States Strategist: ISVs Must Adapt

WASHINGTON, D.C.—In a video deposition taped last month, a key strategist for the states in the Microsoft Corp. remedy case said hed met with Microsoft competitors to help craft the states remedy proposal and called it “tough luck” for ISVs if certain pieces of essential Windows code is missing from implementations delivered under the proposed decree.

During the deposition played in court Tuesday, Tom Greene, senior assistant attorney general of California, told Microsoft attorney Steven Holley he had met with representatives from AOL Time Warner Inc., Oracle Corp. and ProComp to help draft modifications to the non-settling states remedy proposal. ProComp is an anti-Microsoft trade association made up of Microsoft competitors including Sun Microsystems Inc. and Oracle.

During a discussion over interdependencies between various components of Microsoft middleware and the operating system, Holley asked Greene: “So if Intuits Quicken uses Internet Explorer to render its user interface, its just their tough luck if Internet Explorer is not present in the unbound version?”

Greene replied: “Well, yes, I think thats right. One of the problems here is that one of the aspects of the barrier to entry is that its so much easier to write applications to Windows, that if those APIs, etc., associated with Microsoft middleware products are left in, then there will be relatively little incentive for people to write for other platforms.”

That would make it difficult to create a strong market “for intermediary kinds of middlewares that would allow people like Intuit to write both to the Microsoft product as well as Plle or Linux or Unix or some other OS,” Greene said.

He said ISVs such as Intuit might have to redistribute pieces of Windows in addition to their products to accommodate for whatever might be lacking in various unbound implementations of Windows.

Greene also stated that Microsoft would be responsible for testing all the various iterations of Windows that could be made under the decree. Microsoft also would be relied upon for support, he said.

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