Silicon poll: IT entrepreneurs speak out on Microsoft case

An exclusive poll of IT entrepreneurs conducted by Silicon has shown that opinion is divided over whether the US Department of Justice's (DoJ) assault on Microsoft is justified.

Sir Clive Sinclair, home computer pioneer and inventor of the first pocket calculator, said: "There are no market forces. Microsoft has a monopoly.

"The Microsoft monopoly is extremely dangerous - far worse than the Bell companies because this is a global monopoly, which is tragic."

Sinclair didn't agree that Microsoft should be split into two separate companies though - one for applications and one for operating systems. "Splitting it up is not enough. We need competition," he said. "I don't know how it will be resolved."

Paul Sykes, founder of Planet Online, doesn't believe Microsoft has a monopoly. "Microsoft has an enormous status in the market. For the next few years, that partial monopoly will have control of the market. Microsoft has gone so far ahead that it's hard to catch up.

"It's like BT when we privatised it," he explained. "We had to give competitors some time to catch up, and we legislated for that. But then that's interfering with the free market. Whenever someone interferes with a free and open market, consumers always lose."

Cliff Stanford, founder of Demon Internet, described himself as "90 per cent for Microsoft and 10 per cent for the Justice Department".

Stanford had no time for complaints by Netscape that its business was being sabotaged by unfair, anti-competitive practices. He explained that when Netscape was a Demon supplier it was "late in its supply, shipped an inferior product and then missed two more deadlines. Meanwhile, Microsoft came out with a better product at a better price and they delivered it on the day they said they would. And yet we were accused of bowing to a monopoly".

He concluded: "We got fed up with Netscape and we switched even though we had a contract with Netscape. We didn't bow down to a monopoly. We bowed down to good service."

However, Stanford took the case of small software developers to heart. "I've got sympathy with anyone who would build software. Everyone who builds software now hopes it gets bought by Microsoft - I'm investing in a software company right now and I'm hoping it gets bought by Microsoft. That's the dream."

Only Welsh IT entrepreneur, Bob Jones, said he had no specific opinion on the matter.