Linux
becoming mainstream removes the barriers for a sofar absent effect of
commoditization of the platform by java. Pure java applications running
on the expensive Windows platform can without modification run on the
cheap Linux OS. The same effect would help newly developed platforms,
such as BeOS today, to gain entry in the OS market. If a large suit of
applications were written in pure java, the primary barriers to
marketing a new OS would be removed and the market would be
commoditized.

On itself, Java removes technological barriers to
standardization. In combination with Linux, it provides a
cost-efficient alternative. There may not be a suitably fast JVM
available for Linux today, but Sun is now half-supporting the Linux
port of their JDK, Kaffe is gradually developing out of beta, the
TowerJ server side java compiler beats all JVM’s, and IBM - the creator
of the fastest JVM on the Windows platform - has already made its fast
jikes java compiler available for Linux.

Thus Microsoft has
good reason to use its hold over the largest development community -
that for Windows - to beat them into not writing pure java
applications. Their monopoly rents are at stake here, and they have
good reason to prevent standardization and the associated
commoditization in order to keep their markets free from competition
and their prices high.

The latest is that Microsoft is “opening” their java “interoperability technologies” by giving them for free to developers:

Microsoft
Corp. today announced the immediate, royalty-free availability of the
Developer Tools Interoperability Kit. This new kit provides development
tools vendors with specifications and test software to enable
Microsoft’s Java language interoperability technologies to be
incorporated into third-party compilers and virtual machines.

If
Microsoft were true to its embrace of openness and standards it would
have tried to cooperate with other companies and organizations to add
to the definition of the java standard in order to give customers the
benefits they perceived. As they did not bother with any such attempt,
it is clear that Microsoft does not underwrite the very process of
standardization.

As for wording, Microsoft’s “openness” has
nothing to do with the usual connotation of allowing third parties to
have a say in the direction and possibly implementation of the latest
developments, it merely means “royalty-free”. Their wording is
therefore misleading.

Microsoft Opens Java Integration Technologies
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1999/May99/JavaIntpr.htm

Therefore it is not
surprising that Gates felt he had some explaining to do about
Microsoft’s recent wave of investments in cable companies.

According
to Gates account, Microsoft’s sole purpose in investing is to help the
companies they invest in, to create the infrastructure that creates
demand for software later that Microsoft can then fulfill. Gates - in
one of his infamous memory lapses - forgot to tell that Microsoft made
it a condition of the investments that the telecommunications companies
now agree to buy Microsoft software later.

Gates Defends Telecom Investments
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/ap/technology/story.html?…

The Register
By Graham Lea

The
Microsoft PR machine claims that the CEO Summit hosted by Chairman
Gates would not serve as an occasion to hawk Microsoft products, but
this account of a Gates speech, with unfortunately no published text,
says otherwise. Besides the sales pitches, the speech aimed at sprucing
up Gates’ image as technological visionary along the lines of his
forgettable “Business @ the Speed of Thought” book published earlier
this year.

Microsoft treatment of
the Mindcraft forgery is a case in point. Mindcraft’s numbers were dead
wrong as a result of mis-tuning Linux. When PC Week and PC Magazine did
benchmarks that proved Mindcraft’s numbers wrong but their estimate
which platform came out of the test fastest, Microsoft proclaimed that
these results corroborated Mindcraft’s test. If you read the Mindcraft
test again, you’ll notice that Mindcraft claims that their numbers
apply to the operating systems generally, and not only to the specific
hardware configuration they tested. Another false claim. According to
ZDNN, Microsoft claims that the four-way server Mindcraft tested is the
kind “used to run a small business”. Weird claim, given that NT servers
are especially prolific on one-processor departmental servers.

Yes, expect Microsoft do go against Linux “every which way”.

Linux draws Microsoft interest
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2263211,00.html

Hit team’ drives MS plan to bludgeon Linux with benchmarks
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990521-000006.html

Earlier
situations in which Microsoft’s urge for secrecy turned out to be
unwarranted were the DoJ’s access to Windows and MSIE sales data (the
DoJ had to go to court three times to get them as Microsoft went so far
as to return - what judge Jackson called - “gibberish” the second
time), and the deposits that a court of appeals originally kept behind
closed doors at the request of Microsoft in spite of the letter of the
law.

Caldera 2, Microsoft 0
http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/19809.html

The PC’s growing popularity
isn’t surprising. Prices have fallen sharply while the power of the
hardware and software has kept increasing. Consumers and businesses
everywhere are rushing to get on the Web, and the PC makes that easy.
But what really sets the PC apart is the incredible empowerment and
flexibility it offers in a single, economical package.

For
most people at home and at work, the PC will remain the primary
computing tool; you’ll still want a big screen and a keyboard to
balance your investment portfolio, write a letter to Aunt Agnes, view
complex Web pages, and you’ll need plenty of local processing power for
graphics, games and so on. But the PC will also work in tandem with
other cool devices.

Gates latest book has been described as
“boring” by those who have taken the time to read it. I haven’t taken
the time to obtain a copy of the book, but reading Gates’ Newsweek
article I have an idea of how boring he can be.

Newsweek: Why the PC Will Not Die
by Bill Gates
http://www.newsweek.com/nw-srv/printed/us/st/sc0422_1.htm

1999 CEO Summit Keynote
Seattle, Washington
May 19, 1999
by Bill Gates
http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/05-19ceosummit.htm

The press release is more fun:

The
CEO Summit was established in response to business leaders growing
interest in IT issues. Many CEOs, while recognizing the business
benefits made possible through the deployment of complete IT solutions,
are also beginning to view technology as a strategic business tool. As
such, these leaders are looking to become more knowledgeable about IT
issues, so they can be empowered to take part in the technology
decisions that have the potential to shape the future of their
organizations. The CEO Summit provides these leaders with an
opportunity to expand their IT knowledge in the company of peers from
around the world. Gates, who recently authored “Business @ the Speed of
Thought,” a book about success in the digital age, and his company’s
shared mission has been to create technology that removes barriers
between information and people.

Bill Gates Envisions Strategy of “Knowledge Workers Without Limits” At Microsoft’s Third CEO Summit

press release:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1999/may99/CEOSummpr.htm

introduction:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/1999/05-19ceosummit.htm

When looking up the transcript of Gates’ speech, I noticed that the menu contained an entry “Philantropy”. When following the link I came at the home page of the “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations”.

The
marketing organization that created the site had a pretty clear idea of
its goals: while waiting for the pictures to arrive I read that the
main picture had a tag “images of children”. Always does it, doesn’t it?

The different images are to tell the story of the different foundations and there is only the following introductory text:

Bill
and Melinda Gates hope to make an enduring contribution toward
increasing access to innovations in education, technology, and world
health. More than six billion dollars in endowments have been set aside
for these causes.

As I doubt that Melinda has anything to
saw about Gates’ billions, I would attribute the whole setup to Bill
himself. On the whole, I would say that Gates campaign to make himself
loved isn’t executed subtly.

Highly recommended browsing!

http://www.gatesfoundations.org/

So now
they go in reverse gear and the present company line is to evangelize
the idea that the PC is here to stay. Nicely coinciding with Gates’
article in Newsweek, Microsoft published a Q&A session (haha) with
head of the Developer Group Paul Maritz.

Q: There has been a lot of speculation lately that the PC is dead. What’s your view?

Maritz: The
PC will still be at the center of computing for most people, but it
will work alongside numerous companion devices and appliances. There is
an incredible investment in the PC today. Most businesses have them and
about half of all homes have them. We believe the future of computing
will include many different devices and multiple PCs, all connected and
working together. The term “personal computer,” or “PC,” as well as the
concept behind it, is morphing. It’s not an “either/or” argument, it’s
“either/and.” Through our investments in Windows CE and WebTV, we are
helping to extend the PC into this new “PC-plus” world.

Uh
oh, this sounds as if Microsoft’s position in the PC market can be
transferred to emerging markets for intelligent peripherals. Not quite
the picture they painted while being in the courtroom.

One
effect of the trial delays is that Microsoft’s claim that AOL is
cooperating with the DoJ in holding back its support for Netscape’s
browser until they can unleash it after Microsoft is broken up gets
ever less likely. Another effect is that Microsoft spokespersons get
too much opportunity to contradict themselves and their company’s
witnesses in the press, thereby further reducing the credibility of the
company’s defense.

Q&A: Microsoft’s Paul Maritz Talks
About the Future of the Internet, the Evolution of Personal Computing,
and Microsoft’s Commitment to Software Developers
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/1999/05-24maritzqa.htm

Update:

Re-reading Maritz’ statements, I found another one that is of interest:

Developers
face many challenges, but their need for comprehensive, integrated and
interoperable solutions are at the top of the list. They also have
incredible opportunities, greater than we’ve seen in the two-decade
history of the PC industry. The ability to turn their ideas into
reality and reach millions of end users has never been more real. But
to do that, they need an infrastructure, and they need leadership from
companies like Microsoft, which provide some of the building blocks
central to creating great products.

If you didn’t notice, I’ll make the anaphorical jump more explicit and add some emphasis: “Developers .. need leadership from companies like Microsoft.”

I
can understand the need for well-defined standards on which
“developers” can build, where I consider a “standard” something that
can not be unilaterally changed. But saying that developers need
“leadership”, sure pushes things towards an ideological interpretation
that I dislike. Think of what role the concept of “leadership” plays in
economic science, then think of what political movements emphasize the
role of “leadership”.

I admit cutting away some context, and will quote it here to make it easier for you to consider its truth in isolation:

Microsoft
is only one of the companies trying to provide leadership, and it is
this incredibly intense competition that helps drive the industry
forward at a pace it has never seen before.

Maritz is not talking about some “coming out on top” here, but about “providing leadership”. Brrr.

Java Lawsuit: Judge Says Microsoft Infringed On Copyright
http://www.crn.com/dailies/digest/breakingnews.asp?ArticleID=5500

Split decision in tentative Java rulings
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,37017,00.html?st.ne.fd.gif.d

(Would you believe that the last two articles describe the same event?)

Update:

Win98 and IE broke Sun copyright - judge rules
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990526-000003.html

Think of this next time you hear a Microsoft executive speaking harshly of software piracy.

The
different Microsoft Windows operating systems together account for
nearly 95% of all OS’s with WebTV bringing the total of Microsoft OS’s
used to browse the Internet to above 96%.

Lots of Noise, but not Numbers on Linux
http://www.statmarket.com/SM?c=WeekStat

This is likely to become dirty.

The Register: IBM ‘dossier’ to detail MS Windows threats
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990527-000004.html

PC Week: MS-DOJ:
Did Microsoft threaten IBM? - IBM exec will allegedly testify that
Microsoft warned that it would deny Big Blue a Windows license
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,1014829,00.html

Garry
Norris, the IBM manager who will be one of the government’s final
witnesses in its antitrust trial with Microsoft, contended in sworn
testimony Thursday that Microsoft exerted pressure on IBM to cut its
sales of OS/2, the software product that competed directly with Windows
until the popularity of OS/2 waned in late 1994 and 1995.

Norris said IBM’s costs rose from $40 million to $220 million.

The
Washington Post seems to have a publishing scheme whereby articles are
released under the same URL time and again. Unfortunately, I do not
know if they have a long-term URL and, if true, what it is. If anyone
knows a permanent URL of the article (and possibly also of the
Washington Post article that preceded this one about AOL/Netscape and
the rise of Linux undermining the DoJ’s case), I’d like to hear of it.

The Washington Post: IBM Executive Tells of Threat
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/microsoft/micro.htm

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/news/applems.htm

“As
pioneers in the personal computing revolution, Bill Gates and Apple
cofounder Steve Jobs have often shared the spotlight in presenting a
new vision for the future of computing. Even so, it surprised many
people at the 1997 Boston MacWorld when they announced a broad product
and technology development agreement.

People talked about this
being the beginning of a great relationship when in fact, a great
relationship had been going on for years and years. For those of you
not familiar with this relationship, or for those who just want to
reminisce, here are several links to historical reviews.”

It
also presents a list of things that Microsoft has done for Apple during
their “great relationship”. But it doesn’t mention any of Apple’s
contributions to the relationship. What is most irritating is the fact
on that on each page it claims to be “The whole story”.

Thought you might like this for your collection.

It
seems that the missing link is now fixed and you can now see at page
four of “Microsoft and Apple through the years” that no lawsuit (that
Paul Maritz called “patent terrorism”, apparently of significant
concern to Microsoft) seems to have taken place.

Now that I have seen the “Microsoft MacTopia home” I can’t wait to see how they are going to do the same to Linux.

The Register: Maritz at TechEd - still embracing and smothering
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990528-000006.html

The Register: MS play the standards game with BizTalk
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990528-000005.html

The statement “Just the Facts
- AOL-Netscape is a diversion, not a defense” elaborates somewhat on
Microsoft’s puzzling claims that the merge of AOL and Netscape changes
anything in the relevant markets: Microsoft’s monopoly market on
desktop operating systems and the browser market. In the light of the
latter, one should think of the website visiting OS statistics
mentioned here a couple of days ago: nearly half the visitors were
using Windows98, that is, they MUST use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer
at least for some tasks. This is not changed by the deal.

Furthermore,
given that Microsoft includes the price of its browser functionality in
the price of its operating system, it makes no business sense for AOL
to release a competitive product providing browsing functionality, as
customers have already paid up for a Microsoft’s browsing functionality
by buying Windows.

The statement contains several quotes from
former federal judge Robert Bork and former director of the FTC Bureau
of Competition Kevin Arquit.

ProComp: Just the Facts AOL-Netscape is a diversion, not a defense
http://www.procompetition.org/xp/p-headlines/i-current/a-927835429/p_article.view

The
establishment of an open standard gives customers confidence and allows
manufacturers to compete, innovate and differentiate their products
with less risk.

However, where they differ is that there is
no open market for Windows. Windows pricing is secret and is determined
only partly on quantity. The additional commercial activities of the
buyer - e.g. using its own or third party software - also weigh in.

Furthermore,
VHS is standard not only by way of being a monopoly product, but also
in the way of not changing, whereas Windows is continually changed due
to a multitude of factors - e.g. bundling software for the latest
market Microsoft is determined to take over - and the hardware
companies have little or nothing to say about the software they bundle.
Phone appliance companies probably want the software to evolve, but
according to their own design, not that of some outsider that
subsequently forces it on them.

[W]hat motivates Symbian’s
parents more than anything is that, as computing and wireless telephony
converge, they do not wish to end up like PC makers-low-margin
assemblers that are little more than a distribution channel for
Microsoft’s intellectual property. As the mobile-phone firms see it,
Symbian should ensure that they stay in control of their future. And
the licence fees that will go to Symbian, rather than Microsoft, are a
nice way of keeping all that money in the family.

The Economist: Symbian’s friends
http://www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/29-5-99/index_wb4468.html

Smart
action: Microsoft’s proprietary technology is pushed through charity
and because of tax reductions American tax payers are going to pay for
part of the marketing cost.

Microsoft: Free Beastie Boys Music Download to Aid Kosovo Relief Effort
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/1999/05-26kosovo.htm

At least, this would be understandable: escaping boring tasks and doing what one likes is what one gets rich for, right?

Time magazine: Microsoft technology chief departs
http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/990530/bg.html

Update:

The Register: MS dilettante research head ousted in Ballmer purge
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990531-000005.html

Die
Rheinland-Pf�lzische Landesregierung erh�lt Gelegenheit, zu dem
umstrittenen Kooperationsvertrag mit Microsoft Stellung zu nehmen. In
einer Podiumsdiskussion am LinuxTag werden sich die Verantwortlichen
dazu �u�ern.

Insbesondere bei den von Ministerp�sident Kurt
Beck vorgegebenen Ziele der Ausbildungs- und Qualifizierungsprogramme
f�r die Bereiche Schulen, Hochschulen und berufliche Ausbildung, bei
den Anwendungsm�glichkeiten in privaten Betrieben und Haushalten und
bei der Vernetzung von Dienststellen in der �ffentlichen Verwaltung
verspiele das Land gro�e Chancen, wenn es Linux ignoriere und seine
Zukunft in der Abh�ngigkeit von Microsoft-Programmen zu finden glaube,
erkl�rte ein LinuxTag Sprecher.

Earlier French Linux
enthusiasts informed their government of the cheap alternative to the
Microsoft monopoly. This resulted in a cooperation of the government
with the AFUL to introduce Linux, and open source software in general,
in the educational system: http://www.aful.org/presse/CP-MENRT.html

It
is about time that such voices are heard, as many European governments
are presently extending their embrace, and thereby ratification, of
Microsoft’s monopoly.

OEM’s can license StarOffice far cheaper than MS
Office and many Linux users such as myself have discovered that
StarOffice allows them to do everything they wish an Office suite to do
- which is often merely reading their managers’ documents or providing
simple documents themselves.

Naturally, Mr. Ballmer would gladly
see a package with such price/performance marks disappear so he
“predicts” that this will indeed happen. He effectively tells potential
customers to focus on the ability of StarDivision to withstand
Microsoft’s market power, rather than on product quality.

Mr.
Ballmer made his remarks when he followed in Mr. Gates’ steps to work
on European government leaders to make them adopt Microsoft’s monopoly.

You can read an account (in German) at: http://futurezone.orf.at/futurezone.orf?read=detail&id=1387

A slashdot discussion can be found at:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/05/31/1413221&mode=thread

The following article extensively discusses the interrogation:

The Register: DoJ’s ‘Punch’ beats MS’ ‘Judy’
by Graham Lea
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990601-000017.html

As mentioned earlier, Microsoft’s lawyers
lack basic knowledge about software and Microsoft officials apparently
have not attempted to use the past couple of months to remedy this
situation.

Sarcasm isn’t pretty, but Microsoft seems to catalyse it in a lot of commentators today.

ProComp: What They Forgot to Tell You
(A “memorandum” to Microsoft’s lawyers.)
http://www.procompetition.org/xp/p-headlines/i-current/a-928267573/p_article.view

The latest company to jump on the bandwagon is Microsoft:

PRODUCT MANAGER
[Job Code: N05rc-e3 ]

Job Location: Redmond, Washington

If you want to learn more, you can look up the job description.

Update:

Mark
Hinds informed me, that as of June 2, the link has been replaced with
list of over a thousand potential positions. As I found when Microsoft
twice “upgraded” their NT/Linux comparison without comment, it is a
good thing to archive what they publish as it tends to disappear
without notice when people find it odd.

I
guess, something like Bellsouth’s discrimination against Linux is what
Microsoft has in mind when globally buying into cable companies.

Vide
this account of a Linux user that was denied an ADSL connection as he
didn’t run an “approved” operating system, even though he didn’t need
any help from Bellsouth’s engineers to set up his system.

http://www.devzero.org/bellsouthadsl

Government witness and
economist Franklin Fisher’s observed that given the price of other
portals, the price AOL paid for Netscape seems to be determined
primarily by the value of Netscape’s Netcenter, and the browser
apparently has little value. By the way, with the next version of
Netscape’s browser having become open source, this is exactly that
Microsoft’s ideologists on intellectual property should expect.

Mark Murray, Microsoft’s spokesperson for the trial, commented:

I long for the day that my four-year-old company is so irrevocably broken that it can only be sold for $10 billion.

Mr.
Murray here clearly displays his incompetence in dealing with the
relevant issues of an antitrust trial. Whereas the relevant matter is
the situation in - and relationship between - the OS and browser
markets, Mr. Murray seems to believe it is about Netscape’s
shareholders.

I got the quote from:

Netscape Loses Again, Despite AOL Purchase
http://www.32bitsonline.com/news.php3?news=news/199906/nb199906022&page=1

Microsoft defense lawyer Michael Lacovara went over the edge by asking the question: “Isn’t that exactly what you’d expect Mr. Gates to say, given what his business is?”

I
say over the edge, because if Mr. Lacovara is willing to dismiss Mr.
Gates’ public statements, he is not only further damaging Gates’
tarnished image, but also undermining a significant amount of
Microsoft’s defense exhibits. Many of the exhibits that were to show
that there is healthy competition in the software industry were
statements from competitors taken from websites and advertisements in
trade rags. What will be the effect of Lacovara’s demarcation criterium
on this part of the defense?

Second, Lacovara asked whether
Fisher’s expert testimony could be influenced by the possible interests
of possible clients of the consulting company of which he is chairman
of the board. Mr. Lacovara apparently hoped to connect Mr. Fisher with
Microsoft witness Gordon Eubanks who was found to have held a nice
e-mail conversation about his public support for Microsoft and who in
the process hoped that Microsoft would remedy the situation in which a
competitor of his was benefitted. The difference between the two
situations is that Mr. Lacovara rested with asking a rhetorical
question and didn’t bother to support the contention.

Bloomberg news: Government: Microsoft “grasping at straws”
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,37318,00.html

The institute claims to represent 240 economists. To
get an idea of what this means you may be interested in learning that
the institute is producing a book by Stan Liebowitz (an on- and off
Microsoft consultant) and Stephen Margolis titled “Winners, losers and Microsoft”.

Stan
Liebowitz recently made the news by claiming that having three Windows
source code licensees that are allowed to fork the code would cost the
software industry $30 billion. On the basis of his methodology, asking
some top level managers to estimate what the additional cost of
supporting three platforms would be, Mr. Liebowitz actually got another
number, but as that seemed high to him, he divided it by three.

Such
is the methodology of an economist that the 240 member economists of
the “Independent Institute” seem to value high enough to pay for having
his book published.

And yes, Microsoft is a paying member, but
the Institute won’t tell if they merely paid the corporate membership
due of $1000, or more.

32bitsonline.com: 240 Economists Slam US For Antitrust Actions
http://www.32bitsonline.com/news.php3?news=news/199906/nb199906026&page=1

Liebowitz’
presentation of his $30 billion calculation can be found in the
transcript of the second Appraising Microsoft workshop “Which remedies”:
http://www.appraising-microsoft.org/2nd-transcript.html

####################
We
don’t have an external modem to give you. There is no possible way we
are going to install the Road Runner on your machine with Linux. The
tech. will NOT just drop off the modem, even if he could it would be an
internal because we don’t have externals. Two-way service is NOT ready
in your
area, even if it was we will NOT do an install on Linux. We
have NO plans to install on Linux anytime in the future. If you ever
decide to use Windows 95/98 we would be glad to install the service for
you.

—————————————-
Technical Support, MediaOne Road Runner
Tel: (888)339-1688
Mailto:help@mw.mediaone.net
—————————————-

Original e-mail from Robert Miller, forwarded by Matthew Benjamin to the am-info (”Appraising Microsoft”) mailinglist:
http://lists.essential.org/am-info/msg03791.html

In 1998 Microsoft made a 10% equity investment in Road Runner.

The
witness is Bristol founder Ken Blackwell. As one of the exhibits is a
video-taped presentation of Bill Gates, which I believe was not made
specifically for the trial, Bristol considers Gates a witness too.

At
Bristol’s webpage on the trial, you can find some links to articles,
e.g. from Reuters and ZDNet, with some additional information.

Bristol Technology sues Microsoft Corporation for violation of antitrust laws
http://www.bristol.com/legal/index.html

Microsoft and Bristol Technologies, Inc.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/bti/

Apparently,
marketing made Microsoft change the order of the parties in the lawsuit
and replace the “vs” with “and” to make it look less disturbing. They
haven’t recently updated the page, but its first line is still their
basic defense:

“Despite Bristol’s claims, this case is
really about Bristol’s attempt to use the courts to impose a
preferential contract for Bristol over one of its competitors.”

Meanwhile, Bristol has pointed out that the not-mentioned “one of its competitors”, which is Mainsoft, signed a contract with Microsoft only after Bristol filed suit. Clearly, one cannot “impose a preferential contract .. over one of [one’s] competitors” if that competitor didn’t have a contract at the time.

Furthermore, one should ask how Microsoft’s usage of Mainsoft’s “MainWin” Windows/UNIX library for the ports of Internet Explorer and DCOM to UNIX is related to Mainsoft’s licensing conditions.

For details, see Mainsoft’s website: http://www.mainsoft.com/.

MS, DoJ lawyers out in force for IBM witness
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990604-000003.html

“Microsoft
is clearly seeking to show that there was some dissent within IBM, and
that the browser market was competitive (except that Microsoft does not
like to recognise the existence of a browser market, of course).”

IBM witness - MS probes for conflict within IBM
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990604-000004.html

“We
were offered on several occasions, from time to time, offerings from
Microsoft, financial offerings, financial incentives, to stop shipping
products from time to time, or reduce or eliminate them.”

IBM witness reveals MS OEM price threats and deals
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990604-000005.html

“Pepperman
said that Microsoft had ended up taking $30 million for what was
claimed to be $50 million of under-reported royalties. Norris said he
was unaware of this. Pepperman then asked Norris if he knew that an
internal IBM audit had found that royalties were under-reported. Again,
Norris said he was unaware of this. Pepperman indicated that the audit
had taken ten months, and that a great deal of time had been taken up
by IBM in negotiating a non-disclosure agreement with the auditors.”

MS OEM VP to IBM: dump Lotus and we’ll cut a deal
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990604-000006.html

All articles by Graham Lea.

• Corel intends to
  create a GUI desktop for Linux and therefore Linux is a threat to
  Microsoft’s position in the desktop market (Fine, look forward to it,
  but it is not here now.)
• Lotus Notes is being ported to Linux.
  That may be a server application, but Lacovara attempted to make Fisher
  admit that this will help Linux on the desktop. (False assumption: a
  port doesn’t change the protocols, so having the server run on Linux
  will change nothing wrt the clients. Of course, one can create
  protocols favoring certain client OS’s, but that is not at hand.)
• Dell
  and IBM support Linux, even on some desktop lines (This shows there are
  cracks in the wall of OEMs pre-installing only Microsoft software, not
  that Linux has any “usage” share.)
• “Linux is beating Windows”
  as Mr. Cole writes to James Allchin. Microsoft dug up some data
  intended to show that Linux (client+server) is beating Windows
  (client+server) in retail. As Mr. Fisher replied, Windows users buy
  their OS when buying a new computer, while Linux users must buy at
  retail (or download, but I’m sure not going to do that at home). It is
  interesting that Microsoft is now switching from their “usage” share
  unit to “market” share. A recent survey of OS’s (clients for sure) that
  visited tens of thousands of websites, showed the “usage share” of
  Linux to be 0.22%, while Microsoft was at 95%. Compare this with the “Linux is beating Windows” claim that Microsoft is defending in court today.

Mr.
Boies objected against having an e-mail from Microsoft’s David Cole to
Jim Allchin admitted as evidence as it was possibly created for the
purpose of being evidence. Mr. Lacovara vehemently argued that if the
DOJ valued internal e-mails so much they should admit this one to and
Judge Jackson denied the objection. A good thing, as we will now get
the opportunity to check exhibit 2479 once it appears at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/exhibits/

Otherwise
Mr. Lacovara asked some questions about early adopters and whether Mr.
Fisher had done empirical research in this area. Mr. Fisher - who
didn’t do such research - failed to see the relevance of these
questions, and so do I.

transcript:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/transcripts/jun99/06-03-pm.htm

See also:

The Register: Linux is outselling Windows 98, says Microsoft
by John Lettice
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990604-000009.html

##8##
ENUM::000000006AB5C619AED7D211AF3400105A9D758B64BE9F00

Of
course, this doesn’t answer the question whether the MediaOne folks are
even installing the hardware, but I guess such reasoning is the vestige
of lawyers, and that we may conclude that MediaOne is willing to offer
a service to their customers instead of telling their customers what OS
they should buy.

“Wink has been
marketing interactive TV services that work over conventional analog
cable lines. Under a joint development and marketing agreement,
Microsoft will blend Wink’s technology with future versions of
Microsoft’s WebTV, a rival offering that offers a form of interactive
TV based on a telephone connection to the Internet.”

The deal gives Microsoft a 10% stake in Wink.

WSJ/CNetMS invests in Wink Communications
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2269906,00.html?chkpt=hpqs014

IBM witness: the inside poop on MS and IBM killing OS/2
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990604-000029.html

In the US Department of Justice
anti-trust case against Microsoft, some more embarrassing Microsoft
internal e-mails have come to surface. Microsoft wanted to dig up some
numbers to show that Netscape market share is holding steady even as it
is well known to be declining. This could only be explained as a
desperation move.

See:

Microsoft E-Mail Shows Late Data Search
Washington Post
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Similarly,
Microsoft’s lawyers want to show that Linux and network devices are a
credible threat to its PC operating system monopoly even as Chairman
Gates says just the opposite. The DOJ’s economic witness Franklin
Fisher says that Linux has only niche market share as a desktop
operating system and needs to grow significantly to be regarded as a
true competitor:

“The last time I looked, it was no
more than about five per cent. It’s going to have to get up, I would
say, to well over 20 per cent and be seriously growing.”

Microsoft must have a much lower standard for true competition; they
claim Netscape is still a serious competitor in browsers even though it
is only distributed by about 25% of computer vendors and ISP’s with
that figure either flat or falling. As to whether network appliances or
handheld devices can displace the PC is a matter of speculation.

See:

Microsoft trial: Judge pursues `parallel universes’
Seattle Times
By James Grimaldi

and:

Microsoft Trial: Linux argument fails in court
VNU Business Publications
By Janice McGinn

Computerwire’s
“on-location” coverage of the Microsoft trial has been acknowledged as
the most complete and insightful in the industry. Content from our
Computer Business Review magazine has even been cited in evidence at
the trial.

We have made it available to non-subscribers here,
through links with popular internet portals (PC Plus) so that readers
can judge for themselves and keep track daily with the most important
legal event in IT history.
At the same time this can provide a sense
of the quality of Computerwire’s paid services and we invite you to use
the buttons on the left to look through our Knowledge Centre with a
view to taking a deeper look a our services. Trial coverage will
continue during the recess.

The page contains links to several ComputerWire articles with trial coverage each day.

ComputerWire: The Microsoft Trial
http://www.computerwire.com/msoft/

AT&T
has already started to auction off the doors edging on their roads,
e.g. by agreeing with part AT&T owner Microsoft to install Windows
CE appliances. When competitors are allowed to use AT&T’s cable
network, it seems that AT&T has been selling something it doesn’t
own.

ZDNN: Judge to AT&T — Free access for all!
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2270297,00.html

Is
all this spending a sign of maturing corporate entities spreading their
wings to converging technologies, or just simultaneous midlife crises?
Are Wintel’s investments in trendy networking and Internet companies
the equivalent of buying a shiny red sports car at the first sign of
gray hairs?
…
The one clear trend in these highly diversified
investments is a move toward networking and communications. For
Microsoft that means investments in cable companies linked to
agreements to use Windows CE in set-tops. For Intel, there’s a strong
move toward networking chip solutions as well as a surprising leap into
Web hosting.

IDG: Analysis: Wintel acquisitions on the upswing
by Eric Brown
http://cnn.com/TECH/computing/9906/03/wintel.idg/

Why Microsoft will not winPCWeek By Stan Gibson

[Developers] need leadership from companies like Microsoft[.]
Paul Maritz, Head Developer Group, Microsoft http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/1999/05-24maritzqa.htm

We have to lead - and we have to follow our customers.
Steve Ballmer
Seen on BBC World - World Business Report, June 7, 1999

What
a strange madness must have taken hold of Microsoft’s executives that
they do not see that people are generally distrustful of those that
tell them to be their leaders.

Update:

A recent article at ZDNet has yet another reference to “leadership” by Steve Ballmer:

“We
don’t really need a company of 29,000 leaders,” Ballmer told attendees,
according to documentation from the meeting. “That may be what we’ve
got, but it doesn’t work very well if we’re going to achieve any kind
of goals we’ve talked about. We need to do a better job of developing
leaders. Ballmer went on to acknowledge that “sometimes maybe our
ambitions outrun our ability to put in place the leadership teams
needed to run the projects.”

Its a good thing that this is
not about leadership over third parties outside Microsoft, but it is
still interesting that the concept is drawing such interest from, in
this case, Ballmer.

Ballmer: Remaking MS in his own image
by Mary Jo Foley
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2270675,00.html?chkpt=hpqs014

MS economist gets fail mark from his old prof
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990608-000006.html

“More
substantively than that, what this does not tell you is that Netscape
is actually paying Compaq in order to get its browser on the desktop.
It was paying them advertising, something supposed to be worth over
$700,000.”

Did Compaq and MS collude to ambush DoJ witness?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990608-000007.html

“Microsoft yesterday announced its latest acquistion, Canadian software developer ShadowFactor Software.”

MS shines light on ShadowFactor
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990608-000009.html

“Ballmer’s
dream that Office Servers could come close to Web servers in
penetration meanwhile suggests that the old plan to get the Microsoft
formats out there (as expressed by Bill himself in subpoenaed documents
circa 1994-95) is by no means dead.”

MS ‘Office Servers’ to rival Web servers - Ballmer
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990608-000015.html

Update: Additionally:

The
timing, the volume and the subject of Gates’ phone call make it clear
that he was inextricably bound up in the whole matter. He’d mailed his
OEM sales chief Joachim Kempin in March 95 asking if SmartSuite “should
become an issue in our global relationship with IBM,” and Kempin had
responded: “I am willing to do whatever it takes to kick them out.”

The day Bill Gates screamed IBM’s house down
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990608-000020.html

Microsoft’s latest “alliance” acquisition is Inprise:

Microsoft
Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Inprise Corp. (Nasdaq: INPR) today announced
the completion of a set of strategic technology and licensing
agreements that will be the foundation for a long-term alliance between
the two companies. The announcement includes a $25 million purchase by
Microsoft of shares of Inprise preferred stock.
…
Microsoft
also paid Inprise $100 million for the rights to use Inprise-patented
technology in Microsoft products and to settle a number of
long-standing patent and technology licensing issues. The total value
of the investment and payment to Inprise is $125 million.

Will Inprise now do the following?
- drop CORBA standard for COM+ (Visibroker)
- drop Java standard for whatever we should call Microsoft’s proprietary language based on java (JBuilder)

INPRISE AND MICROSOFT CONFIRM COMMITMENT OF INPRISE TOOLS FOR THE WINDOWS PLATFORM
http://www.inprise.com/about/press/1999/inprise_ms.html

What follows is an enumeration of how
Microsoft has forced each OEM to do its bidding and thereby harm
consumers. A bit over-enthusiastic at times (e.g. IBM’s total payment
for Windows licensing depended not only on price per license, but also
on the rising number of licenses), but I think this is the right
approach to go about this matter.

IBM Speaks Out For an Industry Bullied by Microsoft’s Monopoly
http://www.procompetition.org/xp/p-headlines/i-current/a-928776652/p_article.view

MSNBC: “MS held `secret meeting’ with IBM”
http://www.msnbc.com/news/277875.asp

The Register: “MS offered IBM Win95 source for ‘neutral’ PC”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990609-000005.html

Meanwhile,
Microsoft is telling that it’s present buying spree has nothing to do
with taking control - as an interpretation according to economic theory
would explain it, but more along the lines of charity:

“Microsoft
acknowledges that it is spending billions to help companies within the
USA and internationally develop more reasons for people to buy
computers.”

(USA Today, Email Edition Jun. 09, 1999 6:00 a.m. ET
Seen at: http://www.usatoday.com/email/mail5.htm#tech, but content is removed now.)

IBM evidence shows how MS controls PC OEMs
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990610-000007.html

Some
of the conditions that Microsoft presented to IBM if it wished to get a
licence for Windows 9x or NT4 were: “adopt Windows 95 as the standard
operating system for IBM: $3 [discount per Windows 95 licence]”;
“Windows 95 is the only operating system mentioned in advertisement”,
to gain a $1 MDA reduction; and “reduce, drop or eliminate OS/2″, which
would be worth a total of $8 in MDA reduction.

Secret deals MS uses to control PC companies
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990610-000006.html

From
about 20 July, IBM found it was completely cut off from access to
Windows 95 code, and could not continue with development of models
incorporating Windows 95. Kempin told Santelli that if IBM would agree
not to ship SmartSuite for six months to a year, the audit would be
settled. The judge asked at this point for Kempin’s name to be
repeated, which seemed to indicate that he was concerned at this gross
abuse of power.

Cut a deal or you don’t get Win95 - IBM faces PC suicide
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990610-000005.html

When
Norris had to negotiate the1996 market development agreement, Microsoft
toughened its negotiating stance. It was “non-negotiable”, since
Microsoft had decided it no longer needed IBM to help make a market for
Windows 95. Microsoft also turned the screw by telling IBM it could
only have a single licence agreement for Windows 3.11, MS-DOS, MS-DOS
tools, Windows 95, Windows for Workgroups, and NT 4.0 in a “Windows
desktop family agreement”.

Screws went onto IBM at Gates’ bidding
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990610-000004.html

All articles by Graham Lea.

Jesse’s
here to tell us that Windows CE is bound for glory. You might as well
make plans to support it because it is the obvious choice. Any other
platform is a dead end and you’d be wasting your time and money if you
don’t make plans to integrate Windows CE into your plans now.

I
can’t help but wonder exactly what the motivation is for this kind of
bald faced boosterism posing as journalism. Does Microsoft threaten to
quit advertising in ZD magazines if ZD doesn’t show enough enthusiasm?
I really wish that Microsoft would get confident enough to just buy
Jesse a new Lexus or pay for a Hawaiian vacation with the checks signed
by Bill himself. As it is ZD and their troops can pretend to be
unbiased. After all, Jesse said some nice things about Linux. But then
so has Microsoft, for the benefit of Judge Jackson. Probably just a
coincidence.

God forbid that the pointy headed managers of the
world would have to choose products on technical merits. As it is they
just have to point to articles like this to justify their choice of
Microsoft’s products. After all, resistance is futile.

In the US DOJ’s antitrust case
against Microsoft, the final rebuttal witness Princeton University
computer science professor Edward Felten is again on the stand. In
rehashing earlier assertions that Internet Explorer does not have to be
integrated into Windows, the trial took an unexpected twist when Judge
Jackson brought up virus prevention as a possible reason for having an
operating system without a browser. This is primarily a feature (or
lack thereof) security-conscious corporate users would want, but it
certainly is a valid concern with Windows users in general.

Trial focuses on security question
C|Net / Reuters

Update:
Microsoft “proved” once again yesterday that Felten’s Internet Explorer
“removal” program does not truly remove Internet Explorer:

Yesterday
saw what you might call a completely unabashed hopelessly unscientific
counter-attack. Microsoft attorney Steve Holley whipped out a Toshiba
notebook he claimed had just been bought, and demanded that Felten
install his program on it there and then. Felten protested that other
stuff that came preloaded on the Tosh might interfere with his program,
but the judge told him to go ahead anyway. He seems to have adopted
something of a patronising and indulgent tone: “Holley really wants to
run this program,” he said, shaking his head.
He installed the program, ‘removed’ IE but then when Holley told him to press control/N, wham! Internet Explorer popped up.

Of course, this makes for a flashy display but completely avoids some key issues:

1. Felten
   never claimed his program entirely removes Internet Explorer (and,
   possibly, the machine used for the demonstration was running a version
   of Windows ‘98 for which he had never seen the source code)
2. What
   are the benefits of welding the browser to the operating system that
   cannot be achieved with the browser as a separate application?

DoJ expert: there are 3,000 bugs in Win98
The Register
By John Lettice

IBM plugs hole for government
June 8
BY RICH GRAY

Rich
Gray, is a San Jose attorney with 17 years of experience in
intellectual property and antitrust law. His trial commentary for the
San Jose Mercury has been an island of objective opinion in a sea of
slanted coverage. As you might expect, he has praised the efforts of
the Department of Justice and marveled at Microsoft’s blunders.

However, he has consistently avoided jumping to the conclusion that Microsoft could not win.

This
week he came to the conclusion that it’s time for Microsoft to run up
the white flag. He’s also confident that a ruling that Microsoft has a
monopoly will survive an appeal.

Unfortunately,
the page is not up to date and it shows $0 prices where information is
lacking (-cjr: I am to blame on both accounts).

As I wanted to
have the data presented in a diagram without having to do any
scripting, I used StarOffice to create it. Unfortunately, StarOffice
5.0 seemed unable to turn the result into HTML+GIF, so I have split the
result in a HTML page with the table, found at http://main.billwatch.net/background/osprices-19990612.html and a StarOffice file that includes the diagram: http://main.billwatch.net/background/osprices-19990612.sdw (for downloading if you have StarOffice)

From
the data we glance that Windows NT Workstation, OS/2, and Windows98 are
the most expensive options for the desktop. Anyone claiming that
Microsoft Windows is priced low has some explaining to do.

This
morning one of the Euronet’s fine engineers went above and beyond the
call of duty by going to the office at an untimely hour and resetting
the box. Thank you Niels Bakker .

http://www.ffii.org/clem/pm99-069.txt

This
year Gates and Ballmer have been quite successful in making extensive
deals with European governments, e.g. to have them subsidize the buying
of Microsoft software.

The government support for Microsoft’s monopoly has not gone unnoticed and protest is mounting.

June 13, a conference takes place in K�ln titled “Informationelle Monokultur und die Alternativen”. (See: http://kongress.ffii.org/) (Yeah, that’s today, if I had known earlier I might have gone there . )

Aside
from agitating against the NRW’s support for Microsoft’s monopoly - and
not considering any alternatives before embracing Microsoft as a
partner - a theme of the conference is the EU’s soon to be accepted
laws concerning software patents, without having bothered to
investigate whether such laws are beneficial for any party at all.
(See: http://www.freepatents.org/)

It
is interesting to see that French and German open source activists are
starting to collaborate to educate the governmental officials that -
probably unwittingly - raise barriers for competition by partnering
with Microsoft.

Web Publishing the Microsoft Way
Wired
By Oscar Cisneros

Now
that Office 2000 has been released and it supposedly is oriented to
publishing documents on the Internet, there is much concern that
Microsoft has not fully implemented the existing Web standards while
introducing their own competing proprietary methods. Here are some
relevant sections of the article:

• “They have this sort
  of weird hodgepodge format — but the document is neither valid HTML,
  nor is the document XML conformant,” [independent programmer and
  technical editor for xml.com Tim] Bray said.
• “If
  you want to do stuff beyond the standards, that’s fine. But just
  implement the existing standards before you go tearing off with the new
  stuff,” said George Olsen, leader of the Web Standard ProjectHis comment alluded to a recent statement made by the project about Internet Explorer 5.0’s standards compliance.
• After
  analyzing a test document created using Office 2000, Olsen said
  Microsoft was on the right track in making sure that its proprietary
  extensions did not interfere with standard tags and languages. But he
  did note some overlap that caused him concern.
  “There do seem to
  be a number of tags that do seem to duplicate W3C’s CSS standards,” he
  said. “If it’s duplicating that standard, then it’s fragmenting that
  standard.”

Microsoft chimes in with this comment:

• “With
  Office 2000, we’re saying that HTML is on the same level as our file
  formats,” said Andrew Dixon, group product manager for Office 2000.
  “We’ve done a lot of work in implementing Web standards.”

The
above could mean that Microsoft regards HTML/XML as being subject to
proprietary change at any time. Additionally, the collaboration
features introduced with Office 2000 can only be used with a Windows NT
server with Office 2000 extensions. Along the lines of
“de-commoditising Internet protocols” outlined in the infamous Halloween memos, it definitely smells like Microsoft’s embrace-and-extend attempt at controlling the Internet.

54. Wind/U is
a gateway technology, since it reduces the cost to ISVs of supporting
UNIX and thus attenuates the network effects of Windows’s dominance of
the personal computer market. The reduction in switching costs that a
gateway technology permits enhances welfare by increasing the extent to
which consumers can choose operating systems according to dimensions of
functionality other than network benefits. Moreover, by reducing the
significance of compatibility issues, Bristol’s product helps increase
innovation both by creating a larger stable institutional environment
and by reducing the resources ISVs need to divert away from innovation
and toward duplicating software for multiple standards. In this
context, a gateway technology like Bristol’s product helps create some
of the benefits of a single standard environment without reducing
competition.

I have no idea whether Bristol will or should
win its antitrust case, but it sure brings up good reasons for
Microsoft to suppress its technology.

Bristol Technology v Microsoft Corporation
Affidavit: Richard N. Langlois
http://www.bristol.com/legal/affidavit_langlois.htm

Summary of government’s rebuttal case
http://www.procompetition.org/xp/p-headlines/i-current/a-929364638/p_article.view

http://www.computerwire.com/msoft/mt2-990616.html

Open
source is hard to ignore right now. We looked at the real customer
benefit. We don’t want to do something like Netscape, making a big
fanfare to see it end in complete failure.

Two things are
relevant here. First, as Microsoft is paying Transvirtual, there is
apparently money to be made by creating software and distributing it
under an open source license. Microsoft’s insistent claims that open
source is not viable because programmer’s would rather be payed than
not is therefore ignoring a relevant fact. Thus Microsoft’s repeatedly
presented selection of facts with regard to payment for open source
programming efforts leads to the false conclusion that these efforts
are not ever payed for.

Second, if Netscape’s distribution of
its browser as open source is a “complete failure”, then what does this
mean for Netscape/AOL as a competitor in the browser market? Microsoft
has repeatedly claimed that releasing software under an open source
license will have detrimental effects on the financial state of the
creator of the software. If “mozilla” is a failure and given that there
is no way back to a more restrictive license for what is distributed
now, I can’t think how Netscape can possibly at the same time be an
ardent competitor in the browser market. Let alone, that he competitive
landscape of the software industry at large has tilted to
AOL’s/Netscape’s advantage.

The following article contains
factual mistakes about Transvirtual and the kaffe JVM. I refer to it
for the quotes that I consider damning to Microsoft’s position in court.

Wired
MS Kaffe-Maker Swallows Java
by Leander Kahney
http://www.wired.com/news/print_version/technology/story/20225.html?wnpg=all

Furthermore, we would have heard that the
alleged monopoly on oil could fall apart at any moment, as a multitude
of people were digging in the earth with the purpose of striking oil.

And
lastly, they would have told that oil was about to be overtaken by
nuclear and solar energy (and one shouldn’t bother about questioning
whether these can provide energy for cars) so, despite Standard Oil’s
market share, the company wouldn’t have market power at the moment of
investigation.

It takes the absence of principles leading to a
consistent belief system to set store on Microsoft’s vapor ware
announcements of competition in the future that are supposed to undermine its monopoly today. MSNBC is one organization that lacks such principles as it heartily evangelizes the claims of its part-owner Microsoft.

MSNBC
AOL’s epic aim: to slay Microsoft
By Elliot Zaret & Brock N. Meeks
http://www.msnbc.com/news/280218.asp

Eubanks’
interview in the book, “In The Company of Giants - Candid Conversations
With The Visionaries of The Digital World,” which the government
produced as evidence, suggested that Symantec had good reason to stay
in Microsoft’s good books. In the interview, Eubanks had said of the
Norton Utilities suite, “We have a tremendous infrastructure that works
closely with Microsoft. This is a tremendous barrier to competition.”
Boies had already brought out a San Jose Mercury News article in which
Eubanks admitted that Microsoft was “a natural monopoly,” although
Eubanks insisted that monopolies would always be “eclipsed” by the pace
of technology. However, the damage was done, and at the end of his time
on the stand, Eubanks looked more like a man who had been mugged by the
digital age rather than a visionary.

ComputerWire
DOJ Crushes Credibility of Digital Visionary Eubanks
by Dan Jones
http://www.computerwire.com/msoft/mt2-990617.html

Addendum:

In a reaction to this item, Rick Fane wrote:

The
Washington-Post story on Eubank’s testimony refered to his taking a
Palm Pilot out of his pocket as an example of a threat to Microsoft’s
monopoly. If only the DOJ had introduced the box that the Palm Pilot
comes in as evidence. Mine lists, under system requirements: Windows95
or Windows NT 4.0 — They support the Mac but that kit is sold
separately. Some big threat.

Well, this supports Bill Gates’
description of the situation in Newsweek and undermines the arguments
of Microsoft’s attorneys in court. A product that makes it a condition
of its usage to obtain another product is most certainly not competing
with that other product.

For
those of you who aren’t familiar with ebooks let me give you a little
background. The term ebook, which is short for electronic book, can
apply to book in the form of a computer file such as ASCI, HTML, PDF or
proprietary format that’s available online that can be read on your PC.
A newer definition of the word refers to a class of portable reading
devices which are specifically designed to make reading these files
more convenient. About a year ago the first three products in this
market were announced by NuvoMedia, EveryBook and SoftBook. The first
of these, the Rocket eBook from NuvoMedia started shipping last
November. SoftBook started shipping last January. In the meantime
several other companies have also announced products and shown
prototypes. So far there are over a half a dozen compaines that have
developed products although, as far as I know, only the two I’ve
mentioned have actually shipped yet.

A few months ago all these
interested parties and Microsoft got together to plan an Open eBook
standard so that a single uniform file format could be supported by all
these devices.

So today, I just read a story from InfoWorld
about Microsoft’s expectations for ClearType. Perhaps I’m reading too
much into it, after all it wasn’t written by anyone from Microsoft, but
I do find a lot to dislike in this article.

Starting with the
reference to the proposed Open eBook standard as being Microsoft’s.
Then Dick Brass, Microsoft mouthpiece, proceeds to tell us how
Microsoft’s new technologies will “launch a lot of new areas such as
eBooks, tablet PCs, ePads and ePaper, with eBooks to come out of the
gate first with ’major announcements’in about six months.” As if I
haven’t owned an ebook for 8 months, as if there weren’t haven’t been
several tablet PCs on the market for years.

(This pronouncement
comes from a company that hasn’t shipped any products in this market
yet. But they’ve staked their claim. This is in the finest Microsoft
tradition of announcing vaporware. For those of you who don’t know what
you’re supposed to do, here’s your part. . . don’t buy anything until
Microsoft’s products are available. After all, they will own the entire
ebook market eventually so any purchase you make from these
fly-by-night companies like NuvoMedia or SoftBook is a waste of money.)

In
the next paragraph the esteemed Mr Brass admits that these concepts are
not new. But apparently, until Microsoft does it, it doesn’t count.

The
article ends on this note: “Brass also hinted that Microsoft may be
interested in doing more than delivering the technologies to enable
people to read online books; it might also be interested in delivering
the books themselves. When asked if Amazon.com and such retailers would
be the likely distributors of eBooks, Brass said he would prefer people
to get the books through Microsoft, but that Amazon.com would probably
have them as well.” It should come as a comfort the the stockholders
and employees of Amazon that Microsoft has given them permission to
sell books, at least for the time being.

Anybody want to buy a used Rocket eBook?

If you’re interested in ebooks, check out:eBookNet

Once
again, Microsoft’s internal email contradicts the claims that they’ve
made in public and in court. In this article Mary Jo Foley provides
some very interesting examples of Microsoft’s real policies in
providing API information and supporting cross platform capabilities.
Perhaps these will also be produced by David Boies when Richard
Schmalensee is on the stand again.

The Register
MS pushes write to congress campaign via Windows Update
by John Lettice
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990618-000006.html

It
is good that some action has followed on Richard Stallman’s call some
weeks ago to act upon the EU’s planned introduction of software patents.

The
letter ties the planned introduction of software patents to Microsoft’s
strategy to replace Internet standards with proprietary technology.
Although that is the first thing that comes to my own mind, I must say
that I imagine that this is not the kind of argument that helps against
the introduction of software patents generally.

Anyway, I consider this initiative a Good Thing.

Letter to the EU Competition Commissioner
http://swpat.ffii.org/miert/indexen.html

If the Dutch government persists in its refusal
to create a tax entry application that is suitable for the Macintosh,
Apple will file suit against The Netherlands at the European Commission.

We
talk with the EU to make sure that all member governments guarantee
that they won’t discriminate against Mac-users. These talks have been
going on for quite some time now; they take a lot of time. In all of
Europe some five million Macintoshes are used. So there is a potential
of five million people running the risk of being discriminated against,
because they can’t file their tax entry in a simple way through their
computer.
The Dutch government cannot refuse to make a tax entry
aplication for the Mac if it produces one for Windows. And if it
persists, we will put the problem before Karel van Miert, the European
commissioner for competition. We would rather refrain from doing this,
but if we are forced to, we will fight it in Brussels. This form of
discrimination may not continue.

Of course, I sympathise
with Mac users on this matter, but unlike Apple I don’t believe that a
port of the application to the Macintosh is the way to solve it. Just
as European governments should not make buying a product from one
vendor a condition for filling in a tax entry on a computer, they
shouldn’t make buying products from one of two vendors a condition.

One
way to solve the problem is to use open standards and write the
application in java. Java JVMs are available for a large number of
platforms, and those platforms not supported can at least create a port
of the JVM based on the java specifications.

With
Sun, IBM, Novell, Oracle, Microsoft and even open source JVM’s being
available, one would think that competition would be between these
products, where price and performance are chosen by customers. Not so
according to Dr. Schmalensee. He claims that the JVM is in competition
with Windows because essentially Windows is not a product but a
“platform”. An implication of Dr. Schmalensee’s claim would be that if
all applications were written for WORA java, Microsoft would have
completely lost to the competition, even if it would still provide the
OS for 96% of the desktop computers. Things would end up even stranger
if we remember that Microsoft distributes a JVM: if all applications
were written for WORA java and Microsoft would have, say, 96% usage
share here, Schmalensee would see competition with Windows. Such are
the results of an economic analysis in terms of specifications instead
of suppliers and products.

LACOVARA: SO BASED ON YOUR REVIEW OF THE GOVERNMENT’S COMPLAINT,
15 OF THE TESTIMONY OF THE GOVERNMENT’S WITNESSES, AND OF YOUR
16 REVIEW OF ALL THE MATERIALS THAT YOU HAVE REVIEWED, WHAT DO
17 YOU THINK IS THE APPROPRIATE ARENA OF COMPETITION TO ANALYZE
18 AND TO ASSESS FROM A CONSUMER WELFARE PERSPECTIVE?
19 SCHMALENSEE: PLATFORMS.

Otherwise the testimony is full of little word tricks like the following:

LACOVARA: HAVE YOU SEEN ANY ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OR EVIDENCE
2 THAT SUPPORTS THE PROPOSITION THAT THE BROWSER WARS ENDED
3 BECAUSE, UNDER PROFESSOR FISHER’S VIEW, MICROSOFT HAD 50.01
4 PERCENT?

Charming straw man, right? Actual economic analyses don’t say that it is over “because” of some usage share percentage - this would be a limit, not a cause.
Rather they are in terms of possible revenues, and there we find that
Microsoft can charge for MSIE as part of the price of Windows, whereas
Netscape has to go so far as to pay Compaq to ship its browser.
The war is over because Netscape is no longer able to create revenues
from its browser to justify and continue its development effort.

As
an aside, before the session started judge Jackson read up the old joke
on “girlfriend 1.0″ updating quietly to “wife 1.0″ and in the process
disabling a couple of favorite applications and monitoring all others.

transcript Schmalensee testimony 21 June am session
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/transcripts/jun99/06-21-am.htm

Of
course, doing a price performance comparison of a server operating
system when the competition is free is likely to look bad. The solution
- rightly - is to compare the total cost of a system, that is, hardware
plus software. To reduce the price difference, the hardware has to be
as expensive as can be found.

And yes, this works! Windows NT comes out well - on a four-processor machine.

But
who cares about a system that doesn’t suit one’s own needs? Why would
one use a web server that spits out more data than a company’s
bandwidth can transfer? Who needs a file server able to handle over 20
clients simultaneously (up to 20 all OS’s tested by PC Week have about
the same performance, and, what’s more, cheaper hardware can do the
job).

Things get even funnier when Microsoft notes that Linux
doesn’t use part of the hardware. Eh, wouldn’t that mean that it could
get the same performance with cheaper hardware, thereby driving down
the embraced total cost of ownership measure?

Aside from these
main points concerning misrepresentation through ignoring relevant
information, there are minor, but nasty points such as measuring the
production of dynamic web pages under Linux through slow CGI instead of
faster mod_perl, mod_php, or mod_jserv technology. Clearly, the
benchmarkers didn’t bother with optimizing Linux.

Another
interesting aspect of Microsoft’s representation of the tests performed
by PC Week and PC Magazine is that it doesn’t tell about Solaris
outperforming Windows NT and that at a lower price. So, if you need a
four-processor machine, use Solaris! If you merely need a
single-processor system - guess what, that’s that vast majority of all
systems shipped - these tests won’t help you as OS’s behave differently
there.

Industry Benchmarks Show Windows NT Server 4.0 Outperforms Linux
http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/nts/exec/compares/ntlinux.asp

Update:

Microsoft
propaganda as refered to above often evokes the idea of having a site
or set of pages defending Linux against it. It appeals to me too, but I
prefer to remain OS agnostic. (Do you believe this?)

I am happy to see that Linux Orbit is expecting barrages of Microsoft FUD and are preparing to deal with it: http://www.linuxorbit.com/fud/

To get an impression of how relevant Linux
is in Microsoft’s defense, you see how Linux is claimed to have already
broken through the lack of applications support:

So, it starts with a small base of users, starts
with almost no applications, and is difficult to use, frankly, in its early versions, and still it doesn’t have
the simplicity of Windows.