From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Nov 18 9:54:47 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from smtp01.primenet.com (smtp01.primenet.com [206.165.6.131]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6468A1546F for ; Thu, 18 Nov 1999 09:54:22 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from tlambert@usr02.primenet.com) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by smtp01.primenet.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id KAA20622; Thu, 18 Nov 1999 10:54:09 -0700 (MST) Received: from usr02.primenet.com(206.165.6.202) via SMTP by smtp01.primenet.com, id smtpdAAAMtaa8N; Thu Nov 18 10:53:52 1999 Received: (from tlambert@localhost) by usr02.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA15939; Thu, 18 Nov 1999 10:53:36 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199911181753.KAA15939@usr02.primenet.com> Subject: Re: Judge: "Gates Was Main Culprit" To: jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org (Jonathon McKitrick) Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 17:53:36 +0000 (GMT) Cc: crh@outpost.co.nz, tlambert@primenet.com, chat@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: from "Jonathon McKitrick" at Nov 18, 99 02:29:41 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > Since you seem to have a clear picture (pardon the pun) of this whole > debate, could you explain whether the salient points from this discussion > can support the premises we have been debating? I can try... > Is it possible for company to cause the adoption of lesser > technology purely by business/marketing tactics? Yes. It required the ability to wield what is called "monopolistic power" in the marketplace. If you can wield this power, you can subvert normal free-market pressures, and by subverting, ignore them. I should probably point out at this juncture that the U.S. is not entirely a free market, in the strictest sense of the word, mostly because the process is imperfect (but better than most). There was a recent ABC news special entitled "Is America Number One?", which examined the question of what it takes to be an economic superpower. America (in this case, referring to the U.S. only), has many regulatory barriers that other countries do not have, many of which are not related to the idea of the greater good (e.g. environmental law barriers are for the greater good, but business licensing and zoning restrictions aren't). The narrator was able to set up a business in New York, widely known in the U.S. as a huge bureaucracy with a high relative corruption and large special interest imposed regulations, in particular trade union politics, in four weeks. A similar experiment in India resulted in the narrator giving up after two months. In Hong Kong, the narrator was able to start a store in a mall in 24 hours. Clearly, then, regulatory barriers are important, but they are not the only barriers in the way of optimum economies; some of the other factors are: seperation of commercial and criminal justice systems, strong intellectual property laws, uniform enforcement of laws and business regulations, availability of skilled labor, the ability of foreign nationals to own property or businesses (this is a particular problem for Japan), etc.. It was also pointed out that one in every five Silicon Valley companies was started by a foreign national, and that one of every three scientists and engineers in Silicon Valley are foregin nationals. So "Is America Number One?"; "Yes" was the answer, in terms of overall opportunity for anyone, regardless of origin, to realize value through their own labor (sometimes called "sweat equity"). But part of this is the fact that the U.S. has regulatory barriers which are related to the idea of the greater good; and one of these barriers is the regulation of monopolies. People in this discussion seem to range on a luntic fringe on two sides of a spectrum, with one end labelled "all monopolies are evil" and the other labelled "monopolies are the natural result of superb capitalism, and therefore by definition good". The U.S. is not free of monopolies. They abound. But each of them are subject to stricter government regulation than other non-monopoly buisinesses, in order to _prevent_ them from unduly interfering with normal free market forces, and thus detracting from the greater good. > What *really* was responsible for the success of BetaMax over > VHS? You mean "VHS over Betamax". There are two schools fo thought. The first is the one that is currently attributed to Sony, the inventor of Betamax; it say "VHS won over Betamax because of recording times". I personally do not subscribe to this view, since recording times were an arms race, and there was never more than a six month lag between the two. I have also been unable to obtain any official confirmation of this hear-say claim that this is Sony's position in the matter. I think that it is far more likely that the Universal-Disney copyright infringement suit against Sony, which did not name either JVC or Pioneer, who were producing VHS recorders at the same time, has a chilling effect on the availability of movies for Betamax, and a concommitant chilling effect on the availability of software titles for the format. To paraphrase, I think that it was the availability of software that people wanted to run that ultimately decided the winner. Given Bill Gates press statements last night about what he was willing to do about a settlement, and what was not open to negotiation (content of Windows, opening source code to Windows, third party modification of Windows), it's pretty clear that he believes that availability of software would carry the day for the OS, as well, and that a split along OS/Application companies lines would be of least harm to him. In fact, if you follow the trade press, you will see that Microsoft has already reorganized into OS and other seperate business groups months ago. I think the only question is one of whether they will let Bill dictate that the divisions occur where he's already sewn in the zippers, should a settlement negotiation take place. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message