Jim,

I saw an article on ZDNet today in which several people voiced their concern over a breakup. All of these folks got tired of the finger pointing when they had disparate systems. They were much happier when the went to a MS solution, typically SQL Server with NT, because things worked together much better.

Yes MS has engaged in some practices that should not be allowed. However, I don't think a breakup is a way to handle it. You've been around long enough to have worked with a system that was comprised of parts from several vendors. How many times did you have to make several rounds of calls to get thru the finger pointing that was going on.

As far as Netscape, in the .plan file that was mentioned, the author discussed how management made the decision to use a bad set of source for the base for the open source project. He knew it was doomed from the start because the source was so crappy. Examples like this, Netscape being slow to embrace DHTML, XML show poor management not MS causing problems.

PF
>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?
>>
>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.