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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems

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To: cheryl williamson who wrote (5003)	10/20/1997 7:55:00 PM
From: LKO	of 64865

> Since when is an application program a part of the operating > system?? It may not be in a very technical sense be "part of the operating system" but applications are shipped "with the operating system" all the time. In the traditional unix world, you always had an applications for editing files called "vi" but you could choose to get a better text editor "emacs". There is always "ftp" and "rlogin" applications though you can choose to invoke their web based client programs these days. Sun ships a windows system choices ("Openwindows", "CDE") in SOlaris but many customes get the MIT X bundle and replace them because they think it is better. Sun ships a "sendmail" mail server application but many customers choose its public domain version over it since it has more features. That may not be a common thing in the PC world where DOS was prevalent (which many might object to even being called an "operating system" :-)), but in advanced operating system software bundles a core set of applications is always there. They can always be replaced by a better thing atleast in the Unix world though I have heard the Windows world tries to make that harder to do (I wonder why :-)). That "core set" can always include a browser and Sun's Hotjava browser is an example. > MSFT lawyers are contending that the consent > decree allows them to enhance their o/s, & that is just what > they have done, with a browser(!!!). At the surface that is a reasonable argument. Depends on how they wrote the contracts though. If the contracts said something like "...you cannot ship Windows 95 if you include a different browser.. .." they are in trouble. In the Sun analogy, Sun released the HotJava browser by ftp downloads, but shipped it in a future OS release (Solaris 2.6). It would be anti-competitive if it tried to force Solaris OEMS (the few that there are :-) e.g. Sparc clone makers or SOlaris x86 OEMS) instead of Netscape. I hope the justice department lawyers knew what they were looking at and found Microsoft upto something fishy. But, in the long term the release of Windows98 will render this issue moot when the IE browser will be part of the "core applications" that get shipped with the OS bundle. At that time Netscape browser will have to stand on its merits. Of a more shady nature are practices of other Microsoft subsidiaries like MSN where content is only viewable throuh IE browser and not Netscape browser. If you are shopping for a car and want to view carpoint.msn.com see what happens when you try with the Netscape browser.

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