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Technology Stocks : MSFT Internet Explorer vs. NSCP Navigator -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Reginald Middleton who wrote (14952)	12/16/1997 10:22:00 AM
From: John F. Dowd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

Exactly my sentiments - Righto Reginald!

To: Reginald Middleton who wrote (14952)	12/16/1997 12:03:00 PM
From: Harvey Allen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

>NSCP, SunW, IBM and ORCL Reg- They're no angels. I don't know much of Oracle, but of the bunch, IBM is the most trustworthy, they've had a long history of fairness. The PC industry they created is a good example of that and they've even opened up more with their company wide Java initiative. Customers respect them for that and it pays (many an IT manager should now be having doubts about reliance on Microsoft). Sun got caught playing games with Java benchmarks and if they're not careful they could kill Java. Netscape played games with HTML and helpers. They all cost the users time and money. All for a short term advantage to the vendor. I basically file it all away and play it back when making a choice in technology. One reference point for me is Microsoft's DOS 6.0 and it's faulty compression software- that's 10 years ago but the tiger rarely looses it stripes. I would never expect a software company to give away it's code. (Though HTML is all freeware and that makes it a snap for anyone to become proficient). Only write it so everyone has a crack at making their applications operate at peak efficiency. I believe that Explorer is faster than Communicator and part of that comes from code in the OS not available to the other browsers. Then there is the negative side of making the other guys software run poorly (ho ho ho Windows ain't done till Lotus won't run kind of stuff). That can get you sued. Microsoft is just getting under way with Caldera's 1987 DR. Dos suit and I think there is a lot of liability and evidence built up that doesn't show up in Microsoft's balance sheet. Hope this gives you a better idea of what I meant. Harvey

To: Reginald Middleton who wrote (14952)	12/17/1997 9:11:00 PM
From: Keith Hankin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

>>> Can the same be said for NSCP, SunW, IBM and ORCL? Do they have to open up thier internal code to give a everybody fair access to thier respectively monopolized markets? Since when is NSCP a monopoly? Because they have a majority of the browser share? This does not a monopoly make. I think that it would be hard to show any market patterns that indicates that they are a monopoly. What market does SunW monopolize? Yes, IBM has had a monopoly in the mainframe market, and they have been treated in the legal system as a monopoly - no inconsistencies here. But, according to Lessig's boxes, I think that it has become background/contested. There is no demonstratable case that IBM holds any sort of chokehold on the future of computing (e.g. evidenced by failure of MCA, OS/2, etc.) Indeed, government legal proceedings against them have long since been dropped. What market does ORCL monopolize? Relational databases? ORCL holds no monopoly here. They have not been able to control the industry. Moreover, while their marketshare is larger than any competitor, it is still much less than even 50%. Also, RDBMSes have become commodities, and ORCL has nothing that it can wield to monopolistic advantage. Most people rely on standard SQL. Sure they have Object extensions, but in this area they have not demonstrated any control over standards.

To: Reginald Middleton who wrote (14952)	12/18/1997 10:15:00 PM
From: Harvey Allen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

Still, perhaps something should be done. My suggestion is that rather than bash Microsoft, the government and industry lawyers concerned about the conjunction between Microsoft application and Microsoft OS groups concentrate on requiring publication of all API calls, supported and unsupported. They should also make Microsoft agree that no Microsoft application will make use of an unsupported call without, in a timely manner, upgrading that to a supported call and publishing the upgrade information. byte.com