[ Thanks to Jeff
Gerhardt for this link. ]
“They are resurrected over and over like the miniaturized
themes within a Mahler symphony. By the time you have finished
reading Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson’s Findings of Fact for United
States et al. v. Microsoft two main themes have burned their way
into your conscious–innovation and applications barrier to entry.
Nobody can walk away from the judge’s findings and not understand
their importance to the case. And like any good Mahlerian theme,
they keep resurfacing to emphasize their context within the events
of the case.“
“Innovation is the major theme of the judge’s Friday opus. It
represents the effect; the end result; the tonic key. To Judge
Jackson, Microsoft’s stifling of innovation has done significant
harm. The facts which back this conclusion are relentlessly drummed
home. Time and again, the judge shows how Microsoft actively
opposed innovations which originate with a competitor.”
“Microsoft is successful in ruining Netscape’s browser market,
killing competitive innovation in that market. Microsoft is
successful in forcing Intel to kill their Native Signal Processing
(NSP) software project, one that promised to substantially raise
the bar of graphical performance for everybody using Intel
processors. Microsoft is successful in harming Apple’s efforts to
bring out QuickTime, a competing standard for multimedia content.
Microsoft attempts to influence RealNetworks, developer of
streaming audio and video technology, to favor Microsoft’s newly
purchased VXtreme technology. Microsoft successfully coerces IBM to
suppress their competing products: Lotus SmartSuite and IBM OS/2.
Microsoft took deliberate actions to insure that any Windows-based
Java implementation is incompatible with Sun’s platform independant
solution.”