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

To: Gerald Walls who wrote (31369)	4/27/2000 6:38:00 PM
From: John Dunigan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

Is there anything about SUNW or has this thread degenerated to a Gates bashing enterprise? What a pity. John

To: Gerald Walls who wrote (31369)	4/27/2000 7:15:00 PM
From: cheryl williamson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Gerald, There's nothing "narrowly" defined about the existance of PC-DOS as the only O/S running on IBM-spec PC's. It happens to be the truth. There has always been competition between hardware vendors, but the IBM-PC has become the standard for all PC's because of its superior price/performance. The idea of opening up the hardware was a brilliant marketing move by IBM, but they dropped the ball when it came to do the same for operating systems that were to run it. They too should have been non-proprietary. Gerry, even you can't deny that there is no competitor to the IBM-PC in the desktop market. All those CPM based systems were made by proprietary hardware vendors, which I clearly stated in the prior posting. Their market dominance was easily eclipsed by the cheaper, faster PC. This point was not lost on the opportunistic Mr. Gates who jumped at the chance to get aboard the IBM marketing engine before it left the station. The DOJ lawsuit, Gerald, is NOT about the 15% or so marketshare owned by Apple and it customers. It is about the 85% marketshare owned by M$FT and its customers. It is also NOT about the Intuits who make software that M$FT has not attempted to trump (though they did try to buy Intuit and that was blocked by the gov't). It is about the apps M$FT produces for their customer base. It's about how those apps get to market, how well they work, and about what M$FT does to prevent other competitive apps from getting equal share in the marketing arena. The point about the software just needing to be "good enough" is IMO a salient one. That is because it directly addresses the issue of consumer protection, which is at the heart of the DOJ case. I you would like to rebut my posting about the DOJ case, perhaps you could start with the point of consumer harm.