[olug] MS losing the API War?

[Thomas D. Williamson]

This reminds me of a discussion in the mid 90's about how to remedy MS's
monopoly in the market. The suggestion was creating a API Board to insure that
there were sets of common calls and any developer could get independently
functioning API's to create the software needed to run on a Window platform
unimpeded by the last minute changes that made other non-MS programs either not
functional or function improperly. Remember at that time MS Word for Windows
was battling with Wordperfect on DOS for professional and business offices.
Quite a few lawyers were using Wordperfect for DOS, long after Windows versions
were available. Even now when I looked at what Wordperfect did vs MS Word,
there are still some functions not in MS Word that the DOS and Windows versions
had.

The argument for the opening of APIs to an independent board did not go
anywhere. I think this was because the issue was too esoteric of an issue for
the courts to see how it would act as a remedy to the anti-competitive
monopolisitic actions of MS.

Tom Williamson


Quoting Mike Hostetler <hostetlerm at gmail.com>:

> I dunno if anyone else here reads Joel On Software, but today's column
> is very good, and very though provoking:
> 
> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html
> 
> -- mikeh
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