Gates takes the stand

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates finally took the witness stand yesterday, appearing in person for the first time in the company's four-year antitrust battle.

Gates was out to persuade US District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly that the remedies proposed by the nine states opposing the Department of Justice settlement were unworkable.

In an initial written testimony, Gates maintained that the remedies threatened the future and progress not only of Microsoft and its Windows operating system, but the entire IT market and its consumers.

"The [states' proposals] would undermine all three elements of Microsoft's success, causing great damage to Microsoft, other companies that build on Microsoft's products, and the businesses and consumers that use PC software," he said in his 155-page testimony.

In contrast to his videotaped testimony played during the initial trial, Gates remained smiling and calm in court as he underwent questioning from the opposing states' counsel.

He initially warned that the plan to force Microsoft to open up the Windows operating system to rival software developers would destabilise the platform.

It would also mean handing over the software giant's intellectual property. Sharing the source code would "give away the recipe" to Windows, he said, thereby stripping Microsoft of any incentive to continue its development.

In addition, the complexity as well as the cost of meeting the proposed remedies would force Microsoft to pull Windows from the market altogether, according to Gates.

The states' proposal that Microsoft must make an unbound version of Windows that is the functional equivalent of the complete Windows was also dismissed by Gates.

He maintained that a version stripped of the Internet Explorer web browser could not be made to work properly.

Gates also implicitly defended the company's operating system monopoly.

He stated that allowing other companies to develop their own versions of Windows would stop the platform from being "uniform" throughout the market.

In other words, Microsoft's monopoly was positive in that it helped to unite a fragmented PC industry.