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LinuxPlanet Interviews Robert Bork
Greg writes: "Robert Bork, former Supreme Court appointee from the Reagan era and a recent entrant in the MS antitrust case, did an
interview
over at LinuxPlanet. The topic? The Evil Empire's court settlement." Bork isn't actually new to the Microsoft case or to the subject of monopolies -- his legal experience makes this an interesting read, even for those who don't consider Microsoft an "evil empire."
Bork is widely acknowledged in legal circles as one of our country's greatest legal minds.
He is widely respected for his integrity.
He is a well known legal conservative and strong believer in strict constructionist interpretation of the Constitution.
Anyone who thinks that the Microsoft case is a left-wing attack on big business should pay careful attention to Bork's words. Whatever else Bork may be, he ain't no left-wing anti-business type.
"I believe in innovation, not litigation."
(I almost expected him to follow with "if the glove don't fit, you must acquit". But I digress.)
Anyway, this statement could have -- and probably DID -- come straight from the mouths of Microsoft's PR department, probably in the same envelope as a campaign contribution (to be fair, I'll bet Gore got one too).
Our best hope is that the President's advisors listen to intelligent conservative commentators like George Will, who wrote an excellent column in the Washington Post about Enron, in which he made the following point:
Capitalist economies don't spring up automatically, like crabgrass. They are dependent upon a complex set of laws. Capitalism is a government program.
Will was speaking about laws which require accurate financial disclosure so that people have faith in the market. But the same priciples hold for the right to fair competition. Without that right, where the success of a startup [e.g., Netscape] leading to its imminent demise by those seeking to maintain their control [e.g., Microsoft], why would anyone risk their money to enter the marketplace? The result in such a case is stagnation, and the loss of a healthy economy.
I'm a bloodsucking fiend! Look at my outfit!
This is a really good point. This case was about the browser issue.
Once upon a time, not too many years ago, there was real innovation in the browser market. People could barely keep up with the features coming left and right from Netscape, Spyglass, Mosaic forks, Cyberdog, etc., and features were piled on left an right. Forms! Tables! JavaScript! Java! DHTML!
Then Microsoft crept over the 50% market share mark. Now the new browser feature people get excited about is TABS, for Pete's Sake! They're still trying to get a decent CSS2 implementation done, ECMAScript is stagnant at best, and Java applets still don't work all that reliably.
And it's been a few years. There's no innovation to be found. Yeah, Mozilla has some froody features, and XUL may still kick ass someday, but if you want real innovation, you need competition, and any capitalist can tell you that. If IE had to compete on the open market they might even run lint on it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)