BC, where were you in 1992? CompuServe was a world wide professional network before the WWW became a household word!
A browser to download? No way, People downloaded stuff over dial-up from somewhere back in the 1980's. Circa 1984 I was mailing Public Domain software for people that wanted to do BBS using CP/M on an Apple ][ **or a Kaypro. People could download back then without a Browser. Before people knew what PC-DOS would be.
For god's sake? BBS's don't download through HTTP, they download through other protocols, like XMODEM and KERMIT and whatnot.
Back to topic. The courts found MS guilty. Ms refused to fully comply with the orders. Time went by. The thing became a dead issue. Or so it seemed. The European court just wants MS to do what the should have done.
the EU reached a preliminary decision in the case in 2003 and ordered the company to offer both a version of Windows without Windows Media Player and the information necessary for competing networking software to interact fully with Windows desktops and servers.
They made a version without Windows Media Player. For the EU. they documented their network interfaces (how the *censored* else did SAMBA come about? Sure, they only really partially went through with it and simply released the Source code to windows Server 2003 to members of it's Work Group Server Protocol Program.
It's kind of funny. Linux Zealots sometimes say that "the source code can be used in a manual" but suddenly source code is no longer good enough to keep MS from getting fined 2 Million dollars a day.
personally, If I was Mr Gates, I would have just fingered the lot of them and withdrew from that market entirely.
And yes, there were some awkward claims made by Microsoft's
lawyers (this is an important point, lawyers are not exactly the most trustworthy people in any situation).
Basically, the original thing the EU was screwing MS for was the "network interop" features. their already WERE windows networking compatible components for both Linux and Mac, and to say that they got their info through sheer trial and error is ridiculous.
If this was any other company for any other reason, people would be outraged. the EU says "no IE for the european union" so thy remove IE and release Windows 7 E (I believe Vista and XP had similar versions). But even though that was exactly what the EU asked for, apparently they decided to fine them again for not providing the
obvious ballot box selection screen that was
so obviously implied.
And of course, the whole "undocumented API" bull crap.
Basically, some douche takes dumpbin and looks at the output from a few system files. If there are functions that aren't fully documented, then... "It's undocumented and being used for MS gain".
For example, in windows 3.1, there was a entirely undocumented function in the "user" module. The function was called "BOZOSLIVEHERE" Obviously MS is using this for their exclusive benefit! And there were functions like "BEAR1" and "BEAR2" and "PIGLET1" and "PIGLET2" and "BUNNY1" and so forth. OBVIOUSLY because these exports are undocumented they MUST be being used by MS for competitive advantage! OH THE HORRORS!
The truth is actually quite the opposite. "BOZOSLIVEHERE" for example is an older version of the Edit Control Windows Procedure. Apparently with Windows 3.0 some developers decided to call right into this undocumented function (which at the time didn't even have a name) rather then call the DefWindowProc() Function. When MS found that people were doing this, they simply gave the function a less then flattering name, made the new procedure elsewhere, and let people decide for themselves wether they were bozos.
the BEAR, PIGLET, and BUNNY functions are all essentially unit testing routines. They were probably conditionally compiled and don't have anything in them.
And all the BS about the "undocumented Shell functions" is just that. I mean, 80% of those "competitive advantage" functions are basic string manipulation functions. the reason MS didn't document them is not for "competitive advantage" but rather because they assumed that programmers could write some basic utility functions. Heck, half of the bloody functions have direct equivalents in the C Run-time and the run-time of most languages.
Most of this "undocumented" talk simply comes form lazy programmers, who see the Commandbars in office and say "that's probably a windows control" and when they cannot find it documented they assume it is a windows control that isn't documented, without actually figuring out that it's a part of Office, not windows. If you want a commandbar/commandbars, you can write one yourself. It's not hard. Or, you can just purchase/download one of a number of libraries that allow you to create commandbars.
A Lot of MS programs have UI widgets that people think should be documented so they can use them. How about you stop being lazy and write them yourselves. The ListBar in Outlook, for example, was written by the developers of Outlook For Outlook. And it's not that hard to reproduce.
In fact, nearly every UI widget that MS has left "undocumented" can be
recreated in Visual basic and half of the controls available there are simply wrappers around the already documented windows control (listview, treeview, etc)
And yes, it was important to MS to destroy Netscape. You may not think so, but MS sure wanted to do just that and they did. Read your history!
It's called, "The Price of capitalism" If you prefer democracy over communism or fascism then you better get used to it. better to have one or two monopolies in a free market then to have government sanctioned monopolies in things like Car Insurance and Natural Gas. The "government Sanctioned" part makes it perfectly legal, too.
