6 May
2000
6 May
'00
10:27 p.m.
That is backwards. The law, and common sense, requires
that you already have to have significant market share
to have monopoly power. Monopoly power is the ability
to control prices and exclude competition by virtue of
monopoly power. To me, the question is, how did MS
achieve that power in the first place. There is no
doubt that once they had the power they abused it --
It started with the licensing of DOS at the vendor level to the
extent that if the hardware could run dos it had to be licensed.
Some of us may remember the early machines the the
"jumper" to disable dos. the is was to inhibit the CP/M
follow ons, Netware and the unix varients.
This first lockin of the vendors was exploited for the windows
software that followed. It would also get the DOJ to issue
an aggreement back some years for MS to stop this
monopolistic activity.
Thats how the got the power. The money came from the
applications and MS was known for them and never cheap.
Allison