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

To: Justin Banks who wrote (16430)	1/20/1998 2:47:00 PM
From: Pink Minion	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

Currently, the product in question, IE, is sprinkled throughout the filesystem, as icon files, executable files, libraries, configuration stuff, etc. If one wants to mandate removal of IE, one merely has to find out what things are needed for IE to run, but not needed for other things, and remove them. Isn't this merely an exerise in what is ported to the other OS platforms? Or am I'm assuming too much code reuse? Mr. B

To: Justin Banks who wrote (16430)	1/21/1998 2:51:00 AM
From: Gerald R. Lampton	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

>However, those pieces that are only relevant to the execution of IE would be >required to be removed. I suspect that there are relatively few pieces that are "only relevant to the execution of IE," especially when other apps may make calls to IE or contain IE components that make calls to libraries that, when viewed solely in conjunction with the OS, might be perceived as "only relevant to the execution of IE." cnet.com I assume you would want to minimize the amount of code Microsoft can force distributors to license as a condition of receiving Windows. I suspect your approach will frustrate this goal by allowing Microsoft to condition the purchase of Windows upon the licensing of some fairly substantial hunks of IE code. And, what do you tell someone like Quicken, who incorporated IE components into their software and, once all "pieces that are only relevant to the execution of IE" are removed, may or may not have a product that works on Windows? You also have to consider issues of efficiency: If 30 software vendors all use IE components in their products, does it make sense for them all to have to include all the junk needed to run it in their software? Does this not incentivize Microsoft to distribute IE covertly, through third party software, instead of overtly on its own OS? How would such alteration of the distribution of the product affect overall efficiency in the market place and competition? Does it make more sense to have 30 copies of all or part of IE on your hard drive or just one? >Having decided what the goal is in the consent decree, But, what is the goal of the Consent Decree? Microsoft might argue that its purpose is to ratify Microsoft's broadly-defined right to design "integrated products," whatever those are, while placing rather limited restrictions on its right to bundle Windows 3.1 with DOS. DOJ obviously would have a different opinion.