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RE: [TCLUG:1056] Another nifty TSR from



Whether MS is checking for "approved" DOS versions or "unapproved" DOS   
versions is irrelevant.  The legal doctrine in anti-trust (as understood   
by me, a layman) is that "tying" sales of a "monopoly" product (Windows)   
to sales of a non-monopoly product (MS-DOS) is anti-competitive.  It's my   
understanding that this is similar to the case being made by Netscape.   
 The cost for an OEM to license Windows 95 and Internet Explorer was less   
than the cost of licensing just Windows 95.  Netscape believes that this   
"tying" of unrelated products was a deliberate tactic aimed at shutting   
them out of the market and driving them out of business.

Of course it is unreasonable to expect MS to certify Windows with every   
version of DOS.  However, it should have been possible for Digital   
Research to certify DR-DOS as being "Windows compatible", but Microsoft   
wrote Windows to rely so heavily on MS-DOS internals that to avoid the   
error message in question would have required verbatim copying of   
Microsoft code which would then have made DR guilty of copyright   
violations.  (IBM had a license that allowed them to do this for PC-DOS.)   
 Imagine a new user booting up a computer and getting a message that says   
that the software may not work.  The first thing they would do (in a   
significant number of cases) is call the vendor and complain.  The choice   
was clear, only use MS products or suffer the consequences.

All of this does put an additional burden on MS.  What most people fail   
to consider is that legally if you have a monopoly, you have to go to   
extra lengths to ensure that fair competition is possible.

 ----------
From:  Ed Bertsch

   

I don'tsee this as being anticompetitive or sabotage, necessarily.   
Another way
of viewing the situation is that Microsoft has only certified their
windows software to "work" with their own DOS and IBM's PC DOS.