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MS Settlement: Six States (And Samba) Say "Stop!"
Masem writes "The BBC is reporting that because 6 states have refused to agree to the settlement between Microsoft and the DOJ, Microsoft is conceeding that a settlement adjustment will not be possible, opening the door for Judge Kollar-Kotelly to begin rapid remedy hearings. There is a slim chance that negotiations might happen before the end of business today (Tuesday) that will allow the settlement to go after several refinements over the last few nights, but few expect any success. While Judge Kollar-Kotelly is promising to resolve the issue as fast as possible, legal experts are projecting a drawn out battle, with the additional time no longer on Microsoft's side. No word on which states were on which side, beyond MA being very much against the settlement and IL being for it." Besides the states, the Samba team has its own objections, below.
Jeremy Allison and Andrew Tridgell of the Samba team have posted a brief analysis of what the current settlement proposal would mean to that project. (Thanks, jdfox.) Considering that Samba is one of the most important links between open and closed software, it's worth mulling over.
I agree with the judge in "her belief that a quick resolution to the case is in the best interest of the nation," however...
The hearings would not even start until March of 2002. Given that the legal process is slow (and much for good reason) will Internet time and monopolistic practices render such legal remedies a moot point?
Quoth Tom Reilly, my new hero:
"In an earlier interview with the Wall Street Journal, Massachusetts attorney-general Tom Reilly said the deal was "full of loopholes and does little more than license Microsoft to crush its competition".
Thank you for the sound bite, Mr Reilly: the DoJ has handed Microsoft a "license to kill".
My question is this: 6 states oppose the settlement, 6 states are undecided (want more money), and 6 states are for it (we're already paid off). Of these three groups, are any of them actually interested in protecting their businesses from this predatory monopoly? Is anyone truly acting on principle?
In an era where it's easy to be cynical, it would be a wonderful thing to be able to believe in people like Tom Reilly.
Why does the department of justice keep insisting that things are dealt with quickly? This is the first time in history where an antitrust trial has been mostly upheld by some of the most respected courts in the nation and suddenly being settled. The doj had this thing pretty much in the bag and all of a sudden we don't want to deal with it anymore? Come on this is getting rediculous. At this point maybe the judge will stand up and do what is right. If one of us was found guilty of a crime they wouldn't suddenly be persuaded to settle the case!
You can also try the following stories.
t ml
m l (Reg Required)
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www.msnbc.com/news/652977.asp
money.cnn.com/2001/11/06/technology/microsoft/
www.cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,316946-412,00.sh
www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,38145,00.html
www.nytimes.com/2001/11/06/business/06CND-SOFT.ht
canoe.ca/MoneyMicrosoft/nov6_msfttwothirds-ap.htm
"Microsoft more time to violate antitrust laws. XP shows they haven't learned anything from the proceedings"
What exactly was MS supposed to learn? I think if MS has learned anything, it's that the courts and officials are too technically illiterate to really understand what going on. Unfortunately I think most of these proceedings have proven this.
The courts have found that Microsoft is a monopolist, and that its abused it's monopoly. The current case doesn't even address any of the numerous issues with Windows XP!
No court has yet done a good job of truly understanding the software industry and it's relationship to OS providers. Microsoft is making a massive attempt to lock the entire software world into it's infrastructure - this is a bad thing from almost any perspective you choose.
So, let's hope the states have the courage and resources to stick with this case and insure real change at Microsoft.
299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
I think perhaps they learned to stall and drag things out until a change in political leadership could appoint a more corporate-friendly chief to the DoJ.
Guess what?! Even some of the people who *dislike* Microsoft products have been saying they don't like the behaviour of the US Government in this case.
disclaimer: I run FreeBSD on all of my machines and push it whenever it's the best tool for the job
Don't blame Microsoft, the fact that they know how to play the game better than everyone else should not be frowned upon. Most of their products are terrible, but they know how to appeal to the masses. They are the businessmen and salesmen that are the ones to look up to. Blame Joe User for not looking for another product, because gawd knows there are plenty of better products out there.
In case you forgot, or weren't born yet, IBM hed much more of a monopoly than MS ever will. You just never hear about it these days because computing was not in the spotlight of the general public back then.
The market righted itself in the past, and it will this time too.
I disagree -- Samba is arguably the single most often used piece of "middleware" (under the MS/DoJ settlement nomenclature) that would be affected by this settlement. I can't think of anything else even in the same category possessing the same level of usefulness as Samba. I've seen much speculation over the last couple of years that says Microsoft would be delighted to have a means to get rid of Samba; this might just be it.
Therefore I believe it's extremely important for any discussions to include Samba.
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. -- Ambrose Bierce
The lesson MS has learned (as well as most other obscenely large corps) is that with enough money and enough lawyers, anything is possible.
Also, let's be clear on exactly what the problem is: It's not the OS per se, but the fact that they're bundling all this drek along with it and is forcing it onto the OEM's. The problem is the use of its (reluctantly stated) legal monopoly on operating systems to force others out of other, non-OS markets. Think of the last time your Windows machine was marketed with Navigator, Corel's office suite or StarOffice, etc.
Microsoft's OS won in the OS market because they, at first, made it more attractive. Same as VHS over the technical superiority of Beta. Nowadays, there's nothing consumer that's in Beta (and even professional Beta machines are getting the boot). Very little consumer hardware is not in Windows.
You've got a point, XP is a case of arrogance to the nth degree. However, the settlement mentioned was a virtual slap on the wrist made with a feather instead of a ruler. One of the three people that would oversee MS's books and code would be a Microsoft designee, the second would need Microsoft's approval as well as the (fill in the blank). They couldn't share information with the outside world. To boot, it only would last a maximum of 7 years. To a corporation as pervasive as MS, seven years is nil.
It's amazing what campaign contributions will buy you nowadays.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
Disallow MS from buying any tech companies or any technology product for the next 7 years.
This would foster competition. When MS buys a company or product such as Visio, Powerpoint, IE, SQL server, etc. they remove the competition and get ahead start against anyone else that might be in that market. They use their huge pile of cash that they have acquired by being a monopoly to squelch any upstart and recover from any bad decision (such as initially ignoring the rise of the internet) . The best an upstart can hope for is being bought out.
I can't see how MS would find this too disagreeable as they often like to think of themselves as Innovators, so innovate and compete.
My bet is that if MS had to develop IE from scratch Netscape would still be in the game. Look at the products they develop from scratch such as IIS! A buggy insecure product that will take another 4 years to mature. If Apache was a commercial product they would have bought it long ago and we would all be using MS Apache.
Exactly what "obvious miscarriage of justice" are you talking about? The proposed settlement is apparently not going to go through. The case will go back to the judge for her to determine the remedies.
And exactly what does the XBOX have to do with this? Microsoft violated anti-trust laws relating to their bundling of the browser (which is a debatable crime), forcing PC manufacturers to ship with Windows, practically speaking, and other similar acts. The XBOX is a new, unproven gaming platform, and MSFT should be allowed to lose as much money as possible on it 8^)
"Send an Instant Karma to me" - Yes
Well it is probabably good you are not a lawyer :)
All anti-trust cases are federal cases, it is a federal statute, and one of the few issues that has original jurisdiction in a federal court. If a State, private company, individual, or Fed govt wants to bring suit on anti-trust, it is a federal matter.
Now just because the Bush DoJ (and I did vote for the man) sold out, and gave MS a deal replete with so many loopholes that you could drive a truck through, additionally exempting them from anti-trust laws, additionally refusing to do what the Court of Appeals asked for in a remedy (for the fruits of their illegal conduct to be destroyed, you know the same court that everyone who refuses to read the opinion of says precluded break-up, but in fact did nothing of that nature), then States SHOULD STAND UP.
After all, these State A.G.s did not get millions of dollars from MS in contributions (yes, the GOP recieved around 2 million last year, and the same fundraisers who took the checks are also now working in DoJ as Ashcroft's top luitenants, Also see the Wash. Post article talking about how a top MS lawyer regularly consulted with DoJ anti-trust chief Charles James (he was James' mentor))
But I am not cynical, just hoping the states stay vigalant.
Oh, that is why the States do not need to capitulate to the DoJ decision
I can't get to the Samba statement (appears Slashdotted), but I can see one big way in which the Samba project is hurt.
The current settlement basically allows Microsoft to hide implementation details in the name of security, copyrighted material restricted use enforcement, and virus protection. This truck sized loophole will allow Microsoft to throw an encryption layer over all of their protocols and refuse to share the details. This is exactly the sort of anti-competitive behavior Microsoft has engaged in before. Such an encryption layer would significantly harm Samba's ability to work with Windows. The only thing that could practically stop or slow down the Samba team from providing the public, for free, with a replacement for Windows servers is this sort for dirty trick of Microsoft. Allowing Microsoft the loophole to attack Samba with would remove an option the public already has. That sounds like harm to me.
Huch? Samba company? going out of business? what are you smoking?
Samba is not a company but a project that let Microsoft customers use their computers in a way they want - and not in the way Microsoft wants. U.S. legislation is "supposed to be designed to protect the customer?" OK. Then protection is needed to be able to write something like Samba in the US.
Joachim
People don't write Manifestos any more -- what's going on in this world? [Frank Zappa]
I fear that MS is betting that with fiscal conservatives in power and a economy going from bad to worse there would be a ton of pressure on the judicial branch to go easy on MS.
Except that branches of the govenment HATE being pressured by other branches. That's a sure fire way to backfire your plan. And idiology doesn't mean squate. Remember, Judge Jackson was considered a conservitive judge, and he hammered MS more than anyone.
The point here is that Samba is one (of many) party that has been affected by Microsoft's illegal activities to maintain their monopoly. Microsoft has made numerous changes to extensions to the SMB protocol that are (arguably) intended to thwart interoperability.
The proposed settlement appears to prevent this behaviour, but when the fine print is read, there is nothing to stop Microsoft from using the authentication issue to contiue this behaviour.
Another interesting clause in the settlement is the appearance of allowing dul-booting OSes. Under the same authentication and security clause that will allow MS to continue to make life for the Samba team more difficult, MS can remove dual-booting systems as a viable option.
All MS has to do is write into their OEM agreements that no non-MS OS shall have access to data on MS partitions. They could claim that accessing the NTFS filesystem through Linux, for example, constitutes a security threat as files can be read without going through the MS security procedures. There is no easy way to prevent this kind of access, and MS can blame the OEMs for not being able to supply a secure dual-boot system.
This settlement is really useless. The exclusions can be streched an warped by Microsoft in any way they see fit. The commitee overseeing compliance is prevented from going public with anything and the DoJ has been castrated by the current administration. This settlement could only be seen as a victory for Microsoft and it is a good thing (TM) that it will not be approved in it's current form.
Daniel Tarbuck
I'd declare certain Windows XP "publicly modifiable". What this means is that resellers should be allowed to repackage it any way they feel like. They could rip out MS add-ons, MS logo, add their own apps without restrictions.
The hope would be that MS would not be able to bundle crap into its OS because it would just get ripped out by resellers. For example, all marketing functionality could be taken out of IE, or substituted with the marketing material by some other high bidder, such as AOL.
The comment that "time is no longer on [Microsoft's] side" is a good one. In some ways, this might be the best of a bad set of possible outcomes: some restrictions are placed on Microsoft's behavior immediately, the various states continue to pursue the matter, keeping it alive in a US jurisdiction and keeping open the possibility of more meaningful constraints, and Europe is waiting in the wings, watching all of this with the chance for further action if the overall US response is insufficient. One of the problems this whole process faced is the lack of really good possible remedies: breaking up Microsoft (Judge Jackson's remedy) was likely to result in not one but two ruthless monopolists; creating a "US Department of Microsoft" sets a bad precedent for government meddling in the affairs of tech in general; Open Source Windows would simply expose a million-line rat's nest of bad code to hacking; and MS has a long history of ignoring behavioral remedies. So what's the answer? I'm sure I don't know. My favorite was insisting on the granting of free licenses to make derivative works -- i.e., you could wrap anything under, around, or on top of Windows that you pleased. This isn't popular with died-in-the-wool techies, but it would allow Win to morph into something more useful to society. As it is, we are stuck with a 30-year old user interface paradigm, and my biggest fear is that the innovation needed to move us past WIMP just isn't there. But that's another story. S. McGeady (caveat: I testified against Microsoft for the government)
I noticed a distinct difference between the summary on the main page of Slashdot, and that given by the BBC, and what is being reported by other websites and the American television news. The stories linked to from here say it's a 3-way equal split, and "experts" expect a long legal process to decide on a penalty. The more "mainstream" press is saying the settlement is a done deal with (the last count I just heard) only 3 states holding out and going after penalties on their own. Both views are supported by quotes from the attorney generals involved and even the judge herself, so what is the real story?
Is this a case of people only hearing what they want to hear?
I always had the question who could be on the oversight panel.
It couldn't be someone who testified. It couldn't be someone who worked for a competitor (cause what doesn't MS have it's fingers in).
It could have been Linus. He worked for a chip company.
It would have been great. Get paid to be a pain in MS's rear while continuing operating system developement
Bet MS realized that loophole, and decided to go for a new agreement.
Require open standards? That's like telling Coke they need to open up their formula for their trademark beverage so that Pepsi and RC can compete more fairly.
Actually, not a bad analogy is Coke was convicted of being a monopoly that abused its position to keep Pepsi and RC from producing soda.
Coke play hard, as do Pepsi and anyone in the sugar water business (or any other business). But monopolies are a different beast alltogether (in legal terms). Monopolies can be restricted from doing things that would be legal for a non-monopoly company. Lots of people forget this.
Now, you may disagree that MS is a monopoly; I've heard compelling evidence for both sides. But the judicial branch of the gov't spoke, and (barring some weird ass legal turnaround) they found MS to a) be a monopoly and b) have illegally maintained it. Thus, the penalties they could have imposed on them may not allow them to do certain things that the likes of Apple, Sun, HP, Compaq, et al will still be allowed to do.
This is merely a fluke.
While I think the south ca. 1860 was a bunch of rotten bastards, they were well within their rights to secede. The federal government was overstepping their bounds (and not just WRT slavery). So, the first Republican president was as dead set against states' rights as any other president (with the possible exception of FDR).
Since that time (and before. Look up the Whiskey Rebellion) there have been numerous cases of the Fed riding roughshod over the states.
FWIW, while DMCA, SSSCA, etc. get all of the press, water rights, highway appropriations, etc. are the bread and butter of governments (federal, state, and local).
All in all, you are right. Like you, I'm very glad to see that some states have remembered that they are sovereign over the federal government. Not only that, but they are doing it for the right reasons (not just to keep 'funny looking people' out of schools). But it won't last. If it weren't for our current state of national unity, I wouldn't at all be surprised to see Ashcroft threaten to make it harder for the states to use the resources of the DOJ if they didn't knuckle under to this decision.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I think Microsoft does believe in empowering the user. They may be a bit off-course, though. I still believe Microsoft's development tools are second-to-none, and their API documentation, for the most part is excellent.
Credit where credit is due, Visual Studio is one of the best development environments around. Their online documentation for MFC and the API is also very good. If only this were enough.
The main area I have a problem with is the Windows registry. It's become a source of misery in general, but it also contains thousands of critical keys that Microsoft hasn't documented and has no intention of ever documenting. If you want to write a program that intergrates itself into the OS, you're going to have to spend a lot of time exploring the registry.
Sure, Microsoft makes it easy enough to develop applications for their operating systems. But Microsoft also keeps enough stuff undocumented so that you'll never be able to integrate applications into the OS as closely as they do. This creates an environment where you're free to write all the cool software you want, but Microsoft can at any point write the a similiar app and latch it into their OS. This is why I would love Microsoft to document ALL of their operating system, it would help to level this area of the playing field.
"After all, these State A.G.s did not get millions of dollars from MS in contributions "
No, but they did receive millions of dollars from MS competitors in contributions.
I think it's interesting how you try to accuse Microsoft of bribery, but ignore all of the money that was contributed that led up to this case. Microsoft only started contributing money to political parties after the fact. They've also given just as much money to the Dems as the GOP.
Go take a look at Larry Ellisons political contribution record. We're talking millions... I can't find a reference now, but I recall it being close to $60mil.
As a matter of fact, I am cynical.
I know that the only reason Mass and California are so unhappy with this settlement is that they have companies in their states that are MS-wannabees who have spent a lot of money on this court case...
The only state that you could possibly claim isn't in this for financial motivation is Iowa, but that's only because Iowa is a technological wasteland.
Steve
From Iowa
Yes, I'm going to contact the attorney general of my state immediately and let him know how I feel. But even though I vote in every election, my own voice is cheapened and weakened by the huge numbers of people who don't. Why should an elected official listen to me, rather than a contributor, when the overwhelming statistical odds are that I am among the huge pool of incorrigible non-voters who have surrendered all power over their government's actions? Even if I announce that he/she's "got" or "lost" my vote next time, odds are that's not true.
I know, I know, this is another one of my "granny knows what's good for you kids" rants. But think about it, please. What if next election there were an 80% or 90% turnout? You could actually fire your state's attorney general for sucking up to MS and taking this ridiculous settlement! Imagine that. Are you so absolutely sure that voting would have no impact? Are you so positive that you won't even bother to try it, thereby guaranteeing business as usual? Probably (sigh).
I have a new idea, which I'm going to practice starting with the next local election. Our state's ballots have little square tear-off tabs. They don't show who you voted for, just the fact that you cast a ballot. I'm going to save mine and scan them, so that I have a permanent record of every election I've voted in, which can be printed out and mailed, or sent as an email attachment. Thus, when I contact an elected representative to express my opinion, it will be accompanied by a concrete "voting record" -- evidence that I care enough to back my opinion up with my vote.
If this practice became widespread, it might be quite effective, not only in empowering communications between technologically-informed citizens and the government, but in exerting some peer pressure against the huge non-voting majority. Like, if voters carried their voting records around all the time, then if someone was really whining about how the government never listens to us, we could all whip out our voting records and say "let's see yours." It could become shameful to protest government action without a voting record to throw down when one's bluff is called; shameful enough that Americans actually start exercising the democratic rights we purport to stand up for. Ok, I'm a dreamer, but I'll keep trying. I believe in a democratically elected government, for Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and . . . what the heck, maybe even the USA for a change.
No, no, no. This is not a sig.
The Nader/Love letter has the judge's address. Perhaps slashdotters should write her pronto.
She is at:
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly
United States District Court for the District of Columbia
333 Constitution Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001
My public comment will be something along these lines...
United States Department of Justice:
State Attorneys General:
United States District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly:
I object to the proposed Microsoft settlement. I believe that it will require too much government involvement and its enforcement will be too expensive. I doubt that it will correct the damage done by Microsoft or cause them to reform their behavior.
I propose a simpler, cheaper remedy which will be effective and fair: Revoke some of Microsoft's patents and copyrights. Give them back to their rightful owners or to the public.
This remedy would return the competitive system to its natural state by freeing Microsoft's competitors to produce interoperable products without the threat of lawsuits. It would also strongly deter future anticompetitive acts by entities which value their patent and copyright privileges.
This remedy would be fair because it would both reduce Microsoft's ability to profit from their crimes and seize the assets used as tools to commit those crimes. The value of many of Microsoft's works was created mainly by depriving consumers of any alternative choices. Consumers and computer vendors should be allowed the right to freely duplicate the existing Microsoft works. Those works are inferior to the work which would have been produced in an freely competitive marketplace.
It would be trivial to implement this remedy. The court would simply select an appropriate set of patents and copyrights, declare them void, and refuse to enforce them. The selection could be limited to only those patents and copyrights directly involved in criminal acts, or the court could deny Microsoft all patent and copyright privileges for some period of time.
As a general rule, an anticompetitive monopolist should never be granted extra power to prevent competition through patent and copyright. To the contrary, a market entity's access to legalized monopoly protection should be inversely proportional to its size. This would lead to a stable market of medium sized producers and would maximize competition and innovation.
Finally, I want to suggest that every computing product or service offered for sale, whether from Microsoft or not, should be accompanied by a warranty [see note 1]. The warranty should clearly document the product's input and output, including the type, purpose, and format of all files and network resources used. While this is not currently law, the court should require it of Microsoft from now on.
note 1: Because source code describes exactly what a program does, unobfuscated source code should be considered a sufficient warranty for software products.
Thank you for your good work. I hope you are able to find a fair solution in the best interest of society.
Sincerely,
Dave King
Irving, Texas
------DO NOT WRITE BELOW THIS LINE------
The government should do the following:
- Every new PC should be dual boot. Short term measure that might spark some curiosity in Joe average user.
- Make a policy to move to a non Microsoft operating system within the next 5 years.
- Fine Microsoft, the money should be used to finance open source projects that directly help their goal of switching to a non MS operating sytem.
- Force MS to use fully disclosed and patent-free protocols for their app2app or computer2computer. Document formats should be considered protocols for app2app.
Those things would show that the governement doesn't want to support a monopoly. It would definitely help the customers and definitely help the competition. It wouldn't prevent Microsoft from selling software in the other operating system, it wouldn't prevent Microsoft from selling their operating system to normal users too.
According to opensecrets.org Microsoft gives almost evenly to both political parties. In 2000 they gave 46% of $4,543,276 to the Dems. I'd say they were hedging their bets either way.
I still wouldn't say the DOJ is capitulating because of money. Recent polls have shown that the American people don't really care about Microsoft anymore, and that is why the Government is giving up and settling. Although they supposedly brought this case because MS broke the law, and the Gov't should pursue this kind of thing regardless of politics, if it isn't popular it isn't going to happen no matter who is President.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
Does it seem funny to anyone else that the judge is eager to initiate fast-track remedy hearings but they won't start until March 2002? Only in America can something be "expedited" by a process that takes 2 years and won't even start for another 5 months! No wonder Microsoft thinks it can commit murder with impunity.
Actually, what IBM did was to make the corporate decision that protracting the litigation for as long as possible would enable them to continue their anti-competitive practices. They calculated that they would make more money by perpetuating the status quo than they would spend in legal fees.
IIRC, though, eventually IBM did go under a consent decree of some sort.
It's not just non-MS browsers that are blocked. It's also non-Windows OS's. Using Internet Explorer 5 for Mac OS X, I am unable to access the site, but instead get this message;
We're sorry,
but MSN Music currently requires a PC system running
Internet Explorer 4.1 or higher installed if you want to browse the site
or
a PC system running Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher
with Windows Media Player 7.0 or higher installed to listen to music
woof!
I'm not saying that somebody should strap Bill Gates to an electric chair, not at all.
I'm saying that Microsoft, legally and morally, should be dismantled.
Microsoft is a corporation, which means that they have articles of incorporation. That is, the government has given them a license above and beyond that of a normal person, to be publicly traded and to produce limited liabilities (you can't sue a corporation for more money than it has, but you can sue a person that way and garnish their wages).
Incorporation is not a right, it is a privelege. And when a privelege granted by the government is abused, it can and should be rescinded. It's just like taking a driver's license away from a drunk driver.
A court of law has ruled, and has been backed up by the US Supreme Court, that Microsoft is an illegal monopoly. The same courts have also ruled that Microsoft has wilfully ignored court orders--is in fact in contempt of federal courts. IMHO, Microsoft has shown that they believe themselves to be Above the Law.
When a person is given a court order (such as to stay 200 feet away from another person) and intentionally disobeys that order, they show that mere laws cannot stop them. As such, stronger forces are used--they are incarcerated, sentenced to jail.
Microsoft has shown that mere laws and court orders cannot stop them from doing whatever they please. As such, teeth are necessary.
Their articles of inrporation should be rescinded. The corporation has exceeded its lawful charter, and must not have the benefits of that charter.
Think about it. This freezes their stock--you can't trade stock on the open market anymore, how useful are those stock options in pulling in new employees?
Does this trample the rights of the shareholders? No. Their property (the stock, a percentage of Microsoft) cannot be taken away without due process of law. I see tremendous due process here, backed by the supreme court.
--The basis of all love is respect
Huh? Without Samba my windows boxes can't see a damned thing on my *nix boxes. How does Samba compete with MS if it allows windows to do something it couldn't do before? Competition implies that they are both trying to do the same thing, which isn't true. Samba isn't for installation on windows, and I don't see MS putting out SMB/CIFS implementations for *nix. I admit it's possible that they have, but I've never heard of it.
And of course Samba has a different implementation than MS. It's not like they had access to MS's code...
Doesn't matter if it was created "by consumers, for consumers", by entering that "market" (I'm using that loosely to mean the set of situations and scenarios in which Samba and NT Server provide the same functionality) Samba became a competitor.
Samba is not a competitor because it offers something MS's SMB/CIFS doesn't; interoperability. You could argue that Samba enables competition, and I would agree, but Samba itself is not a competitor. And since any anti-trust remedy should increase competition, shouldn't something that enables that competition be a beneficiary of that remedy, particularly something that is created and maitained by the very consumers whos protection is at issue?
NT unreliability in the area of interest (CIFS/SMB file sharing) is largely hearsay. If you believe otherwise, please cite (independant, unbiased) studies that prove one way or the other.
Well, there was that thing from the Gartner Group a little while back, although it was about using MS for webservers mostly. I don't doubt that MS's implementation of SMB/CIFS is rock solid, but that amounts to dick when it's sadled with the instability of the OS it's running on. In my personal experience, I have never seen an MS server match the reliability of a *nix server, whether they were maitained by myself or anyone else. If you tell me that your NT server goes a month or two between reboots, I'm still going to point to *nix servers with uptimes of several months or even years, and the 2 minutes it takes for you to reboot that NT box could easily cost a couple thousand dollars in lost productivity, and that's for a company that's not even that big.
I spend 50+ hours a week using windows, and I know it a hell of a lot better than I know Linux. My post wasn't about Linux evangelism, it was about why the Samba team has as much right as anyone else to benefit from any judgement against MS. What does it mean to the consumer if MS has to open up it's API's? Nothing, except what groups like Samba are able to do with them.
So what if they're a third party, they're complaints were equally valid for Sun and Oracle. Their assessment of the proposed settlement was accurate.
You're the one who said said anti-trust is supposed to protect the consumer, how would it do that if the only beneficiaries of this action were the companies that origionally complained? If this were simply a civil action, I would agree that the Samba team have no right to complain, but it isn't civil action, it's anti-trust, and anti-trust is supposed to benefit everyone (well, except for the abusive monopoly, of course).
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
The PC industry flourished with open standards, and where standards were closed (BIOS) they went past it by having reverse engineering and a lawyer inbetween to make sure no copyright information was shared, allowing third parties to create their own IBM compatible systems.
It may be a good punishment (letting the punishment fit the crime) by allowing people to reverse engineer windows to create competitive products (currently reverse engineering is only legal in very narrow circumstances of interoperability but even then there is no guaratee that someone could try to sue the crap out of you, or that laws like the DMCA wont allow corporations to come after you).
A market can only correct itself if the law lets it. Preventing reverse engineering under certain circumstances can do just that. Reverse engineering allows competition and competition (and information) is the natural force of balance in capitalist markets. Copyrights are a form of government regulation/social engineering, that one would expect from a communist/socialist government, not from a capitalist one, with out which businesses like Microsoft would not be as big as they are, and consumers would have a lot more choices, as well as developers being able to create hybrids, the market (and community) would be in more control of the products then an entity like a corporation.
disclaimer : My views do not represent those of every one else in slashdot.
Hows this.
1) Forced Open Standards on all M$ apps.
2) Release whatever kneebreaking agreement M$ has with IBM over OS/2 Warp
3) Allow IBM to market Warp as IBM Windows with similiar name scheme (ME/2000/XP etc...)
Yes, this would create confusion for the custom but they would figure it out quickly enough. Now we have a huge competitor with backbone that has an ax to grind.