Microsoft Corp must hand over documents that could undermine its case for integrating the browser and the operating system, US District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled in the Washington courtroom yesterday. Microsoft has always maintained that the Internet Explorer web browser and Windows98 are so tightly integrated that they cannot be separated. But test results carried out internally at the firm in October 1998 may show otherwise, government antitrust lawyers argued. In response to a program written by government witness Dr Edward Felten which claimed to separate out the two functions, Microsoft software engineer David D’Souza carried out analysis of Felten’s tests. As part of that work, he analyzed the functionality of the SHDOCVW.DLL dynamic link library, which is used when a new window is opened. His work was revealed in an e-mail which, according to Microsoft attorney Steven Holley was inadvertently produced to the court. Microsoft has asked for the e-mail to be returned. Within the message, D’Souza wrote: Arguably…this list could be used to ‘separate’ shdocvw into two parts: shared+shell and browser specific. Government lawyers pounced on the phrase to mean that, if such an analysis was possible, then Microsoft could be asked to separate the two products. Elsewhere, the email revealed that the test had shown up 700 browsing specific and 152 operating specific functions, but also 1,000 common functions. While justice department lawyer David Boies argued that the tests would show that a substantial portion of the code that performs browsing function alone has been welded onto the operating system, Microsoft claimed that the tests results would actually help its case. Nevertheless, it still appeared very unwilling to produce the detailed results. I’m not trying to hide the ball here, Holley told the judge, who replied then I think [the results] should be produced. If browser code does not also perform operating system functions, the government side hopes to argue, then Microsoft must have carried out the integration work for reasons that aren’t technical.
