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Microsoft Settlement For Private Suits Rejected
Lumpish Scholar writes: "Reuters story here. The judge "could not endorse the settlement ... Microsoft will have to start from scratch in negotiating a new settlement or fight the scores of suits in court."" Reuters also has an article from yesterday that looks at the positions of the various parties prior to this news. You will recall that Microsoft was proposing to settle the civil suits brought against it by donating free Microsoft software and old computers to schools. And do remember - because this always seems to confuse people - that the case brought by the Department of Justice and state governments is distinct from these suits filed by individuals.
To tie this up in the courts for years. Or atleast long enough to push out a few more OS versions....
Do it doug.
I have friends that know Judge Motz here in Baltimore. He was described to me as a person with "A strong sense of fairness" and a good judge. I had a feeling he would reject that BS settlement ! woohoo !
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
This is awesome... the deal that was reached was so totally beneficial to Microsoft it would have made more sense if Microsoft had been suing the schools and the judgement was inflicted on them!
A flat-out $1 billion cash sum should do it.
That the settlement and the Red Hat Modification (ie MS buys the computers and RH donates the free software) would be accepted
This is a quote from this Yahoo article.
I'm really happy to see that the judge didn't cave in!
299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Apple and others had objected on the grounds that by letting Microsoft give software and cheap hardware to schools, they were actually not out much money (since they just have to replicate their own software) and were reaping giant marketing benefits by pushing out Apple or other vendors.
It's at least a small victory.
that Judge Motz didn't blab to any reporters in his chambers that the settlement was patently unjust or that the microsoft execs were behaving like spoiled children.
(Don't mind me, but I've been burned before with false-relief that the truth will out.)
Seriously. Their idea of a settlement was to donate computers with MS software to schools? I read about that before as their proposed settlement and didn't really pay much attention to it, but now that they actually took it to a judge I'm just speechless.
Here's why I'm laughing inside: MS gets sued by individuals for unfair competition and illegal business practices, and then MS proposes a solution where they will appear to be doing a public good, but in fact they will be cementing their platform in the future computer world by brainwashing children. What a joke!
Like many others on here, I would love to see them donate all this hardware only for RedHat to volunteer and install Linux on it all, but I seriously doubt MS would let that happen. Given their attitude and actions in this case so far, I'm sure they'd write up some wordy contracts about proper use of the equipment they donated. I wouldn't be surprised if they even claimed everything produced by the computers and software would then become IP of MS. Anyhow, I really think the judge should have fined them for wasting the court's time.
~ now you know
It's already happening, and will continue. Have patience.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
From the article: "Class-action attorneys from California have argued the money should be reimbursed directly to customers who were overcharged for Microsoft software."
This is interesting. How does someone actually determine the worth or 'price' of software? Generally you want to take all your overhead, add some profit, and take a good estimate of what your sales will be. Then you'd determine a price. (I realize this is very OVER simplified) You would also compare your product against competitive products and see where you sit in comparison to them price/value wise.
Since Microsoft essentially had a monopoly on the PC market for sales of Operating Systems, their competition was none. They could charge any price to the OEMs and Consumers for the retail packages they felt like, which at least appeared to be a reasonable price to most customers.
But how would they determine if someone was overcharged by Microsoft? Is the very fact that when you buy a PC, you automatically have Windows installed on it and are also paying for the OEM version of Windows that was installed on that PC?
This could easily be argued as a 'value-added' feature of that PC. Where the customer ultimately benefits because the cost of an OEM Windows license is less than the Retail Windows license.
I personally loathe Windows, and don't use it. But I'm more curious on how they determined that Microsoft overcharged it's customers.
This was a pre-trial settlement. Microsoft has not been found guilty of the allegations of over charging consumers.
These cases will now go to court.
But it's up to the claimants to prove that in a more competitive market the price would have actually declined. That was the allegation that Judge Jackson made in his court that spawned these lawsuits, but it was more of an assumption of the nature of monoply than really supported by facts.
It's highly unlikely that Microsoft will lose these cases, they simply tried to get a pre-trial settlement because it would have been cheaper than the legal costs of fighting in court, as well as derailing the negative publicity a court case causes.
That is why the proposed settlement cost seemed so low. It was a hedge, not a punishment.
MS may have lost this one, but they are patient in seeking complete market domination. There are many palms to grease in DC. Eventually someone will rise up in Congress and ask that we brush aside this blight on the profits of such a fine company as Microsoft.
I'd like to believe that won't happen. But too many legislators have the techincal comprehension of a sea slug. Nothing substantive will ever happen to Microsoft at the behest of any branch of the US Government. Eventually the dissenting states will be forced to give up the fight because they simply can't afford the up-front cost of litigation.
I saw this in someone's .signature on some random mailing list that I can't remember at the moment. I think they attributed it to a Mac website.
...someone is caught breaking into your house, offers to repair the
damage instead of going to jail, if they can put up a massive billboard
for their house maintainance business in your front yard for six
months...
woof!
I was just talking with someone today about how something like a speeding ticket to Bill Gates is no punishment at all.
But a public whipping would be pretty punishing no matter who you are (well maybe not to masochists)
So rather than come up with some arbitrarily large sum of money to punish Microsoft, maybe all the execs on the board should be publicly flogged.
How about a compulsory $37-billion donation to the Free Software Foundation as punishment?
From cnnfn there is a mention that the judges reasons are:
Judge Motz said he was not satisfied that there was enough value to the settlement and that the charitable institution would have been insufficiently funded.
Further, Judge Motz said the settlement "would raise antitrust concerns from the perspective of other software manufacturers" because the donation of free software could be construed as "court-approved predatory pricing."
Both these issues have been raised by many people and posted here on slashdot in the past.
I wouldn't mind lawyers getting paid by the boatload for all this stuff, as long as Microsoft is the only one that has to foot the bill. MS should also pay hefty court fees for wasting so much of the court's time.
... underdogs, and people like underdogs...
:)
I'll agree with this piece.
[apple] never encouraged tinkering and hacking by individuals
The entire development environment and documentation library for Mac OS-X is both free and pretty darn spiffy. Visual Studio is something like $500 to $1000 depending who you are and how you get it. Heck, my first Apple came with schematics and ROM assembly listings.
At least Microsoft freely release GW-Basic in the early days...
Apple gave away Basic before Microsoft even existed. Never for Macintosh, but I believe that was more for strategic reasons. Apple needed to force the applications to a dramatically higher level of usability. This required the armys of evangelists and much arm twisting. "modern" mid '80s gui applications were not going to be thrown together in the Basic of the days.
Microsoft has also supported the porting of Perl and Python (via Activestate) to the Windows environment.
Yes, now we can see if that was the embrace before the extend.
Microsoft's software has been typically cheaper than Apple's
I have no idea in what universe this is true. Actually, there is very little in the way of good comparisons. Office $400, Appleworks $99. But Appleworks is feature poor compared to Office. It does everything I need, so its a good deal for me (well, $0, I buy low end Macs where it is included). If I needed the extras Office has this would be a worthless comparison. IE? No comparison. Apple is still forbidden from suggesting that there may be other browsers much less making one. iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD? No competition. Likewise there are loads of MS apps with no comparison. OS prices? Upgrades are similarly priced. Development tools? No contest.
Remember Apple 's sordid attempt to foster clones?
Yes. Apple gave them the hardware reference designs and OS in the delusion that the cloners would make a wider variety of machines and attack niches. The cloners just built the reference designs with minor tweaks and sold them in to apple's highest margin market (early adopters) because the cloners could start selling the newer faster processers while they were still in short supply and Apple with their larger market had to wait for production to ramp up. (I believe at one point Apple was buying all the initial production of higher speed processors at a premium and warehousing them so they could get the fast machines out first. When you have to pay a premium to keep faster processors away from your users in order to promote your platform something has gone wrong.) The media savaged Apple for offering slow machines. Apple lost sales. The platform didn't gain . Apple didn't revoke the cloners licenses (except one, they bought that back) they just raised the OS price so the cloners paid the same per machine for the OS as apple. Without the OS subsidy to pocket the cloners left the business.
I am glad tho that I do not have to pick between the lesser of two evils
Me too. I suspect any corporation with a 90%+ market share will be bad for the users. God knows what GPL v9 will look like when free software has 90% of the market.
that's ok... i like clothing made from .NET.
Micorsoft-opoly...
BillGates: [rolls dice] = 8
BillGates: sweet, doubles!
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8.
Chance: "Place token to nearest anti-trust judge. If he is unowned you may buy him from the bank, otherwise come up with new settlement plan."
BillGates: damn!
BillGates: [rolls dice] = 5...
Yes, if Apple had 90+% market share, they would be just as bad as Microsoft, maybe worse.
... wait a minute, never mind.
... like Microsoft itself was in the days of IBM dominance. Maybe Red Hat?) Whoever it is, they will try all the same monopolistic dirty tricks as Microsoft has, and that IBM did before it, no doubt. And we will have to be on our guard against them, and fight them every step of the way -- hopefully we can keep them from ever getting that powerful, but if not, expect yet another long anti-trust saga that leaves no one satisfied.
And if Sun had 90+% market share, they would be just as bad as Microsoft, maybe worse.
And if Oracle had 90+% market share, they would be just as bad as Microsoft, maybe worse.
And if IBM had 90+% market share
The point is not how vicious other companies beside Microsoft may be (though I'll note that Apple has become considerably less closed in the OS X age than it used to be.) The point is that Microsoft has unique monopoly power right now, and that they are everyone's enemy. Let me make that clear: if you work for Apple or Sun or Oracle or IBM or any other computer company that is not Microsoft; if you prefer MacOS or Solaris or Linux or any operating system that is not Windows; if, in fact, you do not actually work for Microsoft or for some "company" that is really a marketing arm of Wintel, Inc. (e.g. Dell), Microsoft is your enemy.
If and when Microsoft is toppled from its throne (and I sincerely hope it happens soon) there will be another company waiting to take its place, no doubt -- and it's entirely possible that one of the companies I mentioned above will be it. (Probably not; it will probably be someone we either don't know about or aren't particularly afraid of
But right now, in 2002, that doesn't matter. What matters is that Microsoft is much too big and too powerful, that it is crushing innovation, that it is evil. Remember that Churchill and Roosevelt allied themselves with Stalin against Hitler, and they were right to do so.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Ya, but between whippings Ballmer would shout
"Developers! Developers! Developers!"
Please, spare us the spectacle...
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
The way class action suits normally are resolved in the U.S. are as follows:
Company X illegally overcharges consumers, say one million consumers at $100 each. Class action lawyers file suit 'on behalf' of consumers. After many years, and many appeals, a settlement is reached and damages are awarded. Consumers are asked to fill out 20 pages of paperwork in order to receive a $25 off coupon the next time they make a purchase of $3000 or more from Company X. Offer good for next six months. And the class action attourneys split $25 million in fees.
Having Microsoft donate money to poor schools is a great idea -- iff it can be done in a way that that doesn't reduce competition.
[Insert pithy quote here]
In my opinion, this is not much different than offering a bribe to the other side's lawyers to get their support in settling the case for peanuts. Would it be OK if the plaintiffs offered to pay M$ lawyers to persuade M$ to make a $5 billion cash settlement offer??? I think not.
M$ is not the only company that is allegedly trying to settle class action suits with charitable contributions & paying the plaintiff's attorneys. To me, this is a dubious practice that should be squashed.
"Yes, if Apple had 90+% market share, they would be just as bad as Microsoft, maybe worse."
... wait a minute, never mind."
... like Microsoft itself was in the days of IBM dominance. Maybe Red Hat?)"
Probably, but at least their stuff WORKS.
"And if Sun had 90+% market share, they would be just as bad as Microsoft, maybe worse."
I disagree. Sun's a hardware company. They sell hardware. Cheap software means selling more hardware. Plus, since they aren't turned off by Linux, they could avoid $$$ in development costs.
"And if Oracle had 90+% market share, they would be just as bad as Microsoft, maybe worse."
Yep.
"And if IBM had 90+% market share
Actually, if they had it again they might at least put out a little better product, because they got taken down once.
"The point is not how vicious other companies beside Microsoft may be (though I'll note that Apple has become considerably less closed in the OS X age than it used to be.) The point is that Microsoft has unique monopoly power right now, and that they are everyone's enemy. Let me make that clear: if you work for Apple or Sun or Oracle or IBM or any other computer company that is not Microsoft; if you prefer MacOS or Solaris or Linux or any operating system that is not Windows; if, in fact, you do not actually work for Microsoft or for some "company" that is really a marketing arm of Wintel, Inc. (e.g. Dell), Microsoft is your enemy."
Except if you're in the Bush administration, apparently...
"If and when Microsoft is toppled from its throne (and I sincerely hope it happens soon) there will be another company waiting to take its place, no doubt -- and it's entirely possible that one of the companies I mentioned above will be it. (Probably not; it will probably be someone we either don't know about or aren't particularly afraid of
If Linux takes over, it will NEVER be like it is with Microsoft. Thank you GPL.
"Whoever it is, they will try all the same monopolistic dirty tricks as Microsoft has, and that IBM did before it, no doubt. And we will have to be on our guard against them, and fight them every step of the way -- hopefully we can keep them from ever getting that powerful, but if not, expect yet another long anti-trust saga that leaves no one satisfied."
If Microsoft gets taken down, hopefully that will be a lesson to whoever follows. Probably not, though.
"But right now, in 2002, that doesn't matter. What matters is that Microsoft is much too big and too powerful, that it is crushing innovation, that it is evil. Remember that Churchill and Roosevelt allied themselves with Stalin against Hitler, and they were right to do so."
Um, bad comparison. Microsoft isn't THAT bad (very few are, fortunately.) Plus, we don't have to crush Microsoft to succeed. (Although it would give us that little warm feeling inside...) I'm operating this computer without using any Microsoft software. I'm getting work done (well, not right now, but still...) I'd call that a victory.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
If the federal judge accepts the DOJ-M$ "settlement", then none of this will matter.
.NET vs Java, etc... then preventing that company from dominating a single segment of the economy: education, will be practically meaningless.
The potential impact of Microsoft getting off virtually scot-free by the DOJ will overwhealm the positive impact of this settlement being struck down.
Should Microsoft be allowed to continue these exclusive arrangements with OEM's, the leveraging of Windows into other margets, gauging for Office, leaving out Java support in XP as well as plguins for IE, forcing users to ask for permission to upgrade their PCs on XP home edition, rigging ZD Net polls on
How many entrepreneurs have been dissuaded or discouraged from writing software because of Microsoft stiffling innovation? (hardly any commerical companies make consumer operating systems anymore) How many once dynamic and cutting-edge products have stagnated once Microsoft gained a 90% share? If they dominate more of the industry, we're going to see even more inferior products. The only good software M$ ever came up with was when they had to compete with another company.
Having the school settlement struck down is a small victory, one that pales in comparison to the potential losses that would occur if the colluded DOJ settlement is accepted.
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Hoo-ray for small miracles, an actual judge with sense not to be bamboozled by 300 lawyers (and a complicit prosecution) in a case involving MS. I think Apple, Red Hat, et al. deserve credit where credit is due in this by effectively presenting to the court why this would've been a bad deal. C|net also has an updated story on this, sugesting the possibility of a greater-than $1B penalty for MS now from Judge Motz' comments.
But this case, like the antitrust case, is not yet over. While we can't do anything to influence the next flimsy settlement for price-gouging MS will probably try to come out with here, maybe we can make a difference in the antitrust case by writing the DoJ. Public comment period ends January 28, 2002. Do write, but polite & reasoned letters only, please.