Salon: How the Web Was Almost Won

[ Thanks to Karyn Hunt
for this link. ]

“Just how close did we come to a Net ruled by Microsoft? The
“server wars” show a grim counterpart to the browser
wars.“

“In the study of history, it is often the things you don’t
notice that make all the difference. Connie Willis’ wonderful
time-travel mystery, “To Say Nothing of the Dog,” posits that the
entire course of World War II might have depended on such small
details as a cat saved from drowning, a missed train and a nosy
church warden. In a similar way, I find myself fascinated by the
untold story of what we might call the war for the Web.”

“The Justice Department’s antitrust suit and Judge Jackson’s
finding of fact have focused on how Microsoft used its operating
system dominance to wrest control of the Web browser market from
Netscape. Perhaps even more significant is the untold story of
Microsoft’s attempts to corner the Web server market. As someone
whose company competes directly with Microsoft, (we sell a Web
server called WebSite that runs on Windows NT, and we are active in
promoting Perl, Linux and other open-source technologies), I’ve
been privy to some of the not-so-small details that have guided the
course of this recent history. And, it seems to me that if it
weren’t for the work of a small group of independent open-source
software developers, the Justice Department intervention might have
come too late not just for Netscape but the Web as a whole.”

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