Erik,

I think that one of the important points here is the nature of computers in terms of operating systems.

One of the big barriers to entering the operating system market is the cost for people to switch. I think in order for someone to properly evaluate cases such as this, they would have to understand the cost to a company to switch to a new operating system. Cost of new application software, training, etc.

Linux has made very little inroads onto the desktop and probably won't (see Unix on the desktop).

Of course the argument has been made that if MS applications were a separate company, they would be more inclined to produce sw for other operating systems.

But once again, I think that when the MAC first came out a lot of developers jumped on the wagon. Yet you still very rarely saw corporations adopt Macs as standards.

PF

>>Linux, being in the news or not, is 100% irrelevant with respect to the argument of whether MS is/is not a monopoly.
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>Linux is in the news because it is gaining marketshare at a blindingly fast pace. If MS had an OS monopoly, this would not be possible. Most or all definition of the word monopoly use the word exclusive. If a competing product is gaining marketshare, MS does not have exclusive control over the market.
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>>As for barriers being next to nothing, lets apply a litmus test. Can you today, fund development of a new OS and successfully market it? My guess is that you cannot. It would take 100's of millions of dollars both in terms of RD and marketing dollars. That it is folly to think that no significant barriers to entry exist in this industry.
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>Isn't that what Linus Torvalds and his helpers did?
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>>It is possible. Just because somebody has not practiced law all that long does not make them unqualified. Again, the lawyer just needs a fundemental understanding of the technology. While development skills in the trenches are nice to have, they are not required..
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>Microsoft built the ability to convert a VFP cursor to an ADO recordset and vice-versa into VFPCOM. It says so right in the VFP docs. But you would have had to try to use this technique in production to know that, even though the feature is there, it's not practical to use. Didn't you say this, in so many words?
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>I think that the same can be said for most of the practical issues involved in OS and software interaction. A lawmaker cannot really know how much the cooperatiomn of the OS developers, Tools developers, and the Browser developers really helps the developer. I know, because I write software that depends on that cooperation. To a lawmaker, it looks like collusion, to me, it looks like a beautiful orchestration.