I wrote 'Nuke Redmond'

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Sun May 7 12:48:12 2000

Almost on the mark, but see my remarks below.

Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: Wayne M. Smith <wmsmith_at_earthlink.net>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 07, 2000 12:12 AM
Subject: Re: I wrote 'Nuke Redmond'


> > William Henry Gates, III was able to leverage any
> advantage he had, and he
> > did.
>
Yes, it's likely that Billy used his vast resources to push things right to
the limits, . . . and then he LEANED as far as he could, having reach what
he perceived to be the limits.
>
> Well leveraging, that's different. If you use your
> monopoly power in one market (such as OS) to exclude
> competition in another market (browser) then that's a
> no-no. Perhaps that's what Richard intended.
>
All the talk about the browser market is a red herring. Internet Explorer
was never a product separate from Windows. It was a part of the OS utility
package called PLUS!. In Win98, it was integrated into the OS becauseit was
the tool for viewing the help files, among other things.

Internet Explorer always was a part of the Windows 9x package. Netscape,
OTOH, was a commercial product intended for sale, but initially offered
gratis to individual users. HOWEVER . . . they did have to purchase the
WINSOCK from a third party, i.e. Trumpet, in most cases. This was never the
case with Internet explorer. Only after Internet Explorer became as popular
as it did under '95 did Microsoft release the "made for WIndows 3.1x"
version, also at no charge, but complete with its own WINSOCK and the 32-bit
runtime libraries it needed for operation under the 16-bit OS.

In the meantime, IBM had acquired LOTUS, primarily in order to take over the
Lotus Notes program. With the spread of Netscape, people found that
Netscape would replace Lotus Notes quite easily, hence IBM quickly acquired
them, only to distance themselves from it later, in order to APPEAR to be an
outsider to the conflict which I'm quite certain they actually scripted, and
which is now being played out in the courts.

Unfortunately, there does appear to be evidence that MS overreached its
rightful position in the industry, giving their applications developers an
advantage by giving them information they didn't publish as part of the
standard API. That was an anticompetitive act, and should be reversed in
some way.

Many people think that lobotomizing MS would help the industry. I am not
among them, however, because, at least for now, MS is the only organization
capable of mustering the talent and resources to generate application
software that pretty much functions as it should within the framework of
this extremely complex OS.

Even if someone else could do it, which I seriously doubt, it's unlikely
anyone can come up with an OS capable of competing against Windows, if the
same tests are to be applied that have been used to determine MS' practices
monopolistic or anticompetitive. If the complete source code for Windows is
to be mandated by the courts to be made available to anyone who wishes to
write applications for Windows, MS is correct in demanding that the code be
released only to companies who, including all their employees as
individuals, be barred for a period of, say, ten years, from participating
in the production of any operating system which might be used as a
competitor to Microsoft's OS products, including the drivers, utilities, or
ancillary programs, e.g. a browser.

If they're to "fix" this thing in a permanent way, then they will have to
legislate a solution which would require that no person involved in the
development of any major software product be permitted to communicate with
anyone else, not his/her spouse, offspring, superiors or subordinates,
except in permanently recorded written form for a period not less than five
years beyond the end of the economic life of that product. I doubt that
will happen.
Received on Sun May 07 2000 - 12:48:12 BST