Mike Gurstein forwarded:
> Government case vs. Microsoft looks solid Jan. 10, 1999
>
> BY DAN GILLMOR
> Mercury News Technology Columnist
...
> [Microsoft]'s a culture of hard work and superb talent, without a doubt.
> The talent shines through in documents that show penetrating strategic
> insight and tactical smarts.
Users would be served better if the "superb talent" was _technical_
rather than marketing-strategic and monopoly-tactical...
> At one point, Jackson noted with acid accuracy to a Sun Microsystems Inc.
> executive that Microsoft's version of the Java programming language
> worked better than Sun's own version in some respects. Sure, Microsoft's
> overall aims were to ruin Java's promise as a potential Windows
> competitor. But the company could plausibly claim that it was doing
> something beneficial for consumers.^^^^^^^^
"Plausibly" ? For computer-laymen (lawyers) perhaps... Actually,
Microsoft's version worked better with Microsoft's operating system.
Just like MS application programs worked better with MS-Windows than
did application programs of other software manufacturers, because
MS didn't publish the "secret" interfaces in the manuals, so only MS
could use them. And just like MS-Word happened to work better with
MS-Windows than with MacOS, so that ignorant Consumer Magazine journalists
advised readers to buy Wintel-PCs instead of Macs "because the word
processor is too slow on the Mac" (!!) (this was actually written in a
Consumer Magazine here in Switzerland).
That's Gates' way of bullying the users to use _his_ products, but such
tricks can hardly be called "doing something beneficial for consumers" !
> If Microsoft is found to enjoy a monopoly with its Windows operating
> system, as I believe the court will rule, the company inevitably will be
> found to have used the monopoly in illegal ways.
What's often forgotten is that it were _jurists_ in the first place
who made Gates what he is now:
- His father, a rich lawyer, who helped Gates to trick out IBM and his
competitors in the "early days".
- The courts that ruled in favor of Gates in the Windows lawsuit: Apple
sued Gates for "copying" the MacOS graphical user interface to Windows.
The court ruled that this was no copyright violation, basically arguing
that the interface can be decomposed into small units that can not be
copyright-protected. This "reasoning" made about as much sense as
argueing that a novel can't be copyright-protected because the words
and letters of which it consists are not protected... (BTW, this was
written in a German Computer Law journal..)
Cheers,
Chris
__________________________________________________________________
In a world without walls and fences who needs windows and gates ?
