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Red Hat CTO Testifies at MS trial
An anonymous reader writes "Red Hat CTO Michael Tiemann testified on behalf of the 9 states in MS's trial. From the article on SF Gate: "Red Hat Chief Technology Officer Michael Tiemann said Microsoft adds 'extensions' to critical communications methods that computers use to transmit security information, print, and perform other tasks. Those extensions are proprietary to Microsoft, he said, and despite recent actions Microsoft has not been forthcoming in releasing details of those changes.""
Were these words used at all in his testimony?
I saw a Red Hat exec. on Fox News the other day talking with Neil Cavuto (sp?) about their just released financial results. He was rather unimpressive in his answers about Red Hat's results, its future, its business plan, competition from MS, etc. This is not meant as flamebait at all, but if I was a RH shareholder, I would have been very nervous after watching that interview.
As the "flagship" company for Linux, with all eyes upon it, I hope RH has some top notch execs working behind the scenes. Running a business takes *alot* more than just great coders and passion. Especially when competing against one of the most ruthless companies on the planet.
Quoted from The Washington Post:
This is an interesting proposal that I hadn't heard about before. Does anybody have a complete list of what the unsettling states have asked for?
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Well
Technically, if they decide to hold out long enough, they can do nearly anything they like.
Unfortunately, most likely, the 9 states think that holding out more will eventually lead microsoft to offering those states lots of money to make them go away. (I still say the recent tobacco-company settlements in texas and elsewhere are going to have bad consequences for just years to come...)
However, they are, like, you know, sovereign states. As the representatives of the law of those states, if those 9 attorneys general just keep holding out, as long as they feel MS has violated the fair business practice laws of their states, they have it perfectly within their rights to (they can at LEAST do this much) block MS from selling software in that state.. which would be a horrible catastrophe for microsoft, not so much because they couldn't make money in that state but just because software sales in that state would suddenly become a huge source of funding for any new or existant company or companies that might want to become serious competitors to microsoft. That state would become a neat little hole in the software market barrier to entry.. and microsoft depends on that barrier to entry being impenatrable.
This has nothing to do with what the states *can* do. The states are, well, remember, *sovereign states*. They set the rules within their boundaries, except where amendments to the U.S. constitution stop them. The states can do what they like, and since microsoft has is currently in the eyes and laws of the states an outlaw awaiting judgement, the attourneys general and state courts can render judgement however they see fit.
The question is what the states *will* do-- when will the attourneys general give up and wander off, or be rotated out of office and replaced with pro-monopoly equivilents.
I don't think anyone realizes exactly how big the amount of power these states hold at the moment. Microsoft's banking almost everything on the hope that these states will eventually be placated by some settlements and turn around a couple times, forget anything happened, and go to sleep..
But if they don't.. and the states decide that justice carried out against microsoft really is what they want, and decide to exert their power as soverign states.. they can pretty much do what they want.
Yeah, yeah, like this is news.
We know that MS plays like this, Mike Tiemann knows this, and so do all the lawyers and judges hearing what he has to say.
But the events of last week showed the judge was more interested in closely following a particular legal track.
Are these allegations going to be entered into the proceedings of the court, or are they likely to be stricken out as "hearsay" because they do not very strictly address what the court wants to hear?
Maybe I'm getting the 9 dissenting states' separate suit confused with the remedy phase of the original MS trial. My apologies and hopes that someone more knowledgeable can clear this up for me...
"Provided by the management for your protection."
From what I gather, Microsoft is adding extensions to communication protocols that they developed. True? If that's the case, then so what? They are free to do so. They aren't modifying some existing standard so that it's inoperable with other products. They're not hijacking a standard (like they did with Java). So what's the problem? If Microsoft developed the protocol, aren't they free to do with it whatever they like.
I am not a supporter of Microsoft and its products, but it seems sometimes that people are jealous of its success. Yes, ms stole windows from apple, but they stole it from Xerox. They played around with it, and now 93% of all computers on the earth run some version of ms windows. They were the ones who made it work, they are the ones that are making the billions, and they are the ones that make people jealous. I think we should back off, ms will fail one day, lets let them go down in flames on their own.
I'd expect a lot of this kind of behavior from MS. They will do something that they claim is out of the goodness of their heart, and not required by the settlement, but actually is. However, since MS is performing the required action, there is no impetus for whoever enforces the settlement to go out of their way to prove that it -is- required. They aren't going to engage MS' lawyers just to counter some PR. Thus MS manages to turn everything it does because it essentialy has to into positive PR. If it works well enough, it could sour attempts to go after them further, because they've shown themselves to be such nice guys. Thus they use today's judgement to prevent future ones.
I don't like them, but sometimes I have to be amazed by their saavy.
The enemies of Democracy are
"Anyway, what Microsoft is doing with Kerberos is perfectly legal and allowed by the standard."
New mantra for you and others like you who are confused by all this:
This is the punishment phase, not the trial.
This is the punishment phase, not the trial.
This is the punishment phase, not the trial.
What you just said is akin to asking "Why should a convicted murder be put in jail? Travelling around the country is perfectly legal."
They're somewhat right. RedHat at first was agressive on marketing Linux. However, the last couple of years they haven't done much for promoting Linux, except testifying at MS's trial. Nowadays you hear more about Mandrake in the news than about RedHat.
RedHat must develop new products, put it's ads on TV, web, magasines, etc.