Forget about O.J. Simpson and Paula Jones, the current US legal sensation is Microsoft vs. the US Justice Department. Put aside sex and violence, it's time for operating systems and browsers to have their year out in court. This is a legal battle with profound implications for the future of the computer industry: giant Microsoft vs. the little guys or faceless State lawyers vs. Gates, an honest, decent entrepreneur. Last December, Judge Thomas Jackson in the US Federal District Court ruled that Microsoft must not insist on Internet Explorer (IE) being part of every Windows 95 installation and must allow the uncoupling of the Microsoft Web browser from the operating system. PC manufacturers and customers could choose browser and operating system separately and avoid the "dominance by default" of IE at the expense of Netscape's Navigator, in particular.
Microsoft lawyers are appealing vigorously, contending that no PC manufacturers have accepted the alternative (non-browser) version of Windows 95, the version they scathingly refer to as "designed by the Department of Justice".
While the appeal continues, Microsoft is under legal pressure on other fronts. Up to a dozen states are considering joint antitrust action with the Justice Department on the broader issue of Microsoft's perceived monopoly position. The Senate Judiciary Committee is also concerned whether Microsoft is exploiting its dominance of the operating system market to impose its software on the Internet.
Then, a new pro-competition lobby group (ProComp) was formed by (surprise, surprise) several Microsoft rivals, notably Netscape, Sun Microsystems and Oracle backed by no less a lobbyist than former Senate majority leader, Bob Dole. Microsoft is also locked in a legal embrace with Sun Microsystems over Microsoft's version of Java. US antitrust law was used as long ago as 1911 to break up John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil empire; the giant Aluminium Company of America was investigated in a landmark 1945 case; in an early chapter (1956 to be exact) of computing history, IBM had a consent decree entered against it by the same Justice Department when it threatened to monopolise punchcard and, later, electronic dataprocessing machines (computers to you). The ancient IBM decree was lifted only last year. This Microsoft case, however, may well be the most complex of all.
The first problem for the courts is that the pace of technological change means that Windows 98 will be released before any final legal resolution of the Windows 95 issues; Microsoft will have moved toward further integration of IE and the operating system, a much-hyped feature of Windows 98.
A second problem is that it is very difficult to accuse Microsoft of below-cost selling of IE, even though they give it away free with Windows. Because it is software, the marginal cost of producing copies of it is next to nothing, once the design, re-design, programming and debugging are done. The marginal cost of producing, say, a new car - labour and materials - is significant, unlike the marginal cost of distributing identical copies of new software. A third problem is that other companies are perfectly free to write and market independent software for Windows - the necessary technical details are available, even if the Microsoft inside track is not.
It's a complex issue and full of ironies: Bill Gates started as a small MS-DOS cog in IBM's big wheel, when Big Blue was forced to engage with the emerging (and then diverse) world of personal computers; Microsoft at first largely ignored the Internet before it turned on a sixpence and started to build Web software into all of its products; Microsoft's acquisitions of WebTV Networks, RealNetworks and Vxtreme give it a foothold in the emerging Internet-TV and Internet-video markets but these are not yet seen as anti-competitive practices.
Many Windows users have decidedly mixed feelings about Microsoft software. It is too easy to use IE rather than make the effort to give Navigator a fair chance. I use Microsoft Word because everybody else does; Wordperfect has slipped quietly away from my desktop. I will probably end up using MSExchange for email for the same reasons of comfort and inertia. It is understandable that rival software companies are unhappy and feel that the playing field needs a heavy anti-trust roller applied to it.
As the lawsuits grow more convoluted and the software more complex, some challenging ideas have emerged from the confusion. Jerry Pournelle, in Byte magazine (www.byte.com) argues that the simple answer for both Microsoft and its critics is full, open documentation of all Windows API (Application Program Interface) calls. This would allow third party application designers to compete fairly with Microsoft. No undocumented features of Windows could be used. This is interesting because, if Microsoft then continued to insist that IE is an integral part of the operating system, it would have to document the browser itself - "file formats, hooks, calls, features, DLL hooks, the whole ball of wax".
Scott Rosenberg, in Salon magazine (www.salon.com), takes this argument to its logical conclusion: Microsoft should publish the source code to the entire Windows operating system. After all, Netscape has published the navigator source code, which will allow independent developers to fix the bugs and add new features. These writers argue convincingly that Microsoft must extricate itself from the present legal mess. By freeing its precious source code, it could do so at a stroke.
It's a fascinating scenario: can the great Microsoft monolith absorb the legal pressure and prevent a large-scale move to simpler, more varied and more open operating systems. Computimes, in Skibbereen Eagle mode, will keep a watching brief.