Microsoft yesterday began spinning the proposed MS-DoJ antitrust settlement, telling reporters it introduced new, uniform licensing terms for its top 20 OEMs on August 1st (the day Licensing 6 kicked in), and that it would be disclosing details of 272 APIs (so there's an official API counter somewhere in Redmond) and offering 113 proprietary protocols for license. The effects of these actions won't be clear for some time yet, but given that Microsoft has been insisting its own programmers don't get preferential access to APIs for years, one suspects. With the release of Windows 2000 Service Pack 3, however, it's been possible to see how at least one part of the proposed settlement, the hiding of Microsoft middleware and its replacement by alternative applications, works - or not.
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