“Professor Says Rival Products Are No Threat to
Windows.”
“Citing as evidence Microsoft Corp.’s own courtroom exhibits and
statements by its employees, the government’s chief economic
witness yesterday dismissed as ‘totally irrelevant’ a pillar of the
company’s defense at its antitrust trial — that its dominant
Windows software faces stiff competition from a new product called
Linux and from Internet-connected electronic devices.”
“But the day’s most lively segments came when the economic
witness, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Franklin
M. Fisher, argued that the growing popularity of the Linux
operating system and non-PC ‘information appliances’ would have
little impact on Microsoft’s monopoly in the PC operating system
market. He called Linux ‘a niche operating system’ and scoffed at
the idea that PCs would be supplanted by other electronic
devices.”
“To attack Microsoft’s Linux arguments, Boies displayed — and
Fisher commented on — two other news articles. One was a June 1998
PC Week Online article in which Gates is quoted as saying, ‘I’ve
never had a customer mention Linux to me.’ The other was a March PC
Week piece in which Microsoft manager Ed Muth said: ‘The more I
study Linux, the weaker the value proposition is to
consumers.'”