Guilty!

"Microsoft went the extra mile," says Mr. Bill. What a shame we have to spend so much time and money on this unpleasant legal action, if only the governments had been willing to see things the Microsoft way.

What a flaming crock!

Here's part of the "extra mile" that Judge Jackson found in his verdict:

...
Microsoft strove over a period of approximately four years to prevent middleware technologies from fostering the development of enough full-featured, cross-platform applications to erode the applications barrier.

...
In pursuit of this goal, Microsoft sought to convince developers to concentrate on Windows-specific APIs and ignore interfaces exposed by the two incarnations of middleware that posed the greatest threat, namely, Netscape's Navigator Web browser and Sun's implementation of the Java technology. Microsoft's campaign succeeded in preventing - for several years, and perhaps permanently - Navigator and Java from fulfilling their potential to open the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems to competition on the merits.

...
First, Microsoft bound Internet Explorer to Windows with contractual and, later, technological shackles in order to ensure the prominent (and ultimately permanent) presence of Internet Explorer on every Windows user's PC system, and to increase the costs attendant to installing and using Navigator on any PCs running Windows.

Second, Microsoft imposed stringent limits on the freedom of OEMs to reconfigure or modify Windows 95 and Windows 98 in ways that might enable OEMs to generate usage for Navigator in spite of the contractual and technological devices that Microsoft had employed to bind Internet Explorer to Windows.

Finally, Microsoft used incentives and threats to induce especially important OEMs to design their distributional, promotional and technical efforts to favor Internet Explorer to the exclusion of Navigator.

...
By extracting from Apple terms that significantly diminished the usage of Navigator on the Mac OS, Microsoft helped to ensure that developers would not view Navigator as truly cross-platform middleware.

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As part of its grand strategy to protect the applications barrier, Microsoft employed an array of tactics designed to maximize the difficulty with which applications written in Java could be ported from Windows to other platforms, and vice versa. The first of these measures was the creation of a Java implementation for Windows that undermined portability and was incompatible with other implementations.

Microsoft then induced developers to use its implementation of Java rather than Sun-compliant ones. It pursued this tactic directly, by means of subterfuge and barter, and indirectly, through its campaign to minimize Navigator's usage share. In a separate effort to prevent the development of easily portable Java applications, Microsoft used its monopoly power to prevent firms such as Intel from aiding in the creation of cross-platform interfaces.

Microsoft's tactics induced many Java developers to write their applications using Microsoft's developer tools and to refrain from distributing Sun-compliant JVMs to Windows users. This stratagem has effectively resulted in fewer applications that are easily portable.

...
Microsoft's actions to counter the Java threat went far beyond the development of an attractive alternative to Sun's implementation of the technology. Specifically, Microsoft successfully pressured Intel, which was dependent in many ways on Microsoft's good graces, to abstain from aiding in Sun's and Netscape's Java development work. Microsoft also deliberately designed its Java development tools so that developers who were opting for portability over performance would nevertheless unwittingly write Java applications that would run only on Windows.

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Finally, Microsoft impelled ISVs, which are dependent upon Microsoft for technical information and certifications relating to Windows, to use and distribute Microsoft's version of the Windows JVM rather than any Sun-compliant version.

If Mr. Bill wants to save us all lots of time and money, he can give up his plans to appeal this thing to exhaustion. He's supposed to be a good reader. He can read the finding of fact, and the verdict, and he can figure out as well as you or I that Microsoft will not win any meaningful points on appeal.

They're guilty, guilty as charged, guilty as sin.

April 3, 2000

Tom von Alten      tva_∂t_fortboise_⋅_org

http://www.anybrowser.org/

Monday, 03-Apr-2000 11:00:00 MDT
http://fortboise.org/guilty.html