Monopoly=bad; breakup=bad; competition=good (Score 1)

Undeniably Microsoft is a monopoly, whatever the $600/hour lawyers can say in the court about it is not going to change the fact. However, is braking up this software giant going to do any good? Well, I do not think so. First of all, anyone thinking that two companies, one producing the OS, and the other applications for that OS must be blind. If 90% of all computers run Windows, and the remaining 5% run MacOS, it is unlikely that there would ever be an Office version for UNIX or Linux. Why, because that already covers 95%. Secondly, what would be the nature of the competition? Those companies would have to work very closely anyway, making products for the Windows platform. Finally, one can only imagine the turmoil caused by the breakup decision. The stock market would go down, thousands of people get fired, and more lose on Microsoft shares. Isn't it better to impose certain restrictions on Microsoft, which would disable anti-competitive actions on their part? Perhaps it would be a good idea to require Microsoft to open the source code to all their free products (such as IE, Media Player, Outlook), or force them to charge money for them if they choose not to? (Of course that could be difficult to do since MS could charge some ridiculous amount like $0.10, but such law with additional restrictions is not impossible. When it comes to MS ignorance, I believe that their late moves are indented to lower their market share. The new software activation model (currently used by Citrix), which requires a 30-day activation based on an algorithm, is nothing but a rope on MS neck. In the short term it may give them more money, but in the long run (few years) the use of other operating systems will increase. But again, maybe that is what MS wants? I have been using Windows for 6 years. But I will never purchase anything from MS after the new activation is in place. I just do not like the model where I purchase a piece of software that I do not fully own. I will likely find it difficult, since I work for an IT dept. in a mid-size corporation, but we have been actively researching other options like FreeBSD, Solaris, and Linux, and already lobotomized a few Wintel servers and workstations. I hope that the UNIX-like OSes will get better on the workstations some time soon, so we could introduce it to more staff. Keep up the good work!