Microsoft Trial: Gates Keeps His Cool

Microsoft

The software executive, who has been known to be prickly during depositions, maintained his composure under questioning by Steven Kuney, an attorney representing the states that are contending the settlement reached between Microsoft and the U.S. Department of Justice is too lenient.

Gates repeatedly said revised remedies proposed by the dissenting states would destroy not only Windows, but the PC industry by leading to massive cloning and fragmentation.

But Kuney managed to establish that Microsoft itself had fragmented Windows for some time, with two code bases, without hurting the industry. Kuney also maintained that Microsoft itself had cloned products successfully in the past when it suited its own purposes.

Citing an e-mail written by a Microsoft employee to Gates, Kuney showed that Microsoft had to clone protocols to make sure its own instant messaging application buddy list worked against AOL's instant messaging service.

Gates took the stand in defense of the antitrust settlement hammered out by Microsoft and the Department of Justice Monday.

The questioning Monday appeared to go better for Microsoft than Gates' videotaped deposition three years ago during the antitrust suit. Many observers said that video devastated Microsoft's case before U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who later ruled Microsoft was a monopoly that should be broken up. An appeals court agreed on Microsoft's status, but ruled out a breakup as overkill.

Grinning slightly during questioning, Gates kept his temper and his composure, stammering slightly only when asked whether he knew his own attorneys had defined middleware in his published testimony. Gates had been argumentative and evasive when asked about such definitions in his earlier deposition. When Kuney asked whether Gates knew that his attorneys had defined the term in his written testimony distributed Monday, Gates appeared flustered and said no.

After the Monday afternoon session, a Microsoft spokesman said Gates had helped clarify some issues that have been "distorted and misunderstood." Asked by CRN how he'd done, Gates smiled without comment.

The spokesman characterized the dissenting states' position, that Microsoft must offer a modular version of Windows to ensure interoperability with third-party offerings and disclose all its APIs, as a "crazy quilt" of demands by competitive interests.

Opinions differed on the other side of the aisle. Former Whitewater prosecutor Ken Starr, who now works for Procomp, an association of companies advocating stricter antitrust controls on Microsoft, dismissed Gates' claims that PC disaster will result if the revised settlement goes through. His is a "fairly extreme position for starters, and it's going to be easy to dissect that," Starr said.

Michael Pettit, also with Procomp, said Microsoft could produce both a full-fledged version of Windows, much as it is now, and a modular version, without causing massive fragmentation.

Gates is expected to testify again Tuesday and perhaps later in the week.