o-----------ooO--(- Important Message -)--Ooo------------o | | | SAVE BANDWITH, SPACE, TIME & MONEY, REPLY WITH PRUDENCE.| | | o----=[ Penguin @ My - Linux ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ]=----o Subject: keratan drpd url http://www.osopinion.com/Opinions/NoahYetter/NoahYetter1.html Authored by: Noah "MoNsTeR" Yetter The Microsoft Monopoly: You're ALL wrong. A challenge to our software industry pipe-dream. There has been a lot of hullabaloo about Judge Jackson's initial Finding of Fact in the Microsoft vs. US Department of Justice case. Unfortunately, most of the commentary, as well as the fact-finding itself, have largely missed the point. Quite a few commentators have lamented Judge Jackson's finding that Linux, BeOS, etc. are not in the same league as Windows. The following should make it clear why that statement is perfectly true. Let's say I'm Altec Lansing. I make a lot of PC speakers, so I have a large need for speaker wire. Let's say that I've been happily buying wire from Wire'N'Stuff Inc. for (a TOTALLY ficticious cost of) $1/meter. Maybe one day Wire'N'Stuff decides their margin on the particular wire I'm buying isn't large enough so they raise their price to $2/m. Well this doesn't bode well for me, since I buy so damn much of the stuff, so what do I do? I find another vendor, plain and simple. Maybe the offer I turned down last year from Cabling Etc. Inc. at $1.25/m seems perfectly good now that Wire'N'Stuff has gone spare on me. The important thing, however, is not the exact price I end up paying, but that I have choice, that I'm not tied to one vendor. This has been a large part of the pro-open-source (or free software, if you like) rhetoric, that, if anything, has not been emphasized enough. Now let's take that example and move it to Intel PC operating systems. Let's say I'm Dell Computer. I buy millions of copies of Windows from Microsoft at $95/ea (this is the normal OEM price, and ignores the volume discount that Dell surely gets). Let's say that in this example, as in the previous one, that Microsoft decides their profit margin just isn't large enough, and doubles the price to $190/ea. Worst case scenario, I let that extra cost get eaten out of my profit margins, which is probably not feasible considering the slim state of PC margins. Perhaps I simply pass the cost on directly to my customers, at a flat increase of $95 per machine. However, the most likely case, where my mark-ups are calculated as a percentage instead of an absolute dollar value, more than that $95 gets passed on to the consumer, perhaps 120% of $95 = $114 per computer. But again, the important thing here is not the prices, but the (LACK OF) choice. I simple can't go to another vendor to get Windows. Notice that I did NOT say that I cannot go to another vendor for an "Intel PC operating system". The reason for this is that, for all reasonable intents and purposes, only Windows will run most commodity software. Those of us "in the know" in computers take this for granted, but it must be noted that it is a phenomenon confined almost exclusively to this industry. In the previous example concerning speaker wire, it didn't matter who Altec Lansing went to, because it was all compatible. So the important thing is not that Microsoft has a monopoly in Intel PC operating systems, for we all know they do not: Linux, *BSD, BeOS, and others will fill that requirement. But what customers want/need is not an operating system in the general sense, but an operating system that will run "Windows software". What Microsoft has a monopoly in is not PC OS's, but in Windows OS's. If (and only if) I could go to, say, IBM and purchase another implementation of the Win32 API's that might have different performance, cost, support options, or any number of other factors, but still ran all the same software and hardware, then Microsoft would have competition. This notion may seem somewhat ridiculous to traditional software people, to whom the idea of different vendors marketing different yet compatible implementations of an OS (and set of API's) is likely seen as rather ludicrous (though recall the different versions of DOS marketed by various firms at various times...). This is only because software is much harder to reverse-engineer than most other goods. If you want to make your own engine that's "compatible" with Chevrolet's big-block V8, all you need to do is go buy one, measure it's various dimensions, make educated guesses at the metal compositions, and cast your mold (this assumes that the engine is purely mechanical, and ignores any issues with computer-controlled valve timing, emissions, or whatnot). For software, this process is much more difficult since just what software does is very seperable from how it works. Furthermore, from the perspective of the OS/API architect, it's not in your best interest to document your system well enough to facilitate a third party implementation, unless you planned to charge a HUGE sum for it. So Microsoft, Sun, SGI, HP, IBM, DEC, and all the other vendors of operating systems of all shapes and sizes decided to keep their designs closed, and as a result they ALL have monopolies on their particular operating system markets (except in some cases of binary compatibility within the hardware platform, such as iBCS). Consider some other software types where similar things have NOT happened. Though the knee-jerk reaction is to label Microsoft Office as a monopoly on office software, that is a flawed conclusion. Corel, Sun (viz StarDivision), Lotus, and possibly others offer applications or suites of applications that provide very similar sets of functionality to that which Microsoft offers. They can even read and write each other's files (to a certain extent). The advantages Microsoft's software has are 1) ability to more or less force OEM's to distribute their software, 2) knowledge of undocumented features of the Win32 API's, and 3) the perception of customers that, naturally, Microsoft's applications will work best on Microsoft's platform. #1 is obviously a result of monopoly power. Microsoft certainly has a right to force the bundling of Office with Windows, it is only because the OEM's have no vendor choice that this is a monopolistic practice. #2 is perfectly fair within current conceptions of software markets, but in a market where the OS/API design can be implemented by third parties, becomes at best a licensing issue, at worst a monopolistic practice. #3 could be perfectly true or a marketing-induced misconcept, but exists in many other industries and is a reality that other players will have to live with. So the real problem is that by extensive use of factor #1, Microsoft has made their office platform basically ubiquitous, thus forcing the other players to feature compatibility with them. And when (not if; remember #2) those other players implement not-up-to-snuff import/export filters, consumers simply throw up their hands and buy the native products, no matter what the cost, since without good compatibility with the "industry standard", they're lost. Why I say that what happened with operating systems did NOT happen here is that no true monopoly is held in office applications. Software from Corel, Sun, or Lotus will allow you to do (more or less) the exact same things. The formats are even somewhat open. Microsoft is winning the office suite wars not so much because of monopolistic practices, but because of perceived higher quality, and because of a superior implementation of one feature (compatibility with, or rather being the "industry standard"). I know some of you are still scratching your heads, trying to reconcile the idea that Sun, HP, SGI, et al. have monopolies on their respective operating systems. "Aren't they all more-or-less UNIX?" you say? Well, yes. If I understand UNIX history correctly, all of our modern commercial UNIX systems came about through a combination of source licenses from AT&T and UCB. The "problem" is that each vendor made their implementation incompatible through various modifications (always marketed as "improvements"). But try as they did to screw UNIX up as much as possible ;), it stayed standard enough that ISV's could write for one platform and port to others with a modicum of effort. They remained so standard in fact, that Richard Stallman and his FSF was able to do ground-up re-implementations of most of the standard facilities. So standard in fact, that our friend Linus Torvalds was able to do a re-implementation of the kernel-level services. Be, Inc. did a similar thing, though their system is very different from UNIX (despite being POSIX-compliant, IIRC). If Microsoft Windows had begun as a laboratory project, with source licenses given to universities at a nominal cost, then we might have as many implementations of Windows as we do of UNIX. Also likely is that we'd have one or two or half a dozen open-source implementations. Whether government intervention is ideologically "right" or not is another question (one which my libertarian ideals are having a hard time answering). Whether Microsoft's monopoly would have declined in importance over time is another question. What the punishment for Microsoft's business practices should be is also another question. What is NOT a question under any circumstances is whether Microsoft has a monopoly or not: they do. If you've just skipped to the end hoping for the juicy parts, I'll put it succinctly: Who else could you call if you wanted to buy Windows? The power this monopoly gives Microsoft over distribution and pricing is inarguably bad for the consumer. The fact that Microsoft's prices have remained nearly constant for over a decade while prices of all hardware and many kinds of software has plummetted means either that the value of their software has consistently risen, or that their pricing is un-economic. I'll leave the choice as an exercise for the reader. I, for one, would be perfectly happy if the outcome of all this was the publication of the Win32 design, so that I had a choice of vendors. The end result could only be more speed, stability, and lower prices. Who would you like to go with today - Disclaimer : http://users.my-linux.org/disclaimer.html
[Penguin] The Microsoft Monopoly: You're ALL wrong.
Hasbullah Pit Abdul Rahman - sebol (terluka) Tue, 16 Nov 1999 07:40:31 -0800
