I've only been following this one selectively, but has anybody pointed
out yet that the political implications here are pretty stiff? For
example, what if M$ *does* manage to convince not just their willing
dupes, but the entire world, and the JD along the way, that Internet
Explorer really is part of an operating system? [Possible basis: if a
windowing system is part of an OS, and a windowing system is really just
a different type of browser (which it is), then by extension. . . ] If
they do that, where does the OS's outer border really end up? Is M$
Orifice part of their OS? Then, given the M$ track record on modularity
(my .02: "abysmal"), who would be able to say that M$ isn't entitled to
rule the whole PC? What happens if they decide that companies like
Corel are a threat to the "desktop portion" of their OS, and stop
providing them with the magical keys necessary to develop for a M$ OS?
Apocolyptic and paranoid, maybe, but look what's happening to Netscape.
I have no outside basis for this but I think of the OS as being the
kernel and its surrounding enablers, with everything else (bash, the
windowing system, whatever) being classed as applications, however
universally necessary they may be. I freely admit that this is a
pragmatic definition, because I have a vested interest in being able to
move freely from one app/OS combo to another, and stiff delineations
between levels of the machine help to make that possible. I like the
fact that Communicator works more or less the same way on my machine and
everybody else's, rather than having a M$ browser, a Linux browser, a
SCO browser, ad infinitum. Of course, if all flows from the kernel,
then the kernel is going to have some things to say about how all
flows. Hence "environments," "platforms," or some other ill-defined
term to describe the general atmosphere that surrounds a particular
"OS," but I think it's going a bit far to include as part of the OS
programs at the level of the windowing system, which can obviously be
swapped in an out of a *n*x box at will, while leaving the *n*x box
still a *n*x box. Or consider some firewall which runs the Linux kernel
but doesn't even support shell logins. Probably not all that common,
but possible; does that machine cease to run Linux if you take out bash?
And, coming full circle, does it cease to be 95 if you take out IE? If
so, then can I please have a refund for all the 95 licenses we had to
buy for a bunch of machines that only run DOS7? ;)
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