Microsoft remedy effective or wrist-slap?

[Tejota]

*Originally posted by Squink *
What’s with the personal attack here ? Is the high road only something that you encourage in others ?
I’ve been coding applications, TSR’s, drivers, and patches to operating systems since the late seventies, and will happily pit my coding knowledge and disassembler savvy against your self-vaunted “skilz” any day of the week. I think everyone agrees that Windows and Explorer are tightly integrated. But when you say “The bulk of IE is really a collection of system services that are necessary for the operation of the Windows shell” it needs to be pointed out that one person’s system service is another’s embedded application; and if you remove the end user interface, you can reduce any application to the status of a utility library. In that light, the “removal” of IE from the operating system becomes less drastic than the gutting of the OS you, and Microsoft, would have us believe.

Apologies. I think you have summarized the issue quite neatly here. I will agree that if you define IE as merely an application, but not the utility libraries that are installed with it, then IE can be removed without harm to the OS. However, I don’t believe that this is the definition of IE that we have been using up to this point. Perhaps I am just confusing you with another poster, but I thought we had agreed that IE is ‘the functionality of web browsing’

It would seem rather pointless to allow MS to provide a full set of web browsing utility libraries to ISV’s, but at the same time prohibit them from providing a relatively trivial app that takes advantage of these libraries in order to provide the user with a web browser application.

And yet, that is precisely what Felten’s ‘IE removal’ application does.

To clarify, I present to you three choices.

is I.E.

[li] an application which can browse the web, using OS services to do most of the actual work of browsing.[/li][li] The functionality of Web Browsing, as provided by Microsoft.[/li][li] What is contained in the installer for MS IE on Win95.[/li]
I will stipulate that the first can be removed without harm to the OS, but that the second cannot. The 3rd is
basically the same as the second. It is the 3rd that MS believed they we being asked to remove from Win98, and the 2nd I believe we have been using as the definition of ‘what is IE’.

During testimony, Jackson at one point removed the IE icon, and then claimed that he had proved that MS was lying when they said they could not remove IE. I think this makes it clear he didn’t understand the arguments presented to him. The icon is not the program, and the program is not IE.

Felten is certainly capable of understanding the difference between these options, but refused on the stand to admit that a difference existed. He also refused to admit that his ‘feltenizing’ app only removed option 1, He consistently claimed that it removed option 2, which is demonstrably not true. (I can’t think of any way to cite this, but you can prove it to yourself with a copy of Win98 and Felten’s program. Just bring up system help and browse away.)

I believe that Felten knew that he hadn’t removed the funtionality of web browsing from Windows, and was thus lying when he claimed that he had. Can I prove it? no, but it stands to reason given the facts available to me and a presumption of his technical competence.

[Tejota]

*Originally posted by squeegee *
Tejota: I can see where you’re coming from with the ‘IE needs these zillion DLLs or it can’t run, and neither could Help or some other bits’. I can even see your point of view. But by that standard, user32.dll is a integral portion of Photoshop. It’s just too broad. You just cannot define all these random (and, yes, related) bits of paraphanalia as being THE browser. Well, of course you can, but I disagree with you.

Sorry, that’s not quite the point I was making. Clearly, GDI32.dll etc, is irrelevant to the argument. The point is that there is virtually no code in iexplore.exe. Which means that most of what makes a browser must be somewhere else.

It’s more The ‘we can’t remove this without busting windows’ approach is not an absolute engineering reality, it’s a legal theory, a scorched-earth approach (or perhaps brinksmanship would be a better term) to the MS/DOJ ordeal used by MS to thier advantage.

Agreed. In software, everthing is possible. But I don’t think they could have resolved it without busting Windows. They had already made promises to ISVs that Windows would provide easy-to-imbed browser functionality. There were ISV’s that depended on this, and the Judge basically told them to take that functionality out.

Microsoft’s response was definitely a fuck you to the Judge. He was out of line dictating software design, and MS called him on it. They won on appeal, so it turns out that they were right after all.

But they were also wrong, because they entered the second trial with the Jackson as an enemy rather than as an impartial arbiter.

Or you can open that HTML help file with Netscape. See, that was easy.

Actually not. Netscape would not provide imbeddable browser functionality for several more years, and MS HTML help is not pure html, its also compressed to save space on disk and has extra indexing to make searches go faster.

[squeegee]

originally posted by Tejota
The point is that there is virtually no code in iexplore.exe. Which means that most of what makes a browser must be somewhere else

I guess we’ll have to disagree. I’m more in Squink’s camp with “you can reduce any application to the status of a utility library”, which on the face of it is true: if you don’t show a UI or (in the case of Help) some extra capabilities in a window, then that ‘application’ ceases to exist.

originally posted by Tejota
Microsoft’s response was definitely a fuck you to the Judge…but they were also wrong, because they entered the second trial with the Jackson as an enemy rather than as an impartial arbiter.

Absolutely. I think this was both the most brilliant and stupidest thing MS did during trial. Thier whole approach seemed quite bizarre, and I recall thinking ‘jeez, guys, if you don’t stop pissing off the Judge, there’ll be Hell to pay’. And there was.

But in the end, this tactic amazing worked in MS’s favor. Again, I can’t decide if this was brilliant planning (they meant to piss of Jackson, perhaps discredit him? Hmmm. Nah.) or dumb luck. I think in the end what saved MS’s cookies was a combination of a change of flags at the DOJ and some amazingly fortunate rulings in the appellate court and some very dumb moves from Jackson (prompted by dumb [calculated?] moves from MS). Fascinating case.

originally posted by Tejota
Actually not. Netscape would not provide imbeddable browser functionality for several more years.

I was being facetious, but I think you picked up on that.

[rjung]

I just wonder, from a layman’s point of view, if Internet Explorer is such an integral and inseparable part of the Windows operating system, then what the heck is it doing on the Macintosh and Linux platforms?

Barring that, I’ll just sit here in the bleachers with my Coca-Cola and my bag o’ popcorn and watch the proceedings. Tejota’s answers are amusing – it’s almost as silly as watching Bill Gates mull over the definition of “market share”.

[drewbert]

*Originally posted by rjung *
I just wonder, from a layman’s point of view, if Internet Explorer is such an integral and inseparable part of the Windows operating system, then what the heck is it doing on the Macintosh and Linux platforms?

Well, based on the above discussion about how Windows IE is composed of lots of little scattered files, it appears that at least the Mac version (can’t say anything about Linux) is far more self-contained. Microsoft, these days, has its own Mac division which is fairly widely separated from the rest of the company - (I’ve even seen pictures of employees wearing “I don’t do Windows” t-shirts!) Their versions of Microsoft apps are built from the ground up as Mac apps, and not as crummy ports of the Windows software as was the case just a few years ago. In fact, as much as many Mac-fans hate to admit it, IE for Mac 5 is regarded as one of the best browsers for either platform.

Interestingly enough, Microsoft does not make a Mac version of Access - because it relies too much on the Windows OS. (sorry, don’t have a cite, if you want one I’ll look for it later…)

[Tejota]

*Originally posted by rjung *
I just wonder, from a layman’s point of view, if Internet Explorer is such an integral and inseparable part of the Windows operating system, then what the heck is it doing on the Macintosh and Linux platforms?

Dont let the similarity of names confuse you, IE for the Mac is a completely different product with different goals than IE for Windows.

IE for Win95 is a replacement for the shell. (That would be the Finder, in your terms). In Win98, the the IE shell is the only shell available.

IE for the Mac is a conventional browser, writtent by Mac developers at MS for the Mac. It is not a port of IE for Windows, and it contains none of the benefits of browser integration into the shell. [sub]It wouldn’t do for MS to give the Mac (or Linux) too much help getting into the internet age…[/sub]

[rjung]

*Originally posted by Tejota *

*Originally posted by rjung *
I just wonder, from a layman’s point of view, if Internet Explorer is such an integral and inseparable part of the Windows operating system, then what the heck is it doing on the Macintosh and Linux platforms?

Dont let the similarity of names confuse you, IE for the Mac is a completely different product with different goals than IE for Windows.

Oh, I understand the technical differences. I was just trying to point out that, in the court of public opinion, it seems like Microsoft is undermining their own argument that IE is an “integral” part of their OS when that part is also available for other operating systems.

Then again, as a software engineer, I also know that if a federal judge orders me to ship Windows 98 without IE, I do not use my chutzpah to delete every library and DLL and resource that IE uses, then wave the now-inoperatable version of Windows as “proof” that I had “complied” with the order. Guess that makes me smarter than Microsoft’s engineers – not that that’s particularly difficult.

IE for the Mac is a conventional browser, writtent by Mac developers at MS for the Mac. It is not a port of IE for Windows, and it contains none of the benefits of browser integration into the shell.

Thank goodness!

I mean, just look at Windows Movie Maker for Windows XP – it carries the “browser integration” idea to new levels of user inoperability…

[Tejota]

*Originally posted by rjung *
Oh, I understand the technical differences. I was just trying to point out that, in the court of public opinion, it seems like Microsoft is undermining their own argument that IE is an “integral” part of their OS when that part is also available for other operating systems.

Oh, I agree, giving their browser for the Mac the same name as their shell replacment for Windows was a big tactical mistake, But they are hardly equivalent. IE for the Mac, good a browser as it is, is a cripple compared to all of the functionality in IE for windows. In fact, MS probably would have been better off if they never shipped a Mac browser at all. But wouldn’t you be in a world of hurt having to use Netscape for the last 6 years

Of course, you would actually have to be a Windows software developer to make use of most of the differences, but that is really the whole point. On the Mac if you wan to browse the web, you use the browser. But on the PC, it’s easy to treat the web as an extension of your application. There are some very clever (and also some horrifying) ways that ISV’s have made use of this.

By the way. You wouldn’t happen to be an Apple employee by any chance would you rjung?

Then again, as a software engineer, I also know that if a federal judge orders me to ship Windows 98 without IE, I do not use my chutzpah to delete every library and DLL and resource that IE uses, then wave the now-inoperatable version of Windows as “proof” that I had “complied” with the order. Guess that makes me smarter than Microsoft’s engineers – not that that’s particularly difficult.

On the contrary, If you know that the Judge is wrong in the law in asking you to do this, and you are willing to bet that an appeals court will reverse him, that’s exactly what you do.

What truely boggles the mind is a federal judge who barely knows what software is who thinks he’s qualified to design it. They were right to refuse, and the appeals court agreed. Whatever you may think of MS’s implemtation of integrating IE into the shell, (And I’ll agree that there were some real stupidities: Active desktop anyone?). What the Judge told MS to do was to ship Windows without the ability to use the internet, at a time when every other major OS shipped with a browser. They didn’t really have an choice but to call bullshit on him if they wanted to stay in business.

Tell me, rjung if a judge ordered you to commit suicide, would you?

[rjung]

*Originally posted by Tejota *
By the way. You wouldn’t happen to be an Apple employee by any chance would you rjung?

Not even close – I’m currently developing software for a major aerospace company in Southern California. I’ve also done some stints in auto insurance and an internet development group, but the only time I’ve ever intersected with Apple’s real estate was the one time I went to their Cupertino campus (they were closed, since it was during the Christmas holiday) and when I browse through one of their retail stores.

I am a satisfied customer, but that’s hardly a crime, is it? Especially since I log in 50+ hours with Windows NT at work on a weekly basis anyway.

What the Judge told MS to do was to ship Windows without the ability to use the internet, at a time when every other major OS shipped with a browser.

Nonsense – Jackson’s order was to separate Internet Explorer from Windows 98. There was nothing in there about making Windows unable to use the internet at all, but Microsoft’s engineers “interpreted” it as such.

Tell me, rjung if a judge ordered you to commit suicide, would you?

Depends on the context. But considering how you mangled Jackson’s order above, I think your attempted analogy doesn’t work.

[Tejota]

*Originally posted by rjung *
Nonsense – Jackson’s order was to separate Internet Explorer from Windows 98. There was nothing in there about making Windows unable to use the internet at all, but Microsoft’s engineers “interpreted” it as such.

A distinction without difference. The purpose of separation was to enable the removal of IE from Windows. Otherwise what’s the point of separating? You could still use Netscape with Window’s either way, it wasn’t to enable the presense of competition to IE, but to enable the absense of IE.

The Judge could have ordered them to remove the IE icon, and menu item, and leave the underlying technology, but he didn’t, he told them to remove all of the IE technology. Are you claiming otherwise?

Tell me, rjung if a judge ordered you to commit suicide, would you?

Depends on the context. But considering how you mangled Jackson’s order above, I think your attempted analogy doesn’t work.

And you’re playing word games. Sure separating Win from IE was an end in itself. Right, gotcha, whatever :rolleyes:

What matters isn’t what you believe, but what MS believed. And they that they were being told to commit suicide. Their entire strategy going forward depended on the presense of guranteed known internet technologies on every installation of Windows.

You’re a programmer, so you should be able to imagine having a vision of the proper way to solve a problem and then being told that you can’t do it that way. That you have to do it in an inferior way in order to protect the market share of a lazy competitor.

Oh, and you have to spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions dollars on a solution that’s inferior that the one you already have completed and tested.

I don’t see how self-repecting company could do anything else but call the Judge’s bluff.

[rjung]

*Originally posted by Tejota *
What matters isn’t what you believe, but what MS believed.

Funny, I thought what matters was obeying the judge’s orders. There’s nothing intelligent about flagrantly defying a federal court order and then smirking about it before the judge – one does not need to be a lawyer to recognize that as “contempt of court,” after all.

But then again, the whole “we’re right and everyone else is a clueless moron” mentality is what keeps getting Microsoft into trouble. It’s going to be a cold awakening when Microsoft (and its apologists) realize the world doesn’t revolve around them…