Dan Kegel, a software engineer in Southern California who wrote a letter to the Justice Department in January, signed by more than 2,000 people, criticizing the proposed settlement.

I did a [computerized] text comparison of the new order with the earlier proposed settlement. I have a good idea of what appear to be the differences between the two -- they're up on my site.

I think it did address what I said in my letter a little bit. They can't threaten retaliation now. That might change the mood of things a little bit. The changes are fairly complex. There are a few nice touches, like Microsoft has to pay the plaintiff's expenses. It's nice that Microsoft had to lay out a little bit of cash. The biggest disappointment I have is that the disclosure requirements weren't changed very much -- so WINE and SAMBA will have to continue reverse engineering.

This closes the most obvious loopholes in the proposed settlement, but it's not going to slow them down.

Richard B. McKenzie, professor of economics at the University of California at Irvine and author of "Trust on Trial: How the Microsoft Case is Reframing the Rules of Competition"

Those of us who were on Microsoft's side seem to have lost some battles but won the war. The extreme remedies have been set aside, and the decision seems fairly reasonable to me. If there was a problem of Microsoft retaliating at computer makers, it looks at those things. It gives [computer makers] more freedom to put their icons on the screen.

The problems are complex, but you shouldn't expect that a firm that operates where there are network effects to be very aggressive in fighting off competitors. And it can actually be doing that to benefit consumers. If you have network effects, consumers benefit from having that network. When a threat occurs, like there was one from Netscape, you should expect the firm to do things like offer zero prices, especially when the marginal cost of reproduction is zero and the net effect can be that, to the effect that you hold the network together, you benefit consumers.

That's why I think it's understandable why two-thirds of consumers sided with Microsoft in this case.

Glenn Manishin, an attorney who represents ProComp, a group that gets some of its funding from competitors of Microsoft

This is eminently appealable. Whether the court will permit interested third parties to appeal, I don't know. It would be unseemly for the court not to allow the opponents of this decision to appeal it.

[Judge Kollar-Kotelly] has accepted every provision proposed by the Justice Department. She has rejected every change proposed by states who didn't settle. The folks that I represented made the simple argument that the case involved several forms of anticompetitive activity, like putting Explorer into Windows and polluting the Java language -- and she does nothing about that. She bends over backward to justify accepting the settlement. She says it's OK to [include the browser] because they're taking the icon off the desktop. But the case was never about icons. It wasn't about whose icon was on the desktop. She just glosses it over. It's really sad.

Judges are supposed to exercise independent analysis. It boggles my mind that a federal judge could spend six months analyzing a case of this complexity and write an opinion that doesn't even reflect a serious discussion of these issues. We said it would be unconstitutional to defer to the Department of Justice in the case of the non-settling states -- and she doesn't even address that issue. You can say that my views have been affected by that fact that I've analyzed it on behalf of my clients. But if you read that 100 pages you'll see it's like ships passing in the night. It's not only an issue of her not getting it, it's an issue of her not even realizing she hasn't addressed it.

Jonathan Zuck, president of the Association of Competitive Technology, a group that has sided with Microsoft in the case

I think that what the states were most concerned about were some of the loopholes that limited the flexibility of [computer makers], and I think [Kollar-Kotelly] placed a lot of focus on closing those loopholes.

In large measure it resembles what was proposed by the Department of Justice -- none of that was a win for Microsoft. They've already had their loss and they're already going to be one of the most highly regulated companies in the industry. It's going to result in and has resulted in fundamental changes to how Microsoft does business. With the ruling that it's a monopoly, it means they can't compete as aggressively as their competitors do. The same stuff that goes on in the industry is no longer available to them. It's a fundamental culture shift. Anybody who says that [these aren't strong penalties on Microsoft] is smoking glue. The reality is that Micrsosoft will be a regulated company in an industry that isn't regulated. There's nothing that Microsoft did that its competitors don't do today. The only difference is that Microsoft passed some line that said it was a monopoly. They're being held back to let their competitors get a leg up.

I can see how it can be good, but I also coming out of this industry and know how quickly things change. And I hope this doesn't result in shackling the innovation we've come to expect from them.

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