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To: Rusty Johnson who wrote (22936)	3/9/1999 8:32:00 AM
From: Harvey Allen	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

Rusty- Picked this up by way of links from your Salon article. Best expression of trials purposet I've come accross. There was a moment in history, just a few years ago, when any number of operating systems, real and imagined, could have emerged to run the world's personal computers. That moment is past. The Microsoft architectures have established them selves so deeply in every segment of the computer business that they cannot be displaced, not even by Microsoft. Those standards are an essential facility—to use antitrust jargon—like the 60-hertz AC current that flows to every American household. To date they have remained mostly open and mostly public, because that served Microsoft's business interest. Now the Government could, and should, declare a public interest in open standards in computing. The Department of Justice does not need to break Microsoft apart. It need only—a far-reaching step in itself—require Microsoft to make its operating system, and the web of standards surrounding it, truly and permanently open. Other companies should be allowed to clone it if they could; Microsoft should be restricted from taking internal advantage of new changes until they were published to the rest of the market. For that matter, Microsoft should open its standards voluntarily. It will not, but it should: end the painful cognitive dissonance that comes from proselytizing for open standards and then threatening to close them at will. "It's not like everyone and their brother is going to go out there and beat them," says Eric Schmidt at Sun. "They'd probably have 95 percent of the market any way. Then all the arguments about their behavior would stop. If they really did open interfaces, it would change the dynamics of the industry in a positive way." It would be for their own good, he says: "They could get back to work and try to build great products and compete." and The rest of the industry is captive, too. No company has Microsoft's power to place bets; few companies can afford to chance a new approach in a product category near the ever-advancing boundary of Microsoft's Windows package. No quantity can be harder to perceive and harder to measure than innovation that never occurs—the absent pioneers, the fading of vitality in a still-comfortable industry. No monopolist wants to be relieved of its burden. To Microsoft, it would be nothing short of theft. They own that operating system—they sweated, invested and fought for it. If they can put a computer on every desk and in every home, all running Microsoft software—and all connecting to the Internet —consumers should be grateful. "You click a button and it's so easy!" Silverberg says, grinning again. "How could there be anything wrong with that?" around.com