MS & the Consent Decree 2
MS & the Consent Decree 2
In October 1997, the DOJ filed a petition with the US District Court saying Microsoft was in contempt of the consent decree because it offered the license for Windows only if computer manufacturers also agreed to license Internet Explorer as well, and offered no version of Windows without the browser included.
The DOJ asked the court to issue an order that would prohibit Microsoft from forcing computer manufacturers to accept and install the code that Microsoft distributed at retail as Internet Explorer 3.0.
Microsoft claimed that without the files that constituted Internet Explorer, Windows would not boot or function properly. Essentially the DOJ was ordering that Microsoft produce and market a non-functioning, and therefore commercially worthless operating system. Also, it said that the fact that Windows needed the code to function properly proved that Internet Explorer was integrated with Windows and thus protected by the consent decree.