From: bdubbs@cs.tamu.edu (Bruce Dubbs)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: ftc and ms
Date: 21 Dec 92 17:44:32 GMT
Reply-To: bdubbs@neuron.tamu.edu
Organization: Computer Science Dept., Texas A&M University
NNTP-Posting-Host: sparc39.cs.tamu.edu

In article <1992Dec20.202150.818@noose.ecn.purdue.edu>, helz@ecn.purdue.edu (Randall A Helzerman) writes:
|> In article <1992Dec20.3155.5785@dosgate>, "richard anstruther" <richard.anstruther@canrem.com> writes:
|> 
|> |> If it were only a question of other OS's, Lotus, Borland and WP
|> |> wouldn't care one way or the other.  It's applications too, or
|> |> more specifically, MS's alleged habit of using its virtual
|> |> monopoly in OS's 
|> 
|> First of all Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on OS's.

But they would like to.

|>                                                          If you want to
|> run DOS programs and you don't want to go to Microsoft you can buy
|> DR DOS from digital research.  And windows is facing very stiff competition
|> from OS/2 now, and when Solaris from Sun, NeXTSTEP from NeXT, Taligent from
|> Apple and IBM come out next year, nobody can say that the end user 
|> faces a lack of options in the marketplace.


The whole point is that a very large company with very deep pockets can 
afford to sell a product at less than another company needs to stay in business.  That puts the other company out of business.  The size and
importance of operating systems is much greater today than ever before.  A
single programmer can create a CP/M or a DOS 1.0.  It takes a large team to
create an OS/2, Solaris, etc.  If the other products go out of business, the prices are sure to go up.

For example, what was the cost of the OS/2 1.2 Programmer's Developmet Kit?  $2600?  That was done when there was effecively no competition.  It doesn't
really matter who is doing the anti-competitive practices.  Competition is
essential.  

Microsoft has grown to a point where they are trying to take advantage
of their size to squeeze out smaller companies.  When that happens, the
prices will go up.  Can it happen?  I think so.  Will it happen?  Without
organizations like the FTC, I think it might.  Without the FTC action on
IBM, would they have gone to B Gates for DOS 1.0 or would they have just
created it themselves?  Probably not, because they did not really have the
foresight to see the real potential of microcomputers, but the potential 
was there. (How's that for a frightening scenario?) 





|> 
|> |> to leverage other companies' apps out of the
|> |> marketplace by giving its own application programmers the inside
|> |> track to upcoming changes and undocumented features in the OS.
|> 
|> Would somebody please tell me exactly what is wrong with that? 


See above.

|>                                                                 Besides
|> whining "its not _fair_!!!"  Microsoft owns Windows and DOS.  What Microsoft
|> wants to reveal or not reveal isn't anybody's business but Microsofts.
|> 
|> If Lotus, Borland, WP, Novel, et al don't like how Microsoft plays, they 
|> don't have to play with Microsoft.  Let them develop for UNIX or the Mac or
|> OS/2 or VMS or OSF/1 or NeXTSTEP or TOS or AmigaDos DR DOS or the Acorn
|> instead.


Ah, but B Gates vision is to have Windows xx take the place of all of them.
Replace UNIX?  It doesn't look likely now, but with the proper leverage
it could happen.  Put Apple out of business?  A very real possibility.
The fewer the competitors, the more profit can be made.  

I believe that the strength of the country is the ability for small companies
to grow into large companies.  Microsoft is an excellent example.  We need
to encourage this and prevent the companies that have grown large from
hindering the smaller ones.

-- 
Bruce Dubbs                   |  Oxymorons of note:
bdubbs@neuron.tamu.edu        |  Honest Politician, Political Science,
                              |  Scrupulous Lawyer
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy