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Shell Functions and the Microsoft Settlement

In 2002 Microsoft documented a few hundred Settlement Program Interfaces as an outcome of an anti-trust suit brought by various U.S. governments. If one accepts at face value Microsoft’s talk of having “fulfilled its obligations under the consent decree”, one might suppose that these few hundred functions are all that there can be. It may indeed be that they are, if only under some strict reading or self-serving interpretation of what was agreed in the settlement. But how is anyone to know?

Completeness of Microsoft’s disclosure is certainly not obvious for the functions provided by various modules of the Windows shell. Just over a hundred shell functions are newly documented for the settlement, yet many hundreds seem still to be undocumented. Of course, the settlement does not require that all previously undocumented functions now be documented, but that so many remain undocumented is surely grounds enough to look more closely and to insist that Microsoft account in some detail for its interpretation of which functions must be documented. It’s not for me to pick over the fine detail of the settlement’s requirements, but as my contribution to that exercise by others, I mean to lay out what I imagine the lawyers may treat as facts of the matter. I survey the Windows shell functions, whether documented or not, both for their history and for the use that Microsoft presently makes of them, and begin what may be sustainable as an on-going project of alternative documentation.

Of course, I do have my own interpretation of the settlement’s requirements for API disclosure, and thus my own notion of which shell functions has Microsoft missed. Because this list runs to a few hundred—indeed, is larger than the list of shell functions that Microsoft did document for the settlement—I have formed unfavourable opinions of everyone involved, though less of Microsoft than of the court and plaintiffs who seem to have accepted, and perhaps even trusted, a plainly deficient process of verification. It is only inevitable that I shall not keep these opinions (prejudices, criticisms, etc) to myself. Their written expression is in preparation, but will be presented as editorial matter, separate from the survey.

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