Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2000 23:39:41 +0530 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: J McKitrick <jcm@freebsd-uk.eu.org> Cc: David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com>, "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: M$ anti-trust case Message-ID: <20000417233941.A532@theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in> In-Reply-To: <20000417183905.D27040@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>; from jcm@freebsd-uk.eu.org on Mon, Apr 17, 2000 at 06:39:05PM %2B0100 References: <3.0.6.32.20000417104107.0088ee50@mail85.pair.com> <001201bfa891$92066480$021d85d1@youwant.to> <20000417183905.D27040@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>
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J McKitrick said on Apr 17, 2000 at 18:39:05: > On Mon, Apr 17, 2000 at 10:22:56AM -0700, David Schwartz wrote: > > > So now Netscape and Sun are the small guys?!?!?! The Microsoft anti-trust > > case is not about big versus small. > > Unfortunately, though the judge ruled M$ broke the law, many are arguing > that M$ really hasn't hurt anyone but developers, and has helped consumers. > Unfortunately, it appears that is the case. Um, if that is the case, why is it unfortunate? :) I think M$/IBM did help consumers in the early days, by making cheap and usable computers widely available. Non-Intel computers even today are much more highly priced. The trouble started when the power of the machines exceeded the capabilities of MS-DOS, but because of their entrenched monopoly alternatives couldn't really develop. So people got stuck in Windows 3.1, then Windows 95, etc, only because they wanted backward compatibility for whatever reason. The real and dangerous monopoly M$ has is not in operating systems but in office software and proprietary file formats. Of course, they got that monopoly thanks partly to their Windows monopoly. As long as 90% of the people out there keep believing that a Word file is the only way to send formatted documents, competitors will keep having to work at maintaining compatibility with Word, and M$ will keep trying to keep ahead of that (in the process breaking compatibility with earlier versions of its own software), and users will get caught in a useless upgrade cycle with no benefit in quality. This is really their gameplan, to make their stuff incompatible with everyone else but so widespread that everyone else is forced to switch. People don't really care about the OS: if everyone used StarOffice, I know lots of people would be happy to run it on Unix rather than Windoze. The customer suffers in being forced to pay for a bloated, crashy Word/Office 2000 that doesn't really work better than a less bloated but equally crashy Word 97. Meanwhile nobody has the incentive to develop anything better. Rahul. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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