Re: on web standards: sent to Markoff

[attila <attila@primenet.com>]

   Markoff is not the best on criticism. write the editor direct.
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   Microsoft particularly does seem to place a death grip on things, but
more industry consortiums are forming and Billy has been required to accept
the heat; Java is one, except Billy always finds a way to subvert the
process. Billy is like Karl Marx' premise: "sign all treaties; break them 
when it is convenient."

   The conundrum is trying to decide "when" a particular company is a 
monopoly by either the classic definition of the Sherman and Clayton Acts 
or an effective monopoly, or "bad" player as defined in the 
Robinson-Patman act. 

    Bill Gates more than satisfies the requirements of defining a monopoly
in Sherman and Clayton with 85% of the desktop locked in and an assualt
with "almost" standards on the open-system server market. NT is already
garnering more than 25% of server installations in business --big
business, since it will be "guaranteed" compatible with their desktop 95s. 
The rest of us, stay with the real thing.

    Add to MS' virtually absolute domination of the desktop and its 
impending domination of the commercial servers the fact that MS has 95% 
of the front line office products --WP, Spreadsheet, Database, and mail 
with the last be non-standard to long established rules and you do have a 
problem to be considered. 

    Will the market correct itself?  Very questionable since MS rode to 
its position on IBM's back and capitalized on IBM's failure to recognize 
what they had stumbled into. IBM did not fall by the market rejecting IBM 
--the market exploded with the PC for price and diversity reasons: you 
can not compare direct entry, full screen aplications and 
transportability of a PC against a looped, expensive main-frame 
connection, if the boss even approves the cost.

    However, Bill Gates' more serious offense involves the fair trade
provisions of the Robinson-Patman act and the subsequent fine-tuning of
the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) which has its own courts. Bill Gates
has used his operating system dominance to force hardware vendors to ship
MS products on _every_ machine, or pay substantial penalties in rates 2
and 3 times larger for all MS products --cheap only if it is universal. 
Under these conditions, why would they ship OS/2 or UNIX? Add a few more
of his contractural items and Anne Bingaman was correct in charging Bill
with restraint of trade. 

   The real issue in DOJ v. MS was that although Bill complied with a 
consent decree, he _immediatley_ found other ways to apply the screw, and 
many of these newer terms are even worse, but more subtle. And, there is 
no question the verbal threats have been significantly worse. To software 
vendors it is the threat of denial of technical information on GUIs and 
APIs, to hardware manufacturers it is threats of ecomnomic sanctions, 
including publishing decertification of the platform for various WIN95 
and NT compliant stickers, etc.

    Bill Gates is NOT an ethical businessman. If the fact was that Bill
was able to garner his position from hard work, a better product, and a
well-greased advertising and marketing organization would not justify the
application of the classic Sherman and Clayton anti-trust rules; the
market will either continue to accept them or not. 

    However, Bill has used his position of 85% in OSs not only to dictate 
OS considerations, as bad as they are with DOS nothing more than a boot 
sector virus and Windows a pretty program loader, but he has used this 
position to dominate the applications market by bundling and forcing 
machine integrators to include the MicroSoft applications in return for 
the OEM discount on the operating systems.  

    Preloading the market by those means is _not_ ethical or good
business. Bill Gates _clearly_ violates the FTC provisons on ethical
conduct and restraint of trade by a monopoly or quasi-monopoly position. 
Why were nearly 30 OEMs represented anonymously in "friend of the court"
briefs? --and the first thing Billy's (hired virtually every high end firm
in SF) attorneys' did was subpoena the _names_ of the consortium under the
rules of evidence --welcome to the "Kiss of Death." 

    Personally, I think it is time to dismember Bill Gates --give him a
choice of his OS group or his applications group and literally force him
to sell all direct or indirect interest in the one he does not choose,
plus forego any involvement. 

   An example of the "ill" is Gate's clear announcement that _all_ MS
programs would now be geared to direct interface to the internet --again
initially only the Microsft Network with proprietary standards.  This may
be commendable on the intended results of better integration to the world,
but not in terms of free trade as _everything_ MS does is proprietary, or
they do not release _correct_ API information until they have taken a
commanding lead in the market (witness Compu$erve and the rest on no
access to Win95 --IBM put their network and a button for other networks,
with a working PPP interfacein the same folder). 

    Anyone who thinks Bill Gates or Microsoft is a benevolent 800 pound 
gorilla has not paid attention in history classes:

	power corrupts
	    absolute power corrupts absolutely.

	he who fails to heed history,
	    is doomed to repeat it.  (which is mankind's normal path)

    ATTILA