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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Milan Shah who wrote (33803)	11/11/1999 5:57:00 PM
From: RTev	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Since you claim to know so much more about legal matters than the judge whose name you seem unable to spell (perhaps in recurring fits of adolescent pique), you understand that the injunction was based on the '95 consent decree and that the circuit court determined that the '95 decree did not bar Microsoft from releasing Windows 98 with an integrated browser. You also understand, I'm sure, that this is a new case with new evidence that does not depend on the '95 decree. You surely know that the judge has ruled, "The debut of Internet Explorer and its rapid improvement gave Netscape an incentive to improve Navigator's quality at a competitive rate. The inclusion of Internet Explorer with Windows at no separate charge increased general familiarity with the Internet and reduced the cost to the public of gaining access to it, at least in part because it compelled Netscape to stop charging for Navigator. These actions thus contributed to improving the quality of Web browsing software, lowering its cost, and increasing its availability, thereby benefitting consumers." [408] The judge does a pretty good non-technical job of explaining in his FOF the basic shared routine development process: "The software code necessary to supply the functionality of a modern application or operating system can be extremely long and complex. To make that complexity manageable, developers usually write long programs as a series of individual 'routines,' each ranging from a few dozen to a few hundred lines of code, that can be used to perform specific functions. Large programs are created by 'knitting' together many such routines in layers, where the lower layers are used to provide fundamental functionality relied upon by higher, more focused layers. Some preliminary aspects of this 'knitting' are performed by the software developer. The user who launches a program, however, is ultimately responsible for causing routines to be loaded into memory and executed together to produce the program's overall functionality." [162] I mentioned the Office toolbars because they're a great example of shared code that isn't included in the OS. You said, "The intrinsic logic that a toolbar represents is very small - most of its logic is app specific." That's not true. The rendering and control of the toolbars is controlled by the the shared code and not by the app. You can move the toolbars (including the menu strip which is just another toolbar) anywhere you want them. Put them on the top, bottom, or sides. Get them close enough and they'll click to the edge of the app's frame or drag them out of the app's frame entirely. Drag an icon or menu item to a different toolbar or delete it entirely. You can create a custom toolbar that will show up where you want it whenever the app opens. If you want to irritate someone, you can make all their icons and menu items behave in all the wrongs ways. All of that and more is done by shared code. Non-Microsoft developers can license and use that shared code so that they don't have to reinvent the complex and tricky logic used to control those toolbars. The same thing happens with VBA -- the shared code used for macros within Office apps. Corel now licenses that code from Microsoft so that their Draw apps use the same macro language, objects, and editing environment used by Office. MSJet is yet another example. Much of the shared code for that database engine is stored in the OS directory. For years, Microsoft has encouraged developers to use its database engine if they need that functionality in their application. Hundreds (if not thousands) of developers inside and outside of Microsoft have used it. Access uses it. It also uses that shared toolbar code and the shared VBA code. None of that code sharing has prevented Microsoft from making millions of dollars a year selling Access. All of that is to say that the desirable and beneficial aspects of shared code are not enough in themselves to justify the marketing and licensing practices that were alleged to be exclusionary.