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Friday, June 21, 2013
When the Dept. of Justice took on Microsoft
The recent death of judge Thomas Penfield Jackson brought back memories of the late 90's, early 2000's and the spectacle of the DOJ versus Microsoft trial, the appeals, the sideshows and the aftermath. So I went back to what I'd written at the time in both the Wired Windows column as well as the Windows Networking newsletter. It's interesting historically, I think, so I've reproduced all of the columns and newsletters (16 of them) here for your erudition and amusement (as you laugh at my predictions!).
Not everything was about the trial in the almost 4 years covered, but the other stuff is also interesting, and can help set the context of the times. Enjoy!
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1/26/98 Wired
Windows:
Thomas Jefferson said the best government is that which
governs least. It's a principle I agree with. Certainly I have no wish to see
the government proclaim standards for computer operating systems. A casual
read-through of the proceedings of the government-sponsored International
Standards Organization, especially as they relate to computers, shows that this
is an area governments should stay out of - except as a last resort.
But Jefferson also said that one of the fundamental
reasons to have a government is to protect us from those more powerful than
ourselves. In the computer industry, Microsoft is more powerful than any other
entity.
Few consumers want to buy computer systems in a piecemeal
fashion. Gateway 2000's recent TV ads tout the fact that its computers include
everything you need, as opposed to those companies who make you purchase the
monitor separately. Yet even those unnamed companies include an operating
system with their PCs, and that operating system is invariably Microsoft's
Windows 95.
You'll also find Internet Explorer, Channels and the
Active Desktop on that computer - whether you want them or not. And most of you
don't want them. You spend an inordinate amount of time removing them from the
computers you give to your users. But even if you buy from the largest computer
manufacturers, such as Compaq or Dell, you cannot specify a Windows 95 OS
without the clutter and claptrap that's turning your desktops into so many
televisions complete with 24-hour-a-day advertising.
You can't get what you want, because Microsoft won't let
you. Microsoft won't let Compaq or Dell or even Pete's PC and Storm Door
Company install Windows 95 without Internet Explorer and its baggage. When you
can't get what you want because the world's biggest computer makers are
powerless to give it to you, then it's time for the last resort of government
action.
At first my thoughts on the Department of Justice vs.
Microsoft were guided by the principle of least government. But the sheer
arrogance of Microsoft in the face of Judge Jackson's order to remove Internet
Explorer from the license agreements it has with computer manufacturers gave me
pause. When Microsoft baldly stated that the only way it could comply with the
court order would be to give the manufacturers the choice between Windows 95
with Internet Explorer and Windows 95 that would not boot, it showed a contempt
for the court and the law far beyond anything Al Capone had ever done.
I knew that Microsoft had no concern for my opinion as a
consumer. I suspected the company had little concern for the needs and desires
of hardware manufacturers and applications vendors. But to stand up and defy a
federal court, to lie boldly to a federal judge, is to step over a line which
should not be crossed.
Hold Microsoft in contempt, Judge Jackson. Fine the
company a million dollars a day, as the Department of Justice requests. Even
put the officers of the corporation in jail until they are ready to submit to
the law of the land. Heed the words of our third president, who wrote: "I
hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed
corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of
strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." (Thomas Jefferson
to George Logan, 1816)
All contents copyright 1995-2002 Network World, Inc. http://www.nwfusion.com
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11/22/1999 Wired
Windows
A lot has been written in the aftermath of Judge
Jackson's release of his Findings of Fact in the Microsoft anti-trust case.
Today, we'll look at what Microsoft has said. Remember, though, that it’s a
tenet of propaganda that if you repeat something often enough people will
accept it as fact, without questioning its truth or falsity.
Microsoft president Steve Ballmer said in an op-ed piece
in the 11/9 edition of the Wall Street Journal, "…we cannot compromise on
the government's demands that Microsoft essentially stop listening to the
marketplace and cease innovating its products.''
Vice president of Microsoft's Developer Group Paul
Maritz, in the San Jose Mercury 11/10, wrote: "Our company is built on
very clear values: innovation, integrity, service to customers, partnership,
quality, and giving to the community."
On the Microsoft web site, Bill Gates is quoted as
saying: " we have a responsibility to protect the principle that has made
America a leader in technology - the freedom to innovate on behalf of our
consumers."
The only thing wrong with these quotes is that Microsoft
has never innovated anything - with the possible exception of Microsoft Bob. To
lay claim to innovation you have to be able to demonstrate that you thought up
a new way of doing things and then implemented it.
From its very beginning, Microsoft has grown on the back
of other, non-Microsoft developers and software companies. The road from DOS
1.0 through to Windows 2000 is paved over failed or diminished software vendors
who did create innovative applications only to see them stolen, co-opted or
bought out by the behemoth of Redmond.
There are a number of principles at issue in the
anti-trust trial, but the ability of Microsoft to innovate is not one of them.
Rather, the ability of other, non-Microsoft companies to innovate and profit
from their innovation in the software industry is central to the case.
Microsoft has, time and time again, trampled on the right to innovate of
thousands of smaller software vendors. It is not simply disingenuous; it is
propaganda of an order which even Joseph Goebbels would have blanched to
consider, for Microsoft to claim the banner of innovation as its defense
against the overwhelming facts in the anti-trust case.
Many are urging that Microsoft and the Department of
justice reach a settlement, but the arrogance shown by Bill Gates and his
henchmen not only during the trial, but in their reaction to the Findings of
Fact lead me to hope that there is no settlement and that Microsoft is found
guilty and receives the punishment they so richly deserve.
TIP OF THE WEEK:
While you might think of Bill Gates as "Mr.
Monopoly", that moniker really belongs to the dapper, mustachioed
gentleman who is the icon of the board game from Hasbro. Over 200 million copies of the game have been
sold since its invention in 1934. Visit http://www.monopoly.com/ to learn other
fascinating facts (such as the length of the longest Monopoly game played in a
bathtub) about the best selling board game in the world.
=====================================================
12/6/99 Wired
Windows:
In my last column, I suggested that Microsoft deserved
whatever punishment Judge Jackson might pronounce on them in winding up the
Department of Justice's anti-trust case against Bill Gates and his cronies.
Today, I want to go on record against one form of punishment, though.
In the African veldt, you can tell when a large animal is
injured by the number of vultures and hyenas circling the still breathing body
waiting for a chance to pounce. In a more civilized society, you can tell when
a corporation is injured by the number of lawyers circling the still warm body
ready to file class action suits.
The theory of a class action suit is commendable - a
large group of people band together to join their claims against a corporate
entity in hopes that their joint efforts will prevail where individual actions
would be cost prohibitive. This holds for the proposed suits against Microsoft
where the group of people seeking to be certified as a "class" are
those who bought Windows 98 at retail. This is a small percentage, otherwise
unorganized, of the group of Windows 98 users most of whom purchased the OS as part
of a hardware/software package.
The problem, in my view, is that the only ones making
money off of class action suits are the lawyers. The plaintiffs - the
"class" - will, if they prevail (most likely through a settlement
agreement), receive no money. Instead they will most likely get coupons
entitling them to some discount off a future purchase.
I've been part of a class in a similar suit - that
brought against the major airlines for price-fixing. I did get some coupons out
of the deal, coupons good for a discount off future airline ticket purchases.
But there were so many restrictions on the coupons' use (e.g., $25 off a $200
ticket when purchased at "full fare") that I never used them. I
haven't paid "full fare" in many years, its too easy to get discounted
tickets. As an example, that $200 full fare ticket ($175 after using the
coupon) would only cost me $150 or less by using various discount structures
already in place.
One thing you can be sure of, though - the lawyers don't
get paid in coupons. They'll get a percentage of the inflated, so-called,
"value" of the settlement, typically 10-15%. Now, according to the
findings of fact issued in the Microsoft case, the possible loss to the users
buying Windows 98 at retail was $20. For the sake of argument, let's say that 1
million people are certified in the class. That's $20,000,000 plus triple
"punitive" damages of $60,000,000. Settle at 50 cents on the dollar
and its 40 million dollars. $6 million for the plaintiffs lawyers, and a number
of $5 and $10 dollar coupons for the people who were purportedly harmed.
That's not good for Microsoft, the economy, you or I.
TIP OF THE WEEK:
Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, time to
think about your plan to upgrade your users' desktops to Windows 2000
Professional. While you should hold off on W2K servers until at least the
middle of the year, W2K Pro is something you should rollout as soon as you can.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/professional/ has all the information you
need, but subscribing to the Network World Fusion Focus on Windows NT
newsletter (http://www.nwfusion.com/focus/) will help you digest it.
====================================================
12/20/99 Wired Windows:
A year ago (Network World 12/21/98) in this space I
predicted that 1999 would be "the year of the directory", and I think
I got it right. Years from now, we'll look back at 1999 as the year the
directory took over the network space.
The only thing I got wrong was the release schedule for
Microsoft's Active Directory (part of Windows 2000), which was still scheduled
for late this year and now has been put off until February. That doesn't change
the accuracy of the prediction, though, since waiting for a solid, robust
Active Directory would take us well into 2001 and the anticipation of Active
Directory was enough impetus to get all the directory players moving quickly
throughout 1999.
I also didn't foresee the rise of XML as a directory
enabling technology, but the recently released version 1.0 specification for
DSML (Directory Services Markup Language) will be the biggest boon to
cross-directory synchronization and integration since LDAP. In fact, it will be
even bigger than LDAP since it's designed from the ground up to support
directory synchronization. I'll have a lot more to say about DSML in the next
year, both here and in the Network World Fusion "Focus on Directory
Services" newsletter.
Among the highlights of the year, directory wise, were: the
consolidation of the Directory Enabled Networks specs with the DMTF's Common
Information Model; the release of Novell's new version of NDS - now called
eDirectory - for multiple platforms; Microsoft's purchase of Zoomit for its
cross-directory synchronization expertise; the beginning of a new application
category - possibly the "killer app" for directories - called
eProvisionware; and the emergence of third-party directory-management vendors
(Fastlane, Mission Critical, Netvision and others) as the only real contenders
for venture capital (and market capitalization) against the ubiquitous
"e" businesses or "dot coms".
What about next year?
New versions of so-called network operating systems from
Microsoft (Windows 2000) and Novell (NetWare 5.1) strike the death-knell of
Local Area Networks as they reach out to encompass a world of connected users.
Directory services takes its rightful place as the plumbing which holds
together the inter-networked world. Everything - from your computer to your
toaster - becomes directory-enabled. WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) will
bring network and server management to your cell phone. Supply chain management
finally becomes realistic with the use of XML, DSML and Microsoft's well
thought out BizTalk initiative.
In other news, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers) will continue to be a source of controversy and will become
largely ignored as people figure out ways to get things done quickly and
efficiently. And Judge Jackson will determine that Microsoft should be broken
into at least two parts - operating systems and applications. This will lead to
Wall Street becoming disenchanted with high tech, bursting the dot com bubble.
Happy New Year!
TIP OF THE WEEK:
I'm holding off on choosing the 1999 networking MVP until
next column, but I want to point out that last year's co-winner, Cisco's John
Strassner, has just published a book on Directory Enabled Networks (MacMillan
Technical Publishing, ISBN: 1-57870-140-6) which every network manager, every
network programmer and every network hardware manufacturer should read. Get it
now.
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1/8/2000 Focus on
Windows Networking:
Over the next few issues, we'll look back at the year
2000 and highlight the important developments in Windows Networking, then peer
into the crystal ball and attempt to foretell 2001's major news events.
One of the biggest stories of the year was also the first
big story of the year - there were virtually no Y2K bug disasters to report on
January 1, 2000. Interestingly enough, though, January 1, 2001 brought
date-related problems to 7-11's credit card acceptance system as well as
Norway's national railroad system.
February brought the launch of Windows 2000 which, in
retrospect, is probably the most robust operating system to come out of Redmond
since DOS 3.1. Nevertheless, the year did end with most people just beginning
to implement (or plan to implement) the server OS while stepping up rollouts of
the desktop version, Windows 2000 Professional.
The other big news for Microsoft was its spectacular lack
of success in the various legal proceedings during the year. Besides Judge
Jackson's ruling to split the company in two as a result of the Department of
Justice's anti-trust suit there were settlements or loses in at least two other
anti-competition suites - one brought by Caldera (settlement not announced) and
the other by Bristol Technologies ($4.7 million). Additionally, Microsoft
temporary employees successfully brought a class-action suit which gained them
more equal standing with full-time employees. This also forced Microsoft to
redefine the meaning of "temporary" as regards employment. As the new
year dawned, Mr. Gates and friends were going back to court, this time for
racial discrimination in employment practices.
All in all, it was not a great year for the software
giant since even the technically superior Windows 2000 OS was selling much
slower than it had been projected to sell.
But that wasn't all the news from the year 2000 - more in
the next issue.
=================================================
1/31/2000 Wired
Windows:
In a surprising move, Bill Gates, who has been
Microsoft's only CEO, recently handed the title to Steve Ballmer, who has
served as president since July 1998. Gates will remain chairman and become
chief software architect. The new role, he said, will allow him to return to
"what I love most - focusing on technologies for the future."
Does anyone really believe that installing Ballmer as CEO
will actually change anything that happens in Redmond?
Ballmer has been president and chief operating officer
for two years - essentially handling the day-to-day operations of the company
and enforcing policy as laid down by the Chairman of the Board - Gates. Simply
making Ballmer CEO doesn't change that.
All major decisions will still be made by the Chairman of
the Board, and that's still Gates. Even the much ballyhooed reorganization that
Ballmer announced after his coronation was - you can be sure - signed off on by
Gates.
It wasn't the business responsibilities of CEO Gates that
kept him from "focusing on technologies for the future," but his
constant gallivanting from trade shows to government offices and every media
circus in between. How many prime ministers will clear their schedules for
Ballmer, and how many will insist that only the richest man in the world can
get their attention?
And if Gates wasn't "focusing on technologies for
the future," who was? Can it be true that Microsoft was limping along from
day to day, with no strategic vision? Could that be how this whole antitrust
thing happened - no one in Redmond was aware of (never mind planning for)
Microsoft becoming a monopoly in the operating system arena?
Make no mistake about it, there's only one reason for all
the changes happening at Microsoft. They're all intended to make splitting up
the company as difficult as possible in the hope that the Department of Justice
will settle for a fine and an agreement to "go forth and sin no
more." By the time Gates and Ballmer are finished, and Judge Jackson is
ready to rule, Microsoft's applications and operating systems will be
hopelessly intertwined.
The Justice Department should be thinking of injunctive
relief before that can happen.
========================================
4/10/2000 Network
World Windows Networking Newsletter
I know you've been hard at work in the lab, running
Windows 2000 through its paces, formulating a migration strategy to Active
Directory and prepping a rollout schedule. But you must have heard that Judge
Thomas Penfield Jackson handed down a hard ruling against Microsoft in the
Department of Justice's antitrust case. So what should you do?
Go back to the lab. Keep your projects on schedule. This
legal battle is far from over, and the eventual outcome is still impossible to
tell. Anything from a slap on the wrist to the breakup of the company into
smaller "baby Bills" is still possible.
What we can be reasonably sure of is that the eventual
outcome will have little effect on Win 2000. Future versions of the server and
business-desktop operating systems could be affected, but you need to be moving
right now to get your enterprise up to speed. Compared to earlier Windows
operating systems (NT 4 Workstation, Windows 9x), the business benefits of Win
2000 Professional on the desktop are so plentiful that you risk giving up a
competitive advantage should you slack off in your upgrade planning now.
Win 2000 Server and Active Directory are such a major
change from the way NT Server or NetWare servers operate that you need to spend
as much time as possible understanding their every nuance.
All indications are that next year at this time Microsoft
and the Justice Department will still be trying to determine the eventual
outcome of the lawsuit, but you need to be delivering the latest services,
applications and operating systems to your enterprises.
So, for now, ignore the legal news and get back into the
testing lab. Forget the legal briefs, and read the deployment documents. Win
2000 isn't going away. You need to be ready.
========================================
5/10/2000 Network
World Windows Networking Newsletter
The Department of Justice and 17 of the 19 state
attorneys general involved in the Microsoft antitrust case have asked Judge
Thomas Penfield Jackson to split Bill Gates' company into two separate entities
as a remedy for its anticompetitive practices.
While the Justice Department describes this as a split
into an operating system company and an applications company, the reality is
that this division isn't nearly so cut and dried. Yes, there are clearly
defined operating systems (Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows CE, and the
upcoming releases of Windows ME and the follow-on still only identified by the
code name "Whistler"). And yes, there are clearly identified
applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and so forth). But is it really that
easy?
Take Exchange, the Microsoft groupware and e-mail
product. There's Exchange server, various clients and, of course, the transport
mechanism. Is Exchange server an application? What about Outlook Express, an
Exchange client? It's part of Internet Explorer, which is now considered (even
by the Justice Department) to be a part of the operating system. And what about
the MAPI protocol? It's embedded in the operating system, but it's only used by
applications (and maintained by the applications group). Which company gets it?
It's also estimated that the appeals process could take
up to 3 years. What will the operating system and applications landscape look
like 3 years from now? What's to keep Microsoft from declaring that Word is now
part of the operating system (as they did with Internet Explorer)?
It sounds like a real mess is coming, and it's going to
affect your life and your work. Stay on top of it as much as you can, and count
on this newsletter to let you know about the steps you'll need to take to
ensure your networks and enterprises continue to run smoothly.
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6/19/2000 Wired
Windows:
One of the major arguments being promulgated by the
pundits urging that Judge Jackson's penalties against Microsoft in the recent
anti-trust trial be overturned is that they will lead to higher prices being
paid for software. The argument goes something like this, according to Richard
Schmalensee, Dean of the Sloan School of Business at MIT:
"Today, Microsoft has a strong incentive to price
Windows low because Windows sales often lead to lucrative orders for Office and
other Microsoft products. But after divestiture, the owner of Windows would no
longer earn these ancillary revenues and would thus have very good reasons to
charge more for its sole product." (L.A. Times, Thursday, June 8, 2000)
There are two fallacies here. The first is that the baby
Bill OS company would have only one product. Since, today, Microsoft sells 5
operating systems (Windows 98, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 2000 Server,
Windows CE and embedded Windows NT) with more on the horizon there's nothing to
indicate that even more operating systems would not be forthcoming. Also,
Microsoft has previously shown that it can develop Windows for non-Intel
platforms. Doing so again could allow for even greater computing choices for
users and increased revenue for the company. On the other hand, with the
possibility of competing operating systems gaining a foothold on the Intel
platform as a counterweight, there's strong incentive to keep the Windows price
as low as possible.
The second fallacy is the baby Bill applications company
would be able to continue to charge such "lucrative" prices in the
future. Almost alone among software applications, the Microsoft Office suite
has increased in price dramatically over the past seven years. Besides an
absolute increase in the suggested retail price, license changes removing,
among other things, the ability to license by concurrent usage meant that more
copies needed to be purchased to service the same number of users. Without the
inside knowledge of the OS that both sides in the case admit the apps
programmers at Microsoft have, the playing field for performance is leveled and
apps such as Office will also need to compete on price.
So even if the price of Windows should double this is easily
offset by the halving of the applications prices resulting in a lower total
price for the OS plus apps combination. Seems like a good thing to me, but then
I'm not dean of MIT's business school.
TIP OF THE WEEK:
The first geek cruise (http://www.geekcruises.com)
happened over the Memorial Day weekend, and O'Reilly & Associates author,
XML guru, and Perl aficionado Tim Bray has posted a review
(http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2000/06/06/geekcruise.html) of both
the cruise and the educational content. It’s a good, fairly quick read and just
might give you a vacation idea or two.
=========================================
6/24/2000 Network
World Windows Networking newsletter:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, the
spring of hope and the winter of despair. Well, no it wasn’t as bad as the
French Revolution which Dickens was writing about in “a Tale of Two Cities”
when he penned those immortal lines, but I do have two stories to tell today.
This might take a while, so settle back with a nice refreshing beverage.
I’d hoped that Microsoft, in appearing before judge
Kollar-Kotelly could soft-pedal the seeming arrogance they showed in the
earlier trial before Judge Jackson. Right up until the final day, last
Wednesday, they appeared to be doing fairly well. But then they implied, in
their closing arguments that the judge wasn’t technically-savvy enough to
inderstand the intricacies of an operating system. And, of course, they still
refuse to concede that they were found guilty of anti-trust activities. That
conviction isn’t going away. There are no courts left to appeal to. If only
they could bite the bullet, admit that they are guilty, apologize and get on
with life we might all be able to get back to simply managing our networks. But
this action, seen in the light of the licensing and upgrade issues we talked
about in the last issue, could actually end up costing us money – if we buy the
Software Assurance and if the next version of Windows server is further
delayed. Micrtosoft gets found guilty, but we pay the price. That could
definitely lead to a winter of despair.
Still, there is a spring of hope. Some time ago I
recommended Configuresoft’s Enterprise Configuration Manager (ECM) (see
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/nt/2002/01329546.html) but complained about
the company’s website which required you install a Flash Plug-in before you
could access anything.
One reader, though, took it as a challenge. He wrote:
“I am interested in the ECM product you recently
featured, but was so ‘put off’ by the Configuresoft web site that I wrote a letter to them expressing my displeasure they
require FLASH to even read about the product.”
That’s not abnormal behavior, but the follow-up I
received from the reader certainly was:
“within 2 hours of sending my ‘nastygram’ to
ConfigureSoft I received a nice phone call from their sales rep for Minnesota
and an email reply from the VP-Marketing explaining they are about to release a
non-Flash website and that the Flash version was an expediency dictated by time
and an outside consultant's terms. It
seems like they are good people and made a mistake in haste which they are
admitting. “
It is so refreshing to find a software company that
responds to a potential customer’s concerns so quickly and openly. A simple
admission that they made a mistake in their haste to get the site up, but that
it was being corrected as quickly as possible.
And it has been corrected. Go to
http://www.configuresoft.com/ now and you’re presented a choice – you can pick
either a straight HTML rendering or choose the Flash Presentation. You still
need the plug-in if you want to register at the site or download anything, but
you can make that decision after browsing. You can make an informed decision.
There’s still a lot of the website that’s only available
to Flash Users, but it is a step in the right direction. Now if only we could
get vendors to offer us a choice between HTML and PDF formats for documents we
want to read on screen, that would be a triumph.
So there’s today’s homily, a tale of two companies – one
responding quickly to a potential client’s desires while the other seemingly
looks to squeeze every penny it can from its existing client base. And
unfortunately, unlike Dickens, my writing isn’t fiction.
===============================================
9/11/2000 Wired
Windows:
Today, September 8, 2000 may be the day that the Supreme
Court decides whether it will take on the review of Judge Jackson's District
Court decision to break up Microsoft. The court could also decide to have the
review done by the Court of Appeals first, before the Supreme Court rules. But
the Supreme Court will rule. Even if the Court of Appeals hears the case,
whoever loses that review will appeal back to the Supreme Court.
It’s also remotely possible that the Supreme Court may
instruct Judge Jackson to re-open the District Court session for some reason,
but that's unlikely. So - instant prognostication - what will the Supreme Court
do?
It’s interesting to read Microsoft's brief to the Supreme
Court which outlines its reasons for asking that the Court of Appeals first be
allowed to rule. Remember that it’s fairly widely believed that Microsoft's
arrogance in Judge Jackson's court affected the outcome of the trial. Microsoft
continued, in their Supreme Court brief, to impugn Judge Jackson's abilities
but - more importantly, I think - seemed to also impugn the abilities of the
Supreme Court Justices. Microsoft suggests that the Supreme Court should allow
the Court of Appeals to winnow both the legal and technical aspects of the case
in order not to tax the higher court's time or intellect.
You'd think that Microsoft might have learned in Judge
Jackson's court that the Judiciary doesn't take kindly to the stated opinion
that it might be incompetent - very few people would take kindly to that. Next
time your boss takes you to task for some wrong you've supposedly done, try
telling the boss that he/she isn't competent to judge your guilt or innocence
and see how far that gets you (all the way to the unemployment line, I'd
wager).
This case will eventually be decided in the Supreme
Court. There's no way either side will throw in the towel before that. So why
insult the court and the judges who will have the final say?
Actually, if I were handling this case for the Department
of Justice, I'd be willing to go to the Court of Appeals and ask that they
instruct Judge Jackson to re-open argument. Then, I'd start bringing in
Microsoft's current statements and practices to bolster the case already made
(and won) before going on to the Supreme Court in the spring. That would be
fun.
Tip of the week:
Join me in early October for a free seminar called
"Unlock the Value of the Directory in your Enterprise", sponsored by
Business Layers. Sessions will be held in Dallas, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago
and New York. Details and registration at http://www.businesslayers.com/events/
========================================
10/23/2000 Wired
Windows:
Is anyone else as confused as I am by the Microsoft-Corel
deal announced a couple of weeks ago? The two software competitors are best
known for their word processors, Microsoft Word and Corel's WordPerfect, but
compete also in office suites and graphics applications. So it raised an
eyebrow or two when Corel announced support for Microsoft's .NET initiative
while Microsoft purchased $135 million in non-voting stock.
The stock Microsoft got was not convertible to regular
voting stock by Microsoft, but can be sold to third parties who can convert it
to common stock. At the time of the announcement, this would have amounted to
about 25% of the outstanding shares in Corel.
Corel has also been making a lot of noise in the
Linux/Open Source community (without actually delivering very much) about a new
version of Linux or an open source version of WordPerfect. Its also significant
that former interim CEO Derek Burney was named president and CEO - replacing
long-time chief Michael Cowpland who departed in August - just days before the
announcement with Microsoft.
Some have been comparing the investment to the deal
Microsoft made with Apple last year and see both as attempts to shore up some
vestige of competition in the operating system (Apple) and business application
(Corel) markets as evidence of the non-monopoly status Microsoft wants a court
of appeals to see while reviewing the Dept. of Justice win over Redmond in the
recent case before Judge Jackson.
Others feel that the money was the price Microsoft was
willing to pay to remove Cowpland - one of Bill Gates' biggest critics - from a
position which he was using to more and more frequently call into question the
business tactics used by Redmond. Of course, Cowpland was hardly in the same
league as Oracle's Larry Ellison or Sun's Bill Joy in the publicity they can
generate castigating Gates - but he was cheaper to silence.
In the wake of the deal, I expect Corel will stop
flirting with Linux and open source but will maintain the traditional
WordPerfect markets, such as the legal community. That should keep everybody
(well, except for Justice's trust busters) happy in the short term without
leading to any major problems in the long run.
Wondering who's next on Bill Gates' shopping list? Look
for traditional Microsoft competitors who've fallen on hard times and have
their stockholders in an uproar. "Provo? Redmond's calling."
TIP OF THE WEEK:
Whistler, the codename for Microsoft's next operating
system, a follow-on to both Windows 2000 and Windows 9x (including Windows ME)
should be out by this time next year. No big changes from Windows 2000, so
don't delay your rollout plans waiting to see what the differences are.
=============================================
12/4/2000 Wired
Windows:
All along we've thought of Microsoft as one of the
world's greatest marketing companies, is it possible we were wrong? Or is it
just their legal team which doesn't understand how to market a product?
We've commented in the past about how Microsoft appeared
to go out of their way to irritate Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson
(http://www.nwfusion.com/archive/1999b/0118kearns.html and
http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2000/0911kearns.html are just two examples).
Now, in their brief to the Court of Appeals, Bill Gates' lawyers have once
again egregiously insulted Judge Jackson by, in essence, calling him
incompetent and unethical.
There are four possible outcomes to the appeal: a.)
Microsoft will win all points (and the government will appeal to the Supreme
Court); b.) the appeal will be thrown out (and Microsoft will appeal to the
Supreme Court); c.) the Appeals Court will remand the case to judge Jackson's
District Court; d.) the Appeals Court will remand to another District Court. In
2 out of 4 ( b and d) possibilities, Microsoft will have to convince a judge or
panel of justices that both the appeals court and the district court were
wrong. In another instance (c) they'll have to go back before the judge they've
insulted. In only one case (a) will they be able to defend a court's action.
Good marketing practice says you try to make the judge look good at the same
time you attack the outcome - similar to telling a child, "oh look, the
milk spilled. Let's clean it up." Rather than, "idiot, you spilled
the milk!"
Add to this the shotgun approach Microsoft took in the
points raised in the appeal, which most lawyers found odd since one normally
tries to narrow the issues to be looked at, limiting it to those you feel make
the strongest case for you. Microsoft's brief (look at it yourself, at
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/appeals/11-27brief.asp) brings up the
judge's actions, the manner the trial was conducted, the witnesses testimony
only stopping short, seemingly, of blaming global warming for the outcome.
Again, bad marketing where you try to focus comments on your strengths while
avoiding your weaknesses.
It appears that one of the reasons Bill Gates stepped
down as CEO was to spend more time with the legal issues. If that's the case,
the board of directors should take every step necessary to see that someone
with marketing savvy is quickly put in charge of legal strategy.
Tip of the Week:
While election.com wasn't in charge of the Florida
balloting, maybe they should have been. Find out more about on-line voting, the
experience of ICANN, the Democratic National Committee and the state of Arizona
at http://www.election.com/ and find out about election.com's use of Windows
2000 at http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/guide/datacenter/news/electionscom.asp
================================================
12/18/2000 Wired
Windows:
The happiest of holiday wishes to you all! Due to the
vagaries of the publishing schedule, it will be a few weeks into the new
millennium before I can talk to you again (except, of course, if you subscribe
to my Fusion Focus newsletters - http://www.nwfusion.com/focus/).
In keeping with tradition, let's look back to what I said
in the final column for 1999:
"Judge Jackson will determine that Microsoft should
be broken into at least two parts - operating systems and applications. This
will lead to Wall Street becoming disenchanted with high tech, bursting the
.com bubble."
(http://www.nwfusion.com/archive/1999b/1220kearns.html)
I'd say I got that pretty much on target.
I was a bit premature in my enthusiasm for DSML
(Directory Services Markup Language) which - after a fast beginning - appears
to have bogged down as we await a possible version 2.0. Certainly DSML isn't
"bigger than LDAP" just yet!
I mentioned Fastlane, Mission Critical, and Netvision as
three "hot" companies in directory management and - sure enough - two
were snapped up by bigger management companies during the year.
I did comment on the release of Netware 5.1 and Windows
2000 being "the death knell of LANs". While the LAN is still with us,
its very nature has undergone fundamental change. Each of those formerly
independent networks is now (or soon will be) part of the global interconnected
network.
All in all, I think I did pretty well as a
prognosticator. (Of course, if I hadn't, I'd probably not even be mentioning it
here.) But what about the year to come?
First, by this time next year the courts will not yet
have finally decided Microsoft's fate (although it’s possible that a settlement
could end the litigation). This shows promise of being an annual prediction for
the next few years.
Novell's sales will continue to stagnate or fall, and by
this time next year Eric Schmidt will be back at Sun Microsystems - in charge
of the NetWare division.
We won't talk about Directory Services as some sort of
add-on any more. Rather, new applications will expect that you have a directory
in place (either LDAP- or XML-enabled) and use it to store personalization
information as a matter of course. "Personal directories" for
stand-alone machines will emerge which can be integrated with an enterprise or ISP
directory when the person joins an organization.
See you next millennium!
TIP OF THE WEEK:
If this is the " slow season" for your
organization, and you're continuing the time-honored practice of using this
time to do maintenance and upgrades, don't forget the equally time-honored
practice of playing practical jokes on your users. See The Free Site
(http://www.thefreesite.com/Fun_Freebies/) for lots of possibilities.
====================================
11/5/2001 Wired
Windows:
I watched Bill Gates at the Windows XP launch and started
having flashbacks to the Windows 95 launch as well as the taped testimony
before Judge Jackson in the anti-trust trial. I sometimes wonder if Bill Gates
has some genetic pre-disposition which causes him to believe that history
doesn’t exist – or, perhaps, it’s whatever he says it is. We saw during the anti-trust trial that Mr.
Gates, his executives and his lawyers appeared to believe that the judge (and
the prosecutor, mirabile dictu!) had no access to previous documents which
contradicted their statements – although they should have wondered why the
Justice Department read all of their email.
In August 1995, Bill Gates told us that the era of DOS
was over. That while Windows 3.1 sat on top of DOS, Windows 95 banished MS-DOS
to the scrap heap of history. No matter how many analysts and commentators said
otherwise, we were assured that DOS was gone.
Then came Windows 98, which – we were assured – further
buried DOS. Not that it needed to be buried, you understand, but still – just
in case you were worried, it was really gone now.
Once again when Windows ME was launched, as expected, we
were told that finally DOS was gone. Redmond admitted that it had played a
small part in Win 9x (like, the OS couldn’t exist without it), but ME had
finally done away with DOS – you couldn’t boot it to DOS, there wasn’t even an
“MSDOS Mode” listed! Wasn’t that proof enough?
Now Microsoft has launched Windows XP. Evidently Gates is
re-cycling his launch speeches, because he does say “…so today it really is
actually the end of the MS-DOS era…” and, oddly enough, he really expects us to
believe him. That is, believe him now and ignore what he’d said before (after
all, it worked in court – didn’t it?)
In a few years we’ll be seeing the next version of
Microsoft’s operating system, the one that’s currently called “Blackcomb”. I’ll
wager my dollars against your doughnuts that sometime during the launch event
we’ll hear Bill Gates tell us that – once and for all – DOS is dead.
DOS – the Freddie Krueger of operating systems/environments
– may be dead, but all these little utilities I’ve gathered over the years
still want to run in that command line space so we’ll keep breathing new life
into the old OS, and Bill Gates will keep trying to bury it.
TIP OF THE WEEK:
Everyone preaches SCSI disk drives are necessary for
network servers – but IDE drives are cheap, so the bean-counters want you to
use them. What can you do? Check http://www.acard.com/eng/ and check out their
add-on daughterboard which adds a SCSI interface to standard IDE drives. You
could save a bunch of money!
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