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

Finally, the perfect troll! :-)

[thebigwaffle]

From: Luby, Thomas
To:Microsoft ATR
Date: 12/10/01 1:22pm
Subject: Microsoft Settlement

With all due respect to the DOJ Anti-trust department, this case should
have never been pursued in the first place. I thought that anti-trust
legislation was to protect the consumer, not to appease competitors that
are losing in the marketplace. Has Microsoft always been a perfect
angel? I don't think so. Microsoft should face no penalties that
involve changes to their product or by "releasing" information about
their source code. The future of computing is not a bunch of different
systems that aren't compatible but a global network of computers
seamlessly exchanging information. Microsoft is working on this goal.

Sincerely,

Thomas F. Luby

Gonna take a while to slog through all these...

[BadDoggie]

...and me without mod points. My favourite DoJ troll so far: Comment Number MTC-00008437 from "Gates, Billy and Elizabeth". At least, I hope it's a troll. But then I see Comment Number MTC-00008427 from "Allen, Paul". Paul J Allen, according to the comment. With a home number in Winter Garden, Florida.

Seems everything in the 8,000 range is from MS employees and other non-living entities. I thought some random twit slipped through at comment 8432 (AOL address), but no, that's from MS as well, and from obviously someone good at public writing (read: propaganda).

I'm still hunting for the case-widening and case-lengthening posts, along with the pr0n link they admitted receiving, Ashcroft-snotting posts and other crap from the people here.

Haven't found a Taco OR Hemos post yet (nor Rusty or Ino). Found mine, though. Also found some Ayn Rand-spewing nutter with the same name as my father who wrote a rather disjointed diatribe but I think was pro-MS.

woof.

Mine's there, but where's Rob's, etc.?

[Brian Knotts]

Mine is at MTC-00017039, but I didn't see a comment from Mr. Taco, or Linus, or ESR, or even RMS.

What's up with that?

Re:Important lesson

[Maul]

From the comments I've read, it seems that it is about 50/50 when taking into account reasonably informed opinions.

However, it seems as if the DOJ is going to ignore
the arguments against MS by the public, discounting
the majority of even the well structured arguments
as being "Bill Gate Sucks!" posts.

This is very disappointing, especially
since many of the anti-MS comments seem to be the
most informed, pointing to past cases involving MS
basically laughing at decisions and penalties imposed on them.

I think it is blatantly obvious that there is
a huge influence under Dubya's administration
to basically render the finding of guilt
absolutely useless. Repeatedly I hear stories of "pressure" being placed on the Judge to go along with the DOJ's settlement. I think it is fairly
sickening that the balance of power between the
Executive and Judicial branches are failing in
this way.