Other mentioned alleged source holders are DEC (now Compaq) and IBM.

No decisions have been made and no dates are mentioned. Ballmer
says “There is a real customer desire here but making 40 billion lines
of source code available doesn’t delight anybody.” So if Microsoft
would indeed open up any of the code, it would still keep part of it
secret.

Instead of saying that secrecy benefits Microsoft, Mr. Ballmer
gives as the reason that this is better for those seeking knowledge.
“The less you know the better it is for you”, seems to be the
patriarchal credo of Microsoft’s president.

I would be interested to find out what the fate of AT&T’s
interoperability product “NT Advanced Server for UNIX” will be. Could
it be that AT&T has discontinued the development of the product as
Microsoft gave it more money than they could make by producing and
selling it?

Incidentally, the article mentions that there are some 50 licensees to the Windows and NT sources.

The man, Ed Curry, says further: “I have raised this issue
internally with Microsoft, and in return have been the subject of both
bribes and threats.”

Anyway, it is hard to take a piece of writing seriously as starts as follows:

“In what amounts to a startling case of analytical schizophrenia,
Robert Bork, who is being paid by Netscape, recently published a screed
entitled, “The Case Against Microsoft.” At bottom, the attack on
Microsoft represents special pleading on behalf of Microsoft’s
competitors who apparently are hoping to be freed of the burden of
having to compete against a relentlessly efficient and innovative
Microsoft. Bork’s arguments are based on a distorted reading of the
case law and on a studied refusal even to acknowledge, much less
address, the manifest efficiency justifications for Microsoft’s
conduct.”

“U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ordered that
Oracle provide Microsoft, the world’s leading software company, with
information about agreements it had entered into with a group of other
high-tech companies. But Oracle need not provide information about
discussions that never led to completed agreements.”

“You can’t prove anything about the character of Microsoft’s
agreements . . . by the character of Oracle’s agreements. The key
question is whether Microsoft acted illegally in any of its
collaborative arrangements, not whether other companies engaged
incollaborative arrangements”

The DOJ supported Oracle’s position:

“This does not have any bearing on Microsoft’s monopoly power,”
said Melvin A. Schwarz, special counsel for civil enforcement with the
Justice Department’s Antitrust Division.

Protective seals that are to be used to hide trade secrets have in
effect been used to hide information pertinent to the case (could this
be contempt of court – at least it is contempt of the public).
Furthmore, causal knowledge of Microsoft executives is disregarded as
“water cooler conversations” and therefore not knowledge of the
organisation.

Microsoft’s defense indicating Sun’s evil plans for java – using
the words of Bill Joy – is entirely irrelevant: “a Java operating
system, running on a Java chip with Java applications, all controlled
by Sun.” So Sun wants to make a proprietary operating system written in
java and a proprietary microprocessor to run java well. All this has
nothing to do with the control of the java language. To be more plain:
amateurs are writing an operating system in the very same java language
now which is called JOS (http://www.jos.org)
and Intel could create a java microprocessor just as well as Sun, again
based on the very same language. Sun can’t stop the competition from
basing itself on the standards that it sets itself. This is not true
for Microsoft’s java version. No competition – adhering to the same
standards – is possible that doesn’t base itself on Microsoft’s Windows.

Microsoft justifies the subpoena with: “Candid concessions by
senior Netscape personnel that their own mistakes are responsible for
the declining popularity of Netscape’s Web browsing software are fatal
to the government’s contention that Netscape’s problems can be laid at
the feet of Microsoft”.

Well, I am not interested in “Netscape’s problems” and when I
support the DOJ’s antitrust case it is not because I want to protect
Netscape. What could Netscape’s executives possibly say to dispell the
fact that Microsoft’s integration scheme can be used to take control of
any software market that depends on their OS?

“…we’re disappointed that Microsoft has no RMI support built into
their Internet Explorer 4.0. Developers are, instead, given the option
of using the proprietary DCOM. So we’ve got a small solution in order
to neutralize the situation. It involves no major political upheaval or
300 page manuals. RMI for IE4. It’s a small, downloadable patch which
can installed and used with the Microsoft JVM and Internet Explorer.
Programmers can even use it to implement server-side applications
needing RMI.”

The authors signed a confidentiality contract with the Netscape
executives they interviewed. Microsoft now wants to make them break
this contract by turning over the tapes and notes to Microsoft.

“[Bill Day] drew a big circle and he wrote, ’Wintel’ in it,
standing for Windows and Intel, and he drew a big line through it and
he wrote the year 2000,” said Quackenbush according to the transcript.”

Ergo? Microsoft’s lawyers seem to resort to mysticism now by
attempting to ascribe any meaning to such an act. Could anything ask
them to focus on what somebody does and why and how this affects others.

“A Sherman Act analysis requires a careful examination of conduct
and intent,” Bork said. “The best way for policy makers and the public
to determine that, and to understand the issues of this case, is to see
and hear directly the words of the CEO of the Microsoft empire.”

“Netscape officials concede the company made mistakes in its
business strategy that led to many of the problems it later encountered
in the marketplace. According to Microsoft, those admissions by
Netscape refute a central element of the government’s case, which is
that Microsoft engaged in anticompetitive practices toward Netscape.”

How can decision errors on the site of Netscape’s executives
“refute” that “Microsoft is engaged in anticompetitive practices toward
Netscape.”?

The only element of interest that I could find is that the book
seems to conclude – perhaps on the explicit insistence of a Netscape
executive – that Netscape lost its business of AOL due to its own
mistakes. Well, I must say that so far I have found the account saying
that AOL was swayed by getting a place in the Windows channel bar a
pretty convincing reason for chosing Microsoft and that would
constitute a textbook example of leveraging one monopoly to the next.

For the rest, the quotes merely come down to stating and re-stating
that the book alleges that Netscape’s executives made errors that made
their situations worse than it could have been.

Another passage nicely illustrates how Microsoft lawyers use the words of logic without heeding its meaning:

“There are many other quotations in the book that reflect the
shortsighted manner in which Netscape conducted its business. Many of
those quotations are attributed to persons who are, or were, among the
most senior executives at Netscape. Their account directly contradicts
the government’s case against Microsoft.”

The government’s case is that Microsoft has sought to use its
monopoly in one market to obtain a market share in another. Just as
antitrust laws don’t serve to protect companies, the actual behavior of
players in that other market are irrelevant to the evaluation of the
intent and actions of the monopolist. There cannot possible be a
“direct contradiction” here.

Could it be that data from Microsoft products is eminently non-transportable?

Just as Caldera had to go to court again to obtain the source code
of Windows that Microsoft was to give them at the court’s request, so
the DOJ had to request once more for the databases that Microsoft was
to pass over to them.

The article ends with a kind of “disclaimer” that attributes all
that is positive in the present state of the industry to Microsoft.

In state after state, education officials make deals with Microsoft to prevent students to chose their own software.

According to spokesperson Tom Pilla Microsoft’s competitors have leaked the confidential information in a selective manner.

The subpoena is not meant to reveal Mr. Goodin’s sources.

The most interesting information, however, is that Microsoft is
ordered to give access to its databases with OEM records. The part that
it gave to the DOJ came in a mangled form. Judge Jackson confirmed the
DOJ’s evaluation of the state of the data.

The article gives wide coverage to a poll by a Microsoft
front-organization, the TAAC. The methodology by which the poll was
conducted seems to be unavailable. (This sounds like a nasty
insinuation, I’ll gladly replace it with any information on the poll.)

Of course, one could interpret Microsoft’s move as yet another
excuse to stretch the period of the alleged abuse of their monopoly.
After all, if the witnesses give information not pertinent to the case,
the judge will declare it irrelevant. On the other hand, if their
testimony is pertinent, Microsoft doesn’t need their identity to
prepare for their statements.

While claiming that Gates is returning to his “programmer-geek
roots” we see that he is primarily occupied with power politics, partly
concerning the getting in line of hardware and services companies like
IBM, Oracle, Sun and Netscape that seek an independent software
strategy, and party concerning mobile telephone companies that dare not
to chose Microsoft’s Windows CE. The latter organizations are
considered a “threat”, which is strange as Microsoft has little
marketshare to lose in this market.

No indication is given of activities showing how Gates returns to
his mythical “programmer-geek roots”. On the basis of his experience
Microsoft would most likely be unwilling to hire him for any technical
job.

We could consider it negligence that little thought seems to have
been spent on finding an alternative to Microsoft’s dominant position.
I must admit, that I didn’t think much of this myself.

At present, the DOJ seems to start thinking and is right away
chastised by Microsoft: it shouldn’t think until it has won its case.
This is silly as there wouldn’t be any reason for the case if no
alternatives are considered that can be implemented after winning the
case.

I found the account of Linus Torvalds wise and that of Mitch Kapor prophetic.

As is the fate of any politician, the public isn’t undividedly enthousiastic about his actions.

When asked what the three most important innovations of Microsoft
were, his answers were rather bleak: 1. developing software according
to “industry standards” – these were originally set by IBM and
Microsoft later took over the role of the planning institution; 2.
building Windows NT from scratch – just like BeOS, but why is Be’s
position in the market place so unlike that of Windows NT?; letting
Windows NT handle high-value transactions – just like UNIX, ain’t it
great?

But don’t despair on this past record. Microsoft hasn’t done much
that wasn’t done by others before them, but they are sinking huge
amounts of money into the recognition of speech and handwriting. Now
that they have their monopoly and used the innovations of others to
include in their own business, they are eager to make up.

Java systems will be relegated to a niche market.

Microsoft spokesperson Tom Pilla ridiculed Microsoft’s month-long
resistence to granting Bristol access to this material by stating that
granting access to these documents is “standard procedure in these
kinds of cases”.

An important element of Mr. Warden’s defense seems to be to utter
Microsoft marketing slogans like: “Microsoft hasn’t denied consumer
choice, it IS consumer choice.” and clothing Microsoft’s in its
familiar – and unlikely – role of underdog.

Microsoft claims that these agreements make up an increasing
percentage of their revenues, “though not a meaningful percentage”.
This seems to be their way to refer publicly to one third of their
revenues, that is, more than they get from the shrink-wrapped packages
you find so prominently in every computer store.

Furthermore, they mention that the supposed to be problematic
letter from Netscape’s Jim Clark to Microsoft offering to “work with”
Microsoft and suggesting that Microsoft may be interested in taking an
equitity position in Netscape might well be explained by saying that he
sought to raise money for cash-starved Netscape.

Last, it is mentioned that Microsoft’s buying up of startups
specializing in streaming media effectively comes down to pre-empting
the market mechanism for chosing between different techniques. One is
picked by Microsoft to become the “standard”, period.

Their own store is that these profits are not exceptional because
other companies in the industry also posted better results than
estimated. Alas, for those companies, that doesn’t already make them
good.

Some of the rewards Microsoft gave to get exclusive deals with
ISP’s are mentioned and also Microsoft’s claims that Netscape wasn’t
harmed because 1.) its (now non-revenue) browser is still distributed
widely and 2.) its executives give rosy predictions of the future. Of
course, these points do not together show that Netscape is not harmed
as the browser may have brought in significant revenues in a
competitive environment, as it did before Microsoft gave away its
Internet Explorer for free.

Furthermore, John Warden’s claim that competition is simple by
pointing to the first months of Linux development – now seven years on
its way – is ridiculed.

Also discussed is Netscape’s inability to live up to Intuit’s
demands for specific browser features. Of course, that doesn’t imply
that Microsoft did not leverage its OS monopoly to get Intuit’s order.

Microsoft’s claim that AOL chose MSIE exclusively for technological
excellence implies that AOL was not interested in having a place on the
Windows desktop. Highly unlikely.

While on the one hand claiming that Netscape competed “vigorously” for the AOL position, they claim on the other hand,

To show that Microsoft’s deal was not exclusive, Microsoft points
out that AOL worked with Netscape on the GNN project – aimed at a
“different type of users” (different from the millions of AOL users?) -
and that AOL supported users that used and still use the Netscape
client. No answer is given to the restrictions that Mr. Colburn alleges
were put on AOL.

“If you say something he doesn’t like, he yells at you,” recounts
one respected analyst anxious to remain in Microsoft’s good graces.
“Once in a press conference, I asked him about the ’thin client’”
(implying that maybe Microsoft on the desktop wasn’t the answer to
everything), “and he said, ’What do you mean by that? You don’t know
what you’re talking about. Next question.’”

Posted 29/10/98 Microsoft paid Apple $150m to settle QuickTime suit

Key parts of the code were developed for Apple by a third party and
this sold the same code to Intel shortly thereafter. By this way
Microsoft got hold of it and put in into Windows95. Good reason for
Apple to sue Microsoft and good reason for Microsoft to settle out of
court for the well-known $150 million non-voting stock.

Migrating when being locked in a monopoly of proprietary technology
could well be a far costlier disaster then a slower growth with open
standards that is better spread among vendors.

I store value on the anonymous sources that say that the $150
million mentioned in “The Register” was certainly not the settlement
for the QuickTime lawsuit, which would have been more closely to a $400
million payment to Apple.

WebTV will not support java until its boxes will run WinCE with Microsoft’s proprietary non-standard java version.

More important than telling about what is to come is that this
article contains a quote by Microsoft’s senior vice president Paul
Maritz that indicates that Microsoft decision to integrate MSIE in
Windows was taken as an action against Netscape.

The tape seems to have been quite uninteresting: Gates doesn’t
remember what the lawsuit with Apple was over, that MSIE acceptation
was a condition for the deal with Apple, and forgot that certain
e-mails were sent to him.

After fighting the complete showing of the tape, Microsoft’s
William Neukom is now complaining about this being an edited version.

The most loaded statements are quotes showing how Microsoft
employees proposed to use stopping the support of Office for the Mac to
inflict damage on Apple. So much for the friendship messages that
Microsoft send out to the world as a response to Mr. Tevanian’s
testimony becoming public.

It lists several successful products, and the advantages of the
open development model. The best way to “deny OSS products entry to the
market” is found to be introduce proprietary extensions to the
(Internet) protocols that are at present open for all to use.

What seems cool and cheap at first can turn out to be an expensive
nightmare. Message: opt for standards and competition instead of
proprietary technology and dependency on one supplier.

It’s especially amusing when, at the end of the article,
Microsoft’s attorney makes the DOJ’s point for them by showing the
judge how non-intuitive it is for the novice user to change the default
browser.

It is interesting to see that the comparison of Microsoft with other autocratic systems is getting mindshare.

“Our strategy is to find ways to solve customer problems that are not being solved by commodity protocols,” Muth said.

And exactly how does limiting consumers to a Microsoft solution and
denying competition to the marketplace “solve consumer problems”
effectively? After all, Microsoft themselves wouldn’t have been nearly
as successful if the PC specification were a proprietary hardware
standard and the Internet couldn’t exist without standard protocols.

“It’s fairly mild, and I got the feeling that the person that wrote
it actually liked Linux,” said Linux creator Linus Torvalds. “But maybe
I’m on drugs.”

and

“I think the Linux model is so strong that even if they try
something like that, it’s not obvious that it will work,” Torvalds
said. “I may be naive, but especially on the Internet… it’s fairly
dangerous to divert from the standard Networking protocols, such as
those for email and server communications, must be open and universally
compatible. When you have a globally accepted protocol it’s really hard
to try to abuse that protocol.

“That’s why it’s hard. But if there is one company that has the power to try it, it could certainly be Microsoft.”

After the hourlong excerpts played in court, the judge asked Boies: “How long did that deposition take?’’

Also, Gates claimed he doesn’t know what a ’non-Microsoft’ browser
means. Either he is committing perjury, he has lost his grip on reality
or both.

Joachim Kempin, who is responsible at Microsoft to keeping the OEM’s in line, wrote to the Chairman:

“If they decide to sell the OS for $1 and the [central processing
unit or CPU] for $200, they will get the OEMs on their side. Our
reaction could be to buy Nsemi [National Semiconductor] or AMD or both
and own the CPU and the [software] business. We would sell [software]
at $100 and CPUs at [$1 above] costs.”

Sounds like tying and predatory pricing is always on their mind.
Hm, see what happens now that Intel backs Be and Linux. What happened
to the IBM PC – clones taking over from the real thing – could happen
to Intel too.

Furthermore, the article contains some remarks on the court session
where Microsoft’s allegedly non-competitive pricing was the issue.
Microsoft’s lawyer tells us that Linux is a competitor, but doesn’t
seem to think that a “competitive price” has to be similar to the price
of a competing product.

The most interesting news is that Microsoft claims that the
government is “lying with statistics” by mouth of spokesperson Mark
Murray.

“I’ve been battling this type of PR gimmickry for a long time, and
I can smell it 40 yards away,” said Michigan Atty. Gen. Frank J.
Kelley. “It represents arrogance, and it’s personally demeaning to me.
[Microsoft Chairman] Bill Gates would have been better off if he or one
of his representatives had picked up the phone and called me.”

and:

“When it comes to knowledge of computer technology, I take my hat
off to Mr. Gates,” said one attorney general. “But if he wants to enter
the field of political intrigue, I say welcome to my world, Mr. Gates,
I’m ready to do battle.”

Personally, I would amend that 2nd quote to say “When it comes to
running a software business and specifically in recognising the value
of technological chokepoints like the operating system, I take my hat
off to Mr. Gates …”, but I have to be exact in my quotes. *shrug*

Quote from Sm@rt Reller Article:

“Is this then, Windows 98 without Internet Explorer? We thinks so.
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and acts like a duck, we
think it’s a duck.

Windows 98 without Internet Explorer 4 is a working [operating]
system and Internet Explorer 4.0 is not a vital part of Windows 98.”