Re: Transcript of MS Remedies

[Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>]

At 10:26 AM 4/13/98 -0400, Steve Cohen wrote:

>Development tools OUGHT to be about enabling developers to develop any
>application they can imagine.  They may well be platform specific, depending
>on the tool.  But the Microsoft model is skewed toward producing
>applications that work together with Office, with Visual Basic, with the
>whole slew of Microsoft applications.  They want developers to develop
>products that work well with Office.  They don't want developers to develop
>applications that work well with Office competitors.

It is worse than that. The last time I looked, the license "agreements" that 
came with at least some Microsoft tools explicitly prohibited the
development of 
applications that competed with programs in Office.

What's more, according to an article in today's PC Week, at


http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/news/0413/13doj.html

Microsoft is withholding information on Internet Explorer 5.0 from developers
who want to use it in its own applications -- a feature that Microsoft has
touted a great deal. Why? Because IE 5.0 is claimed to be "part of the
operating 
system!"

I believe that Microsoft's claims that the browser is part of the OS are 
utterly bogus, and serve no other purpose than to get it out of hot water
in the current DoJ case. However, let's assume, arguendo, that MSIE *is* part 
of the OS. In that case, the above amountsto withholding vital information 
about APIs from external developers -- *another* anti-competitive practice.

Jamie and Ralph should take note....

--Brett