It's the monopoly, stupid!

Michael J. Jordan, Linux Online Staff

July 4, 2001

When I was eight years old, US President Richard Nixon resigned. I remember that my family sat in front of the TV in our home about 20 miles from Boston and watched Nixon announce his resignation and my mother joked: "Don't blame me, I'm from Massachusetts!". For those not familiar with the story, Nixon was involved in some dirty dealings in hopes of increasing his chances of re-election. Those dirty deeds included the cover-up of a break-in at the Democratic party's offices at the Watergate complex in Washington DC. Eventually, thanks to Forrest Gump, he got found out. Ironically, Nixon probably didn't even have to do it. He won every state but Massachusetts (hence, my mother's comment). I was only eight, but I learned two important concepts that August night in 1974. 1) Politics was a dirty business and 2) Nobody was above the law, not even the President of the United States. By the way, before you fill up my box with e-mail, I know Forrest Gump wasn't responsible for ending Richard Nixon's political career. It was Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. Anyway ...

Last Thursday, we heard the appeals court ruling on the Microsoft Ant-trust trial and I was reminded of the same two concepts. 1) Politics (whether it be governmental or industrial) is a dirty business. 2) Nobody is above the law. Well, almost nobody. The Microsoft spin doctors were quickly out claiming victory. According to them, the company will remain intact, which is what they obviously wanted. Microsoft's actually staying in one piece will depend a lot on what the states who also sued Microsoft and their Attorneys General push for in a proposed settlement. Luckily, those same spin doctors in Bill Gates' employ took the weekend off and we began to hear the good news - that a breakup is not completely ruled out, at least not by the State of Connecticut, anyway.

The sure thing that we got out of this is that the decision reaffirms the earlier finding that Microsoft is, in fact, a monopoly in restraint of trade. I honestly believe that the folks in Redmond feel that it's no big deal. As talk started about a potential settlement, Bill Gates was imposing his conditions on the American legal system on Friday. He just doesn't want us to forget how powerful they are. I'm glad at least Connecticut spoke up and brought up that concept again that nobody's supposed to be above the law.

The company from Redmond is obviously trying to distract us all from the monopoly finding, despite the fact that it was actually good for Microsoft stock. What, us? A monopoly? Microsoft argues that they are essentially the only ones who can give you all the stuff you need to get you where you want to go today, so its just natural that Microsoft products are in the hard drives of most of the world's computers. They didn't plan it that way, it just happened. That's not a monopoly they say.

To me, it's like a small town in the Old West with only one blacksmith. He's got a monopoly, de facto. But what happens if another blacksmith moves into town? The first blacksmith can do either one of two things. 1) Convince the townspeople that his horseshoes are of better quality than the other blacksmith's by actually improving the quality of his product so that fewer shoes get thrown. He can also, at the same time, improve his public relations by changing his soot blackened shirt more often and by using less chewing tobacco in the presence of clients. That's the sort of 'free enterprise' thing that everyone except perhaps Fidel Castro speaks well of. Or he can 2) Embark on a plan of destroying the other blacksmith's business by doing things like shoeing horses in such a way that the shoes cannot be removed by another blacksmith. He might try convince the town's good citizens that they are better off having their horses shoed by him because that other blacksmith employs unorthodox shoeing methods. Proof of which, he points out is the fact that the other new blacksmith makes his horseshoes right out in the street where everyone can see how it's done. This blacksmith, bent on preserving his dominance of the market, might offer to shoe certain types of horses for free until he drives the other blacksmith out of town. I'll conclude my analogy before I start looking like the backside of the animal that the blacksmith is shoeing. You know what option software blacksmith Microsoft chose when faced with competition. That's why they ended up in court.

Speaking of horses and their by-products, The Washington Post ran an article last Friday in which they said that many, including Microsoft's rivals were "relieved" by the court of appeals' decision. They implied that this had brought some sort of closure to the whole business. I beg to differ. When Richard Nixon resigned, that was closure. Everybody but his dog Checkers (who was dead by then) thought that the person who was most identified with upholding the laws in the United States had probably committed serious crimes. Nixon's resignation meant that the country was free to get on with the business of running itself and could finally stop thinking about whether "their president was a crook", to use the words of Nixon himself. Yesterday's decision, in this writer's humble opinion, has not brought closure at all to the Microsoft problem. I believe that we have, in fact, opened a whole new shrink wrapped can of worms. We've broken the seal and accepted the EULA for more controversy.

If you like controversy, another key issue of Thursday's decision was about Judge Thomas. P. Jackson, who had originally decided to break Microsoft up. I guess the judges on the appeals court found it alarming that their good colleague deemed it necessary during the first trial to publicly compare Microsoft's executives to Corsican-born dictators and the type of businessmen that appear in Mario Puzo's novels. I suppose they have a reason to find it alarming. I find it equally alarming that there are individuals who possess so much power and money that they feel the need to acquire an equal amount of arrogance to go with it. I can image that Judge Jackson must have had such an unpleasant experience with these Redmond guys that talking about it must have been therapeutic for him. If only he had talked to his clergyman or a psychiatrist instead of a reporter, because his loose lips may have sunk the ship on which is carried the best hope for making the IT playing field more even, or at least his comments put a big hole in the hull.

As an outspoken proponent of the Linux operating system, the use of the General Public License and the distribution of software at as little cost as possible, the decision really bummed me out, putting it bluntly. Just as Nixon's resignation didn't mean the end of the American way of life as we knew it, the breakup of Microsoft isn't going to mean the end of civilization as we know it. Unfortunately, you heard and will hear a lot of people saying that it might. There were people who even seriously hinted that the US economy might even suffer as a result of an affirmation of Judge Jackson's original ruling. When did Bill Gates become more important than Alan Greenspan? I guess I've been so busy enjoying my Linux computing experience that someone forgot to tell me about that one. Don't blame me, I use Linux!

When my good friend, an NT administrator, asked me what I thought of the decision, of course, I told him, in true Linux advocate fashion, that I thought it was unfortunate that everyone was focusing on the turnover on the breakup order and forgetting about the fact that they were a monopoly. He then replied. 'Well, let's face it Mike, you just don't like Microsoft'. To which I replied, paraphrasing Georges Clemenceau, 'Quite the contrary. I like Microsoft so much I wish there were two of them!' Maybe, with a little luck and some help from Connecticut, the old joke will come back about buying Windows from Micro Inc. and Office 2002 from Soft, Ltd. I too, would love to see the day when we don't talk about one entity called Microsoft just as much as Clemenceau pined for the days when Germany was a collection of little principalities. Despite whatever remedy or remedies are imposed by the courts in the monopoly ruling, an intact Microsoft is just going to keep doing the same thing it has always done. That is, try to impose its will on corporate corporate IT departments, academic institutions, other software companies, governments and most importantly, the average citizen, in any way it sees fit.

All is not doom and gloom, however. Fortunately, due in large measure by the presence of Linux as an alternative, Microsoft's products are not being considered 'de facto' anymore by none other than the US Government who will start installing StarOffice on workstations in government agencies. I also read an article today that says that the Ford Motor Co., or at least the European division is seriously thinking about hanging up the sign "No Microsoft need apply", implementing open source solutions on servers and desktops in Ford's European plants. We may have to accept the fact Microsoft could remain intact, but that doesn't mean that it will necessarily continue to dominate the operating system and application market forever. Linux started a revolution in the way we think about using our computer, so it may very well be responsible for the overthrow of the regime from Redmond. It's an interesting thing to think about in July, a month in which we commemorate the anniversary of the start of two important revolutions in which old, despotic regimes were thrown off.

The problem is that when something is turned into a political struggle, in the world of politics, candidates almost never win and revolutionary political systems almost never become mainstream only by extolling their virtues. There has to be a certain amount of pointing out the vices of your opponent. Politics, as I stated before, is not a squeaky-clean business. Thomas Jefferson not only convinced the English colonists in North America that being independent was better for them politically because it was a free and open source GS (governmental system) but that George III of England was one lousy king who was trying to impose a system on them that denied them most of their rights. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? So far, moderate and responsible Linux enthusiasts and advocates (notice how I'm talking about moderate and responsible advocates as opposed to people who post at Slashdot) have limited themselves primarily to extolling the virtues of this operating system and the whole philosophy that surrounds it. Microsoft execs are the only ones who are mudslinging, by way of their comments about Linux being a "cancer" and the GPL being "un-American" or "an intellectual property killer". But I think part of the acceptance of Linux, much like the victory of any candidate for political office, also hinges of the perception that Windows, regardless of how many times they change the letters or numbers attached to it, is not a quality operating system and that the the "dons" of Microsoft have shown that they don't know how to play nice and get along with others. So now it depends on us, the Linux advocates to not only say that Linux is the best operating system available today, which it is, but to also say that by buying Microsoft products, you're perpetuating a monopoly, something which the free market abhors- and to say it louder than ever. It isn't dirty politics to say this either. A court of law decided that not once but twice. It's a fact. Speaking again of US Presidents, Bill Clinton effectively used his 'It's the economy, stupid' theme to defeat his then rival George Bush (without the W) with his message, a combination of "He's doing a lousy job" and "I'll do better". We should take a lesson from Clinton's political play book. It's the monopoly, stupid!

Michael J. Jordan considers himself a "Linux educator". Michael started his stint in the workforce as a teacher and his mission in this world, at present, is to educate people and businesses on the benefits of using Linux. He can be reached at Michael.Jordan@Linux.org