RE: Just wondering...

[Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>]

At 01:26 PM 12/30/98 -0500, Betts, Lynn (MCI) wrote: 

>
> Since everyone seems to be explaining their positions, 
> I'll toss mine in... 
>
> In addition to several of the other views expressed, 
> one of my principle beefs with Microsoft is the unfairness 
> with which they treat outside developers due to Microsoft 
> refusing to voluntarily draw a line between areas it will 
> pursue and areas it will leave to others (i.e,, applications, 
> tools, utilities, etc).  No developer of software (or 
> hardware?), in the current situation, can know whether 
> or not MS will decide at some point to hinder his product's 
> performance, or appropriate its segment (and to do so 
> in such a way that his livelihood is virtually removed). 
> This might not be so bad if MS were on equal footing 
> with the developers, but its ownership of the OS 
> franchise, and requirements that every developer for 
> the platform must provide them with business plan 
> information and development details, give them unfair 
> advantage in picking and choosing what to appropriate 
> for themselves, and how to most effectively hurt or 
> appropriate the product or segment for themselves. 


The ironic thing is that developers have, to a large
extent, GIVEN Microsoft that power. In the early days
of Windows, I asked many developers, "Why are you
putting all of your eggs in one basket by developing
your product exclusively for Windows? Do you want
to be at Microsoft's mercy?" None came up with so
much as a reasonable answer. 

Borland International is a particularly good example
of a company that aided the creation of Microsoft's
monopoly to its own detriment. I urged Borland
executives, without success, to support GEM and
DESQview; they refused. (I wrote some support for
these environments on my own, in some cases patching
Borland's runtime libraries, and they refused even
to license the code for practically nothing.) I warned
them that by abandoning the Macintosh, they were
locking themselves into dependency on a competitor;
they ignored this obvious, commonsense observation.
Borland supported OS/2 halfheartedly and only to
the extent that they were paid by IBM to do so, even
though it was the one alternative to their direct
competitor's platform. And they refuse, to this day,
to support UNIX. (Ironically, there was once an
unreleased Turbo Pascal for SunOS, but it was only
a bootstrapping platform for the Mac version; it never
shipped.)

Because it placed itself at Microsoft's mercy, Borland
was defenseless when Microsoft forced it to drop portions
of its development platform, raided its ranks for employees, 
and preyed on its products via vaporware announcements.

It's a darn shame. As a developer of tools, Borland could
have ENABLED competitive environments and forestalled the
lack of viable choices of operating system environments.
It chose not to do so, and lost big.

I'm not sure why I'm always the one that has to say "Told
ya so," but this is the role I seem to play. I warned
dozens of companies that they were cementing a competitor's
monopoly, and they didn't listen; now they (and we) are
paying the price.

--Brett Glass