Gates Opening Windows Code? Firm Says No

In an apparently off-the-cuff remark to a news service reporter, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates said Thursday the company might be willing to make the basic code of its Windows operating system public to settle the government’s antitrust lawsuit.

Microsoft officials immediately disputed the report by Bloomberg News. The company said that Gates made no comment on settlement terms during the encounter and that it had demanded a correction.

“Bill Gates in no way commented on any settlement proposals or the mediation process in any way,” Jim Cullinan, a Microsoft spokesman, said. “The only thing he stated was that we would be doing our best to settle the case.”

Bloomberg editors said they stood by their story, although they conceded that Gates’ remark was a “casual” one.

Antitrust experts said opening Windows source code might form the basis of a negotiated end to the case, in which the federal government and 19 state attorneys general have accused the software giant of illegally stifling competition. But they also expressed skepticism that Gates’ remark accurately reflected the company’s position.

Bloomberg said Gates’ remark came after a televised interview with the service. Asked if he would open the source code to settle the lawsuit, Gates said simply, “Yes,” according to Bloomberg.

But that contradicted Gates’ own comments during the taped portion of the interview. Asked then if he would release the source code in the same way that Sun Microsystems Inc. has made the code of its Java programming language public--to help establish it as a public standard--Gates argued that such a move would undermine Windows’ reliability because it would encourage rivals to fashion their own variants of the program.

“To have great reliability you can’t have all these variant versions,” he said.

He also said he would “love to see the DOJ (Dept. of Justice) dispute settled,” but did not set forth any terms.

Settlement talks in the huge antitrust case have been underway since late last year under a veil of secrecy imposed by the mediator, Richard A. Posner, chief judge of the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. If they fail, the company and the government are due back in court Feb. 22 for closing arguments before U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson. Jackson found that the company had engaged in monopolistic practices in a preliminary ruling Nov. 5.

At issue in Thursday’s contretemps was the “source code” of Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Source code is the basic architecture of the system and is largely invisible to users and even most software developers who write programs designed to run on Windows-powered computers.

Making the source code public would allow rivals to market competitive versions of Windows, which might defuse complaints that Microsoft has used its special knowledge of the code illicitly to its advantage.

Last summer, Microsoft officials briefly hinted that they might be willing to open the Windows code to settle the case. But government lawyers did not regard the offer as a serious one, sources said, and it was not pursued.

“It was on the table for about a nanosecond,” one source said.

Antitrust experts said considerable negotiation would be needed to make an opening of the code effective.

Times staff writers Joseph Menn and Charles Piller contributed to this story.