3 ms·

Kind of a strawman argument by dint of hyper-narrow focus, isn't it? Sure, there are no laws granting the government authority or duty to nurture Java or brows

by sk5t 6y ago

Kind of a strawman argument by dint of hyper-narrow focus, isn't it? Sure, there are no laws granting the government authority or duty to nurture Java or browsers; however, what Microsoft did more generally was to squash potential competition by leveraging their extremely entrenched OS monopoly. Java is (or was) much more than a programming language. Rather it was viewed as something more like an operating system. Write once run everywhere, etc. By comparison I don't imagine Microsoft worried much about Pascal or Delphi. Further, it seems... difficult to argue that a company that crushes nascent threats can't be a monopoly.

listenallyall 6y ago
> hyper-narrow focus Lol -- you chose to focus on those 2 specific items, not me. > squash potential competition Virtually every single feature of Microsoft desktop OS'es could potentially be provided by an alternative provider. Many were and still are -- disk defragmentation, disk compression, anti-virus, firewall, web server, ftp client, image editing, database drivers, etc etc. People used to pay money for 3rd party utilities to expand beyond DOS's 640kb RAM limit... should Windows be prevented from handling memory management in order to not suppress competition? Seems like the most basic function of an OS. Early on, you couldn't print a spreadsheet in landscape mode without a 3rd-party utility... should the government disallow Windows from enabling landscape printing? Does Putty have an anti-competitive claim now that ssh is included in recent versions of Windows 10? How about accessibility features... should disabled individuals be denied use of standard Windows releases because the inclusion of a screen reader, magnification, etc would be anti-competitive with commercial alternatives? > crushes nascent threats Microsoft "crushed" neither Java nor web standards, both of which are doing fine and outlasted Internet Explorer, the focus of the government's case. Most of the problems Java does have, starting with poor stewardship, are entirely Sun/Oracle's own making.

by sk5t 6y ago

listenallyall 6y ago

> hyper-narrow focus Lol -- you chose to focus on those 2 specific items, not me. > squash potential competition Virtually every single feature of Microsoft desktop OS'es could potentially be provided by an alternative provider. Many were and still are -- disk defragmentation, disk compression, anti-virus, firewall, web server, ftp client, image editing, database drivers, etc etc. People used to pay money for 3rd party utilities to expand beyond DOS's 640kb RAM limit... should Windows be prevented from handling memory management in order to not suppress competition? Seems like the most basic function of an OS. Early on, you couldn't print a spreadsheet in landscape mode without a 3rd-party utility... should the government disallow Windows from enabling landscape printing? Does Putty have an anti-competitive claim now that ssh is included in recent versions of Windows 10? How about accessibility features... should disabled individuals be denied use of standard Windows releases because the inclusion of a screen reader, magnification, etc would be anti-competitive with commercial alternatives? > crushes nascent threats Microsoft "crushed" neither Java nor web standards, both of which are doing fine and outlasted Internet Explorer, the focus of the government's case. Most of the problems Java does have, starting with poor stewardship, are entirely Sun/Oracle's own making.