The Litigating States' Proposed Remedy for Microsoft

State officials face well-funded, well-organized coalitions of in-state businesses arguing for the prosecution of an out-of-state company, an unequal political contest. Accordingly, the state attorneys general (AGs) have resisted settlement attempts and have pushed both the Justice Department and the courts for stronger action against Microsoft. In the process, the interests of consumers, the AGs' nominal clients, have been paid little more than lip service. The nine litigating states and the District of Columbia together account for just 27 percent of the U. S. population. But they do represent many of Microsoft's most vocal rivals. California is home to Apple, Palm, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and Netscape. Massachusetts is home to the Lotus division of IBM as well as major operations of Sun and Oracle. Utah is home to Novell. By far, the most overreaching provision in the litigating states' proposal is the prohibition on 'binding' middleware code to Microsoft's operating system software. In short, the litigating states would require Microsoft to allow licensees to remove the software code for any function that a Windows licensee could conceivably single out, while still requiring Microsoft to maintain the performance of the operating system. If Microsoft were able to comply technically, which is far from clear, it would have to rewrite Windows from scratch as a combination of thousands of separable, modular components. This would balkanize Windows as a platform for applications software. Developers would no longer be able to count on the presence of key segments of software code. Indeed, to ensure that their software worked properly, developers would have to provide those features themselves. As a result, consumers would encounter different flavors of Windows with differing capabilities. Adding to Microsoft's (and consumers') woes, the litigating states would require Microsoft to license large amounts of its intellectual property to competitors for little or no compensation. Competitors would get Microsoft's software code for free. But consumers would suffer in the long term from decreased innovation since Microsoft would be left with little incentive to develop Windows or many of its applications programs.Technology and Industry

Software business models for AUTOSAR automotive world standard

International audienceAUTOSAR (AUTomotive Open Standard ARchitecture) as a promising initiative, will establish an open standard for automotive E/E architecture. AUTOSAR compliant Basic software will ensure independency of the application software from the underlying hardware while allowing modularity as well as reusability. From existing black box electronic control module business, three distinct layers, hardware, basic software and application software supported by robust toolkit may develop different kinds of business activities. From the drawing of established business models landscape, we will determine the strategic options that could be offered for a Tier 1 supplier. And this will finally end up to innovative business model proposals and a migration plan in accordance with customer needs and supplying value through systems engineering activities, software products and professional services

Emerging Policy and Practice Issues (2004)

This paper, presented at the West Government Contracts Year in Review Conference (covering 2004), attempts to identify the key trends and issues for 2005. The paper suggests that two rather unique items merit particular attention: the Darleen Druyun saga and the plight of contractors working in Iraq. Both frame compliance issues in stark relief. At the same time, we address what we perceive as the far more vexing issue that permeates federal procurement today: the excessive reliance upon, and corresponding misuse of, task-order contracting. We also discuss procurement spending trends (and the inevitable belt-tightening that must follow); contract-related litigation trends; rewarding excellence in public procurement; and lessons learned from the European Union\u27s procurement reform efforts

NumGfun: a Package for Numerical and Analytic Computation with D-finite Functions

This article describes the implementation in the software package NumGfun of classical algorithms that operate on solutions of linear differential equations or recurrence relations with polynomial coefficients, including what seems to be the first general implementation of the fast high-precision numerical evaluation algorithms of Chudnovsky & Chudnovsky. In some cases, our descriptions contain improvements over existing algorithms. We also provide references to relevant ideas not currently used in NumGfun