews to the news media while he was still hearing the case, in violation of the Code of Conduct for US Judges. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals accused him of unethical conduct and opined that he should recuse himself from the case.

Judge Jackson’s response was that Microsoft’s conduct itself was the cause of any “perceived bias”; Microsoft executives had “proved, time and time again, to be inaccurate, misleading, evasive, and transparently false. … Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect. It is also a company whose senior management is not averse to offering specious testimony to support spurious defenses to claims of its wrongdoing.”

The Settlement

On November 2, 2001, the Department of Justice reached a settlement with Microsoft. Microsoft will have to share its application programming interfaces with third-party companies and appoint a panel of three people who will have full access to Microsoft’s systems, records, and source code for five years in order to ensure compliance. This was to ensure Microsoft did not engage in “Predatory Behavior” directly or indirectly forming a “Barrier to Entry”. However, the Department of Justice allowed Microsoft to retain its code and integrate other softwares with Windows in the future. Nine states i.e. California, Kansas, Minnesota, Connecticut,Utah, Iowa, Florida,Minnesota, Virginia and Massachusetts and the District of Columbia did not agree with the settlement.

Andrew Chin, an antitrust law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who assisted Judge Jackson in drafting the findings of fact, wrote that the settlement gave Microsoft “a special antitrust immunity to license Windows and other ‘platform software’ under contractual terms that destroy freedom of competition. Microsoft now enjoys illegitimately acquired monopoly power in the market for Web browser software products.”

Microsoft’s responsibilities according to the settlement expired on November 12, 2007. Microsoft consented to extend selected terms of the settlement till 2012, but the plaintiffs made it clear that the extension was intended to serve only to give the relevant part of the settlement “the opportunity to succeed for the period of time it was intended to cover”, rather than being due to any “pattern of willful and systematic violations”.

Recently, I connected to a prospective client on LinkedIn, and he shared some concerns:

“I was referred to you by a friend who has worked with Mindfire and highly recommended your services. I was impressed by the technical competence of my emails and discussion with your group. However, (and I’m sure you know this), I have been “warned” by people in the SaaS business I know over here, that subcontracting to some offshore firms can be “a nightmare” and that work, though much less expensive, can take three or four times as long. Some even say the quality of the coding is poor.”

This summarized some top points of apprehension for anyone about to start a relationship for off-shore software development. All 3 problems and points of apprehension are true in general, but at Mindfire we have these points covered . Although working with us is the only way to get a real impression of things, let me share thoughts about these as they relate to Mindfire.

1. Quality of code is poor: yes, in many cases.

Most IT/software companies in India do everything – from programming to design to graphics to SEO to data-entry to marketing and so on. You cannot be the best at everything. Often you end up being mediocre in each. We do only one thing – “off-shore small-team software development” – and we do it very well. Starting from hiring to testing to reviews to environment to training to culture, we are focused on being the rock-stars of software development – only.

2. Takes longer: yes, in many cases.

Sometimes it is due to incompetence (related to first point above) and sometimes it is intentional over-reporting for financial reasons. We have neither problem. Money has never been a driver – we want to earn with pride and only want money that we deserve. We have been around for 13 years now and want to be around for much more than that – you cannot violate Truth and Integrity, and last that long.

3. A nightmare: yes, in many cases.

Sometimes it is due to communication issues, sometimes it is due to clients expecting magical solutions to unexpressed desires (our people may weave technical magic, but no other types!). Sometimes it is due to lack of mutual respect, sometimes it is due to plain old incompetence or inexperience. In any case, we offer a pleasant experience to our clients. We have selfish reasons – when our clients can relax about work, they can focus more on growing their business, which will create more work for us! When you are focused on the long run, things are quite simple actually.

This small exchange has not touched upon even more issues in off-shore software development! Those related to communication, culture, engineering replication, understanding, attrition – the list goes on.

It is sad to have to accept these points, but often they are, indeed, true. At Mindfire, we are building an organization that accepts and addresses problems in off-shore software development, rather than denying problems. Every day we find ways of doing things better, and each of them adds up.

Author – Chinmoy Panda