Joe Geiser writes:

>Sure, if someone comes out with a browser that trounces MSIE, and does what
>MSIE does (using APIs, and not plagarizing code)...

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.

The above scenario assumes no malevolence on Microsoft's part. Throw in
some malevolence, and it's very easy for MS to break my program without
affecting their own. If you doubt that there's any difference between
aggressive competition and malevolence, look at Intel, which dominates
the hardware side of the desktop PC market even more than Microsoft does
the software side.

-- Bruce



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