As a legal matter, according to Hillard Sterling, an antitrust attorney with Gordon & Glickson in Chicago, "[The states] need to show that Microsoft must remove these applications to preserve competition. That point is not coming through loud and clear." I can't imagine a good argument why it would.

Think about a market where OEMs could offer Windows systems in which parts of Windows have been replaced with third-party code. In all likelihood customers would have to rely more on OEMs for support. Information from Microsoft or other parties, like books about Windows, would be less reliable.

And the value of Windows Update--a central site where users may go for updates and patches to Windows--would be diminished. Users would no longer have one place to go for these updates, including security patches. I doubt OEMs would come up with anything as easy to use.

The states also proposed to force Microsoft to license the Office source code to other companies to port to other operating systems, the theory being that Office is a major reason why people buy Windows. (Presumably nobody thinks to buy a Mac to run Office.) Once you accept that it's OK to seize an asset of such great value there's a certain logic to this argument. But once you start to think it through there are plenty of good arguments against it, too.

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reat value there's a certain logic to this argument. But once you start to think it through there are plenty of good arguments against it, too.

The first thing I can see is that if your goal is stop Microsoft monopolies, extending its Office monopoly to Linux is a strange tactic. Second, once there are Microsoft and non-Microsoft versions of Office, it's inevitable that incompatibilities will develop between them. Microsoft and the other Office company/companies would have to coordinate their development plans (something seems wrong with collusion as an anti-monopoly tactic) or neither implementation can implement new features.

A much better situation from the competitiveness standpoint would be for other office suites to start gaining market share. The usual line for why they have no chance is file interoperability; Microsoft doesn't publish its file formats. Personally, I think interoperability isn't all that bad as-is. I've written a lot of data format translation code myself, and just because something doesn't translate well doesn't mean you don't know the format of the file. The features of the programs may just not analogize well. So I'm sure there's some excuse-making going on here. But even if this isn't the case, the correct approach would be to insure that Office file formats are made public, not to implement Office on Linux.

The case for simply ordering the proposed settlement seems to be growing.

How do you think the proposed settlement should be handled? Speak your mind in our TalkBack forum, or send e-mail to Larry.

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