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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (30147)	4/4/2000 6:42:00 PM
From: Thomas Mercer-Hursh	Respond to of 64865

That software should be made public-domain and it should be maintained by committee as a commodity. I know we have now had an excellent counter-example in Linux, but the idea of compounding the mess of Windows code by turning it over to a committee makes me wince. Of course, that might be one way to kill it altogether, so maybe that is a good idea after all!

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (30147)	4/4/2000 9:04:00 PM
From: C. Zuck	Respond to of 64865

"Consumers will appreciate that they have been harmed by MSFT when they are able to select from a number of competing products." I think that's exactly right. I can't agree with people who keep saying "Microsoft never harmed the consumer". The PC experience has been almost completely shaped by MS. Who knows what alternatives we would have by now if Be, Spyglass, Netscape, Citrix, or whoever had been "allowed to innovate." Instead, because of illegal coercion by Microsoft, developers and boxmakers were not free to support such alternatives, and they withered on the vine, or were never launched out of knowledge that they would be ruthlessly crushed. (Pardon the mixed metaphor). I think Linux took off because there was a critical mass of people fed up with Windows. Maybe it wasn't necessary for the DOJ to step in, and the market would have worked things out itself. However, the "poor Microsoft, bad lawyers" stuff doesn't wash, because Microsoft blatantly and repeatedly broke the law, even after agreeing not to. I don't see the same arrogance from Sun, Cisco, Oracle, or anybody else.