I fail to see the value of breaking the company into an OS company and an Apps company. I believe a better solution would be to provide a few simple constraints on their behavior:
Muzzle them, like was done to IBM - no product pre-announcements designed to freeze the market for competitors that have beaten MS to market with an innovative product.
Complete disclosure of APIs, file formats, protocols, etc.
Any new API, format or protocol must be fully documented and publicly released, with no licensing costs for creating compatible products, three months before any product using said API is brought to market.
Any change to an existing protocol, format, etc. must be documented and released six months before any product utilizing said API is brought to market.
Failure to adhere to the above rules would result in fines of an appropriate size that would make even a company with the cash reserves of MS shudder.
Simply forcing them to disclose the information about their APIs, protocols, etc. could prevent them from breaking competitors' products and forcing solutions to use the same platform for both client and server, which, to me, is one of the most insidious things that MS currently does.
Slashdot Mirror
- Muzzle them, like was done to IBM - no product pre-announcements designed to freeze the market for competitors that have beaten MS to market with an innovative product.
- Complete disclosure of APIs, file formats, protocols, etc.
- Any new API, format or protocol must be fully documented and publicly released, with no licensing costs for creating compatible products, three months before any product using said API is brought to market.
- Any change to an existing protocol, format, etc. must be documented and released six months before any product utilizing said API is brought to market.
- Failure to adhere to the above rules would result in fines of an appropriate size that would make even a company with the cash reserves of MS shudder.
Simply forcing them to disclose the information about their APIs, protocols, etc. could prevent them from breaking competitors' products and forcing solutions to use the same platform for both client and server, which, to me, is one of the most insidious things that MS currently does.