Re: interface based monopolies

[Alan Glanz <aglanz@idsyst.com>]

      I agree with Hans on this one, Jordan --  I'm sure Sun and Netscape
  aren't exactly "saintly" companies, but neither are they the ones we
  really should be concerned with at this point, AT ALL.  That is, if 5
  years down the road Sun's exploitation of Java allows it to achieve the
  kind of dominance Microsoft has today, and they weild this dominance in
  a similar way -- THEN we'll worry and take action (or hopefully sometime
  before that if we're smart).  But to criticize Sun and Netscape now, or
  in any way put them on a level playing field with Microsoft, is EXACTLY
  what will ABSOLUTELY CRIPPLE  any efforts to get Microsoft to change its
  business practices at this time.
      Perhaps you caught the earlier posting from a man discussing how the
  ISO standardization process is wraught with politics, and how Microsoft
  wined and dined the ISO committees the week before the vote on whether
  Sun should be given exclusive rights to control Java.  This is the very
  scary, very real flipside of your argument that Netscape has stolen a
  public HTML standard and tweaked it to their benefit.  In fact,
  Microsoft is pushing with everything it has (money, power, etc.), I
  suspect, for its specification of DHTML to be passed.  If you think
  Netscape has acted improperly to tweak HTML, my humble response is "Just
  wait!" (for Microsoft to act, that is).
      I think your assertions about Netscape and Sun are potentially
  disastrous -- and the conference *is* titled "Appraising Microsoft".
  
  Alan Glanz
  
  Hans Reiser wrote:
  
  > A very interesting analogy, the one with the FCC.  However, I think
  > that you should
  > judge Sun and Netscape the way one should judge men, not by what they
  > ought to have
  > been, but by what their contemporaries are, and how they compare.  No
  > one can
  > survive comparison with what they ought to be.  Sun is not an open
  > systems company,
  > it is a more open systems company, and that can and should be
  > respected.
  >
  > Hans
  >
  > Jordan Pollack wrote:
  >
  > > I have always felt that microsoft was an issue for the FCC, not the
  > DOJ.
  > >
  > > The common operating system is a "communications interface standard"
  >
  > > like an electric plug or phone outlet or broadcast standard.
  > > Its rules of operation are published, so that companies can make
  > > appliances which plug into to standard. We expect competition to
  > > drive down the price of the utilities which operate the
  > > appliances through the interface.
  > >
  > > Because an "Interface based monopoly" (an IBM) can change the
  > > interface at will, without national consent, lots of abuse is
  > > possible. The interface is changed arbitrarily, generally not to
  > > provide any new services, but to generate windfall revenue, or
  > > to kill competition.
  > >
  > > The real problem with Intl Business Machines (an IBM) was its
  > > ownership of the 360 instruction set architecture, a language which
  > > was taught to every computer programmer, and was the standard
  > > architecture for all software of its day.  There was a software
  > > industry, but whenever a competitor, such as amdahl, built hardware
  > > which would run IBM's code, IBM would issue a new machine with a few
  >
  > > new, provable unnecessary, instructions, and software which assumed
  > > them, so Amdahl's machine would not run the new software.
  > >
  > > If one company owned the electric outlet, and could issue new
  > > outlets "EO 98" -and the new home builders installed them because
  > > they got them cheap, and the appliance builders stopped building
  > > appliances for the old standard, when you needed to replace
  > > an appliance, you would be forced to rewire your home!
  > >
  > > The government does not allow the phone company or television
  > > companies to force everyone to buy new appliances every few years.
  > > Yet Office97 doesnt run under windows 3.1.
  > >
  > > One could argue that microsoft Dos and Windows do not constitute
  > > a public communications interface standard since they were privately
  >
  > > developed.  Of course, TV and Telephone standards also arose through
  >
  > > competition before being made national.
  > >
  > > The nation should avoid looking at Netscape or Sun as "white
  > knights"
  > > either.  Netscape's monopoly is based on the theft of a public
  > > standard - HTML, through one-sided tweaks of that language coupled
  > > with exploitingthe public info highway for zero distribution
  > > costs. Sun's Java, while now offered as a semi-public standard which
  >
  > > rides on network browsers, is still a privately owned language which
  >
  > > only Sun can tweak whenever it feels it isnt selling enough
  > > Sparcstations.
  > >
  > > Once a public interface standard is established so that all
  > consumers
  > > and businesses are dependent on that interface, the SPECIFICATION
  > (not
  > > the copyrighted code itself) should be declared a national standard
  > > and HELD STILL unless essential new services arise and are
  > introduced
  > > in a non-competitive fashion, through patches rather than 90/clip
  > > upgrade windfalls. Thus we should be able to hold windows/pentium
  > > still long enough for makers of operating systems, such as APPLE,
  > IBM,
  > > and DEC, SGI, and GNU, to get their systems support standard wintel
  > > plug-in appliances without fear of immediate investment loss. HTML
  > is
  > > another candidate for a public standard.
  > >
  > > Professor Jordan B. Pollack   DEMO Laboratory, Volen Center for
  > Complex Systems
  > > Computer Science Dept, MS018  Phone (617) 736-2713/Lab x3366/Fax
  > x2741
  > > Brandeis University           website:
  > http://www.demo.cs.brandeis.edu
  > > Waltham, MA 02254             email: pollack@cs.brandeis.edu