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The Courts Government News

Caldera Trial Update 85

Posted by justin++ from the mo-money dept.
In yet another decision from the Caldera vs. Microsoft trial, a judge has ruled that Caldera can sue Microsoft for "alleged violations outside the United States", because Microsoft apparently has a global impact. With any luck, the pretrial will start in August. You know, I'm beginning to wonder who has the bigger legal team these days.
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Caldera Trial Update More

Caldera Trial Update

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  • Re:Teaching Bill (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    IBM went a totally different route for DOS compatibility than MS. IBM OS/2 2.0 and later lets you load PC-DOS, DR-DOS, MS-DOS or whatever in a specific virtual machine.

    I wonder if that example will help Caldera in any way? They can say, "Hey, IBM did this and they sell PC-DOS, why couldn't MS?"

  • Re:More spread out... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Sue for Globar Thermo nuclear apocalypse.
    MS Skynet. Better than the one in the Terminator films, is definately not self aware, nor are it's support technicians after the external MS courses.
    Has a nasty habit of removing missles from silos via launching them at belgium. Also users tend to hit the start button as in releases of the incredibly popular family game "Keep windows 98 alive TM".
    Unfortunately MS Skynet's start button actually starts missile engines.
    A patch is expected as soon as someone can build a computer from the neolithic technology we now find ourselves in. Microsoft though continue to trade and have just recently released MS Flint Axe.

    Brad


  • Re:Those wacky M$ lawyers.... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It sure does sound odd, don't it, to say that MS shouldn't be held liable for actions undertaken in the US to dominate a global market, thus denying other software companies the chance to make $$$ on that market. Why should it matter whether they're only gunning for a monopoly in the US or worldwide? If Caldera's suit has merit when applied to profits inside the US, then it has merit when applied to profits outside the US.

    I also like how MS's lawyers are always disagreeing on matters of what the law says with judges. It's one thing to say "we didn't do this", quite another to say "Even if we did do this, it's not actionable," which is what they keep saying in the face of ... errumph ... legally binding rulings to the contrary.

    Maybe if these guys had spent more time in law school focusing on what the law is than planning what colour they want in their Beemer when they get a corporate job, they wouldn't get ruled against on these points so many times.

    But perhaps we shouldn't blame the lawyers: after all, it's their job to protect MS's interests, even when MS has behaved illegally and left a paper and e-trail detailing their questionable actions ("We're good at making software, not videos" or whatever it was Ed Muth (or whoever) said when they were caught with their hands in the cookie jar at the DOJ trial -- what's a poor defense counsel to do with that?). GIGO is almost as much a principle in the law as it is with programming.

  • End of MS trial for me..... I can filter MS pieces on /., but not just legal stuff... new category? Maybe? :)

    David
  • >More warmed over Ayn Rand. Whoop te doo.

    What do you expect from a bunch of wannabe slave-owners?
  • needless to say I walked out...

    You chose not to buy there!

    Why is this so difficult to comprehend? No-one forced you to buy! You are free to go anywhere else! To buy whatever you want, so long as you can afford it and the merchant is willing to sell to you.

    The DOJ propose to use force against Microsoft, laws which are backed up by prisons and armed police.

    If the /. crowd truly cared about freedom of the individual and of the mind, you'd all be fighting tooth and nail against the DOJ.

    I seem to recall a time in Holland (IIRC) when the government changed the working conditions of medical doctors. Many of them wished to leave the country - so the government conscripted them all into the Army to stop them. The moral of this story is clear: The only power governments have is physical force, and one day they might use it on you.

  • Ah, I see, so if I choose to copy MS Office from a friend MS would not use force on
    me, neither by themselves of by calling on the monopolist of physical force?


    You don't own Office, you only own a license to use it. You chose to accept the license terms when you first installed it, if you subsequently break them, then you have wilfully broken a contract you freely entered into - which makes you fair game for law enforcement.


    It is clear that we each must deal with any other as that other would deal with us. Microsoft choose to deal by the laws of commerce which exist as and when they conduct their actions. You have choses to ignore contract; that makes you the initiator of force.

  • The exact some process is why high-end graphics users are moving to NT away from Macs. Not because NT is better than a Mac for graphics, but just because they are more "compatible" with what clients are using (at least that is one of the more compelling reasons).

    Nothing to do with SMP Wintel machines being cheaper than and easily outperforming G3 macintoshes for rendering then? Or the larger hardware acceleration market meaning the best graphics cards are available? Or the larger installed base meaning it's more economical for ISVs to port to NT?

    And that's just the tip of the iceberg. If you thought NT was unstable, try MacOS with no protected memory or preemptive multitasking...

  • What really pisses me off is he
    gets caught doing bad things and then has the audacity to get mad about it.


    Antitrust law is retroactive, which means that even if something was perfectly legal when you actually did it, if it is subsequently declared illegal you are still liable.


    This means that there is no way to tell if you are breaking the law when you do something, because the law doesn't exist yet! Microsoft's phalanx of corporate lawyers would never have broken existing laws, Bill is too smart for that.


    software you can tell he believes all
    software should come from him for some divine reason only he knows about.


    As is the goal of all software development projects. If you were to take a straw poll on /. you'd find many people who believe that all software should only come from the open source community by divine right.


    Bill was never really a hacker in the first place like so many Unix
    heroes were/are, he just funded projects and used other people's work to his
    advantage


    More FUD and lies. Bill's simply more successful than anyone else because he was the first to realise the truth: There is no such thing as a software project, there are only business projects with a software element.


    Buying out every company with an idea and forcing companies to use only
    your products isn't "Freedom to Innovate" Bill.


    Force is the sole monopoly of governments. The only force here is that applied by the DOJ. Microsoft has no guns and no laws to compel people to obey, only the free judgement of the rational individuals who freely trade with them, everyone from the home PC user to megacorporations like Compaq and IBM. No-one has ever compelled you to trade with MS, you have always done do freely - it is a central fact that no-one has the right to buy whatever they want, only what they are offered for sale.

    It has always been possible to buy components and assemble your own PC - even if you are incapable of doing so, you cannot demand the world adapt itself to your whims. You can only buy what is offered for sale - either a preinstalled box or take the time to find a niche manufacturer.


    Microsoft's only crime is that they are the ALCOA of the 90's.

  • This is flat-out false. Read the U.S. Constitution, bub. Article 1, Section 9,
    Clause 3: "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." In
    other words, ain't no such thing as retroactive law.


    You're wrong. What constitutes a monoploy is not formally defined in law; it is open to interpretation by the court. If the court choose to regard an act as monopolist, there is no objective way to predict this before the verdict is reached, and vice versa.


    The Sherman Act is deliberately vague like this. While the letter of the law cannot act retroactively, the spirit can, and that's what drives the verdict.


    Right. Uh-huh. Now just TRY and get along WITHOUT using Microsoft products in
    the corporate workplace. Just TRY to see how far you make it.


    Try showing up to work naked and see how far you get in business. Try speaking Swahili to all your clients. Try putting orange juice in your car instead of petrol.


    You see my point? Just because some things become
    convention and some don't, that does not constitute coercion.

  • It may smell like MS-strategy, but MSFT needs to be corrected. Hopefully a large settlement here will help out on that point.

  • Hey, that is a nice way to liven up this "boring" topic. Maybe another way is to speculate on the size of the settlement. One billion, two billion anyone? However large it may be, maybe it will be a bit small compared to the DOJ remedy.

  • If you had any real arguments to support your favorite cause, I am sure MSFT would be using them.

    Otherwise, the pattern of abuse by MSFT over many years is obvious. Now the only interesting questions involve the remedies.

  • Ideally, I would agree with you, for I too am against government intervention.

    But in reality, we are dealing with a crisis that has been and is currently being perpetrated by Microsoft. There are probably many laws that are not enforced in normal situations. But this is an extremely abnormal situation, and I for one am glad that there are laws to give us hope of getting out of this crisis.

    BTW, you claim that their fall is inevitable. Sure, but when is "inevitable"? Five years from now, after even more damage is done? Even if Microsoft ends up winning all of its cases, their behavior being put under the microscope has done wonders for the normal competition that we should have had all along. Others have pointed this out, and I agree that it is a victory by itself.

  • Of course, their chances are still way out there, but I'm starting to think that Caldera is actually going to get a settlement. I hope that they do, they deserve every penny that they get. I think that it's funny that the Microsoft Lawyers would even question that FACT that MS products have a global effect. Does anyone understand what the thing that is going to happen in mid-august is?
  • Antitrust law is retroactive, which means that even if something was perfectly legal when you actually did it, if it is subsequently declared illegal you are still liable.

    I thought no law was allowed to be retroactive (the Constitution says that here in Norway, at least), but with the American legal system, you never know :-)

    /* Steinar */

  • Umm, seems to me you had no trouble finding the choice that didn't involve buying Microsoft.

    I may not agree with sql*kitten's other statements, but he's dead on with regard to force and choice. See, even MCSE's can be right sometimes...
  • Right. Uh-huh. Now just TRY and get along WITHOUT using Microsoft products in the corporate workplace. Just TRY to see how far you make it. Your customers will abandon you, because you're incapable of opening even the simplest MS-Works document when they communicate with you.

    My internal e-mail sig reads:

    Due to the overwhelming number of viruses that are found in binary format documents, I am unable to open and view any documents in any Microsoft format. Please refrain from sending them. Any formated documents sent to me must be in either ascii, or html. (Postscript and PDF are also fine). I apologize for any inconvenience.
    I have used this sig for the past three years. Two of those years were spent as a software salesman, and I have never had any problems, nor objections, from anybody internal nor customers.
  • As the twig is bent, so the tree inclines - sometimes I think M$ got where they are today due to US fear in the early 80's about Japan and Germany, all the rhetoric about the US being 'globally competitive' seemed to justify the creation of a domestic monopoly, M$ political supporters allowed them to get away with questionable tactics as long as it created jobs, paid taxes, etc even tho some economists warned:
    a domestic monopoly is a monopoly is a monopoly, it's just bad bad bad and isn't capitalism; patriotism and nationalism but not competitive capitalism.

    But I could be hallucinating.

    Chuck

  • I know it's difficult to cut thru the politics but it's not at all a matter of 'I like this' and 'I hate that' - facts are facts and the cases must be decided on that basis, not on a popularity or vilification contest. The issues is, did/does Microsoft use illegal/unethical tactics to tie in and promote their products and shut out potential competitors, in their hubris arrogantly thinking they are too smart or too good to get caught at it? The analysis of the AARD [ddj.com] code says to me: YES, they did/do. A civilized marketplace cannot allow one opportunistic monopolist to become so obsessed with success that they think they're somehow exempt, special or above the laws that the rest of us are held to.

    Chuck
  • There is a very good reason why there is a 'double standard'. First, let me address some of the bugs in your argument. One: The change in legality does not occur between 'small' and 'large' companies. Just being a 'large' company does NOT change the legal system for you. But being a monopoly DOES. See the difference?
    Now, there are good reasons why monopolies need to have special rules applied to them. Libertarians would judge all companies alike, in the sense that they ARE companies, and they should be held to the same set of standards. The problem is, any ideology, taken to an extreme, is folly. When a company becomes a monopoly, it becomes more than a 'normal' company because it suddenly is the supplier, and therefore controller of a WHOLE SEGMENT of the economy. It is a known fact that monopolies have a much easier time keeping competitors out of their market (undercutting prices, etc.)
    Thus, when a company is a monopoly, it has special responsibilities, more so than a normal, non-monopoly company. These responsibilities is what antitrust law reflects. Antitrust law is needed because without it, the system can easily go awry, and lead to a select group of monopolies running the ENTIRE economy, completely killing competition. Without competition, the capitalist system is USELESS and inefficient. Antitrust law is needed to protect the market. YES, it IS government intervention in the economy, and it IS needed. Without it, there is no hope for the capitalist system.
    Libertarians who naively beleive in the free laizzes faire market myth dont realize that without antitrust, their wonderful capitalist economy will become a pseudo-communist-oligarchist system. With the economy (and therefore country) controlled by a set of megacorporations, who are themselves controlled by rich investors. It is a complete corruption of the capitalist system.

    Laxative
  • This is, of course, why this article is in the Department Of Justice category. You know... legal stuff.

    --


  • The legal definition of a monopoly doesn't come out of the American Heritage dictionary. I don't think you need to have 100% of the market to be considered a legal monopoly.

    Even so, while MS might not have 100% of the whole computer market, they definately have 99% of various submarkets. Consider mainline corporate desktops (for US organizations > 500 employees) - how many secretaries are *not* running Windows?

    Another submarket is consumer desktops less than the cost of a iMac (~= $1000). Even if you want to pretend that Linux is a good consumer OS, you'd have a fair amount of trouble finding a preinstalled, low-end Linux system in CompUSA.

    Of course, the marketplace is still wide-open for servers and engineering workstations and the like. But if Microsoft could successfully threaten IBM, the worlds largest computer company and owner of several operating systems, to downplay OS/2 - that tells you that Windows is pretty much the only game in town as far as the general market goes.
    --
  • It is clear that we each must deal with any other as that other would deal with us. Microsoft choose to deal by the
    laws of commerce which exist as and when they conduct their actions.

    It is also plainly clear that the majority, no vast majority, of people believe that it is just to deal with Microsoft in the way we are. I presume that they believe (I certainly do) that it would be just for someone else to deal with me in the same manner.
  • Bill has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. What really pisses me off is he gets caught doing bad things and then has the audacity to get mad about it. If you read anything he said from the 70's and 80's about software you can tell he believes all software should come from him for some divine reason only he knows about. I really hope this case is influencial in the DOJ case against M$. For too long they have been stomping out every other company thats had a unique idea simply so all software will come from them. Bill was never really a hacker in the first place like so many Unix heroes were/are, he just funded projects and used other people's work to his advantage. Buying out every company with an idea and forcing companies to use only your products isn't "Freedom to Innovate" Bill.

  • Ever notice how a lot of the increase in non-MS options came after the trial started? I don't think that's coincidence. MS is losing market share right now precisely because, with the trial going on, they can't use their position to threaten vendors into avoiding non-MS options without giving DoJ fatal ammunition to use against them.

    The reason for the difference in treatment isn't company size, it's market control. When several companies are in the market and none of them has overwhelming control, what they do and how they play is less important because if one gets out of hand customers have an option to not deal with them. MS, however, is in a position where everyone effectively has to deal with them. It's similar to the difference between UPS and the power company. If UPS won't deal with you then you just go to a competitor, so how UPS decides which customers they want to serve isn't a critical matter. If the power company won't deal with you then you can't get electricity at all, so the power company is required by law to consider all customers equally as long as they can pay because if they don't the customer has no remedy.

    A monopolist is in a position where the playing field is intrinsically not level. To claim that it should remain tilted in their favor because you don't want to tilt it in favor of would-be competitors ignores the current condition of the field. And if the DoJ sued RedHat for antitrust violations right now I'd condemn DoJ, not because I liked RedHat, but because anyone can go get SuSE or Debian or Caldera or any other Linux distribution and get exactly what RedHat is selling and run all the third-party software they could run under RedHat, hence RedHat is not in a monopoly position.

    You're right, though. MS should not be destroyed. The worst fate that could befall them coming out of the trial is to be forced to themselves abide by the same APIs and methods they recommend everyone else use, and to publish interface and protocol specs for everything they use. For example, IE exposes a COM interface. MS itself tells anyone needing to display HTML to use the COM interfaces to create IBrowser objects and display through them. If MS is simply required to have Windows itself create and use IBrowser objects rather than bypassing their own APIs, the whole issue of browser integration goes away and any company that wants to can tie their browser into Windows as tightly as IE is, as long as they implement all the right functionality per spec.

  • I thought no law was allowed to be retroactive (the Constitution says that here in Norway, at least), but with the American legal system, you never know :-)

    The American Constitution says the same thing:

    No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
    This is from Section 9. As this is part of the original, unammended Constitition, it would seem that the founders put a higher priority on forbidding retroactive laws than on such minor issues as freedom of speech, press, and religion (which had to be added in a bug-fix, er, I mean ammendment, later).

    Given that, I see a couple of possibilities --

    • U.S. anti-trust laws don't really contain ex post facto regulations, and sql*kitten is spewing FUD
    • U.S. anti-trust laws do contain ex post facto regulations, and in the 70+ years of anti-trust law, no lawyer has been clever enough to think of getting the laws thrown out on Constitutional grounds

    I know which explaination makes more sense to me ...

    (Full text of the U.S. Constitution plus many other resources are available at http://www.usconstitution.net/ [usconstitution.net].)

  • Antitrust law is retroactive, which means that even if something was perfectly legal when you actually did it, if it is subsequently declared illegal you are still liable.

    I don't know how antitrust law works in the UK, but in the US this is simply wrong. See my other post [slashdot.org] for more details.

    This means that there is no way to tell if you are breaking the law when you do something, because the law doesn't exist yet! Microsoft's phalanx of corporate lawyers would never have broken existing laws, Bill is too smart for that.

    IANAL. As I understand US antitrust law, while there are certainly areas of interpretation where it may not be clear what constitutes antitrust behavior, in general it's possible to know if you are breaking the law or not.

    It is not, in itself, a violation of US anti-trust law to gain a dominant market share constituting a de facto monopoly. (I'm going to ignore de jure monopolies like the public utilities.) What it is illegal to do is to use that dominant market position to

    • Deny competitors access to that market by attempting to shut them out of distribution channels.
    • Sell at below cost in order to drive comptetors out of a market (using greater bank reserves to outlast a smaller competitor, with hopes of making up the difference by having a more profitable monopoly later). This is commonly known as "dumping".
    • Leverage a monopoly (or near-monopoly) position in one market to gain unfair advantage in a separate market.

    As for the "Bill and his phalanx of lawyers would never willingly break the law" argument --- ROTFLMAO! Sure they would! And they certainly would (and have) push the boundaries of the law as much as they deemed profitable. Anti-trust enforcement in the US has a history of being "too little, too late". So it makes good corporate sense (in a bottom-line, worshipping the almighty dollar and stock valuation way) to do precisely the amount of anti-trust violation that you think you can get away with.

    Now, whether Bill and Co. have managed to walk that line (of attempting world domination without being so egregiously in violation of the law that they suffer a serious setback at the hands of the DOJ) successfully or unsuccessfully is still an open question (since we don't know the results of the trial yet). Given that previous actions by the Federal Government against MSFT for anti-trust violations have amounted practically to little more than a slap on the wrist, we shall see. Maybe Bill was too smart to obey the law, if MSFT gets off too easily ...

    But please, let's not have any of these conservative/libertarian/Randist fantasies about how Microsoft is being persecuted for simply being successful. Microsoft is being prosecuted for violating the law. A law that they freely chose to ignore, or at least dance right up to the line and stick a couple of toes over, believing they wouldn't get those toes stepped on hard enough to matter.

  • All of the arguments in this and many other threads seem to be based in anti-trust law. This set of laws is an abomination. To make it legal for a company to one thing when they are small and then it is illeagle to do it when you are large is absolutely stupid. How can anyone call that a level playing field. I am posting this from Netscape under Linux. I use Linux because I have a choice. I do not want my choice taken away. MS is losing market share without the lawsuits, to me this means they are able to be beaten, on a fair playing fiels without the gov't becoming involved. Some of you out there in /. land seem o give up all principles when it comes to hating MS. Any other time you would be anti-gov't but because they are going against MS you root for them. Hate causes ratinal people to do irrational things. I do not hate MS, I do not like their products so I use something else. I have good friends who like MS, and they use it. They have a choice and they exercise it.

    How do you claim to agree with removing a companies choice on how to run their business ? This is a ludicrous argument. You claim the consumer should have choice (which they do) but a company larger than a certain size should not. You are so blinded with hate that you cannot see the flaws in what you claim to believe. If the DOJ was suing Red Hat, there would be some supporters but not as many and some of you out there would side with Red Hat while siding with the DOJ in an MS case. This is a double standard. Enough for now.

  • To state that gov't intervention is necessary is completely incorrect. First off the people who responded are not the people that I refered to often in my first post, this is obvious. I firmly believe, that the gov't has no business in the marketplace, our anti-trust laws are as outdated as our copyright laws. To think that any business does not have the right to practice business as they see fit, denies the owners of the company the basic right to decide how the company should be run. By setting the double standard you give rights to some while taking away from others, this is internsically wrong. We (America) have taken away the companies right to choose who to hire, how to run their business, and the basic right to be a business without the gov't bothering them. The companies in question have always had the choice to not deal with MS products at all, they signed the contracts, and played the game until they didn't like it anymore then ran to the gov't for help. These lawsuits are wasting mine and the rest of the taxpayers money.


    Libertarians who naively beleive in the free laizzes faire market myth dont realize that without antitrust, their wonderful capitalist economy will become a pseudo-communist-oligarchist system.

    This whole statement is FUD. Communism=Gov't involvement. I shudder to think that intellectual people still believe that gov't intervention at the level we have in the US is good. This is a travesty. With anti-trust laws being hopelessly outdated and our freedoms being eroded daily, you still can't see the forest for the trees. I am not a Libertarian, but I do understand where they are coming from. The gov'y is doing to MS what they accuse MS of doing to other companies. I have stated many times that MS will fall, and they will, I think they should fall without the gov't blowing up the base. I think with the constant erosion of our freedoms that you cannot pick and choose which freedoms you think should be eroded. All of our personal freedoms are under attack, as are a companies freedom to practice business in a manner that they see fit. I do not approve of the way MS goes about business, but if all of the companies that accuse MS of bullying had pulled out and supported another vendor then MS would have been stopped long ago. They did not, therefore it is their own fault they are in the situation they claim to be in. I for one am appalled that my tax money is being spent to fund a witch hunt against MS. I appreciate the intelligent responses to my views. I have almost stopped posting in the past, not due to the fact that my views are not the most popular, but because the responses in the past were idiocy in print.




  • Heh, I'm betting that MS's lawyers are all over the place, rather than focusing on one issue. You can only hire so many lawyers before it starts to drain your blood supplies ;)

    Yeah! Let's ALL sue 'em! ;-)))

    Reasons to Sue Microsoft

    1. Bad hair day (MS-BlowDryer didn't work)
    2. Bank account empty (due to NT "security" at the bank)
    3. Bad coffee (since Java is being polluted)
    4. Disturbance of the peace (due to screaming MS users after yet another crash)
    5. Loss of productivity and medical costs (due to migraines of suffering users)
    6. And whatever else we can come up with

    cya

    Ye Olde Webdesigner [surf.to]

  • I have used this sig for the past three years. Two of those years were spent as a software salesman, and I have never had any problems, nor objections, from anybody internal nor customers.

    Fine for you. You most likely only have to read through some file, in which case your method is all fine and dandy.

    But suppose you're a consultant who is supposed to collaborate with a client who uses pretty much only Microsoft products--say, financial data, or graphic design work, or whatever. So long as you only want to "view" the work, your method is fine.

    But if you want to *edit* and *collaborate* on it, you're stuck with either a larger hassle--converting the file back and forth--or something simply undoable. Which results in a frustrated customer who will go somewhere else...where they use Microsoft products.

    The exact some process is why high-end graphics users are moving to NT away from Macs. Not because NT is better than a Mac for graphics, but just because they are more "compatible" with what clients are using (at least that is one of the more compelling reasons).

    Let's face it--NT is such junk that this is the only explanation for why anyone would be so insane as to want to use it. You want a _real_ high-end workstation or server? Fine, use Unix/Linux/Solaris/IRIX. You want a _really_ decent desktop computer? Get an iMac with NetBoot.

    Anyway...

    cya

    Ye Olde Webdesigner [surf.to]

  • You're wrong. What constitutes a monoploy is not formally defined in law;

    You have missed totally missed the point of the court cases: Microsoft is not being sued for being a monopoly, but for abusing its position, which is quite a separate issue.

    Your counterargument also does not refute the fact that there is no such thing as retroactive law in the United States. It is *not allowed*.

    The Sherman Act is deliberately vague like this. While the letter of the law cannot act retroactively, the spirit can, and that's what drives the verdict.

    So mere interpretation of the law is suddenly an application of ex post facto jurisdiction? Come on! Don't be ridiculous! Come be to the real world before you come with another counterargument...

    Just because some things become convention and some don't, that does not constitute coercion.

    Yes, they do, if they threaten my livelihood. If I am unable to earn money without resorting to using Microsoft products, AND all options to use other products are closed through the actions of Microsoft, that is as good a case of coercion as there can be. This is what we call...an abuse of monopoly.

    Having a monopoly is not illegal in the US. Abusing one is.

    cya

    Ye Olde Webdesigner [surf.to]

  • And that's just the tip of the iceberg. If you thought NT was unstable, try MacOS with no protected memory or preemptive multitasking...

    Sad. You start losing an argument, you you change the subject.

    I'll assume that the lack of your trying to counter my arguments can be construed to mean that you _have_ no other arguments.

    outperforming G3 macintoshes for rendering

    *sigh* I don't "render" anything. I design it. If the system gets in my way, it's useless. NT gets in my way. Fuggedaboutit.

    FWIW I use Macs and Linux. Both work fine and dandy and do exactly what I want them to (Macs as workstations, Linux for servers). Since you're apprently a Microsoft engineer or whatever, if that's what blows up your skirt, fine. Just don't try and foist it on me. I'd rather give up computers entirely than be forced to use NT.

    And if you _really_ want a media system on Intel iron, try Be. NT is laughable. I take pride in the fact that I have an Intel- and MS-free shop anyway.

    cya

    Ethelred

  • Get a grip... Re:Darn... (Score:3)

    by Ethelred Unraed ( 32954 ) on Thursday July 08, 1999 @01:43AM (#1813940) Journal
    Antitrust law is retroactive, which means that even if something was perfectly legal when you actually did it, if it is subsequently declared illegal you are still liable.

    This is flat-out false. Read the U.S. Constitution, bub. Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3: "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." In other words, ain't no such thing as retroactive law.

    This means that there is no way to tell if you are breaking the law when you do something, because the law doesn't exist yet!

    You been reading Kafka too much?

    Microsoft's phalanx of corporate lawyers would never have broken existing laws, Bill is too smart for that.

    Ridiculous. Bill just interprets the law the way it suits him--until he gets caught bending the rules just a little too far. Reminds me of another Bill we all know.

    If you were to take a straw poll on /. you'd find many people who believe that all software should only come from the open source community by divine right.

    Does open source hold a monopoly? By definition, no. Open source is not a monolith--it's a process. Microsoft IS a monolith, and a monopoly. You simply can't compare the two.

    Bill's simply more successful than anyone else because he was the first to realise the truth: There is no such thing as a software project, there are only business projects with a software element.

    No one blames Microsoft for being successful. We do blame them for abusing their position. That's where they broke the law.

    Force is the sole monopoly of governments.

    Ah. A card-carrying member of the Libertarian Party, I see. Mmmm-hmmm...

    Repeat that statement while someone is pointing a .357 Magnum at your head and demanding your wallet.

    The only force here is that applied by the DOJ.

    Baloney. Microsoft also forced numerous companies to either be subsumed by them or be forced out of the game (WebTV, Hotmail, DR-DOS, Netscape, etc. etc. etc.). My Lord, they even had Intel majorly worried, incredibly enough. If you try to claim Microsoft doesn't use "moral force" (to use that giddy Libertarian term), then your credibility is at around null.

    Just because someone is in government does not make them inherently an abuser of "moral force"--and, conversely, just because someone is NOT in government does not make them incapable or unwilling to do so, either.

    Microsoft has no guns and no laws to compel people to obey, only the free judgement of the rational individuals who freely trade with them, everyone from the home PC user to megacorporations like Compaq and IBM. No-one has ever compelled you to trade with MS, you have always done do freely - it is a central fact that no-one has the right to buy whatever they want, only what they are offered for sale.

    Right. Uh-huh. Now just TRY and get along WITHOUT using Microsoft products in the corporate workplace. Just TRY to see how far you make it. Your customers will abandon you, because you're incapable of opening even the simplest MS-Works document when they communicate with you. If things get worse, soon your Mac/Linux/Sun box will be unable to communicate with the other computers because they're using MS-TCP...thus cutting you off from the 90% of desktop computers in the workplace that are running Windows.

    This is why we HAVE antitrust law!

    Jeez...

    cya

    Ye Olde Webdesigner [surf.to]

  • Not only that, but it was quickly determined (in 1796 or so) that this clause of the constitution actually did have some teeth. Antitrust laws have some issues, but they're not ex-post facto in nature. Perhaps unconstitutionally vague or broad.
  • ch-chuck wrote, on behalf of some economists:

    "a domestic monopoly is a monopoly is a monopoly, it's just bad bad bad and isn't capitalism; patriotism and nationalism but not competitive capitalism.


    This sounds right (rose is rose is rose ...), but I think has some holes ...

    1) What is a monopoly? Says the American Heritage Dictionary, "An excluisive ownership or control, as of a given business activity." [emphasis mine.] Not just "the lion's share" (no argument, MS has that in certain markets), but exclusivity.

    And even within that, there are at least two senses of exclusion that matter: 1) definitional and 2) normative. (Maybe a legal scholar can offer better words, but I hope these examples show what I mean:)

    a) Definitional: If I have the only lemonade stand in the town, I have a monopoly, literally, but with no hard feelings. Maybe the town only has enough people to support one stand, and maybe my only competitor folded after a kick-back scandal. Whyever, I just am the only lemonade game in town.

    b) Normative: If my dad is the mayor and I convince him to outlaw any other lemonade stand from opening, then have a normative monopoly. I don't care how many stands the town will support, I have the threat of law protecting mine.

    2) When did Microsoft ever have a monopoly, domestic, international, or otherwise? A preponderance, yes, but never has Microsoft held a monopoly. (At least, whenever I ask the question I have never gotten a convincing answer that MS has held a monopoly.)

    3) Can govt. regulators know better than competing companies which outcomes would be better for customers? (I pose this as a rhetorical question, but if anyone can make an argument that bureaucrats make better designers than entrepreneurs I'd like to see it.)

    A really good book on the topic of monopoly / anti-trust is called (I think I have this title right): Antitrust: A Policy at War with Itself. (By Robert Bork, all-around smart guy.)

    Just some thoughts,

    timothy
  • This has nothing to do with the size of the company. The company I work for has somewhere in the area of 70 to 80 Thousand employees, about three times that of Microsoft. This has to do with the fact that Microsoft is using it monopoly in an illegal way.
    I am wondering though, the popularity of Linux seems to have taken off since the beginning of the trial, and several people I know have switched from using win95/98/NT after hearing about all these things Microsoft is doing. So I believe the trial has had a huge effect on their marketshare because many people didn't think there was an alternative to MS products.

  • You keep mentioning stuff like "the /. crowd" in a way that sounds as you aren't a part of it. You are! And I think we should all be happy for it :-)

    I know no one who is able to put such different spin on everything MS related in such a way that somebody just *has* to answer. It makes reading /. a lot more fun and I wouldn't be without it.

    With your display of well thought opinions, which I think you do even if I don't always agree, I am a little puzzled about your previous statement:

    There is no such thing as a software project, there are only business projects with a software element.

    So what is Linux, X, sendmail and perhaps most of all UNIX? They all started as software projects and except UNIX they all still are. I know that sendmail is now sold differently in a commercial version, but it is still freely available and is therefore still a software project

    Being well-versed in Linux for example you should know that if anything it is only now becoming a software project with a business element.

    Peter
    --

  • So what you are saying is that capitalism is an unstable system that must be nurtured and kept alive (much like a computer running NT ;-)

    I am not sure I agree with you and I am not sure that even MS would be able to keep their almost monopoly even if DOJ hadn't interacted.

    Since late 1993 I chose not to use any MS product so that would be a monopoly minus one that had a choice, right? (this is excluding the thousands others at the time running Linux, *BSD, UNIX, etc.).

    Peter
    --

  • Furthermore, since the Sherman Antitrust Act was passed in 1890, which is before the actions alleged by Microsoft, before Microsoft was even incorporated and--assuming Gates is not the immortal and timeless Dark One--before the founders of the company were even born, the current FTC/DoJ/LMNOP case against Microsoft is not an ex-post-facto application of the Act.

    Methinks you doth assume too much ;)

    Man, the number of people who still appear to think it's about MS's success rather than their success at the expense of others and with -- the evidence seems clear enough -- malice of forethought toward anybody else who even thinks about trying to make a buck or two off of software is getting me down. Read the papers, mon petit chat, and see *how* MS got where they are, with ample warning (see: Standard Oil, IBM) that sooner or later the DOJ could come down on them.

    good civics lesson, keebler.

  • "Bill was never really a hacker in the first place like so many Unix heroes were/are, he just funded projects and used other people's work to his advantage "

    reply:
    "More FUD and lies. Bill's simply more successful than anyone else because he was the first to realise the truth: There is no such thing as a software project, there are only business projects with a software element. "

    Actually not FUD, not a lie.
    The two statements are BOTH TRUE in their context.

    The only "FUD" is the lie that statement one is FUD or a lie.

    Wonders if my Physics Programming Project was a software project? There was no business plan...
  • actually regulation, propaganda, spending...many forces besides brute physical force
    what is at issue is the AVAILIBILITY of choice, and how the available market was influenced.
    you can't buy a product that has been torpedoed
  • Whether or not people are able to choose not to buy Microsoft products doesn't seem to be the issue here. What people are objecting to (quite rightly IMHO) is that Microsoft has taken steps to REDUCE the choice. The point of the Caldera case is that when people had the choice to use MS-DOS or not with Windows, MS changed their product so as to remove this particular choice. If this is the case then in the question of what to use with Windows we don't have any choice any more.

    Supposing (hypothetically) that WINE, for example, ever becomes fully functional, easily, then this choice will one day be restored. As it is Microsoft has forced a monopoly on one area of the market - and (AFAIAA) monopolies are what anti-trust law is all about.
  • Erm. Quite simply no.

    The point of anti-trust laws is that just what you claim will happen doesn't. It has been shown that by creating a monopoly companies are able to break away from the laws of competition and it is found that regardless of whether a product is better / cheaper / happier the monopoly wins out. This is the nature of monopolies and it is for just this reason that anti-trust laws were created.

    If it were so that monopolies could be easily toppled by better products, there would be no need for legislation to do the same thing.
  • But that's exactly what this trial is about. This trial is about whether Microsoft deliberately changed the was Windows works purely so that it was incompatible with other DOS offerings...
  • Uhhh...about not breaking laws in existance and retroactive anti-trust law: the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was passed in 1890. Perhaps billy-boy doesn't like to obey laws passed before he was born.

    -awc
  • well.. as for the not being compelled to us M$..
    I recently (2 weeks ago) walked into a computershop (DynaByte) which advertises with the fact that you can put together your own system. except... they do NOT sell ANY system that does not include windoze. so much for choice there. needless to say I walked out...
  • Although I do believe that Microsoft engages in coercive, anti-competitive, monopolistic behavior, I still have an ethical problem with this action by Caldera.

    Caldera bought DR-DOS just a couple of years ago, well after it became an obsolete product with no sales potential. Then they filed a lawsuit against Microsoft based on something that happened to the product before they ever had any vested interest in its success or even in its very existence.

    In their defense, I must say that Caldera has in fact been making at least a symbolic effort at marketing DR-DOS, calling it a "thin client solution." But there's not much one can do with DR-DOS that one cannot do using the DOS emulation already bundled under Caldera's own Open Linux. Why would Caldera compete with itself this way, when it could consolidate the two into a unified, robust product that can run not only any source-available Unix program ever written, but also any DOS-based binary application written before 1994? They own the source to a full-blown DOS; instead of competing with their flagship product, they could be using it to make their flagship product's DOS emulation bullet-proof and save themselves a bundle in marketing and future development costs.

    They won't do that, though, because it is in their best fiscal interest to hang DR-DOS out to dry, to go through the motions of trying to sell it into a market that vanished years ago.

    DR-DOS is, as of 1999, a useless product. That begs the question, why did Caldera buy it at all? The only answer I can come to is that they didn't buy an operating system: they bought the grounds for a lawsuit. I believe that Caldera purchased Digital Research's old MS-DOS clone in full knowledge that they would never be able to make any significant amount of money by selling or supporting the product to end-users, or by using its technology to improve any of its other future or existing products. Furthermore I believe their primary--if not their sole--purpose in the buy was to make a huge pile of money by suing the biggest player in the business over something that happened before Caldera was even incorporated.

    Regardless of the target of Caldera's lawsuit, I believe their premeditated behavior in this matter is grossly unethical. It is morally bankrupt. It is litigous opportunism at its All-American worst: Caldera themselves were never hurt by Microsoft; they just bought someone else's pain and pretended it was their own. You will be hard-pressed to find a lawsuit which more clearly exhibits the near-total subversion of the United States' civil judicial system from a mechanism by which wrongs are remedied to one you use to make a fast buck.

    Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to drive down to Florida now and buy a pack of cigarettes. Then I'm going to buy a buggy-whip concern and use it to sue GM.

    --

  • Um, sex*kitten? do you even know what what "ex post facto" means?

    Art. 1 Sec. 9 says that you cannot pass a law today and use it to prosecute someone for something they did last year. This means that if we ever come to our senses and ban disco music, we cannot go arrest the BeeGees for having helped make the 1970s a stereophonic hell-on-earth. No matter how much they deserve it.

    Furthermore, since the Sherman Antitrust Act was passed in 1890, which is before the actions alleged by Microsoft, before Microsoft was even incorporated and--assuming Gates is not the immortal and timeless Dark One--before the founders of the company were even born, the current FTC/DoJ/LMNOP case against Microsoft is not an ex-post-facto application of the Act.

    I believe, kitten, that you are under the misapprehension that Art.1 Sec.9 means that you can get away with murder just because the trial happened after you cut the brake lines on the tour bus of the Bros. Gibb. Sadly, this is not the case.

    --

  • Linux-start.com has seventy thousand employees?

    --
  • Thank you for the clarifications from a Caldera insider's point of view.

    Thank you also for pointing out that DR-DOS is still used for embedded and special-purpose applications. I'm glad to see that DR-DOS's technical merits have found a new home in this market. As an AC pointed out above [slashdot.org], I was thinking of the world in terms of desktops and servers, not in terms of smaller environments. I suspect, however, that in environments such as install-disks and industrial controllers, interoperability with Windows 3.11 is hardly an issue.

    You have to admit, though, that buying a product and filing a lawsuit on the very same day looks awfully suspicious from the outside. Although I'm sure you cannot legally comment on this, it looks very much like the sort of thing an opportunistic company would do if it were buying a lawsuit.

    And my arguments and opinions, as they apply to the desktop environment, and as they apply to things which transpired before Caldera existed, are still valid:

    The mechanism by which wrongs are remedied is that criminals are punished. No one else, in a sequence of companies with standing in such matters, has done anything to pursue a remedy or punishment of Microsoft over the alleged criminal acts they committed. It is fairly clear that this is so because of the threat of retaliation from Microsoft. Caldera enjoys a position where retaliation by Microsoft is somewhat more difficult due to the markets we are in.
    So are you doing this because it needs doing, or because you can get away with it? I suspect the latter, and I still have ethical problems with this sort of thinking. You don't right a wrong by punishing a wrongdoer. Punishing someone who has harmed you is not the same thing as repairing the harm done.
    Many people, including Microsoft, have a hard time with the concept that legal standing can be transferred with a product, but I believe that the law allows it for exactly these types of situations. Legally, Caldera can act on behalf of DRI and Novell, to punish Microsoft for their criminal acts. The fact that many of us were actually materially affected by the bad acts is just icing on the cake (justice-wise).
    Of course the law allows for it. The law allows for all sorts of opportunistic behavior. I'm happy the soulless entity "Caldera" has engaged in a behavior which will fulfill its success objectives through legally valid mechanisms. But I am unhappy that people use what is legal as an excuse to ignore what is right.
    Legally, Caldera can act on behalf of DRI and Novell, to punish Microsoft for their criminal acts. The fact that many of us were actually materially affected by the bad acts is just icing on the cake (justice-wise).
    So you're doing this to punish Microsoft. This is substantially different than seeking redress. You're well with in your legal rights, of course. Your company is engaging in legally correct activities--so what if they're revolting? They're legal, and that's all that matters anymore.

    Okay, so I'm being a voice in the wilderness. So are these guys [cerj.org], most likely. Maybe I just need to sell out too, replace my soul with an algorithm.

    I'm glad DR-DOS has a viable future, I really am. It's a good product that deserves to be used. I'm just ashamed of what it's being used as an excuse for.

    --

  • Microsoft associate general counsel Tom Burt said he was disappointed in the decision, adding that Caldera's claim for European damages was "contrary to antitrust law."

    I just love these kind of tidbits from the various M$ trials. 'Contrary to antitrust law' how, exactly? Perhaps the letter (does U.S. antitrust law only relate to the U.S., or have previous cases only been in the U.S.?), but certainly not the spirit of the law.

    Grasping and straws, I'd say. And of course, such an attitude dovetails nicely with Bill's various comments about M$'s role in the global economy.

    Oh well, if M$'s lawyers are going to react to these decisions in that hurt tone (as above), this should provide years of enjoyment....
  • Seems to me that the situation is not really one of ex-post facto laws, but rather one of prima-facia: what looks (on the surface) to be legal is illegal in the context of overall anti-competitive behaviour. In this case, simplified, the defendant may have committed a legal act (such as adding a "warning message" to the operating system code), and another legal act (such as, for example, announcing a vaporware upgrade) which COMBINED TOGETHER constitute a willful and illegal effort to put DR-DOS out of business.

    Oh, BTW, I am neither a lawyer nor an expert. But I do (obviously) have an opinion.
  • The point is not that Windows wasn't compatible with other DOSs, in fact, it was. DR-DOS and others were better DOSs than DOS itself. The only reason for the incompatibilities (pick up Undocumented DOS by Andrew Schulman at a used book store) was Microsoft purposely adding checks for its own DOS. If they'd simply made a product (even if it ran best on their own DOS) and tried to make it work well, they'd have no legal problems. The legal problem is in checking obscure things to see whose DOS is running (like what part of memory the character map for the keyboard is stored in ... which was specific to MS DOS because it was illogical).

    Keep it straight ...
  • You might want to learn to quote properly ... so your posts are legible ...

    Antitrust law is retroactive, which means that even if something was perfectly legal when you actually did it, if it is subsequently declared illegal you are still liable.

    This means that there is no way to tell if you are breaking the law when you do something, because the law doesn't exist yet! Microsoft's phalanx of corporate lawyers would never have broken existing laws, Bill is too smart for that.



    What I'm sick of is people who don't understand the law. antitrust can only really be applied in hindsight. When you see a company suddenly charging $250+ for an OS that used to cost $100 and no one has a competing product (but used to) and there doesn't seem to be much reason for it (the other products were viable) ... then you investigate. OS/2 didn't fall because it sucked (I didn't like it much, but I didn't like Windows either) ... it fell mostly because it didn't get shipped on OEM desktops.

    That's why MS is getting it where it's deserved ... pushing OEMs around. Latest Computer Reseller News has an article on OEMs begging MS to let them multi-boot their PCs into Windows 2000 and Windows 98 so the user can decide which to use, then after a "period of time", have to have the other erased (automatically). MS wants to charge full dual licensing for the two copies ...

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