Antitrust Regulators To Monitor Windows 7, But Not Later Releases 105
CWmike writes "Gregg Keizer reports that federal and state regulators have struck a deal with Microsoft under which any version of Windows released after May 2011 will not be subject to the scrutiny mandated by a 2002 antitrust settlement. As previously promised, however, Windows 7 will be put under the microscope. Yesterday, the DOJ filed documents (PDF) with US District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly asking that she extend her oversight by at least 18 months, until May 12, 2011. Although Microsoft has consented to the extension — and acknowledged that the regulators can later ask for another 18 months — Kollar-Kotelly must approve the request."
Present admistration (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess the present admistration has the same relationship as the last one.
At least it's non-partism
Re:Microsoft and Antitrust (Score:2, Interesting)
If IBM had not been subject to antitrust rulings, would it have developed its own OS for the PC?
Under no circumstances. The PC project was fast and needed as much outsourcing as they could get in order to get to market within a year. IBM had no chance to develop its own OS because the project didn't have the time for that.[1] [wikipedia.org]
None of this had anything to do with an anti-trust ruling. It's more like Gates' hurried adoption of the BSD TCP stack in NT. "Would MS have developed its own if it hadn't been under scrutiny by the DoJ?" Absurd!
Re:Talk about revisionist history! (Score:3, Interesting)
You're right - sorry. More ignorance than revisionist on Netscape.
As for Mosaic - I have a book somewhere with a disk included of its source code and makefiles - that was all available for free download. Did the appropriate mods myself, compiled it on my DEC ULTRIX machine, and later did same on my ISP's *nix machine in their /tmp area (can't recall the *nix). Found source for a server in Europe somewhere, DL'd that, ditto build on ULTRIX.
Downloading browser and server sources wasn't hard - I might have used ftp, but I might have even used gopher for all I remember. :)
I used Opera as ad-supported.
Even by then, my browser at choice at work was lynx - who had time and bandwidth?