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(fwd) Trip Report: Nader's conference on Microsoft
I got this through Phil Agre's Red Rock Eater News Service :
>[I've enclosed Cem Kaner's report on the "Appraising Microsoft" conference.
>I particularly recommend Cem's own paper (which is not focused specifically
>at Microsoft) on impending changes to the Uniform Commercial Code that are
>strongly biased in favor of software vendors. Those who are studying the
>legal issues in the Microsoft Wars may also benefit from a new law review
>article by Bryce J. Jones II and James R. Turner, Can an operating system
>have a duty to aid its competitors?, Jurimetrics 37(4), 1997, pages 355-394.
>Several people have sent me URLs for useful online news articles about the
>Microsoft Wars, but I have managed to lose them all. If you resend them by
>early next week, I'll package them for the list. And anyone else with URLs
>for high-quality reports on the subject are invited to send them along.]
>
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>Date: Mon, 01 Dec 1997 05:05:27 -0800
>From: Cem Kaner <kaner@kaner.com>
>Subject: Trip Report: Nader's conference on Microsoft
>
>Two weeks ago, I was a speaker at Ralph Nader's "Appraising Microsoft"
>conference in Washington. This is my trip report. This memo is a set of
>conference notes, not a scholarly or research paper. The conference itself
>is now at http://www.appraising-microsoft.org. (You can download the
>conference on real audio. There are a few bugs in the recordings, so maybe
>you'll wait for a few days after I send this memo.)
>
>My own paper was on competition within the software industry in general,
>focusing on how the Uniform Commercial Code revisions will reduce
>competition. My belief is that this statute, if enacted, will have a greater
>long term anticompetitive effect than anything done by Microsoft. You can
>find my paper at http://www.badsoftware.com/nader.htm.
>
>I don't have an axe to grind for or against Microsoft. I do business with
>them, with their competitors, and with some of their (some satisfied, some
>dissatisfied) customers. Overall, I've been impressed with the company and
>with their products. On the other hand, Ralph Nader is a hero of mine. I
>work regularly with Todd Paglia, the lawyer that Nader has assigned to
>monitor the Uniform Commercial Code software law proposal. I consider him a
>friend, and trust him. Paglia's boss, Jamie Love, was the primary organizer
>of the conference and has turned into a harsh critic of Microsoft. I've seen
>Love's work on some other issues and consider it excellent. He has high
>credibility with me.
>
>Personal computing put tremendous power into the hands of individuals.
>Microsoft is one of several companies that helped create this information
>processing revolution, bringing the power of computers to "the rest of us."
>Microsoft certainly profited from this, it was definitely part of the
>movement to empower individuals with computers. Watch IBM/Lotus's "Work the
>Web" commercials and you'll see the contrast that I have in mind between
>companies like Microsoft and Apple and companies that saw small computers as
>an extension of the centralized computing mandarinates that served the huge
>organizations that could afford them.
>
>At many levels, I look at the dispute between Nader and Microsoft as an
>unfortunate quarrel between organizations that should be friends.
>
>These notes reflect my biases, but they don't try to spin the conference
>favorably toward Microsoft or Nader. Nor am I going to try to tell you who
>is right or wrong in this dispute. I don't know. My goal instead is to look
>for a rational basis underlying the heat and spin we've been seeing.
>
>=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D Economics =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
>
>I'm not an economist. Maybe you've heard of network effects and tipping and
>the phenomenon of increasing returns, but these expressions were new to me.
>I've seen the effects, but not the scholarly discussions. Nader's conference
>included a couple of economists (you can see the list of speakers at
>http://www.appraising-microsoft.org) who walked us through this.
>
>I've talked with several folks about this conference over the past two
>weeks, including several who are very sympathetic with Microsoft's position.
>One comment that I've heard a few times is, "So what? What's wrong with a
>monopoly?" My answer is that the US economic and business regulatory
>structure is based on a fundamental assumption of competition in the
>marketplace. Competition drives prices, quality, and ongoing efforts to
>satisfy customers. It is a fundamental spur to innovation. I'm not going to
>walk through the evils of monopolies--read a university textbook on
>economics, like Samuelson, and you'll get the picture. I've been told that
>Microsoft would never commit the worst abuses of monopoly power and I'm far
>from being convinced that the current Microsoft management would commit
>those abuses. But monopoly power lasts a long time. Companies change over
>time. WordStar changed after it imported management from Sperry to take it
>public. Apple changed after it imported a president from Pepsi. Corporate
>cultures change.
>
>It also bears mention that Microsoft is far from being the only business
>that the Department of Justice has made antitrust cases against. For a list
>of current cases (with descriptions and official documents), see
>http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases3/.
>
>----------------
>
>The main antitrust laws in the US were written near the turn of the century.
>William Howard Taft and Teddy Roosevelt, for example, were famous
>TrustBusters. These laws were based on assumptions about how monopolies were
>created and sustained that aren't always correct. In particular:
>
> (a) there's a bias that competition within a market
> is a good thing--it's better to have three companies at
> 30% market share than one supremely dominant company
> (say, 70-90% market share) with one or a few powerless
> competitors.
>
> (b) Another example is the (economic) law of diminishing
> returns. When a company supplies a product, its per
> unit costs might initially decline (economies of scale),
> but eventually they rise as you exhaust the local pool
> of labor and other resources.
>
>These assumptions don't always fit an information economy. Laws based on
>these assumptions have to be carefully applied or we will have bad results.
>
>
>(1) Network Effects
>
>If you're the only person in the world with a telephone then it's not very
>useful. You can't call anyone. As more people get phones, the value of each
>phone increases. This is the "network effect."
>
>The network effect creates a powerful push toward a standard. Think of the
>VHS versus Beta competition. Some movies came in beta, some in VHS, some in
>both. The total selection of movies in stores was depressed by the fact that
>stores had to keep double inventory (beta and VHS). When consumers figured
>out (however they figured it out) that VHS was going to be the winning
>format, they flocked to VHS and abandoned beta. This phenomenon is called
>"tipping" (like, tipping the scales). The result was that lots more movies
>were available on VCR and so even fewer people bought beta. Result: beta is
>history.
>
>There are two types of competition--competition IN the market and
>competition FOR the market. Competition IN the market is like Ford vs. GM.
>They both make cars. The popularity of Fords doesn't disproportionately
>reduce the value of GM cars. Both might be able to sustain a 30% market
>share for a long time.
>
>Competition FOR the market is like VHS vs. Beta. There's a network effect.
>The more people who adopt one format, the more movies there will be for that
>format, the more VCR players, etc. The weaker standard dies.
>
>I am often told that beta was the technically better standard. Let's suppose
>this is true. The defeat of beta by VHS illustrates another aspect of
>network effects--competition doesn't necessarily pick the best product or
>standard. Dominance goes to the one that is marginally or apparently more
>popular, whether it is better or not. (No buyer wants a technically superior
>VCR that can't play any of the new movies.) There is nothing sinister about
>this. Eventually, the market collectively makes a decision. Adopting a
>lesser standard can be much more efficient than continuing to fight over
>which not-yet-a-standard is best.
>
>Several things that we (mass-market software publishing staff) know about
>marketing fit into this model. If the goal is to capture the entire market
>by virtue of creating a public perception of dominance in the marketplace,
>then tactics like these are important:
>
> (a) being first to market
>
> (b) cutting a competitor's first-to-market advantage by
> announcing really cool vaporware
>
> (c) other strategic advertising that undercuts competing
> products at critical times
>
>The market for operating systems is a network-type market. If an operating
>system is perceived as relatively unpopular, fewer people will write
>applications for it, fewer people will make or sell computers to run it,
>fewer third party support organizations will form to support it, fewer
>schools will teach it, fewer employers will expect experience with it, etc.
>
>In a network-type market, it is no surprise to see one company with a 90%
>market share. If three companies (who make incompatible products that follow
>incompatible standards) had 30% market shares, we would probably look at the
>situation as unstable, rather than as desirable. If people ever come to
>perceive one of the competitors as more popular than the others, it will
>skyrocket in popularity, and the popularity of the others will decline.
>
>There are several estimates of Microsoft's share of the operating system
>market. My understanding is that 90% of the world's computers run Microsoft
>Windows. That's well beyond the 70% threshold often used to class a company
>as a monopoly. But we should expect this as a normal consequence of the
>operating system market. SOMEBODY has to own the OS market. It just happens
>that this week, the owner is Microsoft.
>
>Competition in the OS world is competition by paradigm shift. We should
>expect the successful competitor to Windows to displace it, not to
>peacefully co-exist with it.
>
>Of course, many operating systems could compete with each other if we
>changed the nature of OS's or applications to make them more compatible. To
>illustrate the point, there was a time when document transfer between MS
>Word and WordPerfect didn't work. That incompatibility created a need to
>standardize on one product or the other. Today, you can have WordPerfect, I
>can have Word, and we can co-author a book. The difference in file formats
>is a nuisance, but it's not a huge deal.
>
>So another way that MS could lose its monopoly on the OS market would be a
>magic wand that lets applications run on any operating system. At this
>point, different people could run different operating systems without much
>loss of benefit. (Some people think this magic wand's name is JAVA.)
>
>(2) Increasing returns
>
>The argument was made at Nader's conference that in the software world, the
>marginal cost for new copies of the software is relatively small. The main
>cost was the R&D cost in birthing the puppy. The per-customer cost of
>support declines as more people call in (the ansswer books are cheaper to
>research and write, plus the network effects. The company that is
>established in a field has a cost advantage over a smaller or newer player.
>
>Therefore, a company that is selling many copies of its products will have a
>cost advantage over a smaller competitor.
>
>I'm not sure that I buy this. In many companies (Microsoft seems to be a
>remarkable exception), the collective corporate IQ seems to be inversely
>related to the company's size.
>
>
>
>=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D The Threat =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
>
>I'm not an antitrust lawyer; some of my comments on antitrust law could be
>naive or downright mistaken. Similarly, I am not intimately familiar with
>the fights between Microsoft, Sun, Sybase, etc.
>
>We start from the fact that Microsoft has a monopoly on operating systems of
>currently sold machines. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with this,
>but it gives cause for concern if Microsoft abuses the power that it gains
>out of the monopoly.
>
>The notion of "Monopoly Leveraging" runs as follows:
>
> A traditional claim for monopolization occurs
> when a firm uses its monopoly in one market to
> actually monopolize another market, or to grab
> most of that market.
>
> Monopoly leveraging doesn't require full monopolization
> yet. Instead, this occurs when a monopolist in one
> market uses that monopoly to gain a competitive advantage
> in another market. It's probably the case that current
> courts will require evidence that the monopolist is
> attempting to use leveraging to gain an advantage
> that will turn into a monopoly.
>
>It was repeatedly stressed at the conference that it is important for
>Microsoft to expand into new markets because (it was said) their business
>model depends heavily on rapidly expanding revenues and a rising share
>price. Microsoft's market valuation is huge. To keep the stock price rising
>will be be very challenging. The analogy that was repeatedly drawn is that
>Microsoft is like a great white shark. It has to keep moving and it has to
>keep feeding.
>
>You don't have to agree with this assessment of Microsoft's situation to
>understand that there are a lot of businesses out there who feel like
>endangered smaller fish. The shark analogy expresses a genuine fear.
>
>Microsoft has been expanding in three areas that have caused concern:
>
> (a) Applications
>
> Microsoft now dominates the market in word processing,
> spreadsheets, and several other applications. It
> is not unlawful for MS to dominate the Office
> market if it got there simply by making better products
> and marketing them better.
>
> Arguments have been made that MS gives its internal
> applications groups more information about the operating
> system than it gives to competitors, making it faster,
> easier and cheaper to produce application software at
> MS than it would be to produce equivalent software at
> a competitive company.
>
> It's important to recognize something here. Whether
> or not MS withheld information unfairly, or used
> private information unfairly, there are many people
> who firmly believe this is true, and they have a rational
> basis for that belief. Just as the shark analogy is a
> noteworthy expression of genuine fear, the undocumented
> DOS (etc.) discussions reflect genuine anger.
>
> I didn't hear a serious claims that there is enough
> evidence to support a lawsuit for monopolization in
> the application market. But a red flag goes up, and
> should go up, when a monopolist gains dominance in
> second, third, and umpteenth markets.
>
> (b) On-line Industries
>
> Microsoft is expanding into several on-line sales
> situations, such as Expedia and sidewalk.com. The
> concern is that these services will become the
> dominant services within their categories.
>
> It certainly is not, and should not be, unlawful for MS
> to expand into on-line markets. The concern is that
> Microsoft is using its dominance in the operating
> system market to give itself a leg up on this.
>
> The problem is the use of the channel bar in IE 4. When
> you install IE 4, this appears on your desktop. You can
> click one to arrange travel, for example. You have a
> choice of on-line travel agencies, but the first choice
> presented is Expedia. Travel agencies have a lot of
> experience with on-line travel reservation systems. In
> fact, these have been the subject of antitrust action
> themselves. On the old systems, you'd see all the
> United Airlines flights first, or all the American
> flights first (or whatever--depends on whose system you
> were using). Even though a better priced flight or a
> better timed flight might appear later in the list,
> over 50% of the flights sold were the first ones listed
> on the screen and over 90% appeared on the first screen.
> Whoever presented their information first got the sale.
>
> By controlling the desktop, Microsoft can arrange so that
> its information conmes first in any competitive listing
> of online services.
>
> As another note, Nathan Myrhvold, Microsoft's Chief
> Technology Officer, said that Microsoft wants to collect
> vigorish on every transaction over the internet that
> uses Microsoft technology. (See Wall Street Journal,
> June 5, 1997, "Microsoft Moves to Rule On-Line Sales.")
> "Vigorish" refers to a fee for bringing the two parties
> to the transaction together. ("Vigorish" is an interesting
> word to use. I've always and only heard it used in
> connection with gambling or with organized crime. It's
> not the best word to use if you want to win the hearts
> and minds of a bunch of prosecutors.)
>
> (c) Content
>
> Microsoft is moving into online and broadcast content
> into ways that some people find disturbing. One concern
> is whether MS is likely to abuse its entry into content.
>
> Microsoft's Encarta is now the world's best selling
> encyclopedia, derived from (blech, ptui) Funk & Wagnalls.
> Encarta is certainly much improved over the original,
> but it is a testimonial to Microsoft that it can turn
> Funk & Wagnalls into the bestseller.
>
> One of the more amusing tidbits at the conference
> involved comparing an old Funk & Wagnalls entry for
> Bill Gates with Encarta. According to one of the
> speakers, both entries were quite similar, except
> for a final sentence. In F&W, Gates is characterized
> as a determined competitor. In Encarta, that goes
> away and he said to be best known for being a
> philanthropist, making big donations to charitable
> causes.
>
> Whatever the full story is behind the Encarta entry,
> we all know that companies often say nice things
> about themselves and their executives. Big deal.
>
> Microsoft responded in surprising detail on this
> point. This is one of (only) 7 "myths" that
> Microsoft claims to have "debunked" at
> http://www.microsoft.com/corpinfo/myths.htm. According
> to this press piece, Microsoft wrote both entries.
> The identification of Gates' charitable work was
> merely an update. (Confusing everything, MS quoted
> from Encarta 98 to illustrate its point, but I think
> the speaker used Encarta 97.)
>
> This illustrates a problem in interpreting so much of
> this material. When I read the MS response to the
> Department of Justice papers, at
> http://www.microsoft.com/corpinfo/11-10Filing.html,
> some of it seems like real baloney. On the other
> hand, some of the statements made by MS critics
> are plenty questionable too.
>
> A frequently repeated claim during the conference was
> that MS abuses its power by threatening publications
> that it will pull advertising if they publish
> certain pieces. Some of these claims were nonspecific
> and I finally rose to challenge speakers to either
> be specific on this charge or to stop making it.
> (The audio for some of this is at
> http://www.appraising-microsoft.org/day2rm.html.
> I spoke in the Questions section of the Government
> Antitrust Enforcement Activities, at minute 9:53
> of the RealAudio clip). Graham Lea responded that
> he had personally been a victim of this and that
> Bill Zachmann (spelling?), formerly of PC Week had
> also been a victim of this and that Microsoft had
> publicly admitted it. Two additional speakers, John
> Perry Barlow and Wendy Goldman Rohm, were quite
> specific in these types of claims. You can hear
> more details in the recordings of their talks, at
> http://www.appraising-microsoft.org/day2rm.html,
> in the Microsoft and the Media section.
>
> If these claims of pressure on the media are true,
> then I think that concerns about the fairness of
> news coverage by companies owned by Microsoft
> are well justified. I'd be more interested in a
> detailed MS response to this one than to the
> attention they paid to that silly example from
> Encarta.
>
>=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D The Lawsuits =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
>
>Microsoft has a lock on the operating system market until and unless someone
>else takes it away from them.
>
>Three different actions were discussed in detail at Nader's conference:
>
>
> (a) Caldera's lawsuit alleging monopolization in the DOS market.
> http://www.caldera.com/news/npr/complaint.html
> (I haven't found an online source for the response from
> Microsoft.)
>
> (b) The Department of Justice action over the bundling of (or
> integration of) Internet Explorer 4.0 with Windows 95.
> http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases3/micros2/1236.htm
> http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases3/micros2/1237.htm
> http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases3/micros2/1277.htm
> http://www.microsoft.com/corpinfo/doj/doj.htm
> http://www.essential.org/antitrust/microsoft/microsoft.html
>
> (c) Sun's lawsuit alleging breach of contract involving JAVA.
> http://www.sun.com/announcement/counterclaimdoc2/
> http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/9711/sunflash.971118.1.html
> http://www.microsoft.com/corpinfo/java.htm
>
>I'm going to start with the Caldera suit.
>
>(a) The Caldera / Digital Research Lawsuit.
>
>Digital Research invented CP/M, which was one of the operating systems in
>common use before IBM PC's came onto the market. IBM chose Microsoft, not
>Digital Research, to create an operating system for the PC. MS supplied
>MS-DOS and PC-DOS for Intel-based machines. DR published CP/M-86, Concurrent
>CP/M-86 and Concurrent DOS for this market. Later, it published DR DOS, at a
>time when MS appeared to have a lock on the PC OS market. Its sales,
>especially of DR DOS 5.0, were significant but they eventually diminished.
>In this period, Digital Research sold itself to Novell, which eventually
>sold the DOS operating system and related assets to Caldera. Caldera sued MS
>for antitrust violations related to the competition between MS-DOS and
>DR-DOS.
>
>Caldera did a remarkably good job of presenting its case at the conference
>and in its complaint, bolstered with information from Andrew Shulman
>(Undocumented DOS, etc.).
>
>I was surprised by the strength of the presentation because I'm a skeptic
>about this suit. I started doing testing in the DOS applications market in
>1983 and had experience with some of the early 8086 offerings for PC's, plus
>later experience with DR DOS 5. I didn't develop a lot of respect for these
>offerings. As to Novell, the other acquisition that I think of when I think
>of Novell is WordPerfect (which I used in preference to Word until I gave up
>on getting a reliable Windows version.) You'll recall that Novell bought
>WordPerfect for about $1.1 billion and sold it for about $100 million a year
>later. Maybe Novell had a bit to do with the failure of DR-DOS too.
>
>Despite my opening bias, I think that Caldera makes a few points that are
>worth considering.
>
>First, MS set up a per-processor license agreement with OEMs. If you made
>such an agreement with MS, then you paid for a DOS license for each computer
>you sold, whether you bundled DOS with that particular machine or not. I
>remember discussion of this at the time that MS was selling these licenses.
>The problem that I remember was that several companies were selling compuers
>with pirated copies of MS-DOS. This agreement was a simple method for
>resolve some serious disputes. I have no idea whether MS even thought about
>or cared about Caldera (then DR) in creating this licensing arrangement. I
>wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that MS worked out the arrangement
>without any consideration of DR, one way or another. However, the result was
>apparently to the detriment of DR's sales.
>
>Second, MS put code into at least one beta version of MS Windows that gave
>an error message on detecting DR DOS (or on not detecting MS DOS) as the
>operating system. According to Caldera's complaint, MS made it clear that
>Windows 3.1 would not be compatible with DR DOS. If this is true, then I
>would expect OEMs to avoid DR DOS. Again, I think that there's an
>interesting question of intent here. A smaller company building a beta test
>version that would widely circulate might well build environmental checks
>into the product that are more restrictive than the final product, and it
>might well do that without documenting this to the beta testers. The fact is
>that in beta testing, like all other testing, there are only so many
>variables that you want to be manipulating at once. Forcing some temporary
>simplifications on the world is not unreasonable.
>
>It's entirely plausible to me that MS acted relatively innocently with
>respect to DR DOS, perhaps refusing to make allowances for DR DOS, but not
>actively seeking to harm DR.
>
>The problem is that it doesn't matter to a cockroach whether you're actively
>seeking to harm it or not. If you step on it, you squish it. If you have
>monopoly-sized shoes, you're required to look where you're going.
>
>Caldera makes other points, more sympathetically to its case.
>
>
>(b) Bundling of Internet Explorer 3.0 / 4.0
>
>Government action is partially a response to law and partially to public
>opinion. To the extent that the DOJ -- or any other antitrust agency --
>perceives significant and rational public fear and anger over a problem,
>that agency will seriously consider getting more active in a dispute that is
>clearly within its domain.
>
>Here's the language of the consent decree that Microsoft agreed to, and
>which was entered by a federal court as a Final Judgment on August 21, 1995.
>This settled the last dispute between MS and DOJ (the Justice Dept).
>
> E. Microsoft shall not enter into any License Agreement
> [with an OEM] in which the terms of that agreement are
> expressly or impliedly conditioned upon:
>
> (i) the licensing of any other Covered Product,
> Operating System Software product or other product
> (provided, however, that this provision in and of itself
> shall not be construed to prohibit Microsoft from
> developing integrated products).
>
>Unfortunately, the decree doesn't define "integrated products."
>
>Is IE an integrated part of the operating system, in which case it is
>appropriately bundled with Windows 95, or is it a standalone application, in
>which case compulsory bundling with IE is probably unlawful under the
>agreement/consent decree? (Unlawful, because MS requires OEMs to include IE
>with Win 95).
>
>You have to decide the anwser to that question.
>
>What's not in dispute is that MS thinks that browser war is critical to MS
>because a high-functionality browser can replace much of the functionality
>found in a high-functionality operating system. For example, here is this,
>from MS's response to the Justice Department's (DOS's) petition:
>
> As the DOJ notes (see, e.g., DOJ Mem. at 32), strong and
> well-financed competitors of Microsoft such as Sun
> Microsystems and Netscape are seeking to render Windows
> 95 and other Microsoft operating systems obsolete by
> creating so-called "middleware" layers that obscure the
> underlying operating system. Apparently in the DOJ=92s view,
> Microsoft should be forced to sit on its hands while
> competitors attempt to take away one of the most important
> aspects of Microsoft=92s business.
>
>We used to have a model of operating systems that including a relatively
>thin operating system layer, then a user interface layer (such as windows),
>then an application layer. Win 95 erases the separation between the system
>layer and the UI layer. Win 98 will erase a separation between the system
>and an application, the browser.
>
>How far does this go?
>
>As far as I can tell, MS' position is that it goes as far as MS wants it to
>go. If MS wants to integrate the word processor, spreadsheet, desktop
>publisher, and lots of computer games into the oerating system, that's none
>of the Department of Justice's business.
>
>I don't think that it makes technical sense to stretch the definition of
>"integrated" this far. But as to what's allowed under the consent decree,
>enjoy your reading.
>
>
>(c) Sun v. Microsoft
>
>The story goes that Java is a perfectly cross-platform language. Write a
>Java program once and you can run it on a bunch of different machines,
>without modification. I don't program in Java and I have no independent
>knowledge of the truth or falsity of this claim. Some colleagues tell me
>that it's reasonably close to true, others tell me that there are some
>significant problems.
>
>Let's suppose that Java really is platform independent.
>
>Sun claims that IE 4.0 and Microsoft's SDK for Java are not compatible with
>Java. In the language of the complaint:
>
>
> The "SignatureTest" results show that the set of public
> APIs for the "java" class libraries implemented in
> Microsoft's IE 4.0 have been modified by Microsoft to
> delete various classes to the "java." class hierarchy,
> and to add and delete various methods and fields in the
> "java" class declarations. Schroer Decl. =B615. These
> non-conforming modifications were not previously disclosed
> to Sun by Microsoft and result in the failure of IE 4.0 to
> pass the JCK 1.1a "SignatureTest." Id. =B6 17.
>
> In addition to IE 4.0's failure to pass "SignatureTest," it
> also fails to pass any of the 343 required tests for the RMI
> class library, and all 239 required tests for JNI.
>
>In terms of the significance of this dispute, Java could be the language
>that will allow competitors of MS to create an application layer that is
>largely independent of the underlying operating system. This is the same
>issue as the one I mentioned above, with the browser.
>
>If it doesn't matter what the underlying operating system is, then on an
>Intel platform it could as well be an updated version of DR DOS as Windows
>95.
>
>
>=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D Remedies =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
>
>So what are the people asking for?
>
>Well, Caldera wants lots of money. Maybe some other court orders too.
>
>A few extremists spoke of exterminating Microsoft, but I don't think that
>this is the goal of the antitrust actions.
>
>Most of what I heard involved some fairly simple demands:
>
> (a) Let OEMs sell MS Windows 95 without showing the IE
> icon. If they prefer to steer people to Netscape, or
> to require customers to download the browser of their
> choice, let them.
>
> (b) Let Sun define Java. Microsoft shouldn't screw around
> with this definition, because that creates a risk that
> Microsoft will be able to sabotage, rather than fairly
> compete with, its competition.
>
> (c) MS should be required to share OS information with
> competitors, to the extent that it uses this information
> in the development of its own products. (This one will
> be tough. Even if MS wants to do this, the paperwork
> load of assuring that it is always done is not going to
> be minor, and it may force MS to change its development
> practices in ways that interfere with its ability to
> do good work quickly.)
>
> (d) ***Something*** (I don't know what) should be done to
> make sure that the IE 4 channel bar doesn't give
> MS-based services an unfair advantage over the others.
>
>=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
>
>Well, that's the end of my report. I hope that you found it interesting
>and/or useful.
>
>-- Cem Kaner
>
>
>_______________________________________________________________________
>Cem Kaner, J.D., Ph.D. Attorney at Law
>P.O. Box 1200 Santa Clara, CA 95052 408-244-7000
>Author (with Falk & Nguyen) of TESTING COMPUTER SOFTWARE (2nd Ed, VNR)
>
>This e-mail communication should not be interpreted as legal advice
>or a legal opinion. The transmission of this e-mail communication
>does not create an attorney-client relationship between me and you.
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