The ever quotable Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, has weighed in with his opinion of the punishment Microsoft should face at the hands of the government. According to McNealy, Microsoft should be forced to divest itself of any and all investments its made within the past year. The comments came during an interview with Newsweek Magazine.
"I think you give them a six- to 12-month time period to divest themselves of all minority equity investments," he said. "You forbid them for five years, or some number like that, from making another equity investment, and you forbid them from buying any incremental intellectual property."
That sounds suspiciously impossible, and it's likely that Microsoft could easily find some legal precedent for such a decision to be overthrown. Still, McNealy's always good for a few laughs.
"And \[the DOJ\] should force Microsoft to publish \[its\] APIs in a responsible, open, transparent way to the rest of the world," he said, forgetting to note that his own company does no such thing. Microsoft's "APIs" are the code that makes Windows run. Open source operating systems such as Linux allow users direct access to the source code, while commercial systems such as Windows and Sun Solaris do not. But McNealy isn't the first to call for the opening up of Windows and its possible that the government could, in fact, suggest this sort of penalty should Microsoft be found guilty in its antitrust trial
