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

To: Gerald R. Lampton who wrote (16189)	1/17/1998 8:32:00 AM
From: Wilson Picket	Respond to of 24154

----- So, where do you draw the line between the Operating System "product" and the "other product"? If, in the process of installation, the "other product" makes changes to the OS product's "shared DLL," where do you draw the line then? ------ If I were an OS technical director, no way I would let some application group come in with changes to the OS shared DLLS. Unless... I got a call from my CEO, saying: "Wilson, we really need these (undocumented) API enhancements for IE 4.0 and, I've made a decision; they're in." What does this enhancement do? well it gives IE a performance or functionality advantage. Maybe this is just how it works every day up in Redmond. MSFT calls this developing integrated products. MSFT competitors call it unfair advantage. Or is it "just business"? MSFT went to great pains to get language permitting exactly this in the Consent Decree. They are forced to defend the "letter" of the law to the bitter end. Now they will see that a judge may interpret the agreement in a more "reasonable-man" way that goes against them.

To: Gerald R. Lampton who wrote (16189)	1/17/1998 10:08:00 AM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

Jerry, I've written a lot about that in the past (where to draw the line), mostly after the previous court date and subsequent trade press coverage. To reiterate, I don't think it's near as hard as it's being made out to be. My impression at this point is that the design of IE/Windows is reasonable and modular, not arbitrarily ugly for "competitive" purposes. IE seems to be "integrated" pretty much the way Office is "integrated", with a COM interface callable from everywhere. Well, the whole "dll hell" thing is sort of ugly, but that predates IE. Of course, there's this other definition of "IE= every change made to the Windows 95 runtime since the retail release", but that doesn't fit very well with "the browser product". Anyway, as additional evidence, I offer this quote, from this weeks testimony: Microsoft attorney Steven Holley asked Cole: "The court has ordered Microsoft to give OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] a version of Windows 95 without IE. What would Microsoft have to do to allow other applications to access the Web [without IE]?" Cole said: "We would have to add back some files, change install scripts, and make sure it works. So we would have to do quite a bit of work." Note this is pure Microsoft testimony, not a random comment on cross examination. "Quite a bit of work" is quite relative here. Sure, it's more work than shipping OEMs the retail release and the lobotomized current release that won't boot. The former is off the shelf, and no need to do any testing on the latter. But, by their own testimony, it's not like it's back to the drawing board for a massive redesign. Add back some files, change install scripts, make sure it works. Not exactly beyond the comprehension of mere mortals, though I'm sure it could be milked for a month or two delay in the Win98 release if necessary. Cheers, Dan.

To: Gerald R. Lampton who wrote (16189)	1/17/1998 12:06:00 PM
From: John F. Dowd	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

Dear Sir: Your points suffer from only one fault - they are too well put and logical. Not suitable for the Mad hatter's Tea party. You will find no reasonable rejoinder on this thread. This cabal would like to turn over the design of OS's to Janet Reno with Lessig advising. Thanks for your voice of reason. Regards, JF Dowd

To: Gerald R. Lampton who wrote (16189)	1/17/1998 1:12:00 PM
From: Justin Banks	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 24154

Jerry - So, where do you draw the line between the Operating System "product" and the "other product"? An operating system provides the ability to boot the computer, perform peripheral i/o, perform memory management, provide various forms of protocol support, and execute user programs. This last part includes support for relocatable binaries and shared libraries. If, in the process of installation, the "other product" makes changes to the OS product's "shared DLL," where do you draw the line then? If a shared library is modified not to correct errors, but to provide additional functionality, it is an OS upgrade. Bundling an OS upgrade with a product distribution does not make the distributed product part of the OS. Aside from the insanity of such an approach from a system organization point of view, this serves to point out an unfair advantage MSFT has by being both the application and the OS vendor. For example, I wrote a program for database connectivity on the Unix command line. This program includes 5 object files in a shared library that I built. I could add all these object files to a shared runtime Irix library (although I'd probably get fired ;) ), but even if I did, my program would not become part of the operating system. The object code that I stuck in the library would be part of the operating system, but my program would not. The issue really isn't what OS stuff the program uses, but what application stuff the OS uses. Just by putting some additional code into the OS, you've not changed that. And, at what point does leaving those shared DLL's (or any other code originating from or shared by the "other product") on the hard drive constitute "conditioning" the receipt of the OS upon licensing the "other product"? If I did as described above, I would say that the point at which I would be conditioning the receipt of the OS upon licensing the other product would only be crossed when/if I required the presence of the executable. In my mind, removing ie.exe (or whatever it's called), would be sufficient to meet the Justice department's criteria. What I think is inexcuseable, however, is MSFT's contention that in order to remove all IE code they've got to remove the libraries that support it. That would be like me saying that to remove the database program described above I would have to remove the C++ shared library because I used cout. -justinb

To: Gerald R. Lampton who wrote (16189)	1/17/1998 4:37:00 PM
From: Keith Hankin	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

A strict definition of what is an Operating System would be something like: "Software that controls the operation of the functionality of computer hardware and provides an Application Programming Interface for applications to use to get access to these operations." By this definition, most commercial OSes would fail as being only Operating Systems. They all include what I would consider applications. MSFT's OSes are the worst offenders of the separation of OS from application, to the detriment of customers. If they had a properly layered approach that separated Operating System from Utility software and applications, customers would be better off.

To: Gerald R. Lampton who wrote (16189)	1/18/1998 5:20:00 AM
From: Charles Hughes	Respond to of 24154

>>>If, in the process of installation, the "other product" makes changes to the OS product's "shared DLL," where do you draw the line then?<<< From a technical standpoint, there are a hundred places to draw that line, or more. (But normally, if something is part of the OS, then it is published in the OS documentation and all application development companies have access to it.) It's not about where the best place is technically to draw the line. Microsoft will draw the line where it shuts out the most competition. The DOJ will draw the line where it lets in more competition. Technically, both of these lines are very easy to draw. There is no fundamental impossibility to 'inextricably tangling' IE with the system, nor is there a problem with creating a nice clean design that has three parts: 1. OS functionality, whatever that is decided to be, 2. A clean published Application Programming Interface to all that, which both MSFT application developers and competition application developers get to use on an equal footing to hook Internet functions to Daytimers, for instance, or Web sites to word processors or Exchange. 3. Various programs with focused or special purposes we call 'applications.' It's all just a question of who gets to draw the line, not where it is more practical technically to draw it. (Of course, techs generally think that modularity is better from a design standpoint, so ironically, the kind of modular breakdown the DOJ would want probably would get the approving nod from most software architect types, not the MSFT 'geez, our code's all tangled up inseparably' style design. This point of argument is probably a real humiliation for any real designers at Microsoft who hear their work degraded in this way by their own management. :) Chaz P.S. The big computer companies long ago succeeded in suppressing competition in OS programming - they devised various methods in most OS to keep competitors from writing modules to improve the OS. But the fact that we have accepted that doesn't mean we haven't been damaged by that as well.