MS Anti-Trust Litigation - The Case For Standards

Ken Krechmer writes "Microsoft Anti-Trust Litigation - The Case for Standards is the title of an article which won first prize this year at World Standards Day. Since it offers a somewhat different proposed resolution of the Microsoft litigation, you may find it interesting. See http://www.csrstds.com/WSD2000.html to read and post if desired (it is available for free republication with attribution shown)." Not sure I agree with all of the conclusions, but the piece is very thoughtfully argued and constructed.

Comments

interesting but dangerous

[selectspec]

Do we really want our government defining and enforcing protocols and standards for operating systems, desktop software and networking protocols? I'm no fan of Microsoft, but keep the government out of protocols and standards. I don't want to "elect" the best operating system, the best network protocol, the best script language, etc.

Define, No; Enforce, YES!

[Planesdragon]

Of course we don't want the government to define software standards--if we did that, politics would get in the way, inevitably. What we want in software standards is exactly what we have in accounting standards--enforced by the government, but defined by the industry.

The government decided that there had to be standards after the 1920s fall, AND they do it intelligently--they have the various people in the market get together and agree on the standards, and then they enforce them.

And in software, we wouldn't be choosing the best method, we'd be choosing the standard method. If you have a better method, use that and convice people to switch.