Most corporate IT execs want MS strung up, says survey

Microsoft may have fewer friends in corporate IT departments than it thought it had, if a survey published in this week's issue of Computerworld is to be believed. According to the US mag, 79 per cent of IT executives surveyed in major US companies thought Microsoft should be fined, broken up, ordered to license Windows to its competitors or split into several different companies. As the DoJ has already decided it's not going to ask for financial penalties, that's actually worse than anything the government will be wanting. But the news quite probably isn't as bad as it looks for Microsoft, as Computerworld itself reckons the opinions of the execs are a mite confused. Why, for example, when they're so apparently in favour of having to company hung, drawn and quartered do 66 per cent of them reckon only moderate government intervention working with market forces is necessary? And then 67 per cent of them feel Microsoft hasn't hurt IT innovation, while they're almost equally split over whether the judge's findings of fact will have a positive, a negative, or no effect. And 93 per cent of them think the judgement will have no effect on the way they do business with Microsoft. These people represent organisations with more than 500 employees in the US, and two thirds of them, according to Computerworld, represent outfits with more than 2,500 employees. Considering how all over the place they seem to be, it seems likely that either they don't know what they're doing (we've heard this said about IT management), or there was something weird about the survey's sampling (the mag had less than five days after the findings of fact were issued to conduct it), or about the formulation of the questions. ®