Sunday, May 7, 2000

Microsoft Concessions -- 1:16 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Microsoft is writing a reply to the U.S. Department of Justice's plan to break up the company. Among the more interesting offerings from M$ is this:

Under the proposal, Microsoft would be required to provide open, timely and complete access to the parts of the Windows operating system code used by independent software companies to design their software applications to run on Windows.

Note that "open," "timely," and "complete" are not defined in the article. It seems clear that M$ is not about to make Windows open-source. This quote made me laugh:

"The DOJ plan bans the addition of any significant new end user features to Windows for up to 10 years," one of the Microsoft lobbying documents states. "The DOJ plan would effectively reduce Windows to a small core of low-level functionality that performs only the most basic operations."

Read: the DoJ won't let us bloat up Windows any more! Is there anyone who actually thinks that Windows couldn't use a little deflating? The core of M$'s argument is that the DoJ plan would stifle innovation. I guess they would know. Thanks Slashdot.

News for 05/07/2000

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