JVP wrote:
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Not that I am taking MS's side here, but where is the harm, the damages? This is a central part of MS's argument, and effective argument at that. People have alleged lots of perceived harm to the consumer. Granted, some of MS's practices on the business to business side of things are problematic. I think this is where the govt's case is good as there are tangible harm. From the consumer standpoint, am I really affected negatively by not having a Linux alternative. There is an Apple alternative and I don't use that. There is a Sun alternative and HP alternative for servers, and I don't use those. That is not to say there is no harm. I simply don't see it.


"Problematic" is a santizing term. The courts called their actions illegal. The harm and damages are in two areas: an estimated $10+ Billion in license fees extracted illegally from consumers lacking choice or knowledge of better opportunities, and blocking of real innovation by putting everything into their OS, after eating the truely innovative companies alive. Start with DRDos and go right up to the most recent "innovation", instant messaging. There are dozens of technologies whose development have been swallowed and whose direction have been subverted to Microsoft's business plan. And these are only the ones that left skeletons behind.

Apple was hurt by MS's outright theft of Apple's GUI design, and Gate's access to Apple's Japanese vendor base. Microsoft was employeed by Apple to write their GUI interface and used their inside knowledge to give Windows 1.0 a significant boost. This was well illustrated in "Pirates of Silicon Vally" and documented in written sources and is an example of significant harm to both Apple and the consumers. By selling Win1.x very cheaply to 286 and 386 vendors, IBM clones bearing Win1.x and Win3.x swamped Apples market. Now, with the laxity of Patent requirements, Microsoft can paper over any avenues for technology leakage, and even block access to those they haven't "innovated", much the same way MacAfee is now attempting to do with their newly minted patent on updating or configuring PC from Internet websites via browsers. Their support of Apple with $128 Million was only to prop up the illusion there is competition on the desktop. Apple primary market is previous buyers, and that market share is dying out through physical attrition of the people themselves.

Sun was originally a hardware vendor making extra money supplying a propriatary unix os for their hardware. Athlon 1GHz PCs with 512MB and big HDs running Linux have cut a large swath out of Sun's customer base. Some Win2Ks contributed too. Sun has somewhat reluctantly climbed aboard the Linux band wagon, making their platform Linux compatable if you run their intermediate layer app first. It has somewhat backfired in Sun's face, because a lot of folks running Linux 2.4.x on the PC mentioned above got better performance at a much more affordable price than anything Sun offers. Sun purchased StarOffice from a German software house and made it freely available (eventually as Open Office - a GPL type Office project) in the hopes of luring their old customers back along with some new ones from the Microsoft camp. Because SO runs well on Linux that move backfired. The net effect is that Linux is eating Sun alive in the server market, and to some extent Microsoft too, but Sun's customer base isn't huge, and that source of servers for Linux will dry up soon. It remains to be seen what effect Linux will have in competing against Win2K servers. WinXXX prior to Win2K were plagued with bugs and instability and the best of them couldn't run more than 49 days without a reboot, but Win2K seems to have gotten a handle on stability to the point where it isn't an issue any more. Only its leaky security has restrained wider acceptance. CodeRedII isn't helping.

So, because the monopoly is still effective, availability of good PCs and non Win-peripherals from major vendors is still a significant issue for Linux, a problem created and supported by Microsoft via illegal contracts with vendors. Linux now has at least two excellent GUI desktops and a huge number of GUI applications in all areas. The biggest problem with cracking the desktop market is, however, a residual effect of the illegal agreements with PC vendors that required that they if they were to sell WinXX at all they MUST include a copy of WinXX with each PC sold, regardless if the consumer wanted it or not, which is a direct violation of the Sherman Anti-trust Act. Even though Microsoft lost the first two rounds in court, they have continued their abusive, anti-competitive behavior and the PC vendors pretty much install WinXX on all PCs sold, regardless. Bidness' as usual. The monopoly is still in effect. To add insult to criminal behavior, even if someone buys a second class PC and persuades Dell to include RH with it, or even on it, if or when one has problems with it the Dell techie *REQUIRES* the consumer to erase Linux and install WinCE, a notoriously buggy version of WinXX before 'problem solving' can begin. And Dell has the gaul to wonder why Linux sales are slow for them. This is significant harm.

Micrsoft is ready to release XP and its significantly hostile registry wizard on the general public, in addition to raising their WinXX license fees. So, IE 5.x, Instant Messaging, and all those other additions to the OS werenlt really free after all, but being in the OS will discourage 3rd party improvement or innovation because it doesn't benifit Microsoft... ie., improvement will only come if MS can see an increase on their bottom line.

A technological harm will arise when XP makes raw TCP/IP sockets available to all those script kiddies. Think of all the DoS attacks that can be launched by 13 year olds writing scripting engine assults on WinXX and sending them out from XP boxes, devoid of Microsofts infamous GUID number or any other ID info that normally accompanies email packets. It will be as if each XP machine becomes an anomynous remailer. Lots of harm to existing NT, Win2K and XP users.