Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: A World Without Microsoft

Author:Jeremy Bowers
Posted:6/8/2000; 11:04:35 AM
Topic:A World Without Microsoft
Msg #:17656 (In response to 17649)
Prev/Next:17655 / 17657

There are definitely healthier ways to structure a computing industry, and we might get to experience some of them.

Some co-workers and I were just playing mind games, and hypothesizing that this really might not be such a bad way of doing business: Let a monopoly form and then burn it down. The trick is burning it down at the right time.

In the last days of the monopoly it tends to look like a mistake (hence the impetus to burn down the monopoly), but all those people who say Microsoft should be left alone as they have provided focus to the industry aren't wrong, they're just wrong in thinking that justifies not doing anything about it now.

In essense, the Microsoft monopoly has outlived its usefullness. Working on Microsoft products is the benchmark of usefulness of most non-niche markets. What with WINE and better emulation, it may well become the worlds next lowest common denominator software. Look at Frontier, which basically seems to be waiting for WINE to catch up to the functionality it uses, and use that as the Linux port. (BTW, I've been playing with it lately. On the latest build of WINE that I've got, the menus are working for what is the first time with me (though the dynamic ones are still missing). I can almost use the outlines, too; they work correctly but crash quickly.)

The AT&T monopoly may have been bad, but we got a standardized phone system. The railroad system shaking out into so few companies gave us good railroad standards.

I don't know if I buy it, but consider it as an alternate view: Occasional short-term monopolies can be good in the long run, as long as we destroy them after they form. (Microsoft was short-term, we just don't feel like it 'cause we live on Internet time.)

I think the most beneficial thing about this viewpoint is that it encourages you to think of things as part of a process, not as a snap-shot view. Microsoft may be locally bad, but could have been globally good... and the hypothetical alternative where there was no monopoly, only equal share between Sun, Microsoft, IBM, [insert 2 more companies here] could well be a vastly inferior alternative.

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