Nicholas Petreley's comments on settlement

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

Subject: Re: Comment on DOJ/MS settlement
       Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 10:27:18 -0800
      From: "Nicholas Petreley" <nicholas.petreley@wpi.com>
        To: love@cptech.org

James,

Edited and expanded from one of my posts to the InfoWorld forums:

I'm a bit concerned that the settlement does not seem to be in full
compliance with the intent of Jackson's order. Jackson's order was
open-ended and applied  even to Windows 98. This "settlement" applies
only up to Windows 95 OSR 2.0. 

It does not even apply to OSR 2.5, directly. Microsoft is not saying it
will deliver an OSR 2.5 without IE. It is saying it will deliver an OSR
2.0 and then deliver additional software to bring it up to OSR 2.5 in
some ways. 

>From the settlement text at:

http://www.microsoft.com/corpinfo/doj/finalstipulation.htm 

                Microsoft states that OSR 2.0 plus the additional
                software referred to in the preceding sentence is the
                same as OSR 2.5 with the sole exception of Internet
                Explorer 4.0 functionality. Microsoft will promptly make
                available to each OEM opting to preinstall OSR 2.0 any
                additional such software supplements that are released
                in the future and are compatible with OSR 2.0. 

Note the promise: "Microsoft will promptly make available to each OEM
opting to preinstall OSR 2.0 any such software supplements that are
released in the future..."  

And the condition: "...and are compatible with OSR 2.0"

The question is - what updates and improvements will Microsoft deem
"compatible" with OSR 2.0?  Remember that this very loosely worded
condition is coming from a company that claimed COMCTL32.DLL was a DLL
that was specifically tied to  Internet Explorer.  It seems to me that
this leaves Microsoft wide open to make it undesirable for any OEM to
preinstall anything but OSR 2.5 with IE 4.0.  

Anybody want to place bets as to the percentage of OEMs that opt for
"OSR 2.0 plus"  instead of OSR 2.5?  If you expect to win, I'd advise
you pick a number between 0 and 1 (compulsive gamblers who like high
odds should lean toward the 1). 

The most telling part of the agreement is that it remains in effect only
until Microsoft is no longer licensing Windows 95 to OEMs.  In other
words, this settlement ends the moment Windows 98 ships. 

-----------... plus, in a follow-up note-------------

You might want to add the following point at the very
end:

Some people are already speculating that the agreement will motivate
Microsoft to release Windows 98 very quickly.  Rather, it seems to me
that with this this loosely worded settlement, Microsoft has a great
deal of latitude to make it undesirable for any OEM to install anything
but OSR 2.5 with IE 4.0 -- making the integration issue of Windows 98 
irrelevant. 


-Nick Petreley

-Nick


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