From: bkliewer@dkmicro.com
Subject: OS/2 Pro Calls for Breakup of Microsoft
Date: 1995/04/11
Message-ID: <3mefbe$k2k@cedar.mr.net>#1/1
organization: Minnesota Regional Network
reply-to: bkliewer@dkmicro.com
newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.os2.misc


Magazine calls for Microsoft to be Broken Up,
Windows De-Installed from Nation's Computers

     An independent OS/2 publication has called upon the Justice Department 
to break up the Microsoft empire and actually de-install Windows from the 
nation's desktops. 

     In its April cover story, OS/2 Professional, which hits the stands 
this week, asserts that a move similar to the Justice Department's break-up 
and de-installation of AT&T and its telephone service in 1982 is the only 
way to remedy the entrenched monopolistic practices of Microsoft. The 
company has garnered some 80 percent of the operating system market and 
consequently maintains life or death control over many of the computer 
world's applications. It has also stifled the growth of IBM's advanced 
operating system, OS/2. Microsoft's future is now the subject of a 
contested antitrust decree that Federal Judge Stanley Sporkin insists is 
too ineffectual to approve.

     The article, The De-Installation of Windows, suggests Microsoft be 
broken up into three entities: Microsoft Operating System Co., to develop 
and market DOS, Windows, NT, and certain related products, such as Lan 
Manager; Microsoft Applications Co., to develop and market such 
applications as Word, Excel, and Access; and a third company, to develop 
and market such consumer services as the Microsoft Network. The article 
suggests that employment and communication between the companies be limited 
as well.

     OS/2 Professional's article suggests that Windows could be 
de-installed from the nation's computers--much as AT&T's long distance 
service was de-installed--by sending diskettes to every 386 or better 
desktop owner, offering a choice of DOS, Windows, OS/2, NT, UNIX, or 
another leading operating system. The magazine says that while many people 
have paid for Windows because of OEM preloading agreements, they never use 
the system. These people would be entitled to a refund. 

     All new computers would be required to offer any of a number of 
operating systems via CD-ROM. CD-ROM players would become standard on new 
computers. Consumers could choose and switch operating systems, just as 
they do now for long distance companies.

     The magazine acknowledges that the de-installation process would be 
intensely disruptive, just as the AT&T break-up was. But when the process 
is over, the nation would be free from the manipulation and inter-company 
warfare that now threatens the economic well-being of an increasingly 
computerized society.

     OS/2 Professional says the only way to remedy the anti-competitive 
world Microsoft has created is for the Justice Department to stop fighting 
Judge Sporkin and recreate the type of cooperation Federal Judge Harold 
Greene and the Justice Department enjoyed when Judge Greene dismantled 
AT&T.

     The article was written by award-winning Publisher and Editor-in-Chief 
Edwin Black, along with Editor Bradley Kliewer.  Last year, OS/2 
Professional won the Computer Press Association Award for the best new 
magazine of the year. It is the oldest and largest independent OS/2 
magazine in the country.