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Date:      13 Nov 1999 01:31:05 +0200
From:      Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr>
To:        freebsd-chat@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Judge: "Gates Was Main Culprit"
Message-ID:  <861z9vmgna.fsf@localhost.hell.gr>
In-Reply-To: "David Schwartz"'s message of "Fri, 12 Nov 1999 12:14:40 -0800"
References:  <001901bf2d4a$8d01f9d0$021d85d1@youwant.to>

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"David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com> writes:

> 	Yes, and they crushed it by putting out a superior product. What is wrong
> with that?

Nothing, but IE is not a superior product.  Superiority is never defined
as taking advantage of `internal' knowledge of the OS, in order to make
a program load faster.  For instance, half if not more of the IE
libraries (aka DLLs in the Windows world) are loaded because they are
part of the base OS of MS.  That makes IE `seem' to load faster than
other Web browsers, because a large part of it is already loaded.  This
is not superiority, it's plain good ol' cheating.  And more examples
like this one can be found at closer inspection, like those rumours that 
non-MS products are offered the great honour of a few extra wait-states
by the scheduler of the OS in question, which is another way of making
all the _others_ look like they're tooo slooow when compared to ma' MS's 
finely intergrated products, etc. etc.

Superiority is also a funny word to use for a browser that runs on one
and only OS, when that other inferior browser runs on a dozen different
platforms.  Ok, Motif sucks in X11, and I would prefer Mozilla to be
using Troll's Qt library or even GTK+ if that matters at all, but then
again who am I to push my own humble opinion on Mozilla crowd?

> > MS has not changed, and will not change unless forced.
> 
> Of course not. And thanks to them, we have an incredibly competitive
> computer software industry.

Competition is another truly controversial subject, especially when
based on what I called _internal_ knowledge (see above).

> Harmful to consumers? Please -- show me any evidence of monopoly harm
> to consumers. (Do you know what monopoly harm is? Or am I wasting my
> breath?)  Show me reduced output. Show me higher prices. Show me
> reduced quality.

Compare the price of running Netscape on *BSD, with that of running IE
on Windows.  Both browsers are free, but with IE you find yourself in a
lack of choises.  You absolutely _must_ use Windows to have IE running,
even if you would prefer to run *BSD as your primary desktop OS.

Monopoly harm begins when you start to get your choises limited, and the 
choise of one's operating system is IMHO a very fundamental one.

> And in any event, killing the competition is what companies are
> supposed to do. Our antritrust laws exist to _ensure_ the most
> vigorous competition possible.

Forgive me if I am wrong, but companies are not supposed to "kill"
competition.  Instead, they are supposed to create superior products, in 
order to be in the head of it.  If someone finds the resources, the
will, or the ideas to create the next superior product, other companies
are certainly not supposed to "kill" anyone, but rather try to create
something of their own with the quality that will ensure their
superiority and give them a larger market share.  Perhaps this would
seem too idealistic in a world like ours though.

So much for Microsoft superiority.

Cheers.

-- 
Giorgos Keramidas, <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr>
"What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing." [Aristotle]


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