Harvey, this Nick Petreley piece, ncworldmag.com, is an excellent companion to the ongoing legal news. I've been a fan of Nick for a while, he goes over the top from time to time but this article shows some real understanding of Microsoft. It's got a lot of stuff that the Microphiles would not hestitate to agree with in a different context.
There's too much I agree with here to excerpt it all, here's just a little bit:
Microsoft rarely wages wars with products. It wages and wins wars with paper -- contracts and the press. Microsoft has other anti-Java strategies and options that it is now exercising. For example, computer consultant and writer Brett Glass recently alerted me to an interesting condition upon which Microsoft contracts with ISPs to give away Internet Explorer. In those contracts, under exhibit C, it says:
Company shall participate in the following marketing related activities:
(v) Deploy [and promote where appropriate] at least one advanced
feature of Internet Explorer 4 (e.g., Channel webcast optimization via a
CDF file, Dynamic HTML, or NetShow content) on Company's Internet
Product page.
In other words, Microsoft holds out a "free" browser if you agree to create content on your home page that Netscape users can't use. What Microsoft gets is a contract that hurts Netscape while advancing Dynamic HTML, Microsoft's challenge du jour to Java. Embrace and extend, indeed. (The contracts are from the license agreement wizard at ieak.microsoft.com
Of course, I'm not quite sure why ISP's have to sign a contract to get "free" IE anyway. Well, I take that back. It's another one of those things that makes the old "Leave the lawyers out of it" line so richly ironic. Microsoft never, ever leaves the lawyers out of it. Never.
There's also a very on-point analysis of the war on Java. First time I read this, I was ROTFL over the "Internet Expectorator" line, but the jokes detract from the serious and straightforward message here.
Cheers, Dan. |
