sometimes an innovation challenges Microsoft, either by challenging the
monopoly Microsoft has been said to hold or by making its business model
less attractive in the future. And here, the government charged, Microsoft
has been quick to respond. If your business model threatens it, then Micro-
soft will respond by killing your business. Gates was not, the government al-
leged, willing to play on a level playing field. (Indeed, as David Bank quotes
Gates "yelling" at executive Paul Maritz, "You're putting us on a level play-
ing field! You're going to kill the company.")[4-48]

Whether or not you believe that Microsoft engaged in the behavior that
the government charged (and whether or not the Court of Appeals and the
Supreme Court ultimately rule that such conduct violates the antitrust
laws), the important point is this: Microsoft could engage in the behavior al-
leged by the government only _because_Microsoft_controlled_its_own_code_.
The source code for the Microsoft operating system is closed; Microsoft
does not reveal the source to the public generally. Thus, Microsoft can
change and direct its source code in ways that advance its own strategic vi-
sion. It is capable, that is, of behaving strategically, by changing its code to
challenge competitors, because its code is closed. It can "control the pace
of innovation" because only it can muck about with its code.[4-49]

Yet this is just the power that open code doesn't have. An open code proj-
ect can't bundle a product the users don't want; users, because source code
is there, are always free to unbundle. An open source project can't under-
mine a competing system; the competing system is always free to take the
open source system and fight back. The source code for open source proj-
ects is therefore a check on the power of the project; it is a limit on the
power of the project to behave strategically against anything written to the
platform.

This "check" is realized in the perpetual possibility of an open code proj-
ect to "fork." Forking occurs when a project led in one direction splits and
develops in two or more directions. This right to split is guaranteed both by
the code (because the source code is available) and by the law (because the
license for open code projects guarantees that people are free simply to take
the code and develop it in different directions). From the same code base,
developers are free to develop different versions. These different versions
can take on a life of their own. And conceivably, a fork could divide the user
community into different sects. A project thriving because it had _x_ thousand
users could then collapse if not enough users support the project.

This threat of forking is not idle. Important open source projects, such as
the BSD Unix clone, have forked in the past.[4-50] There is nothing in the cur-

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