Coming soon: Windows your way
ZDNet | at | by Mike
Microsoft is releasing details of its plans to comply with the antitrust settlement reached with federal prosecutors last year. As part of that settlement, Microsoft agreed to open up the Windows desktop to middleware competition. With the release of Service Pack 1, due later this year, it will do just that. This solution won't be enough for the nine states still pursuing the antitrust case. They want Microsoft to completely remove the underlying middleware code. Whether or not that can be done without crippling Windows is one of the main issues still being argued in that Baltimore courtroom.
Of course, all that middleware code could be removed. It's absolutely possible to have an operating system with no built-in multimedia support or HTML rendering, mail, or instant messaging capabilities. The question is: Would you want to use it?
Sure, it's possible--even probable--that companies other than Microsoft would offer new modules to supply these functions. Software developers could then, presumably, use the services provided by these modules to bolster their apps. But all those middleware apps would have their own programming interfaces through which other apps and the operating system itself would access them. This means that applications developers would have to decide which of these programming interfaces to support--with no discernible advantage to users. In other words, developers would have to work harder just to stay where they are today.