> GUILTY.
> A federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan, the most pro-business and
> anti-antitrust president in recent memory..
Ronald Reagan was best known for his limited intellect rather than specific
policy positions. He was also 'anti big government' but presided over the
largest peacetime expansion of the military in history. Being 'pro-business'
in US politics translates to delivering favors to party donors in Washington
speak. The main distinguishing feature of Microsoft's business model as
opposed to other US corporations has been the lack of political donations.
I had a bunch of folk from Newt Gingrich's office making very pointed
references to Microsoft's 'Failure to play a social role'. I guess that they
made similar comments to people who actually have influence in Redmond.
This is not a victory, it is simply the Internet being served notice that it
had better pay up to the Congressional protection racket.
As for the judgement itself, it is trully bizare. The core of the rulling
concerning
the browser has already been litigated in the appeal court and overturned.
Larry Lessig will no doubt have a lawyerly explanation but it is reasonably
plain where he stands in this. The issues that might have caused most
problems for Microsoft have actually been thrown out.
What is left in the case is a judgement concerning the tying of the browser
to the O/S. I told Microsoft to do that before there ever was a Netscape,
back when Mosaic was an academic project out of NCSA that had 30,000
lines of other folks code without a single attribution for any of the
authors,
or CERN the lab where we worked.
I get kind of tired of the constant religious wars that have to be fought in
the
computer space. I have used more than ten O/S in my time and written
good sized chunks of two O/S infrastructures.
I am mighty tired of being told how great UNIX is when the basic mode
of interaction is to subject the novice to a hazing ritual (learning the
most
patheticly named set of obscure commands), survival of which allows the
expert to lord their Wizardly knowledge over everyone else.
Just how much Microsoft hatred is simply a cry of rage from members of
a privilleged craft guild affraid of a technology that could render their
skills
obsolete and threaten their livelihood?
That is not the kind of computing system I respect. The Web was a reaction
against that mindset. Tim wrote in in principle because he was a NextStep
junkie who realized that that platform had an awful lot to offer the High
Energy Physics Community, it was a means of escape from the centralized
control mentality of CERN CN division.
NextStep used UNIX as a base but went considerably beyond the
original design brief. If LINUX is to achieve its full potential now is the
time
that that community face the fact that the UNIX O/S architecture is complete
junk compared to what they are capable of building if they can find a way
of stepping beyond the constraints of UNIX while still leveraging the vast
base of applications.
Microsoft achieved the position it has by executing a strategy that has
transitioned the old MSDOS userbase to a vastly more powerful one.
The economics of bits are not those of atoms. The entire dynamic of
software is that the value of an O/S lies in the applications it supports.
It is practically impossible for an O/S to offer an advantage to developers
that is so devestating as to cancel out the effect of a large exisiting
installed
base. I see no need to postulate conspiracies when the underlying market
forces are so obvious.
The Web is a collaboration system. It is now time to rediscover that
potential. We have been marking time long enough - it is over eight
years since Tim gave his Annecy speech. Changing the way that commerce
is done is an interesting and profitable diversion but it is merely that - a
diversion.
If you really want to fight this battle then do it yourself. I don't have
much respect for the idea of leaving the task to the US government.
Phill
