Companies also might be reluctant to talk because the deal allows Microsoft to keep from its competitors the critical details about how programs and operating systems can function best in a Windows environment.
Software programs are intricate tapestries. To function smoothly when running on top of an operating system like Windows, the stitches that link an application with the operating system must be snug and seamless.
Competitors complain that because Microsoft was not compelled to immediately reveal to them how to make those stitches, it will continue to dominate in such areas as word processing, spreadsheets and e-mail.
"This settlement does not remedy the monopoly. It legitimizes it," said Michael Tiemann, chief technical officer at Red Hat Inc, a distributor of a variant of Linux, a competing operating system whose basic code is open and public.
Microsoft has a history of undermining software projects backed by consortia of major tech companies that aim to create applications that work well with a variety of operating systems, potentially threatening the Windows monopoly.
The company infuriated promoters of Java when it created Microsoft-specific versions of the programming language in the late 1990s. This year, Microsoft changed and patented a protocol used by Samba, open-source software that lets a Linux machine share files or manage print jobs like a Windows server.
"The whole concept of a free market is to allow fair and open competition and to permit customers to make choices," Tiemann said.
Steven McGeady, a former Intel Corp vice president who made headlines during the antitrust trial for testifying against Microsoft, said the deal only reinforces his own, post-Intel business strategy.
"I still think that competing with Microsoft head-on is a bad business practice," he said. "And it would be a bad business practice regardless of any of the potential remedies."
RSS