Bruce Toback wrote in message ...

>There's a catch to "using APIs": Microsoft has the source code to those
>APIs, and the hypothetical browser developer does not. This makes it much
>harder for a would-be competitor to develop sophisticated applications,
>because anyone who tries must first reverse-engineer the many parts of
>Windows which are undocumented but which must be understood by people
>developing complex applications. If the Microsoft employee needs to
>understand what sequences of messages are sent during an MDI window
>transition, all s/he has to do is consult the Windows source code. If _I_
>need to understand it, I have to buy a third-party kernel debugger and
>write test programs.
>
Hmmm.  This has a familiar ring.  I recall hearing/making a similar argument
for years -- except the owner of the OS was not Microsoft,  the name of the
OS was not 'Windows',  the products in question were not 'browsers', and the
OS interface layer of procedures  was not called an 'API' .................

Winston K.