From: Bill Frantz <frantz@netcom.com>
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 1997 15:54:41 +0800
To: cypherpunks <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net>
Subject: Re: Why I Support Microsoft
In-Reply-To: <19971220.051132.attila@hun.org>
Message-ID: <v03110704b0c3c7704fd1@[207.94.249.97]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 9:38 AM -0800 12/21/97, Tim May wrote:
>Anyway, the recent government actions against Microsoft are reprehensible
>to any person who values liberty. Microsoft is being punished for its
>success.

What I find most ironic about the whole Government/Microsoft thing it the
role the government had in helping Microsoft achieve its current market
position.  Early in the days of the IBM/PC, the government, along with many
major corporations, decided that the only desk top computers they bought
would be PCs.  There were many arguments about how they would save money by
having only one kind of system to support, and how by having multiple
suppliers, they would be able to buy hardware at competitive prices.

Well, one for two isn't bad.  The hardware is competitively priced.
However, the support costs are probably higher than competing systems (e.g.
Macintosh).

What was left out of the analysis was the cost of the software.  The OS is
considerably more expensive than e.g. Linux.  (And it is a hidden cost,
bundled in with the hardware cost.)  Then there is the cost of being held
by the balls by a single company.

Now the government could rectify some of the damage they helped cause by
doing the same thing any other computer purchaser can do.  Specify
non-Microsoft products.  Require special internal justification to purchase
a Microsoft product.  Require all systems to use open (e.g. IETF)
standards.  Ensure that there are several viable suppliers in all phases of
the market by buying from all of them.  Instead, they try to hobble
Microsoft.

I must admit to a guilty pleasure.  It couldn't happen to two nicer
organizations.  The Department of Justice and Microsoft.  It's almost the
same guilty pleasure I felt in watching the Iran-Iraq war.  They waste each
other's resources reducing their danger to the rest of us.  The only fly in
the ointment is that I am paying for one side of this war.


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