NOT since the days when IBM ruled the industry with an iron fist, has an organisation generated such fear and loathing - to say nothing of angst - among its competitors.
We are, of course, talking about Microsoft. The surly start-up that grew to be the darling of Wall Street, has the rest of the industry scared witless.
So powerful has Microsoft become, its domination of the software market seems to have taken on a momentum all its own.
The rest of the industry - figuring if you can't beat 'em, you may as well gang up on 'em - is banding together to try to tackle the juggernaut.
First came COSE (Common Open Software Environment), which counts as members' industry heavy-weights IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems. It is a consortium set up to counter the release next week of Microsoft's Windows NT.
Now, a whole posse of companies is getting together to force Microsoft into the ''open'' - or, more accurately, into the public domain.
