The U.S. Justice Department settled their case with Microsoft, in which they found that while Microsoft <i>is</i> a monopoly and has been for over a decade, the U.S. unfortunately has too much growth and economy riding on their stock (recall that the announcement of the finding of fact against Microsoft in 2000 precipitated the bursting of the dot-com bubble), so they decided to let them keep doing what they're doing, with nary a nod to the thousands of companies either gobbled up, run out of business or which simply never got started because of Microsoft's violations. Several U.S. states still have cases pending against Microsoft, despite their generous settlement offer, which would give over a billion dollars of software licenses and hardware to the U.S. education system. However, as Steve Jobs was the first to mention, the education market is one of the few in which Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly, with Apple still holding 40% of the market. Deciding that the best way to redress the crimes of a monopolist corporation is to "punish" them by forcing them to spend money on a market they haven't been able to get a monopoly in was a singularly evil idea, doubtless hatched by Microsoft's army of lawyers. Jobs' suggestion was to force Microsoft to pay the money to the schools and let them buy what they like (which is also self-serving, since he could be guaranteed to see about 400 million of it, by market share). That's the status of the anti-trust violation Microsoft has been fighting recently. That case starred Netscape, initially, and was nicely obfuscated by the whole "what can you integrate into your system?" question. The real case never made it to trial. You see, Microsoft is not a monopoly because they ship the execrable Internet Explorer with their equally execrable Windows systems. They are a monopoly because they lock hardware manufacturers into contracts in which the only system they can ship on a machine is Windows. When you buy a computer, you buy hardware. It comes with an operating system that lets you do something with your hardware. Usually, that system is Windows. When you boot up, you use Windows because that's what's given to you. Have you ever tried Linux or Be? All you do with the computer is listen to music, browse the internet and write the "letter to Grandma". Both those systems do that. The BeOS does all of those things far faster and more elegantly than Windows does. BeOS did it so fast, you wouldn't even have had to upgrade your computer to handle the latest pudgy version of Windows. Why is there only one system on the computer? There are several out there...I'm sure most of you have heard of Linux by now, but most of you have also never tried it. Why not? What if the computer you buy came with 2 or even 3 different systems that you could sample before choosing the one you liked? How do you know you like Windows better than Linux without trying both? Why aren't you given the choice? Installing Linux on your own is not for the faint of heart, but neither is installing Windows. That's where the monopoly comes in. Microsoft locks hardware manufacturers into installing <i>only</i> Windows, thereby almost guaranteeing that that is the system you will use. That's the crux of Be Inc.'s allegations. These allegations have been well-covered in <a href="http://www.byte.com/documents/s=1115/byt20010824s0001/0827_hacker.html">He Who Controls the Bootloader</a> at <a href="http://www.byte.com/">Byte.com</a>. <span class="quote"><q>So why aren't there any dual-boot computers for sale? The answer lies in the nature of the relationship Microsoft maintains with hardware vendors. More specifically, in the "Windows License" agreed to by hardware vendors who want to include Windows on the computers they sell. ... The license specifies that any machine which includes a Microsoft operating system must not also offer a nonMicrosoft operating system as a boot option. In other words, a computer that offers to boot into Windows upon startup cannot also offer to boot into BeOS or Linux. The hardware vendor does not get to choose which OSes to install on the machines they sell — Microsoft does. ... Microsoft threatens to revoke the vendor's license to include Windows on the machine if the bootloader license is violated. Because the world runs on Windows, no hardware vendor can afford to ship machines that don't include Windows alongside whatever alternative they might want to offer. </q></span> Jean Louis Gassee, the former president of Be Inc. also had a good article, but that has since been removed since Be's assets were sold to Palm, Inc. and their website shorn of all content. <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/">The Register</a> has <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/24134.html">Be Inc. Sues Microsoft</a> in which Be has finally opened a case against Microsoft for the reasons outlined above. <span class="quote"><q>Hitachi had agreed to license BeOS, and ship a dual-boot system using Be's boot loader and an icon on the desktop that enabled a Windows user to reboot into BeOS with one click. ... [In response] Microsoft sent two U.S. managers to Japan who expressed their 'anger' with Hitachi over its arrangement with Be, and 'reminded' Hitachi of the terms of its Windows license," according to the claim. </q></span>