Ask a Legal Expert How MS Ruling Affects Open Source

By now we all know about Judge Kollar-Kotelly's decision in the Microsoft antitrust case. The effect of this ruling on Linux and Open Source use and future development is not yet clear. For those of you who have been wondering about this, we have a special interview guest: Attorney Lawrence E. (Larry) Rosen, Linux Journal's popular Geek Law columnist, who is surely one of the best-qualified people in the world to answer questions on this topic. (Usual Slashdot interview rules apply.)

Re:How do consumers benefit? No, really!

[DunbarTheInept]

Standards aren't about picking one product only and having to use it and nothing else in order to interoperate with others. Standards are about defining a behaviour that products should follow to work with each other, so that companies are ENABLED to compete. There are standards that help the auto industry, for example, about how wide lanes on roads are, what the chemical mixture of gasoline available at the pump will be like. There are standards to make sure everyone is on the same page with regards to safety conventions (for example, the convention that an automobile's turn signal must operate by blinking either an amber light, or the red taillight, on the side of the turn, one in front and one in back.) These sort of standards don't stifle companies. They allow them to compete fairly in a situation where there would otherwise simply be a de-facto standard of "whatever the hell Ford happens to be doing, right or wrong, will the the standard since they have the most cars on the road (at the time these sorts of standards were being concieved.)"

Re:Valid Business Model

[sconeu]

More importantly, what is a sound business model, and who gets to decide what a sound business model is?

As the OP pointed out, section III.J.2 says that a sound business model is whatever Microsoft decides it is.