Hi Perry,

>Have you heard, or do you expect to hear, any arguments that will sway your opinion one way or the other. Haven't all the arguments already been made.
>
>I have heard several arguments from other developers describing how they were hurt by MS actions. However, in the majority of cases, further research has shown that other developers made severe errors in judgement in terms of development or marketing that was the real cause of their problems.
>
I'm not so sure that this kind of thing forms much of a basis for the current suit/findings. I consistently hear only about 'exclusivity of MS product inclusions in marketing agreements', 'forced inclusion of IE in marketing agreements', 'extreme price breaks in the cases aforementioned' and monopoly. And as JVP has pointed out, monopolies can (do, in this case) exist despite there being other products in the arena.
But regardless of the above, that "further research" would be suspect if only because these forced/exclusivity agreements were 'secret', so if the researchers didn't know of this kind of thing how could they possibly account for their impact in their assessments?

>Netscape is a prime example. Yes they were hurt by MS tying IE into Windows. But further evaluation shows how Netscape made major blunders along the way. There was a .plan file issued by someone from Netscape about a year or so ago describing the authors frustrations in working with their open source initiative. Also, as you are well aware, Netscape if far behind IE in several areas.
>
Again, who can say whether the impact of these MS tactics were/weren't responsible for much of the hardship Netscape encountered. It sure seems like the Judge feels that there is some relationship.
Your observations here could well be the result of the MS tactics over time.

>I haven't done enough Java developement to make an evaluation. However, from what I've heard and read, Java has not become the end-all/be-all as was originally touted, because of the way Sun has handled enhancing the product.
>
>It is frustrating to me to see companies seek relief in courts, instead of looking within, to see what they could do better. It still appears to me that MS has done things correctly in several areas, while the competition made errors in the course of their doing business.
>
I agree that the courts are too often used by companies in all manner of trivial things. But this case sure looks to be non-trivial.
Is it really "correct" to crush the competition with agreements of the nature cited? I don't really think so.

>IBM is a prime example. I read an indepth study of IBM written by a WSJ columnist. It's been a while since I read it. But I recall 2 major, major blunders that put IBM behind the 8ball, to stay. One was laser printers. When Canon first developed their personal laser printer engine, they went knocking on doors to get people to license it and build printers. IBM refused to even look at it. Their engineers claimed that the mirrors on their mainframe laser printers cost more than the whole Cannon engine. The engineers couldn't believe anyone could develop an engine that cost the price of the Canon. The other blunder was IBM required the 286 to be the minimum system requirements for OS2.
>
You bring up IBM so let me mention that I haven't heard them crying too hard or taking part in the suit despite the fact that MS was hugely successful in shoving OS2 into 'niche' status. IBM successfully delivered OS2 as a "better DOS than DOS" and a "better Windows than Windows" long after that 286-as-base-system requirement. MS simply routinely changed the WIN32S (or whatever it was) to 'break' WINOS2 whenever a new (MS) application product was installed to OS2. My guess is that IBM knew full well that this was a highly risky strategy and that they did, indeed, get badly burned. They're own fault (assured by MS reacting as they did along with expiration of code sharing agreements) so no law suit.

>On the other hand, MS not allowing DR-DOS to work under windows should be severely penalized. However, breaking the company up would not prevent situations like this from reoccuring.
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>Why should MS be penalized in court because they made correct decisions along the way, when the competition seemed to implode along the way.
>
I think your thinking here is incorrect.

For many watching this develop we have only known this way of doing business, so we are naturally worried as hell about the future.
I was around when the IBM suit was dropped (in favour of significant concessions by IBM) and we were all worried then too. But we survived and found ourselves to be at least as well off in the long run.

Regards,

Jim N


>PF
>
>>As a developer, the close relationship between the folks that create the OS and the apps/app tools is great. However, this is only 1 side - and a very biased side at that - of an extremely many sided argument. I could think of 10 reasons why it is all good. Then again, I could think of 10 reasons why it could be potentially harmful - if not now - sometime in the future.
>>
>>It is a complex issue. And for me, the jury is still out (no pun intended) on where all the chips fall on this issue.