osOpinion: The Warped Perspective: December 2000

Dec 08, 2000, 08:22 (9 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Tom Nadeau)

[ Thanks to Kelly McNeill for this link. ]

"So it is that companies who choose to develop for Microsoft platforms experience boom-and-bust cycles. Netscape, for example, had a huge market share until Microsoft decided to flood the market with a free Internet browser they "bought" from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Microsoft "bought" it by promising to pay a percentage royalty on any Windows version it sold...then refused to charge money for the Windows versions...."

"Now a new threat is now on the horizon, a new Microsoft scheme which endangers even the ability to engage in a survival-move to new market niches. What does Microsoft call this new scheme? Security."

"Yes, the people at Microsoft, the purveyor of insecure products for the uninformed, has decided to offer a diabolical tradeoff: Let us write software APIs that require any application to be "pre-approved," they say. Let us build new Windows versions that will only run application programs that have Microsoft-approved "signatures." If you don't want viruses, they claim, you will have to give up the ability to run "foreign" (competing) applications from "unknown parties" (new competitors)."

Complete Story

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