Re: IT and UNIX

[Jordan Pollack <pollack@cs.brandeis.edu>]

  jeff ollie wrote:
  
  >If you are successful and start to make inroads into Microsoft's
  >market share how long would it take Microsoft before they did something
  >that would make all of your work obsolete?
  []
  >As long as Microsoft controls both the Windows API
  >and the most popular applications there is very little point to creating
  >a Windows emulator.
  
  []
  >The promise of the Internet is: if your system complies with these
  >standards it doesn't matter what CPU or operating system you use. 
  
  So we agree on the problem. But you say we can dream the
  "World Wide Web" dream of a new age of open interface standards: 
  I say baloney! Thats the promise of fortran over assembly language.
  
  The same fundamental "game" is afoot: In the current game one can
  reap infinite riches by privately tweaking public interface standards
  and forcing the purchase of new copyright appliances or utilities.
  
  As soon as NCSA's Mosaic was rendered worthless by banners saying
  "best if viewed with Netscape 1.1S", the arms race to create a new
  monopoly was begun.  Then followed a dizzying rush of releases to
  define the "browser" through adding new standards to HTML ahead of any
  orderly process, ignoring the W3C.  "platform openness" was killed by
  creating private standards like the "plug-in." 
  
  the battle between Netscape and MS and Sun is not a battle for market
  share of free software. It is a battle for a corporate "right" to
  tweak public interface standards for profit.
  
  I say remove the right: As soon as you have created a public interface
  standard, your reward should be a legal stasis field to allow other
  competitors in.
  
  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