You post contained a very interesting phrase: "a monopoly of the operating systems in personal computers that is never going to be displaced".
In fact, DOS as a platform is today replaced. Many DOS games and applications cannot run on Windows NT or Windows 2000, and even on Windows 98 you need to do special things to make it work (lock command).
There are several different DOS's out there, and many DOS emulators, like the ones with Linux.
The same applies to 16-bit Windows, that today runs on both MS Windows, OS/2 and Linux, and probably also other platforms.
32-bit Windows is still not 100% compatible between Linux and Windows 98/2000, which is one of the reasons why some Windows applications still don't run perfectly on Linux.
The interesting thing here is, that Microsoft has to go 64-bit unless they want to lose grip. When they go 64-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit has to be emulated in some ways, and I doubt, whether they will be able to co-develop 32-bit and 64-bit platforms in all future. I think they will eventually abandon 32-bit just like they abandoned 16-bit. Therefore, the 32-bit platform will stabilize and other platforms will probably catch up and be compatible with 32 bit applications.
Then you can argue, that the 64-bit platform will be so backwards compatible, that Microsoft still owns some kind of monopoly, but here it is important to remember how many cross-platform activities there are today. OpenGL slowly replaces DirectX, Corba is used more and more and leaves COM as some kind of Windows API technique, and several programming tools can deliver cross-platform applications (like Corel Delphi for Windows and Linux). All serious middleware today is cross-platform, and an application written on Lotus Notes runs the same way on AS/400 than on Windows. If 32-bit programs have to be changed in order to work on a 64-bit platform, why should the programmers keep themself from making it Wine/Linux compatible at the same time?
No matter how the DOJ case ends, Microsoft is losing influence on which OS people runs. I see Microsoft Office as a much more valuable asset than Microsoft Windows, because applications and automated documents written for Microsoft Office cannot "run" on other platforms. I don't see the Windows platform as being owned 100% by Microsoft for ever.
Did you know, that Microsoft Internet Explorer 3, in the Windows version, runs on Linux? See
winehq.com
Especially that the Microsoft Terminal Server client runs on Linux is interesting, because that gives native support for access to Windows applications from Linux PCs. |
