Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 21:48:35 +0200 From: Eivind Eklund <eivind@yes.no> To: Amancio Hasty <hasty@rah.star-gate.com> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Letter to DOJ: Microsoft vs. the Software Industry Message-ID: <19980513214835.64383@follo.net> In-Reply-To: <199805131626.JAA15791@rah.star-gate.com>; from Amancio Hasty on Wed, May 13, 1998 at 09:26:36AM -0700 References: <Pine.GSO.3.96.980513121433.17292D-100000@echonyc.com> <199805131626.JAA15791@rah.star-gate.com>
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On Wed, May 13, 1998 at 09:26:36AM -0700, Amancio Hasty wrote: > > Given that the Texas State Attorney has backed up off from the Microsoft vs > Software Industry Trust issue, mail your comments to the Texas State > attorney . Do it , Do it now and guess what ? You All are invited > to mail . Got a friend ask him to email ! [...] > For ease, you can always cut and paste my complain: Here is mine (though it will be more efficient if you write your own - or at least you can rewrite the first portion, which doesn't flow very well): ----- Forwarded message from Eivind Eklund <eivind@follo.net> ----- Message-ID: <19980513214528.05773@follo.net> Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 21:45:28 +0200 From: Eivind Eklund <eivind@follo.net> To: dan.morales@oag.state.tx.us Subject: Microsoft investigation Your Honor, I hereby request that you reconsider your decision to allow Windows 98 to be released without a further investigation. This is about Microsoft using their monopoly to try to make the web part of their property (as opposed to the present state, where the basic web technology is based on common standards, viewable by everyone). If they succeed in making the Web (or even a large fraction thereof) accessible from MS-Windows only, they've managed to (a) establish a tax on information (and we'll be talking about _large_ fractions of all publicly available information), and (b) locked out all competing operating systems - thus establishing a monopoly that will be close to impossible to remove. The issues to weight this against is extreme short-term profit motives, and the slight delay of new technology deployment that the investigation will result in if (and only if) you find that their "integration"[1] is OK. This new technology is (in my opinion as a software engineer) not a radical improvement, such as the step from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95 was - it is a small, incremental change with little impact for software developers and little impact on the efficiency of end users. Weighting against a tax on information, this technology advancement is in my opinion negligible. [1] I'm using quotes here, because it is my professional estimate that creating a technical opening for "integrating" another web-browser would be less than 2000 lines extra code. In comparison, the entire Internet Explorer has in excess of 1000 times as much code (that is, more than two million lines of code). In faith of you choosing the right solution for shaping a good future, Eivind Eklund ----- End forwarded message ----- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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