[oclug] The chairman speaks

[Robert Brockway]

On Fri, 18 Feb 2005, Bill Strosberg wrote:

> Microsoft ten years ago was visionary - 'a computer in every home'. Their

Personally I disagree with this statement but I respect you have a 
different opinion.

10 years ago my criticisms of Microsoft were much as they are today, but 
today a lot more people are aware of the problems.

Many of the US DoJ prosecutions seen in the last 4-8 years stem from 
actions MS was taking 10-15 years ago.  If the DoJ had not been so slow in 
taking up these cases I suspect the computer industry would be very 
different today.

I saw little innovate in MS 10 years ago.  I admit they may have been 
doing some ok stuff in their desktop apps but I didn't see them as any 
better than the opposition.  I do think marketting is their forte'.

The 80386 came out in 1985 and it took MS until 1995 - 10 years - to 
produce an OS that properly used protected mode, and even then the road 
was rocky for a few more years.

There were problems with black balling any computer shop that did not ship 
MS-Dos with a PC and the use of their (already existing) monopoly position 
to force Digitial Research and others out of the market.  Plenty of info 
on the DoJ prosecutions of MS is available online of course.

No, I think 10 years ago they were operating much as they do today.

As far as I'm concerned closed standards and monopolies are far too 
dangerous in the information age.  I think our society is playing with 
fire and most people don't even realise it.

As for the "computer on every desktop thing", IMHO it was coming anyway. 
The rapid advances in computing had been pushing prices down since the mid 
70s.  IBM could take some credit for unintentionally clearing away all of 
the incompatible systems present in the 70s and early 80s but MS just rode 
the wave as far as I'm concerned.  I do believe they were able to direct 
the wave - into gettng a copy of their OS on every desktop but we've lost 
a lot through this.  Many of the desktop OSes comtemporary to MS-Dos were 
multitasking.  I think MS made people put up with MS-Dos for 10 years when 
they should have been able to use a real OS.

MS Innovative 10 years ago?  Not from observations at the time or since.

Cheers,
 	Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc.
Senior Technical Consultant, OpenTrend Solutions Ltd.
Phone: 416-669-3073 Email: rbrockway at opentrend.net http://www.opentrend.net
OpenTrend Solutions: Reliable, secure solutions to real world problems.
Contributing Member of Software in the Public Interest (http://www.spi-inc.org)