Letters to the Editor

What's to become of Microsoft? Plus: Putting McKinney's life in Judy Shepard's hands; who unearthed the L.A. Times controversy?

Letters to the Editor

Nov 12, 1999 | "It reads like a novel"
BY JANELLE BROWN
(11/06/99)

and

Do the paranoid survive?
BY MARK GIMEIN
(11/06/99)

and

Is Linux the real remedy?
BY ANDREW LEONARD
(11/06/99)

Mark Gimein's article appears to miss the point of the monopoly charges -- that Microsoft's charges are about business practices and not the prevalence of any operating system. At the time Microsoft released its browser, Netscape was the world leader among Web browsers, with only the poorly featured Mosaic and Lynx to challenge it. What Microsoft feared was not a Netscape operating system, but the cross platform nature of the Web browser itself -- which meant a UNIX, Macintosh or BeOS user could browse the Web just as well as a Windows user. All Microsoft had to do to stop Netscape was cause slight incompatibilities with the underlying operating system, forcing users to choose a substandard browser over an incompatible one. By doing this, Microsoft caused Netscape such financial trouble that they got bought by America Online and could never again properly compete.

Also, Linux rightly shouldn't have been much of a consideration in the proceedings. Linux companies don't sell operating systems, but technical support, training, hardware certification, consulting, commercial applications and CDs primarily containing free software. Linux companies are in a different business than Microsoft is, so Judge Jackson was right to discount Linux in his judgment, despite its overwhelming presence in the server market and increasing success on the desktop.

-- Colin Lee

The situation is similar to the film business. In times past, a single company could own a studio and a chain of theaters. Eventually the government realized the unfair advantage such an arrangement poses. The theater chain can freeze out movies made by anybody else, studio or independent. Outside software companies, while free to develop new software to run on Windows, have access neither to the inner details of the current version, nor the design plans for future versions. Having both, Microsoft applications developers have a pronounced advantage over outsiders. This is the crux of the problem.

If anything is to be done about Microsoft's monopoly, it is to break the company into two -- one that sells operating systems and one that sells applications. It's perfectly all right if the world decides on one OS standard; and it's perfectly all right if the world decides that Word is the world's greatest word processor. The playing field would be leveled, however, and the company having the right combination of innovation and marketing would be the most successful in each market segment. Should it turn out to be Microsoft -- or whatever its successors might be called in the future -- so be it. Other companies would have only themselves to blame.

-- Arthur Fuller

I think the judge needs to step back and take another look. No one has made an operating system that works as well as Windows. The competition loses because the product isn't up to standards, or just plain doesn't work. Microsoft has "squeezed" out no one.

Breaking up AT&T was not good. The phone services have turned to total crap, and the prices for them are outrageous. The local phone company I have is the pits. And the cell phone service is absolutely lousy and way too expensive.

Breaking up Microsoft will create the same problems: bad products, and bad service. One mess has been made in communications, and now the government is working on making another mess. This is a free enterprise country: Come up with a better product, or make a career change.

-- Renee E. Jones

Eric Raymond's critique of the Microsoft antitrust suit ignores legal history. Several huge monopolies have been smashed by government lawyers -- oil, railroads, banking, tobacco and telecommunications -- to the benefit of all. To think that market forces do this service automatically is wishful thinking and reflects an absolutist faith in capitalism, a mental relic of the Cold War. Anyone who has shopped Linux has done so for ideological reasons -- not purely motivated by consumerist behavior.

-- Brian Bagley

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