<<I think it is the customer who benefits as we get a wider operating
system with a lower price, imagine if we need to have 100 softwares to
load to make Windows as efficient is it is today. If customer is
benfitting why should it worry me if software company in a basement is
taken over by MSFT for 100 million $, may be that is the intention of
some of these companies. To be taken over, may be they design their
products so compatible to MSFT, the world of Macintoosh's came to an
end because they were reluctant to open out. Just a thought - I
thoroughly enjoyed your note and learnt a lot.>>
Your premise is good to a degree, we all want a simpler more inclusive
software experience with our operating system. However I think you
will find too many small companies whose software was coopted and who
never got 100 million for their effort. The father of Bill Gates is a
well-to-do Seattle Patent Attorney. I assume he has and his son have a
keen appreciation of the value of intellectual property, and Bill knows
the difficulty of proving ownership. Software programming is an
abstruse, arcane process and software is "slippery." Software
programming is something most people don't understand, they think it is
too "technical." Judges and lawyers don't understand how to deal with
Microsoft, and proving software code copying is difficult because no
two programmers would come up with the same exact code to achieve an
objective.
Remember version 6.2 of DOS? Microsoft was found to be guilty of
copying someone else's code and included it in DOS. Microsoft got a
big fine. Version 6 was removed from store shelves. A few months later
version 6.22 came out with legally acquired code.
Since back in the early 80s all machines sold have been required to
include a copy of DOS. This royalty stream began to make Microsoft very
wealthy. The agreements with box makers to include DOS were leveraged
to include other Microsoft softwares. If boxmakers agreed to only sell
Microsoft bundled software they received it at a reduced rate lower
than that of competing software.
Microsoft was building a critical mass in size which drew in
cooperating software developers and competitive products found it
increasingly difficult to make sales. Microsoft's software often was
NOT the best available product but its competitors were increasingly
shut out of the market. The monopoly position of Microsoft was used to
drive out competitors. Also, Microsoft used "vaporware" as a means to
drive out competition by promising non-existant software to compete
with competitors' existing or developing software. And, Microsoft is
infamous for promising delivery dates that fail and are put off and
off. So, Microsoft doesn't always "deliver."
The upgrade version of Windows95 can be installed without Internet
Explorer, although doing so is not easy. The later OEM versions of W95
increasingly made Internet Explorer an integral part of the code in
many files. Windows98 cannot be installed without Internet Explorer.
Many feel that with W98 it has gone one step too far.
These are a few examples of Microsoft's exclusionary and bundling
practices. The DOJ suit is not a means by which mediocre civil servants
can try to pull down one of the world's "best companies." It is a well
reasoned carefully considered lawsuit. Probably not too much will come
of it but I hope it serves notice to the computing and software
communities that a level field must exist for the creativity and
innovation of all for the benefit of all, and not just for Microsoft.
There is a Microsoft/Netscape thread here that discusses this much
better than I can portray.
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