When the Software Publishers Association announces its guidelines for industry competition on Tuesday, it will take a stand against Microsoft, its largest dues-paying member.
The trade group - which includes many of Microsoft's rivals - will introduce eight principles of competition that it wants members to abide by, including at least one principle that takes its lead from the US Department of Justice's antitrust case against the software superpower.
The group specifically challenges Microsoft's use of its dominant position in the operating-system market to win customers for its other software products. "Operating systems should not be used to unfairly favor [their maker's] own products and services ... over those of competing vendors," states the third of the SPA's competition principles.
"There's no doubt that the decision to move ahead with this was prompted by the Justice Department actions relating to Microsoft," said Software Publishers Association spokesman David Phelps. The group surveyed its 700-plus US-based member firms to determine what stance to take, then passed the decision on to its government affairs committee and board.
Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein, head of Justice's antitrust division and prime mover behind the Microsoft case, spoke to the association's government affairs committee last month. He used the occasion to urge software makers to help the government "understand industry dynamics," an association press release says.
A Microsoft spokesman reacted angrily to the association's stance.
"This charade by the SPA should tell the Department of Justice everything it needs to know about industry dynamics," countered Microsoft spokesman Mark Murray. He criticized the competition principles as betraying an anti-Microsoft bias and questioned the soundess of the process that led to principles' adoption.
Only 164 of some 759 companies responded to the query and fewer actually agreed that the principles should be drawn up, Murray pointed out - a fact confirmed by the SPA. And, Murray added, the committee that determined the principles was chaired by a representative of Microsoft competitor Novell, joined by peers from Corel, Netscape, IBM, Oracle and Sybase - all members of what Murray called the anti-Microsoft contingent.
But Phelps argued that the Novell representative has been the chair of the SPA's government affairs committee since May and insisted the association didn't develop the principles as part of an anti-Microsoft campaign.
"I think Mark's tired," he added.
In fact, Phelps said, the association is not interested in Microsoft-bashing, but rather in coming up with some general, rule-of-thumb business practices for the industry.
"If federal enforcers and regulators are going to be taking a close look at companies, it behooves us as an industry to have a set of standards on which to be judged," he said.
The association's statements notwithstanding, its list of principles does read like an attack on Microsoft.
Several times, the guidelines touch on the proper actions of the "owner of a dominant operating system" while condemning such practices as tying operating systems to applications, leveraging the OS to sell other products - including e-commerce services - leveraging the OS to generate Net traffic to content owned by the OS vendors, and creating incompatibility issues with competing vendors.
Microsoft's SPA dues - US$100,000 annually, based on revenues - are paid up through August. When asked whether there is reason for Redmond to ante up again this year, Murray said: "I think that's a question Microsoft and a number of other companies are considering right now."
