One company would hold the Windows operating system and the other Microsoft's application programs.
Numerous application programs, such as Microsoft's SharePoint, exist to facilitate the implementation of such systems.
Mr. Kelley said he also used Corel WordPerfect GroupWise, a collection of application programs that compete against Microsoft Office.
Browsers can potentially replace Windows as the platform from which computers run word processors and other application programs.
One would hold the Windows operating system, the other everything else, including the Office suite of application programs like Word and Excel.
That led to pioneering work in optimizing compilers, software tools that are used by programmers to increase the performance of application programs.
It would divide Microsoft into a company that sells an operating system (Windows) and a company that sells application programs -- word processors, spreadsheets and browsers.
At issue are so-called application programs -- word processors, spreadsheets, personal-finance software and the like -- that run on top of the Windows operating system.
Mr. de Icaza, in turn, has started his own company, aiming at the heart of Microsoft's dominant Office suite of business-productivity application programs.
But few other institutions have yet joined them, and no prominent college has abandoned early application programs entirely, the surest way to eliminate the fall frenzy.
Another idea under discussion is to force Microsoft to make Office, its suite of application programs, available for other operating systems, including Linux.
