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

To: Justin Banks who wrote (16202)	1/18/1998 12:49:00 AM
From: Gerald R. Lampton	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 24154

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. So, I gather, then, that under your appraoch, the "product" would be the executable file only? Or would you take the approach that requiring licensing only part of the "other product," but not the whole product, as a condition of licensing Windows does not violate the Consent Decree? In other words, could Microsoft require all of the files associated with IE except the actual .exe to be licensed as a condition of licensing Windows and not be in violation of the Consent Decree? What if Microsoft required licensing of the .exe file but left out some other, obscure files, such that the other product fuctioned but was not comlete? Would this violate the Consent Decree?

To: Justin Banks who wrote (16202)	1/18/1998 5:39:00 AM
From: Charles Hughes	Respond to of 24154

>>>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.<<< I think it's perfectly reasonable. Whenever I need to pull the plugs on my car, I always get a hoist and remove the engine block. After all, some fool went and embedded the spark plugs in there in such a way that the cars operating system won't work without the plugs. so how could I remove them without disabling the engine. This is all one completely interdependent piece of engineering, isn't it? Chaz

To: Justin Banks who wrote (16202)	1/18/1998 9:03:00 PM
From: damniseedemons	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

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. So what you're saying is that Windows95 (with the GUI, utilities, etc.) is--and has always been--much much more than just an OS, right? I think so too, which is one of the reasons why I side with Microsoft in the IE integration/bundling case. Seems to me that the only reason the DOJ has gotten on Microsoft about IE is because Netscape is a very high-profile company that has made a lot of noise about Microsoft's [anti]competitive behavior. Fine, but where was the DOJ when quieter companies (like Symantec, for example) got crushed because Microsoft assimilated yet another technology into Windows??? And what happens if Netscape wins...does it set a precedent for Symantec and countless other companies to sue Microsoft for integrating technologies which they would have liked to sell? So then will "Windows2001" be an OS, in that it's a barebones OS that the consumer has to buy--and then they have to spend extra buying all the "applications" that used to ship with Windows95?