In terms of what a court could order, I think remedying the documentation and scope problems wouldn't be overly difficult. A
Susheel,
Actually, I think the current consent decree made some attempt to provide for clear documentation.
What failed, in my opinion, was a lack of oversight and a lack of a clear process to request documentation changes.
That is, the documentation of the API has gotten substantially better. However, there is no way for anyone in the 'public' to request a clarification or visibility into this process. The process is overseen by a committee and they are not responsible to anyone but the judge. So, the documentation gets better, but it happens overnight, invisibly. We have no way of knowing that the documenation was improved, and no way of knowing where further improvements are coming next, and no way to ask for specific clarifications.
I think Dmitry was quite right in his point as well. Given that the original lawsuit was over the illegal use of Internet Explorer, I find it quite bitter indeed that Microsoft is still able to claim IE as part of the operating system. That is, there are a wide range of applications that will not function without Internet Explorer. Their failure is not because of a simple API that can be replaced with Firefox, but because of deep interwoven dependencies. And running IE without a Microsoft OS license is a grey area; completely hampering the use of Wine.
So, to summarize, the punishment to Microsoft for illegally pushing IE and destroying Netscape is...the continued use of IE as an monopolistic lever. Nice.
Cheers,
Jeremy