Microsoft fined by European Commission over web browser

I don't think it did any of IBM's competitors any good either Wolfgang. On the whole it was a pointless exercise.

Well, it was good for IBM because the priced software turned out to be a cash cow. Look at the IBM P&L today - software is one of the major revenue contributers. When I was managing the software business for IBM Europe in the late 80s, the revenue was already over 3 Billion Dollars/year - just in Europe (actually EMEA which was Europe, Middle East and Africa).

I guess it had the opposite effect that the legislators wanted then and as usual the customer lost out. I was working with IBM mainframes then. IBM had just about got its act together on software quality in the late 80's.

Right, quality was a big problem - especially with Vtam. We spent a lot of time to get our arms around quality control. Motorola was one of the leading companies in quality control at the time. many people copied their approach and they were very generous sharing it.

It wasn't too good on VSE or PL1 either. The only quality IBM software I used was VM and if I remember correctly IBM didn't really want to sell it originally.

kado897 said:

It wasn't too good on VSE or PL1 either. The only quality IBM software I used was VM and if I remember correctly IBM didn't really want to sell it originally.

Oh ya, we wanted to sell it. But when I was VSE system manager in 85 thru 87, I always had to fight the hardware guys because they wanted the lowest price possible so that they did not have an inhibitor for their hardware sales. That's when I invented the VSE-ES (entry system) which was a shrunk version with less function and a lower price. A stupid exercise, but it had to be done. Maybe you remember that version.

whs said:

kado897 said:

It wasn't too good on VSE or PL1 either. The only quality IBM software I used was VM and if I remember correctly IBM didn't really want to sell it originally.

Oh ya, we wanted to sell it. But when I was VSE system manager in 85 thru 87, I always had to fight the hardware guys because they wanted the lowest price possible so that they did not have an inhibitor for their hardware sales. That's when I invented the VSE-ES (entry system) which was a shrunk version with less function and a lower price. A stupid exercise, but it had to be done. Maybe you remember that version.

No we were using VSE, I think ESA runing under VM at the time. If I remember correctly it was during that period that VSE began to share the same code base as MVS.

Gary said:

The EU is going to Fail.

What is that supposed to mean.

Dwarf said:

Here we go again.

We fought 2 World Wars in order to remove dictators such as Hitler and Mussolini, but the EU (Merkel, van Rompuy, et al) are no better. Surely there is something more important to do than to continually attack MS over this issue?

It won't get anywhere anyways! MS has been under folly with the EU and other sources a good number of times through the years but is simply "too big" to snuff out! Media Player as well as IE both being bundled in Windows has been a pair of grievances leveled against MS by the EU. EU hands down record $1.35 billion fine against Microsoft