From: sichermn@csulb.edu (Jeff Sicherman)
Subject: Re: FCC will proclaim Microsoft is run by Communists! :)
Organization: Cal State Long Beach
Date: Fri, 25 Dec 1992 21:15:20 GMT

In article <1992Dec24.160351.2557@tc.cornell.edu> bai@msiadmin.cit.cornell.edu (Dov Bai-MSI Visitor) writes:
>From a previous post by Jeff Sicherman:
>
>>  Oh, I think there will still be plenty of opportunities for Billy boy if
>>he works at it. However, it may put a crimp in his megalomania. And I fail
>>to see why we have to tailor the marketplace for the most extreme desires
>>of entreprenuers if that results in being to corruption of the market and
>>the detriment of consumers.
>
>You asked what may happen as a result of FTC actions and I gave
>you my answer. Read some books about successful entrepeneurs if you
>don't believe me.

  Charles Keating was a very successful entrepeneur until they caught up with
his business practices. That is not to put BG and him the same ethical class
of even suggest BG is engaged in patently illegal activities by any means. If
the actions of the FTC or any other duly consitituted regulatory or 
investigatory agency serve to protect the integrity of the marketplace, which
is vastly more important than any particular entrepeneur whether he has a net
wealth of 5 bil or not, I will be satisfied with their actions. If BG doesn't
do it, someone else will.

>
>When I am buying software I could not care less about BG's personality
>traits. I would worry about them if I wanted to be his girlfriend -:). I
>am not interested in discussing any of his personality traits that
>are unrelated to software writing.

  Since he presumably does relatively little of the coding these days,
the whole coding/personality issue is moot. And I rarely consider the
founders personalities when selecting the best software and, in fact,
have many MS products. However, their personality as it affects their
business practices is a fit subject for discussion as it affects the
marketplace.

>
>The marketplace is a place where people are trading _voluntarily_. If
>some government beaurocrats dictate to a software house how it should
>write software it is no longer a market place, but a govermentpalace.

  *If* predatory business practices are used, then the voluntarism, in
it's purist sense, in deficient in the marketplace and competition based
upon such factors as quality, efficiency, and value are denigrated in
favor of somewhat less noble means such as threats and arm-twisting. It's
the gov't role to see that the marketplace operates, within the limits
of reason and due-process, as close to the idealistic model of competition
with freedom of entry.

>
>>  The rules are there and long established and well documented. (Bill
>>could learn a few things about documented rules himself.) All he has
>>to do is follow them.
>
>Show me where it is written on the books that the same software house
>cannt write both system and applications, or that a company who
>writes system API must give them all to their competitors. It is
>purely an _ad hoc_ invention of the FTC, based on the success of
>a single a company.

  The rules need not be specifically written in such terms. They are
measured by the effect and the intent of the practices. And nothing
specifically stops them from doing both systems and applications s/w,
it's how they do it vis-a-vis the marketplace that is at issue.

   Open standards are *not* a recent invention of the FTC. This is just
one of the first times they have arisen as a case point in an investigation
of the microcomputer software industry.

>
>>  Apparently you have developed a new philosophy of applications
>>programming that I have not seen in my 20+ years of it. The best
>>applications programming involves adhereing to the well defined
>>interface supplied by the O/S and not mucking about with and/or in
>>undocumented areas or the internals.
>
>Wuh ? In the MS-DOS market you cannt avoid knowing a lot about
>the internals of the system and the hardware. Ever heard about
>writing interrupt handlers ?

  Which is fine so long as one adheres to the documented standards
such as hardware specifications, BIOS or DOS interfaces, etc. All
can be considered well-defined interfaces though there are other
considerations about introducing hardware dependenies into applications.
You are not addressing the issue which is the exploitation and
non-publication (hence, undocumented) of features and internals.

>
>Besides, you say that if something has been so for 20+ years than
>it cannt be better otherwise. Did it ever occur to you that some
>people are innovators and are doing things differently from their
>predecessors ? That is where the danger of FTC rulings are.

   We're not talking about implementations, we're discussing principles
which don't change so frequently. In fact, the whole basis of API's and
the driving force behind Windows is the creation and adherence to a
standard interface for programs so that they don't muck around with the
hardware and software environment on their own to the detriment of each
other and the user.

   There is no danger in the FTC holding a company to legal standards
of fair competition and to adherence to their own claims and statements
about about the promulgation and enforcement of standards.

  And again I ask, just where has MS been an innovator ?




-- 
Jeff Sicherman
up the net without a .sig
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