Undocumented APIs: A Story That Just Won't Die
A decade or so ago, I joined
InfoWorld, and my very first order of business
was to help Stuart Johnston finish reporting a story about Microsoft giving
its own developers access to APIs that third parties like Lotus, Borland, Ashton-Tate
and WordPerfect were shut out of.
Stuart did a remarkable job on the story, and it ended up being the center
of many of the antitrust allegations made against Microsoft.
Ten years later third parties have the very same complaints.
A suit in Iowa on behalf of consumers charges that Microsoft is violating
a 2002 agreement to play fair with APIs. I'm not sure exactly what's going
on here. Maybe I should give old Stu a call!
Posted by Doug Barney on January 24, 2007