In reviewing the facts, I've developed a proposed settlement for the Microsoft antitrust case which better addresses the issues at hand. Instead of debating a business answer to Microsoft's possible monopoly position, my settlement encourages competition to "put up or shut up" by forcing Microsoft to open up some of their technical monopoly on file formats and device drivers.
In my proposed settlement, Microsoft will be required to release full documentation of, and public domain source code to read all file formats handled by the MS Office Suite starting with Office97 and all device driver formats starting with Windows 2000; they will provide a plug-in registry service, similar to Windows Media codec discovery, which allows third parties to register import handlers for converting their document formats into a formats readable and writable by Office applications; lastly, they wil be required to release public domain source code for the Internet Explorer HTML renderer, including the DOM, JavaScript, XML/CSS handling, etc.
The goal of a settlement is to open up the unfair barriers to competition, without unjustly harming Microsoft in the process. Splitting Microsoft into several separate business units is always at the top of any settlement discussion. However, this would drastically affect the structure of their business (for better or worse). This puts too much risk on an already struggling economy. Another more radical option is to turn Microsoft Windows operating systems into a regulated monopoly. However, there is no precedent for regulating the price of software, and this kind of government intervention would have fast and unknown consequences on Microsoft's process for developing software.
However, a critical eye will notice that many of Microsoft's unfair monopolistic barriers come from technical challenges which can be easily overcome. I've proposed two simple efforts which I believe will have minimal immediate impact on Microsoft's business, while slowly opening up room for competition by alternative vendors.
1. Open up File Formats
It is simply better for everyone to be able to read and write the same file formats. If we had several operating system vendors in pure competition, and everyone had a different word processor file format, emailing documents would be chaos. The scenerio we want is one where there is competition for operating systems and word processors, but where documents are reasonably interoperable. Requiring Microsoft to document and release office file formats would make this kind of interoperability possible.
Fortunatly, Microsoft is already making inroads in this direction. New versions of Office come with XML file save options [Word 11, XML]. They might choose to meet this requirement simply by changing future Office versions to use a compressed XML representation as their only save format. However, releasing documentation to the binary Office97 format is still critical. Many companies have expended effort to read and write these formats with some success. Having access to proper documentation would make it easier for them to achieve a satisfactory level of compatibility with Office file formats.
However, it is just as critical for Microsoft to make it possible for Office applications to read (and write) other third party formats. This would achieve unheard of interoperability between office-like applications. Internet users would be able to email each other documents in virtually any file format and be able to expect some level of compatiblity. Those that wanted true interoperability would trend towards either Office or those Office competitors which had done the best job of implementing the Office standards.
A similar situation exists with device drivers. Every year, thousands of device drivers are written to bring Windows support to third party devices. Every one of these devices is a living breathing technological barrier to entry for any other operating system vendor. If third party operating systems could read and use most Windows device drivers to support devices, it would make the operating system playing field much more open. Intel has already attempted to create such a project under the moniker Uniform Driver Interface (UDI). Requiring Microsoft to make Windows device drivers available to the efforts would make this project viable. In the future, we might require device drivers to be based on Microsoft's excellent MSIL technology (something they might already be thinking about doing themselves) to make dependencies simpler and allow them to be used by non x86 architectures.
After Microsoft takes these steps, we can make a single registry for handlers of many types of standardized fileformats (ala AmigaOS datatypes or BeOS Translation Kit), specified either in JVM or MSIL bytecodes. This registry would be available on the internet for all applications to register and download from. Handlers for the Office fileformats would lead the charge to use this registry, ultimately leading towards a future where file formats truly are interoperable -- not because of paper standards, but because of standardized implementations.
2. Release Internet Explorer source to the public domain
Microsoft faught to popularize Internet Explorer as the best Internet browser, even when the browser itself generates no revenue. There are many standards to assist in making webpages and browser interoperate. However, in the real world, no implementation is perfect and web pages are written to work on the most popular browsers. Now that Internet Explorer has more than 90% of the browser marketshare, it essentially is the standard for the web. In order for other systems to compete, they try and try to build a browser which does not just follow the standards, but operates exactly as Internet Explorer does. In order to make the Internet equally accessable on all desktop systems, Microsoft should be required to release the necessary source code for Internet Explorer.
Microsoft will argue that Internet Explorer is too tightly tied to their operating system. Certainly there are complications. For example, the HTML renderer is no doubt tied to details of Win32 such as the GDI drawing system and Win32 message queue event system. Other details related to its modularity are also likely to create roadblocks. However, surely a development organization as capable as Microsoft can find the right way to package and deliver the source code. As a simple litmus test, we can require them to port the source code and deliver a working application on their free-UNIX of choice. This would likely be FreeBSD if their shared source CLI initiatives are any indication.
Conclusion
This proposal calls for some large tasks to be taken on by Microsoft which will surely alter their business by easing barriers to entry in some of their markets. However, its success is more because of what it does not do. It does not: (a) split Microsoft into multiple bussiness units, (b) regulate the price of any Microsoft product, (c) require constant scrutany of Microsoft business practices, (d) require openness at the Win32 or application level, (e) encourage any drastic change to Microsoft's business.
The changes which happen as a result of this proposal will be gradual, they will encourage slightly increased competition in several areas of the industry, and they will leave Microsoft, the government, and the Industry time to understand and react to these changes.
Are you with me? Can you say Federal Referendum?
Posted by jeske at February 20, 2003 10:24 AM
I am always suprised by the fact that, so many clever, talented people may act like a stupid when it comes to Microsoft. Your arguments misses a lot of points.
First can you explain me how come developing Internet Explorer is unfair. The only thing that can be unfair in this business is bundling it with the OS, and now look at the industry. Apple does the same thing, and rightly so. Because we realize that, it is so valuable to the OS. Say you want to write an application that will show some pages from the internet. No problem, just use IE component, built into the OS. Now try to do the same for Linux, oh no you have to deal with lots of issues. It is not as easy as doing it with IE on Windows, is it? Anyway, the point is that there is nothing unfair about IE. In addition, everything on the web has its standards. Mozilla is good enough to view almost any page on the net. I didn't have any problem with mozilla. However, many people still develop for IE only, not just because it is more popular, but also because it is easier to develop for IE. Try to develop for mozilla, and you will see that to be able to do what you want, you have to read the standards specification. That's just not practical in the real world. My experience shows that, either IE designers failed to comply with the standards and they just invented their own style, or they carefully thought about these issues and decided to make the life of designers, etc. easier by omitting certain things and introducing some other stuff into the standards. Now, it seems it is quite popular to bash Microsoft or any other company for not complying with the standards, but as a developer myself I found it way easier to develop for IE.
By the way, I read some of the court documents, and it is still unclear to me what is the problem with Microsoft anyway. At one point I hated Microsoft too, but now it just doesn't make sense. I mean Microsoft bashing is like a habit, nobody knows what a Microsoft basher is talking about, even the basher himself too. I totally forgot why people hate Microsoft. I don't see any reason now, not that there was no reason, but certainly almost 99% of Microsoft bashing is just plain stupid, lie, distortion and etc.. There is no doubt in my mind about it.
Posted by: Serge at June 30, 2003 2:23 PMRe-read your opening paragraph while chanting the words "mutual respect starts healthy discussions".
[[ First can you explain me how come developing Internet Explorer is unfair. The only thing that can be unfair in this business is bundling it with the OS, and now look at the industry. Apple does the same thing, and rightly so. Because we realize that, it is so valuable to the OS. ]]
I never said that developing IE was unfair. I didn't even say bundling it with the OS was unfair. The goal of the anti-trust laws is to promote healthy competition by intervening when one company has an advantage which prevents competition. It does not make a judgement about how that advantage was earned, but only whether it presents an un-rivalable barrier to entry for the market. My proposal was aimed at encouraging more competition in the operating system industry by making some technologies made available as a common ground. Microsoft does not sell Internet Explorer, so it is not likely to affect their finances to make the source freely available. It is just a small way to help other operating systems gain footing in a market where one player owns 95% of the desktops -- thus encouraging competition.
[[ By the way, I read some of the court documents, and it is still unclear to me what is the problem with Microsoft anyway. At one point I hated Microsoft too, but now it just doesn't make sense. I mean Microsoft bashing is like a habit, nobody knows what a Microsoft basher is talking about, even the basher himself too. ]]
Your lecture is very interesting, but I don't hate Microsoft technology and I never have. I use Win2k on my laptop here and I love it. I laugh at Linux on the desktop (which you can see from my other blog stories).
The problem with Microsoft is that they broke the law. They paid companies not to install Netscape, and they charged PC vendors for copies of Windows which they didn't sell -- because it is hard to fight a monopoly. They were pushing the bounds of what a corporation can do to win, and they got their hand slapped.
In our country, when a company owns 95% of the market, we are concerned, because we've decided that the overwhelming power of the monopoly is not something we want to allow. A monopoly can charge whatever they want for products, is impossible to unseat, and does not allow the competitive forces of capitalism to keep prices down. Computer hardware has drastically reduced in price while increasing in performance over the last two decades, yet software has increased in price. A large part of this is the monopoly Microsoft has on operating system software.
The monopoly exists because they own the software which runs on most of our desktop computers, the same software which most other software is written on top of, and which most documents are generated in. I'm sure they still would have this position if they had not broken the law, because for the most part their products are really good. However, we should not be content to have a single monopoly software player. The anti-trust laws are here to make sure that all markets have the opportunity for competition. My proposal creates more opportunity for competition with relatively simple compromises, none of which are nearly as drastic as even the antitrust investigation was for IBM in the 1970s and '80s.
Posted by: David at June 30, 2003 11:16 PM