From: Chris Davis
> Just for the record. This is not true. If Microsoft hadn't created
> a Monopoly, the market would have produced cross platform languages
> such as java, perl, or python much more quickly. Different OSs
> wouldn't be the problem that it is today.
I have to respond to this. I'm sorry if everyone will now begin wincing and
clicking the next button. I apologize in advance for the following
diatribe.
There was a time when there was an OS installed on more computers than any
other, and it wasn't a Microsoft OS. It was Apple's OS and Apple computers
comprised the marketshare leader in PCs. Before that time, virtually all
(meaning something like 80%) of "home computers" sold in the US ran the same
OS - Tandy's TRS-80 OS.
When MS-DOS was still in version 1.0, long before anyone could even begin to
cry MONOPOLY, there were lots of cross platform languages. BASIC, the
product that MS used to build its initial revenue stream was one of these,
and in fact MS-BASIC was shipped standard with many distributions of CP/M
and other computing platforms.
Pascal (primarily in the form of Turbo Pascal from Borland) was likewise
widely avaiable for CP/M, MS-DOS, APPLE-DOS, etc.
There was a language called LOGO that had radically advanced graphics
capabilities. FORTRAN and COBOL were used in various dialects on most
mainframe computers. The original C language was defined in the early 70s -
and C was >designed< to be a cross platform language - you were supposed to
write entire OSs in it; like, for example, UNIX. I could go on for hours.
Though I was very young and a long way from being a professional, I
certainly participated in a substantial amount of development and systems
work in those years on many platforms, and I can tell you from direct
personal experience that the standardization achieved by Microsoft, IBM and
Intel is a driver of the PC explosion and the rapid and successful
deployment of massive computing power directly to the desktops of millions
of homes and offices. The proprietary solutions offered by Tandy, Apple,
Osborne, and a hundred other PC manufacturers didn't foster creativity,
didn't foster competitiveness that mattered to consumers, and didn't do much
at all for advancing the technical capabilities of the PC, or the
applications available for commercial purchase for PCs. The balkanized,
fragmented and incompatible world prior to the emergence of the MS-IBM-INTEL
standard was a terrible and awful thing left happily behind as fast as
possible by virtually every consumer who lived through it.
Microsoft's "monopoly" is a chimera. It is not structural - it does not
result from Microsoft's control of the movement of goods or services, or a
natural resource, or a market, or a transportation route. If a new OS
appears that offered more value to customers than Windows does, Windows
would vanish just as fast as CP/M, AppleDOS, and the TRS-80 OS. It's the
only "monopoly" in history that has resulted in steadily >decreasing< costs
to customers, and rapid and continuous >improvements< in the monopolized
good in question. Judge Jackson is an ass with an axe to grind, and just
like last time, I fully expect him to be overturned, and reprimanded on
appeal.
Ryan
-------------
For more information, please link to www.opengamingfoundation.org
