Monopoly issues

[Roberto Di Cosmo <Roberto.Di.Cosmo@ens.fr>]

  Dear Sir,
  	I have great difficulty in understanding your post.
  Monopoly is about controlling a specific market, not controlling
  *all* markets, and your 4% Microsoft share of *all* markets is
  irrelevant to this list, only the 80/90% market share in IT is.
  
  But if you really are interested on more global issues like
  this "MS controls the world" ``paranoia'' as you call it, I would
  like to attract your attention on the fact that information technology
  is pretty different from traditional goods like tomatoes, cheese
  etc. 
  
  Please look at what happens whenever a revolution starts (a political one,
  like in Congo in this very moment): the rush is to control the relevant
  0.001% territory where TV/radio and military forces are installed, not
  the 99% of tomato fields, jungle and the like. If you only look at the
  numerical figures, you loose the key point.
  
  Similarly, controlling television/press/computer networks is *very* different
  from controlling coal mines for so many reasons. This is why, for example,
  it is *illegal* for any single person to control more than 25% of any
  broadcasting company in France.
  
  The issue is so crucial that you cannot *trust* anybody with controlling
  the flow of information (the "politically correct" naive stand that
  ``unless you have proof that X or Y will use its control of information 
  flow illegally, you should not speak'' is just that, naive :-)).
  
  Anyway, we are not discussing this particular subject yet in this moment,
  only the *factual* monopoly MS has now. Here, in the same line of thought, though,
  you should see why you cannot *trust* anybody with controlling at the same
  time the ``standard'' operating system *and* the mainstream applications
  running on that system. The incestuous temptation is just too appealing
  to be dismissed as an improbable fact.
  
  The reason why I address this mail to the list is that this last point seems
  relevant to me: why the same arguments used to force AT&T into opening
  up to concurrent telephone companies cannot be used in the MS case?
  Separating the "wires" (MS os) from the "long distance carriers" (applications)
  would be for me a reasonable starting point.
  
  
  --Roberto Di Cosmo
  
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