Microsoft Settlement Comments

GreyPoopon writes: "I'm sure somebody has already sent this in, but what the heck. According to Excite, it looks like a summary of the comments on the Microsoft settlement only show 5 of the 47 released by the Justice Department in support of the settlement. Does this mean that Judge Kollar-Kotelly will rely on only these 47 to make her decision?" The comments that the DOJ describes as "major" are now published; the procedure the DOJ wants to follow for publishing all of the 30,000 comments received is contained in a court filing. (The Federal Register, if you don't know, is a dead-tree, daily publication of the doings of the U.S. Federal Government. The Department of Justice is arguing that there are simply too many comments to publish on paper, despite the legal requirement to do so.)

Comments

being a kde fan...

[7-Vodka]

wow, I enjoyed reading the response from the KDE league Inc. It seemed more relevant to me than the other responses, was brief and has a nifty introduction to KDE.

http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_tuncom/major/mtc -00028788.htm

Re:being a kde fan...

[Karma Sucks]

Hey Phillip.

The proposal is a full 22 page document and goes way beyond a KDE introduction. Look a little closer, maybe.

Re:Probably won't matter

[maxpublic]

The actual facts resulted in a criminal conviction of Microsoft. Popular opinion won't rule, a single judge will - the precise opposite of democratic mob justice. The opinions are meant only as a sample of public thought on the matter, with no requirement for statistical accuracy.

Max

Re:Common Sense

[MindStalker]

The law states clearly that all comments are supposed to be printed in the federal register this would cost millions, and would take multiple volumes, and would be very difficult to scan through. Instead they simply are going to print the major comments, and they will at a later date, publish on the internet, all comments. While the law states otherwise the judge can rule that they can follow this plan, and doing such does have presidence. In the AT&T case, because of the cost of publishing all comments in the fed register they just published the main onces, and published all the comments in just enough volumes so that each court house could have one, that was publically accessable to read. They could do that, but with the internet, why should they.

What it means (I think)

[Lumpish Scholar]

Does this mean that Judge Kollar-Kotelly will rely on only these 47 to make her decision?

No, it means that posting the first 47 "major" (their word) comments is a significant step, and that they've taken it already. There are 15,000 "serious" (my word) anti-Microsoft comments (including mine), and 7,500 "serious" pro-Microsoft comments.

"Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ... said she planned to read the comments before deciding." I think that means all the comments; though she may "read" them by passing many to her clerks.

If I understand this correctly, the DOJ still intends to post all 47 + 15,000 + 7,500 comments on the Web, and publish them on CD, and index them in the dead tree Federal Register. (They're clever enough not to publish e-mail addresses, to the disappointment of spammers everywhere.)

And now, the Pro-settlement comments.

[MAXOMENOS]

Most of the comments either state that the settlement won't promote competition (click here or here, or are based on the allegation that some sort of deal was cut (illegally) between MS and the DOJ. The following is a list of for PRO-settlement comments:

1. The Association for Competitive Technology
2. Professor Nicholas S. Economides, Stern School of Business, NYU
3. Computing Technology Industry Association
4. Joseph L. Bast on behalf of the Heartland Institute

There is also one comment against the settlement, rejects the settlement as a violation of Microsoft's property rights.

Are there any more that I'm missing?

Re:Not surprising, really...

[namespan]

The fact is that a lot (not all mind you) of the respondents are either companies that have a vested interest in the destruction of Microsoft

Let's reword that a little: most everyone in the software and IT industry has a vested interest in the destruction of Microsoft. A fair number of consumers do too. We have a lot to gain from a market where one player is powerful enough to consistently tip things to their own advantage, whether their solutions are superior or not.

But I'm still not sure my rewording is precise enough, so I'll try again: most everyone in the software and IT industry has a vested interest in a Microsoft that obeys the laws they've been convicted of violating, and seeing true restorative measures come about, rather than the perhaps-well-meaning-but-leaks-like-a-legal-sieve proposed "settlement". This doesn't have to include the destruction of Microsoft -- just some precise measures with real teeth. That's what most of us want.

Supporters of the settlement

[Spoing]

Personally, I have a very long memory. I bet you do too. It's important to realize who is on what side.

Since the bad-guy list is short, here's a complete(?) list of those who submitted one of the 'major' papers saying the settlement was appropriate;

1. CompTIA: "The goal of the settlement in this case should not be to penalize Microsoft for past behavior, nor should it be to benefit Microsoft's competitors by forcing Microsoft to license its source code against its will. The settlement should insure that Microsoft does not engage in the actions found unlawful by the Court of Appeals. This consent judgment does just that and therefore it should be approved."

2. The Heartland Institute: "I hope the court resists suggestions that the settlement "doesn't go far enough" in restricting Microsoft's freedom to compete or punishing it for competing too aggressively in the past. Justice in this case requires neither. The proposed Final Judgment protects the interests of consumers and producers by allowing Microsoft and its competitors to compete by producing the high-quality goods and services that consumers want."

3. Association for Competitive Technology: CONCLUSION For all these reasons, the RPFJ should be adopted, and the Litigating States' proposals should be rejected."

4. The Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism "The basis for Judge Jackson's ruling is not any "monopoly" allegedly controlled by Microsoft; it is the monopoly commanded by the morality of altruism over our culture. That monopoly can be seen, unfortunately, in Bill Gates's sanction of his own destruction in a comment immediately after the ruling, in which he declares that "because of our success, we understand that Microsoft is held to a higher standard, and we accept that responsibility."[vii] As long as this moral monopoly remains unchallenged, legal doctrines such as antitrust will continue to punish successful businesses."

5. Nicholas S. Economides, Professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business of New York University: "In my opinion, the RPFJ is a good and fair settlement that achieves the objectives of remedial relief without damaging the software industry. I would urge caution against a deeper intervention in the software industry, where fast technological change and very significant network effects make it very difficult to predict the medium and long run effects of such intervention."

   Washington Legal Foundation: "The United States has said it best: "[T]he [Proposed Judgment], once implemented by the Court, will achieve the purposes of stopping Microsoft's unlawful conduct, preventing its reoccurrence, and restoring competitive conditions in the personal computer operating system market, while avoiding the time, expense and uncertainty of a litigated remedy."(19) We support the Proposed Judgment. The matter is long overdue for resolution, and the States that have declined to join the settlement should, in our judgment, be urged by the Department and the Court to reconsider and adopt it."

Re:Sad...

[Osty]

I've read some of the letters, and it's sort of sad to be reminded of all the companies which Microsoft has unfairly crushed OS/2, BeOS, DR-Dos and others, have all fallen, regardless of user support or quality, and the festering, rotting corpses of these products and in many cases, the companies which created them, are a macabre reminder of why Microsoft must be stopped.

Hrm, let's see.

• OS/2. IBM had absolutely no clue what to do with this operating system. It "died" (even though it's still in use today) because IBM was incompetent.
• BeOS. No apps, poor hardware support, and a confused vision killed this OS. It's commonly accepted that one of the main reasons Be started up was to eventually provide Apple the next OS for the Macintosh. This didn't happen, since Apple opted to go with Jobs' NeXT instead. Shortly afterwards, Be was more or less forced into the x86 market, where they had no real vision. Spend millions of dollars researching and developing an OS for a very small niche market (media editing and development, basically) that had no compelling reason(*cough*Adobe products*cough*) to switch operating systems? Not a very viable business plan. Be really should've taken a page out of Microsoft's book, if they wanted to survive. Their whole philosophy was that they would only provide simple or trivial applications with the OS to encourage third-party developers, yet third-party developers won't really flock to an OS unless there are users, and the users won't come without applications. That means that Be needed to write some better applications. At the very least, they should've focused on making a much better browser than Net+.
• DR-DOS. It's DOS. DOS is dead. Next. Oh, you're referring to the whole win3.x thing not liking to run on top of DR-DOS. Well, that's been covered by many other comments besides mine, so there's little point in discussing it again. Suffice it to say, the problem was only in a beta of win3.x, and not in the final version. But I guess beta Microsoft software can kill competitors, right? Right?

You paint a pretty picture, but try stepping back into the real world for a moment. Be is gone because it was a one-horse company. They bet it all on their OS, then later on their Internet Appliance stuff. Neither panned out, they're gone. DEC had much more than DR-DOS, and the death of DOS isn't what killed DEC in the end anyway. And Caldera (the current owner of DR-DOS) picked it up too late to make a difference. If anything, the only thing that hurt them in the whole situation was buying DR-DOS in the first place. But IBM is still around. They're huge. OS/2 is still in use, but overall I think IBM is happier being out of the desktop OS market.

Microsoft didn't "crush" any of these. They all lost on their own merits, or because the companies behind the products screwed up on their own. Conspiracy theories can be fun, but sometimes you have to come up for air and live in the real world for a while.