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Microsoft Trial Sent Back To Lower Court
nexex writes: "FoxNews is reporting that as expected, a federal appeals court sent Microsoft Corp.'s antitrust case Friday back to a lower court to determine what penalty should be imposed on the software giant. "Microsoft has failed to demonstrate any substantial harm that would result from the reactivation of proceedings in the district court," the appeals court ruled. "It appears that Microsoft has misconstrued our opinion, particularly with respect to what would have been required to justify vacating the district court's findings of fact and conclusions of law," the court wrote." Well, now we get to hear about Kollar-Kotelly instead of Jackson. Yay.
Price is affordable, for the upgrade 100-200.00 seems like alot, but your getting legal mp3 encoding software, legal cd recording software, an os upgrade, compatibility with prior software and a fairly common platform that you can go to any store and buy software and hardware for.
While linux is improving nicely, it still lacks heavily in any music reporduction, media interfaces business applications. I'd rather pay 199.00 bucks for something that works out of the box and comes with lots of software then several hours downloading, burning iso's and then chasing down the latest versions of all apps waisting a whole entire weekend or business days (thus costing more then the 199.00 XP package).
I'm not dissing linux, and not praising XP. Its just time for everyone to get off there totem poll and just use what is out there. You have your choices, microsoft has stopped blocking OEM's from shipping other programs and that is what the antitrust case should have been about. It shouldn't be about a browser that is included, you can install any browser you wish.
So now people will sue microsoft because it/they still include apps within the os.
Nobody sues IBM for OS/2 that was bundled with a browser (warp 3 & 4), Nobody sued Sun for including the ancient java browser and prefering that you use there browser.
Nobody sued Redhat for defaulting to the gnome desktop and making it hard for people to get KDE (which as of 7.2 will be a thing of the past.. redhat is more desktop agnostic now). But still, if i have to download the rpm's for netscape or mozilla on any other platform why the hell is it so hard for a windows user to download and run an installer for that application on the Windows platform?
Windows is microsoft's product afterall. They can decide what and how they want to to work and do. Just like you can decide what and how you want to use it!
Nobody is holding a gun to your head. Personally XP will be my desktop and laptop OS, linux will be my Server/web/email os and linux will also be a developer os (since i can code for my dreamcast and other devices fairly easily).
Let's see now...You've been convicted of being a monopolist and using your position to illegally advance your business interests at the expense of others. While waiting for your sentence you've committed other acts of the same sort.
How is this so different from a defendant trying to illegally preserve assets from creditors by disposing of them to friends, so that the moment of judgement finds the defendant completely broke?
This latter situation is certainly prohibited and proscribed in court cases. Microsoft can simply be told to not sell any more of these things. The "lucky" owners of XP might keep them or not, but without support or future sales of the XP product what will happen to the firm?
Wondering where this initiative of MS will go worries me slightly. I'd hate for the court to unwittingly unleash a "monster" without some method of redress should whatever remedy they come up with prove innefectual.
Windows 95 started shipping today a few years ago, WinXP hit RTM (realease to manufacture) this afternoon, and the court sent the trial back down today.
At this point, I bet the lawyers are scrambling to prepare a motion to stop shipment/distribution of WinXP, but can they succeed in less than 60 days? If so, they'll have dealt a good blow to MS - all those copies of WinXP sitting around in warehouses (we're talking several million boxes of product). This won't hurt MS much financially (much), but it'll be really interesting to see what happens then. MS would have to throw them away if the court required some unbundling. And if the court said, "No shipment until ruling" then MS would have a strong reason to help move the process along - including making some concessions they were unwilling to make a year ago.
Believe me - Microsoft, as a whole, is riding on WinXP, as it is the most stable MS product yet, not to mention that it's the first windows to realize their dream of five years - one version/code base for both home and coporate users.
If they can't get it out within a year...
-Adam
It may end up that by the time justice has run its course it will be too late. If .NET does what I believe Microsoft wants it to do it may be very difficult to dole out any kind of effective punishment without crippling business on the Internet.
In a slightly less extreme view of things Microsoft is likely to continue to harm competitors and the industry in general during this waiting period.
I don't believe it would be fair to impose that kind of limitation on any company. In this industry two years is a very long time. Besides, in developing a product the feature set will most certainly evolve so this would effectively put a two year delay on any product they want to release.
...for those that just don't get it yet.
First, read this.
Now, imagine if the hard drive maker, or the memory maker, or the video card maker (etc., you get the point) tried to do the same thing? Compaq would have dumped them in a second and gone to a competitor.
Now, listen carefully:
THEY CAN'T DO THAT WITH WINDOWS BECAUSE THERE IS NO OTHER CHOICE!!!
This is precisely what is a legal definition of a monopoly (as opposed to an absolute monopoly. Many people say Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly because you can buy a copy of Red Hat and install it. These people are confusing a legally defined monopoly and an absolute monopoly like what AT&T had.)
It's technically legal for Microsoft to have this monopoly, but it's illegal to abuse it by forcing other products down computer manufacturers throats (First Explorer, Office, MSN, now Windows Media Player, Windows Messaging, etc.)
To all you Microsoft apologists out there: Do you REALLY want Microsoft in control of EVERYTHING to do with computing? Because, without the anti-trust case, that's exactly where we'd be heading. Without this "government interference", every computing experience would be handled by Microsoft. We'd all use Windows, Explorer, Office, MSN, Media Player, Windows Messaging, Passport, etc. and then Microsoft could charge whatever they want for all this.
Also, without "interference", NONE of the major companies currently supporting Linux to varying degrees (IBM, HP, Compaq, Dell, etc., etc.,) would have had anything to do with Linux. The repurcussions from Microsoft would have been much too severe.
Not to mention all the security problems that would arise out of all of this. Melissa/Love Bug/Sircam/Code Red anyone?
I am pleased and relieved that the case is going the way it is. This will preserve some measure of computing freedom for us all.