RE: no Java in XP Windows

Ok, now you're talking about a lot more than simply breaking the company up.
You're talking about some specific court imposed restrictions on how they do
business; namely:

1) Bundling for marketing purposes.
2) Opening up the API.


The way I see it, neither of these measures is going to achieve their
intended goal.

For example, how does a court determine what constitutes an "application",
from an extension of an operating system? The TCP/IP stack itself was once
sold as a separate application for Windows. Does that mean that Windows
shouldn't have networking protocols built in? Even if we really stretch here
and assume that Windows is effectively frozen with it's current feature set
and everything new must be sold as a separate application, what's to stop
"MS Office Co." from doing the bundling instead of MS Windows Co.? Another
lawsuit?

Depending upon the API to solve the problem is equally fruitless; there are
too many technical tricks that can be played behind the public interface of
an API. Moreover, are we really naive enough to believe that MS Office Co.
won't get an advance copy of any new API, so that they're first to market
with support for each new version of Windows?

Your final point was that a separate applications company would have to look
at porting to alternate platforms, based on profitability. But why? Is the
court now running this new company? If Billy G. and gang own both companies,
then they're naturally going to make decisions based on what's best for the
entire empire, no matter how many different ways you carve it up.

In the end, all of this is rather academic anyway, since the current Bush
administration is already bought and paid for. Your chances of even slowing
down MS died with your last election.


John Taylor


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-midrange-l@midrange.com
> [mailto:owner-midrange-l@midrange.com]On Behalf Of Chris Rehm
> Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2001 7:05 PM
> To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> Subject: Re: no Java in XP Windows
>
>
> Why, thanks for asking!
>
> The point of breaking them up is to allow other companies equal access to
> opportunities to bundle with the operating system.
>
> For years (two decades now!) Microsoft has been able to push a new product
> into the market by simply bundling it with their operating system and
> displacing the existing market leaders.
>
> If the operating system division were required to isolate their
> income model
> from the income of the applications division, as would be the case if they
> were separate publicly held companies, then at least other vendors would
> have an equal shot on being able to get a bundling deal.
>
> A good example of this is Lotus/IBM. Why doesn't IBM just sink a few bucks
> into bundling SmartSuite with Windows and pick up some market
> share? Or more
> to the more current day point, why doesn't Netscape?
>
> Right now, Microsoft can introduce a new application, like it did with IE,
> and bundle it into the OS. Then, they tell us as customers it is
> "Free" and
> they just roll the cost of it into what we pay for the OS.
>
> Now, just breaking them up doesn't mean suddenly giving market share to
> anyone else. It would be a long time before we would actually see the
> benefits of this because it would come in the form of just allowing other
> companies equal access. But it also means that applications
> developers would
> be guaranteed equal access to APIs (I don't know if you recall when
> WordPerfect discovered that they were given a different set of APIs than
> were being given to Microsoft's applications developers.
> WordPerfect seemed
> to crash a lot more, this was one of the first times a breakup was
> requested).
>
> Second, it would mean that Microsoft's applications division would have to
> view other platforms based on the profit/loss of moving to that platform.
> The applications division has had a unique position in the marketplace.
> Historically, this could have made a big difference to OS/2. If IBM could
> have paid Microsoft's applications division to port to OS/2 or
> done a joint
> venture deal with WordPerfect, then that would have opened up a
> much greater
> market to OS/2.
>
> Right now there is a concern that if the new "Front end" to all server
> applications becomes the browser, the Microsoft has the ability
> to make sure
> that there is an advantage to using IE/XP combined. That's not so bad, to
> see extra special beneficial features in IE and XP, but Netscape
> should have
> equal access to the API that XP publishes for IE, and IE should be tempted
> to be ported to other markets like Linux or OS/2.
>
> Chris Rehm
> javadisciple@earthlink.net
> If you believe that the best technology wins the
> marketplace, you haven't been paying attention.
>
>
>

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