By Sarah Left, 12 June 2000 00:10
NEWS The UK's largest reseller, Computacenter, has warned developers will suffer if the US government imposes Judge Jackson's penalties on Microsoft. Computacenter - one of only a handful of Microsoft Alliance Partners worldwide - pointed out the success of Microsoft has created a mini-economy of application developers whose livelihood depends on Windows. The company claims Microsoft's monopoly is worthwhile because of the certainty it brings to developers and users. Steve Caunce, software and services marketing manager at Computacenter, said: "Any action by the US government that will cause a non-standard desktop for corporate UK is a big concern of ours. We believe ruthless desktop standardisation is one of the key ways for corporate UK to reduce costs." Caunce added developers don't want to return to the days when they had to hedge their bets between OS/2 and Windows. But Jason Vokes, senior technical consultant at Borland disagreed. He said Judge Jackson's ruling implies quite the opposite. He said: "It just goes to show you can't predict or rely on anything in this industry. We should standardise on open standards that protect investment in IT against exactly this kind of occurrence." Vokes claims open standards like Corba and Java wipe away the hardware and software dependencies that make choices like OS/2 or Windows such a gamble for developers. He added: "Microsoft has turned its back on Java and burnt its fingers."
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