<< I think the entire claim against msft that rests on the notion that their ownership of the platform solely constitutes anticompetitive behavior by definition is a bit bogus. >>
The claim is actually that if you own the platform and you recruit others to create for that platform and then later use control of the platform to take over the business they helped to create, that is by definition anticompetitive, since it eliminates the competition through use of an unfair advantage.
Uniformly in the industry, that advantage is supplemented by deceit, industrial espionage, financial pressure, raiding key people, client stealing, and so forth.
(I cite Apple dropping me from their developer program at one time in the late 80's, so that I could not get Mac's at the normal 50% developer discount, because I would not provide full technical product specs, debug versions of code, personal and business net worth statements, and marketing plans for *all* products under development to them.)
The fact that Oracle's development teams couldn't software manage their way out of a paper bag doesn't really provide a hearty counterexample. Also, SQL-compliant DB's are of necessity somewhat generic, so DB apps vendors can counterattack by moving clients to Informix, for example. It is in fact the lack of complete control over the SQL3 platform that kept Oracle from having more of an anticompetitive advantage. Standards, standards, standards. That's one thing they are for.
Notice MSFT doesn't like standards.
Cheers,
Chaz |
