Evidence Surfaces That MS Violated 2002 Judgement 204
whoever57 writes "In the Comes Vs. Microsoft case, the plaintiffs believe they have found evidence that Microsoft has failed to fully disclose APIs to competitors. If true, this would mean that Microsoft has violated the 2002 judgement. This information has become available since the plaintiffs have obtained an order allowing them to disclose Microsoft's alleged misbehavior to the DOJ ('appropriate enforcement and compliance authorities')."
Re:Does this suprise anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
So... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd rather we skip the monetary fines that are becoming meaningless and go for revocation of patents. Can you imagine if MS had it's patents revoked and switched to a free-for-all? That would be nice... Ah, to dream.
Re:Does this suprise anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a difference between APIs internal to the operating system, and APIs intended to provide a userland interface. If Microsoft userland products are using the internal APIs, then those APIs ought to be released. Otherwise, I don't see the probelem.
I'm no Microsoft apologist, but I'd be interested to see which APIs are being discussed here before I go off on an anti-Microsoft rant.
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
Revoking MS' patents would be more like issuing a very large fine, and forcing the company to pay it. Oh wait, that punishment might fit *exactly* to the crime! If we revoke any patents related to their violation, and begin to allow the free market to reassert itself, then MS may no longer fall afault of all the anti-trust laws that they are currently ignoring (and violating).
Re:So... (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, revocation of patent would further discredit the patent system in the US. Taking a patent is supposed to be a service you gives to the state: you disclose your invention and in exchange you receive a patent and some rights attached to this patent.
Now just imagine the shilling effect on US industry if you could have your patent revoked arbitrarily as a punishment in an *unrelated* crime
Also in the current system, revoking patent for a company is not only giving its asset for free, it is opening the company to massive number of patents trials.
Re:Does this suprise anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a difference between APIs internal to the operating system, and APIs intended to provide a userland interface. If Microsoft userland products are using the internal APIs, then those APIs ought to be released. Otherwise, I don't see the probelem.
I think you're considering this a little too much from the programmer's point of view and not enough from the legal/economic point of view. The real distinction that needs to be determined is which APIs are being used by MS in conjunction with some offering that competes in a separate, existing market. For example, APIs that interoperate with MS's Web browser, virus detection, and allow for communication with their server offerings may be categorized as internal to the operating system, but they provide functionality for bundling and tying from an economic point of view.
Don't worry, even not knowing what APIs are being discussed we can always go off on anti-microsoft rants on other topics. That's the fun of it, they're doing so many things that are unethical and criminal that there is always something to rant about.
Re:So what will really happen? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:If it weren't Microsoft...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not at all. If there were lots and lots of CPU architectures, OS's would have to be written to run or be ported easily to another processor architecture. This would open up competition to the "best" processor, rather than the best implementation of the X86 command line.
It probably would have forced OS vendor to be far more innovative in terms of virtualization and other technologies that we can't even dream of.