Markoff is not the best on criticism. write the editor direct. ---------------------------------- 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