Actually, Netscape never made much of their money from the browser business -- they made their money from server sales. You complain about Microsoft giving away a browser, but Netscape did exactly the same thing. Your whole argument is really baseless and poorly informed. I'd suggest reading the briefs from the case if you're looking for the truth. It's annoying to have to refute the same tripe over and over.
Not totally relevant, but I like pointing out that most senior Microsoft execs are very technical. Senior VP of Office was originally a developer, Group VP for Platforms has a cs doctorate, Senior VP for Services was originally a developer, etc, etc. If they're not CS, they have math backgrounds.
When I interned at Microsoft, one of the designers gave a talk about this. He said that part of why overlapping windows were originally used was that monitors had such low resolutions. With the advent of large, high-resolution monitors this has become less necessary. Hence OfficeXP containing a lot more "docked" palettes (e.g. Task Panes). This is definitely the direction of the future.
Windows has been ruled a monopoly, not Internet Explorer or Microsoft in general. That kind of mushy analysis leads to all sorts of crazy conclusions, as demonstrated by your post.
Everyone should remember that loveable Netscape used to block foreign browsers from their site as well. This was back in the days when Netscape had 90% market share and thought it could bully everyone from AT&T to AOL. How times have changed...
1. Microsoft already pays billion in taxes, and that revenue can be used however govts please.
2. Throwing money at losing companies is not a very effective way to generate competition, at least in the long-term. If the companies are sound, the market will support them through the well-established mechanisms.
Microsoft has an internal tool called Raid that tracks bugs too. It's pretty slick, has a web version, extremely feature rich, etc. I'm sure dozens of other companies have developed these as well.
This article is a pretty preposterous analysis of very complex situation. The author clearly doesn't understand technology, economics, of the specific case, MS v. DOJ.
First: He characterizes the US govt's revised strategy against MS as a "surrender." It is no such thing. The US govt decided to drop the breakup pursuit so they could focus their witnesses, evidence, etc. on the area of the case they actually have a chance of winning. The breakup scheme has been repeatedly discredited as punitive, structurally inappropriate, and ultimately bad for consumers. In fact, the crippling regulation that the DOJ may now seek could be an even more deadly punishment for Microsoft.
This incorrect characterization of these events as a "surrender" is FATAL TO MOGLEN'S ARGUMENT. For if there was no "surrender", then the _supposed_ shift in sentiment among corporations cannot be shown to have had any effect.
Lesser points:
1. Where is the evidence that the hardware companies cited ever supported action against Microsoft? Or that their position has changed? I know of none.
2. The author of this article serves w/o fee as general counsel for the Free Software Foundation, so this is as objective an analysis as I might expect from the CEO of Oracle.
3. He characterizes WindowsXP as "bloated" to encourage a "round of expensive and pointless consumer hardware upgrading." This analysis could not be shallower. Yes, advancement of technology will require computer upgrades, but what other choice is there? To hold technology constant? To tell consumers "what you've got is good enough, improvement will be too expensive for you, my dear little consumer"? I would prefer to give consumers *the choice* of whether they would like to upgrade or not; those that don't want to spend the money are not forced. Consumers are not as stupid as many like to think.
(Further factual errors abound in this paragraph: that there are only two types of computers; sweeping and dopey characterizations of complex technologic issues e.g. the decision to cap mp3 "ripping" from Media Player at a certain bit rate, etc. etc.)
Anyway, that should give you an idea of my thoughts on this.
Whatever folks think of Microsoft, they have donated $5 million in cash and $5 in software, including consulting services to relief groups and government agencies.
Hmm...I'm not sure that's exactly right. Areeda, in his antitrust treatise, said that *courts* shouldn't be in the unwelcome position of designing computers. This is because of the chilling effect hard-to-predict balancing tests can have on technology development. Legislatures, on the other hand, have both the right and the responsibility to craft laws for the tech industry.
AOL has little to lose in the deal -- if they want their software on systems, they can just pay OEMs to put it there. And Microsoft doesn't have a ton to lose either -- they can't use AOL as a marketshare crutch forever; all Microsoft cares about is ensuring that Netscape doesn't get a monopoly on browsers which would create a viable middleware platform.
The console business is extremely capital intensive, and there are very few companies that should rightly be in the industry. You have to have pretty deep pockets to take a loss on every unit (about $130 in the case of xbox) while marketing the hell out of it ($200-$500 million) to drive game sales. Further, "The economics of gaming without first-party capabilities are not good" (Robbie Bach) since 3rd party royalties only touch a tiny part of their huge margin.
So, the notion of a tiny company without game development experience targeting a console at folks who historically haven't paid for much software seems pretty silly. Maybe there's something I'm missing, but it looks like they should pack up shop now.
Sigh...You might be interested to know that Microsoft was using the duck icon in an MSN Explorer beta before it was shown in any OSX context. And the designer of MSN Explorer, Craig Hally, used it in design mock-ups about a year before that. It's just a stock photo. Calm down screwballs.:-)
Re:You don't know what you're talking about
on
Racism At Microsoft?
·
· Score: 3
Well, Microsoft's attrition rate (9.6%) is about half the industry average (18.1%), so I think that speaks for itself.
I've been a low-level employee at MS and we were treated like gold. Not only was the environment laid back (come and go as you please, wear whatever you want, spontaneous water-gun fights), but they bought dinner for us all the time, had Friday Fests (music, food, free beer), threw huge parties for us, gave us cool stuff, planned skiing trips, etc. My managers were both reasonable and brilliant (direct manager was a top Cornell CS grad, his manager was a top MIT CS grad) and minorities were very well represented. The organization is also very flat, so I felt like I could have emailed almost anyone above me (our VP, for instance) and it would be read and responded to. I think that's the general experience of MS employees that work in the product groups.
It's their API, they're free to change/improve it. If it breaks IBM's clone, well, such is the life of a clone. Their obligation is to consumers not to competitors.
Actually, my argument isn't that two products shipped in the same box are unlawful if they're not integrated.
OK - so Microsoft can include Word with the next version of Windows since a word processor "of some sort, has been included with Windows since it was originally released"? Word and Windows are plainly not integrated, but that apparently contributes to the lawfulness under your reasoning.
Can I use Navigator inside Explorer to view the contents of a file folder? Can I use Navigator to peruse my Windows help files?
Presumably, Netscape could have created a 'clone' set of DLLs to replace the ones that Windows relies upon, in much the same way Digital Research created an MS-DOS clone. However, Netscape chose to pursue a cross-platform "strategy" rather than integrating with a particular OS. Also, the combination would not have been tested by the original manufacturer of Windows, Microsoft, so it could lead to unpredictable results. For instance, Windows interface elements rely in dynamic HTML, which Netscape chose not to support. Such is the life of a clone.
Given that IE is essentially a COM component...I see no technical reason why replacing the IE component with another rendering component which supports the same interface should fail - unless IE and Windows are artifically tied together.
You could make this argument about any platform piece that's implemented as a component. Also, what is your definition of 'IE'? The MSHTML component? In actuality, "Internet Explorer" is the name for a number of platform pieces of Windows, including shdocvw.dll, mshtml.dll, urlmon.dll, wininet.dll, shlwapi.dll, and comctl32.dll. Note that Netscape actually chose to rely on some of the API's provided by Internet Explorer.
I agree. You can replace human hearts. However, replacing a human heart is not a trivial operation.
Replacing/removing the integrated Internet APIs in Windows is not trivial. After weeks, all the DOJ's Dr. Felten was able to show was that skilled programmers with access to the Windows 98 source code can hide some of the original functionality of the operating system from customers. And still it caused problems.
Vis-a-vis integration, there is something to be said for the objective difficulty in removing it (again, let me stress objective).
Exactly. Dr. Felten spent a lot of time and was not able to accomplish full removal. Johns Hopkins would have an easier time removing your heart.
How can Windows and IE be integrated if Windows doesn't even necessarily require IE?
It would require something that functions *exactly like* IE in the same way your circulatory system requires something that functions *exactly like* your heart.
I mean, speaking hypothetically, what do you do to compete with a company that has a complete, or near, monopoly on essential software and is willing to use the strength of that monopoly to dominate other areas where it is not so strong?
I don't accept your monopoly assumption with regard to Windows, but speaking hypothetically, you improve your product and then distribute those improvements broadly, which is very easy today given the ubiquity of the web. Consumers are not as stupid as you think. Look at Quicken's dominance over MS Money and AOL's dominance over MSN. Internet Explorer began to overtake Navigator only when it was better than Navigator as shown by independent reviews. Even today, most of IE's share comes from AOL, which has said publicly it intends to switch to Netscape.
Tell me, did you similarly object when Apple released Cyberdog 1.0 in May 1996: "Internet access has been dominated by the application browser," said Larry Tesler, vice president of Internet Platforms, Apple Computer, Inc. "What Cyberdog offers is a new level of integration by putting Internet access directly into the MacOS and Mac applications." Or how about when IBM touted its WebExplorer browser as a "built-in" feature of OS/2 on its product box? Or when Sun integrated its HotJava web-browser with Solaris 2.6? Or BeOS's Native Internet Services?
Integrating internet support into windows was not only beneficial to consumers -- it was *obvious*.
What a weird, baseless, self-serving theory. Let's contemplate reality:
1989: Office for Mac 1.0 released by Microsoft
1991: Linus Torvald tells comp.os.minix he's doing a free OS
1994: Justice Dept. begins 1st investigation of MS's (specifically their licensing practices).
The reality is there's no demand for Office for Linux -- just hype -- which is why boondoggle-prone Corel is looking to sell their Linux Office division.
Remember when the hypesters were demanding a Java version of Office from Microsoft? And what a fad that turned out to be? The industry is full of hype landmines and this is one. They'll build it when there's demand and no sooner.
I think you're joking, but I'm not sure. Just to get the facts out there: Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple in 1997 as part of an orchestrated effort my Steve Jobs to renew Wall St. confidence. It worked; the stock jumped more than 40 percent on the news. $150 million is nothing to Microsoft, by the way, and they've probably unloaded most of their investment by now. So that's that.
I would say that no, it was not unlawful, because the technologies are not integrated...
Ha ha, so now two products shipped in the same box are lawful when they're *not* integrated! Wow. There goes your whole argument.
and because a file manager, of some sort, has been included with Windows since it was originally released.
Why does this matter with regard to integration? Do you mean that if IE had been included in Windows all along it would be lawful by your reasoning?
However, the second reason is that I can provide my own tires, or have my choice of the tires I wish to have my car run on.
You can provide your own browser and install it on Windows, as well as choose which browser should be the default. Even Jim Barksdale testified that Navigator was "perfectly interoperable" with Microsoft's operating system. 10/22/98 pm Tr. at 51-52.
Without extreme measures, a heart cannot survive without a body attached to it, nor can a human being survive without a heart without extreme measures. This would be an instance of the two-way dependence I mentioned earlier. Neither component can survive without the other.
Point is, just because your body is dependent on *a heart* doesn't mean it's dependent on *a particular heart* (JHU is happy to provide a substitute) a la the car-tire analogy; and just because your heart is dependent on *an attached circulatory system* doesn't mean it's dependent on a particular one (it can be kept alive outside of your body). The IE analogy follows: Windows is dependent on an HTML-rendering component (not necessarily IE); the IE HTML rendering component has no meaning outside the context of an app, but doesn't rely on a particular app. Still IE is an integral part of Windows in much the same way the heart is commonly thought of as an integral part of the circulatory system. Anyway, enough silly analogies...
Interdependence is perhaps the most complete integration, but cannot be the test for integration. Otherwise, most software written in an object oriented fashion is 'not integrated' and therefore an unlawful tie under your test e.g. you write an air traffic control app in C++ and your AirPlane class is fully encapsulated; the AirPlane class is not integrated with the app, and is a tie.
This is what happens when the govt. tries to take concepts used when reasoning about bricks and medical services and apply them to something that's basically a series of instructions. It just implodes.
Sigh..I wish that myth propogated by the Caldera spin machine would just die. The DR-DOS error to which you refer was disabled in the shipping version of Windows 3.1. The real explanation (quoting Urowsky):
Microsoft considered having Windows test for the presence of MS-DOS, because Windows 3.1 had only been tested with MS-DOS. The notion was that Microsoft could warn consumers that they were using an untested configuration and that Microsoft could not guarantee the proper functioning of their machine. To preserve the option of including such a message in the final product, Microsoft included in the third beta release of Windows 3.1 certain code that looked for MS-DOS. If MS-DOS was not found, that code displayed a benign message asking beta users to call Microsoft support personnel. The goal of the message to beta testers was to determine whether the code that tested for the presence of MS-DOS was working properly. Importantly, Caldera fails to mention that the message to beta testers did not mention DR DOS or DRI by name or suggest that the reason why the message was being displayed had anything to do with the beta tester's operating system. In fact, the message provided beta testers with no indication of what was causing the message to appear. Caldera also fails to mention that no such message was ever displayed in any commercial release of Windows.
See 'Linux Games Not Selling', which appeared on Slashdot on August 13. Contrary to popular slashdot belief, I don't think many folks are willing to pay to run a game on a knockoff platform where it may or may not work correctly. And vendors are unlikely to support it because of lackluster demand and a rat's nest of support issues.
Maybe I'm crazy, but it's not even an interesting question until there's demand.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, Netscape never made much of their money from the browser business -- they made their money from server sales. You complain about Microsoft giving away a browser, but Netscape did exactly the same thing. Your whole argument is really baseless and poorly informed. I'd suggest reading the briefs from the case if you're looking for the truth. It's annoying to have to refute the same tripe over and over.
Not totally relevant, but I like pointing out that most senior Microsoft execs are very technical. Senior VP of Office was originally a developer, Group VP for Platforms has a cs doctorate, Senior VP for Services was originally a developer, etc, etc. If they're not CS, they have math backgrounds.
When I interned at Microsoft, one of the designers gave a talk about this. He said that part of why overlapping windows were originally used was that monitors had such low resolutions. With the advent of large, high-resolution monitors this has become less necessary. Hence OfficeXP containing a lot more "docked" palettes (e.g. Task Panes). This is definitely the direction of the future.
Windows has been ruled a monopoly, not Internet Explorer or Microsoft in general. That kind of mushy analysis leads to all sorts of crazy conclusions, as demonstrated by your post.
Everyone should remember that loveable Netscape used to block foreign browsers from their site as well. This was back in the days when Netscape had 90% market share and thought it could bully everyone from AT&T to AOL. How times have changed...
1. Microsoft already pays billion in taxes, and that revenue can be used however govts please.
2. Throwing money at losing companies is not a very effective way to generate competition, at least in the long-term. If the companies are sound, the market will support them through the well-established mechanisms.
Now you know how countless other people/companies have felt after having history/reality warped by Slashdot.
Microsoft has an internal tool called Raid that tracks bugs too. It's pretty slick, has a web version, extremely feature rich, etc. I'm sure dozens of other companies have developed these as well.
Blake
First: He characterizes the US govt's revised strategy against MS as a "surrender." It is no such thing. The US govt decided to drop the breakup pursuit so they could focus their witnesses, evidence, etc. on the area of the case they actually have a chance of winning. The breakup scheme has been repeatedly discredited as punitive, structurally inappropriate, and ultimately bad for consumers. In fact, the crippling regulation that the DOJ may now seek could be an even more deadly punishment for Microsoft.
This incorrect characterization of these events as a "surrender" is FATAL TO MOGLEN'S ARGUMENT. For if there was no "surrender", then the _supposed_ shift in sentiment among corporations cannot be shown to have had any effect.
Lesser points:
1. Where is the evidence that the hardware companies cited ever supported action against Microsoft? Or that their position has changed? I know of none.
2. The author of this article serves w/o fee as general counsel for the Free Software Foundation, so this is as objective an analysis as I might expect from the CEO of Oracle.
3. He characterizes WindowsXP as "bloated" to encourage a "round of expensive and pointless consumer hardware upgrading." This analysis could not be shallower. Yes, advancement of technology will require computer upgrades, but what other choice is there? To hold technology constant? To tell consumers "what you've got is good enough, improvement will be too expensive for you, my dear little consumer"? I would prefer to give consumers *the choice* of whether they would like to upgrade or not; those that don't want to spend the money are not forced. Consumers are not as stupid as many like to think.
(Further factual errors abound in this paragraph: that there are only two types of computers; sweeping and dopey characterizations of complex technologic issues e.g. the decision to cap mp3 "ripping" from Media Player at a certain bit rate, etc. etc.)
Anyway, that should give you an idea of my thoughts on this.
Blake
Whatever folks think of Microsoft, they have donated $5 million in cash and $5 in software, including consulting services to relief groups and government agencies.
Reuters articles is here.
Either way, they were quoting the same person (Areeda) and everything I said still applies.
Hmm...I'm not sure that's exactly right. Areeda, in his antitrust treatise, said that *courts* shouldn't be in the unwelcome position of designing computers. This is because of the chilling effect hard-to-predict balancing tests can have on technology development. Legislatures, on the other hand, have both the right and the responsibility to craft laws for the tech industry.
Blake
AOL has little to lose in the deal -- if they want their software on systems, they can just pay OEMs to put it there. And Microsoft doesn't have a ton to lose either -- they can't use AOL as a marketshare crutch forever; all Microsoft cares about is ensuring that Netscape doesn't get a monopoly on browsers which would create a viable middleware platform.
So, the notion of a tiny company without game development experience targeting a console at folks who historically haven't paid for much software seems pretty silly. Maybe there's something I'm missing, but it looks like they should pack up shop now.
Sigh...You might be interested to know that Microsoft was using the duck icon in an MSN Explorer beta before it was shown in any OSX context. And the designer of MSN Explorer, Craig Hally, used it in design mock-ups about a year before that. It's just a stock photo. Calm down screwballs. :-)
Well, Microsoft's attrition rate (9.6%) is about half the industry average (18.1%), so I think that speaks for itself.
I've been a low-level employee at MS and we were treated like gold. Not only was the environment laid back (come and go as you please, wear whatever you want, spontaneous water-gun fights), but they bought dinner for us all the time, had Friday Fests (music, food, free beer), threw huge parties for us, gave us cool stuff, planned skiing trips, etc. My managers were both reasonable and brilliant (direct manager was a top Cornell CS grad, his manager was a top MIT CS grad) and minorities were very well represented. The organization is also very flat, so I felt like I could have emailed almost anyone above me (our VP, for instance) and it would be read and responded to. I think that's the general experience of MS employees that work in the product groups.
It's their API, they're free to change/improve it. If it breaks IBM's clone, well, such is the life of a clone. Their obligation is to consumers not to competitors.
OK - so Microsoft can include Word with the next version of Windows since a word processor "of some sort, has been included with Windows since it was originally released"? Word and Windows are plainly not integrated, but that apparently contributes to the lawfulness under your reasoning.
Can I use Navigator inside Explorer to view the contents of a file folder? Can I use Navigator to peruse my Windows help files?
Presumably, Netscape could have created a 'clone' set of DLLs to replace the ones that Windows relies upon, in much the same way Digital Research created an MS-DOS clone. However, Netscape chose to pursue a cross-platform "strategy" rather than integrating with a particular OS. Also, the combination would not have been tested by the original manufacturer of Windows, Microsoft, so it could lead to unpredictable results. For instance, Windows interface elements rely in dynamic HTML, which Netscape chose not to support. Such is the life of a clone.
Given that IE is essentially a COM component...I see no technical reason why replacing the IE component with another rendering component which supports the same interface should fail - unless IE and Windows are artifically tied together.
You could make this argument about any platform piece that's implemented as a component. Also, what is your definition of 'IE'? The MSHTML component? In actuality, "Internet Explorer" is the name for a number of platform pieces of Windows, including shdocvw.dll, mshtml.dll, urlmon.dll, wininet.dll, shlwapi.dll, and comctl32.dll. Note that Netscape actually chose to rely on some of the API's provided by Internet Explorer.
I agree. You can replace human hearts. However, replacing a human heart is not a trivial operation.
Replacing/removing the integrated Internet APIs in Windows is not trivial. After weeks, all the DOJ's Dr. Felten was able to show was that skilled programmers with access to the Windows 98 source code can hide some of the original functionality of the operating system from customers. And still it caused problems.
Vis-a-vis integration, there is something to be said for the objective difficulty in removing it (again, let me stress objective).
Exactly. Dr. Felten spent a lot of time and was not able to accomplish full removal. Johns Hopkins would have an easier time removing your heart.
How can Windows and IE be integrated if Windows doesn't even necessarily require IE?
It would require something that functions *exactly like* IE in the same way your circulatory system requires something that functions *exactly like* your heart.
I mean, speaking hypothetically, what do you do to compete with a company that has a complete, or near, monopoly on essential software and is willing to use the strength of that monopoly to dominate other areas where it is not so strong?
I don't accept your monopoly assumption with regard to Windows, but speaking hypothetically, you improve your product and then distribute those improvements broadly, which is very easy today given the ubiquity of the web. Consumers are not as stupid as you think. Look at Quicken's dominance over MS Money and AOL's dominance over MSN. Internet Explorer began to overtake Navigator only when it was better than Navigator as shown by independent reviews. Even today, most of IE's share comes from AOL, which has said publicly it intends to switch to Netscape.
Tell me, did you similarly object when Apple released Cyberdog 1.0 in May 1996: "Internet access has been dominated by the application browser," said Larry Tesler, vice president of Internet Platforms, Apple Computer, Inc. "What Cyberdog offers is a new level of integration by putting Internet access directly into the MacOS and Mac applications." Or how about when IBM touted its WebExplorer browser as a "built-in" feature of OS/2 on its product box? Or when Sun integrated its HotJava web-browser with Solaris 2.6? Or BeOS's Native Internet Services?
Integrating internet support into windows was not only beneficial to consumers -- it was *obvious*.
1989: Office for Mac 1.0 released by Microsoft
1991: Linus Torvald tells comp.os.minix he's doing a free OS
1994: Justice Dept. begins 1st investigation of MS's (specifically their licensing practices).
The reality is there's no demand for Office for Linux -- just hype -- which is why boondoggle-prone Corel is looking to sell their Linux Office division.
Remember when the hypesters were demanding a Java version of Office from Microsoft? And what a fad that turned out to be? The industry is full of hype landmines and this is one. They'll build it when there's demand and no sooner.
I think you're joking, but I'm not sure. Just to get the facts out there: Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple in 1997 as part of an orchestrated effort my Steve Jobs to renew Wall St. confidence. It worked; the stock jumped more than 40 percent on the news. $150 million is nothing to Microsoft, by the way, and they've probably unloaded most of their investment by now. So that's that.
If you saw the message, it was in beta 3. It wasn't in previous betas and it was disabled in the shipping version.
Ha ha, so now two products shipped in the same box are lawful when they're *not* integrated! Wow. There goes your whole argument.
and because a file manager, of some sort, has been included with Windows since it was originally released.
Why does this matter with regard to integration? Do you mean that if IE had been included in Windows all along it would be lawful by your reasoning?
However, the second reason is that I can provide my own tires, or have my choice of the tires I wish to have my car run on.
You can provide your own browser and install it on Windows, as well as choose which browser should be the default. Even Jim Barksdale testified that Navigator was "perfectly interoperable" with Microsoft's operating system. 10/22/98 pm Tr. at 51-52.
Without extreme measures, a heart cannot survive without a body attached to it, nor can a human being survive without a heart without extreme measures. This would be an instance of the two-way dependence I mentioned earlier. Neither component can survive without the other.
Point is, just because your body is dependent on *a heart* doesn't mean it's dependent on *a particular heart* (JHU is happy to provide a substitute) a la the car-tire analogy; and just because your heart is dependent on *an attached circulatory system* doesn't mean it's dependent on a particular one (it can be kept alive outside of your body). The IE analogy follows: Windows is dependent on an HTML-rendering component (not necessarily IE); the IE HTML rendering component has no meaning outside the context of an app, but doesn't rely on a particular app. Still IE is an integral part of Windows in much the same way the heart is commonly thought of as an integral part of the circulatory system. Anyway, enough silly analogies...
Interdependence is perhaps the most complete integration, but cannot be the test for integration. Otherwise, most software written in an object oriented fashion is 'not integrated' and therefore an unlawful tie under your test e.g. you write an air traffic control app in C++ and your AirPlane class is fully encapsulated; the AirPlane class is not integrated with the app, and is a tie.
This is what happens when the govt. tries to take concepts used when reasoning about bricks and medical services and apply them to something that's basically a series of instructions. It just implodes.
Microsoft considered having Windows test for the presence of MS-DOS, because Windows 3.1 had only been tested with MS-DOS. The notion was that Microsoft could warn consumers that they were using an untested configuration and that Microsoft could not guarantee the proper functioning of their machine. To preserve the option of including such a message in the final product, Microsoft included in the third beta release of Windows 3.1 certain code that looked for MS-DOS. If MS-DOS was not found, that code displayed a benign message asking beta users to call Microsoft support personnel. The goal of the message to beta testers was to determine whether the code that tested for the presence of MS-DOS was working properly. Importantly, Caldera fails to mention that the message to beta testers did not mention DR DOS or DRI by name or suggest that the reason why the message was being displayed had anything to do with the beta tester's operating system. In fact, the message provided beta testers with no indication of what was causing the message to appear. Caldera also fails to mention that no such message was ever displayed in any commercial release of Windows.
Maybe I'm crazy, but it's not even an interesting question until there's demand.