All MS Settlement Comments Now Online

Sundance writes: "The DOJ has published their answer to the Tunney Act comments on the Microsoft settlement. The gist of it is that, basically, they like the settlement agreement the way it was written and won't change much of it, if at all. Choice quote: "A number of commentors are concerned that Microsoft will deny disclosure of APIs and Documentation, or licensing of Communications Protocols, to open source developers on the grounds that the developers do not meet the "reasonable business need" or "authenticity and viability of business" criteria of Section III.J.2.(441) The United States believes that the requirements in Section III.J.2 are no broader than is necessary to prevent misuse or misappropriation of intellectual property." I guess that crimes pays, after all -- provided that you're rich enough to start with." hbo adds: "The comments are indexed by comment id. There is also an alphabetical list of commentators. To find a particular comment, look it up in the list, then find the comment id in the index. Finally, click on the particular comment to view it."

Comments

Damn!

[mESSDan]

The DOJ doesn't run slashcode! How am I supposed to moderate all of these things? Everyone knows that pro-Microsoft comments get -1 troll!

Heh.

Re:link 404's

[xmedar]

Tsk tsk what a waste of an fp, just incase anyone was interested Van Sickle, Harold had the fp MTC-00000001 in the case it seems.. and it all seems so familiar..

The DOJ has sold the public down the river by not breaking up Microsoft.

Breaking the company up would not have lessened its assets only its MONOPOLY
POWER. The DOJ has partnered with George W. Bush to repay Bill Gates for
his generous campaign contributions to him and the GOP party. There is
nowhere the public can turn anymore now that our Justice Department has sold
out to politics. There is no other explanation the public will believe.

You've made your bed with Bill, now sleep in it. A monetary fine means
nothing to the world's richest man - losing his power over the industry
does. As you attempt to settle with him, he is already targeting LINUX for
the Internet market - he has learned nothing, except whom to contribute to
for favors. You people can spin it anyway you like, we, the public, see it
for what it really is. There is no longer equality under the law, there is
no longer equal enforcement of the law, the law is Dubya.

I'm betting that there are alot of posts like that, I wonder if 30,000 gun toting MS-Bush bashing people are enough for a revolution....

Validation?

[stu_coates]

One wonders if any effort has been made to validate the origins of any of the comments. If it has, I guess this one slipped through.

this will restore competition - the judges said so

[Anonymous Coward]

128.
Several commentors suggest that the RPFJ burdens OEMs with the responsibility of injecting competition into the operating system market, a burden that, in the view of these commentors, the OEMs are not financially or technically capable of bearing...

...
[this] ignores the fact that the OEMs will respond to competitive pressures in choosing what software to offer consumers.

...
In fact, at least one OEM recently showed that it will replace Microsoft middleware when it believes other options are more profitable: Compaq announced, on December 12, 2001, that its main consumer line of PCs will ship with RealNetworks' RealOne Player, rather than Microsoft's Windows Media Player, set as the default media player.

Competition restored! Case closed!

Heh, I found this comment on their site...

[mrroot]

MTC-000000001 0001:

First Comment!

Re:Obfuscated Indices

[linzeal]

Its the weekend database programmers will be up in about 2-3 more hours. They need their sleep.