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Massachusetts Appealing Microsoft Ruling
linuxwrangler writes "Criticizing the "loophole-filled deal" and saying "We are prepared to go it alone," Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly has announced that Massachusetts is appealing the Microsoft ruling. Seven other states have dropped out and are negotiating enforcement and attorney fees. West Virginia is still undecided on an appeal."
...which sends a shiver up and down my spine. It's not about winning anymore. It's about standing up for what you believe in.
My name is Carlos Montoya. You share files of my music. Prepare to die.
Well, this is all very depressing.
Much respect to Massachusetts for appealing the ruling, but with no other (except possibly one) state to support it, it'll just die a natural death.... I'm sure we will have heard the last of this whole thing by this time next year. After then, it'll probably just be the odd private suit Microsoft is so used to dealing with, certainly nothing which will hurt them or encourage them to change their ways.
Its got good intentions, they are smart enough to figure out that Microsoft pretty much won and want to correct that error, because buissness is pretty much the usual for Microsoft, back to tormenting little buissnesses, OEMs, EULAs and the such. Its got to stop and finally one state isn't blinded by a ruling and is taking them on, hey they have money, they can battle Microsoft on their own and whose to stop them in this stage of the game.
This just seems like a colossal waste of time and money. If Mass could get other states on-side, maybe the costs would be less...
But this piece-meal approach to dealing with monopolies like MS (or IBM in a previous generation) is bullcrap. If the federal gov't can't come up with a reasonable punishment/settlement that all states sign off, there will never be any truly effective measures put in place. Another case when distributed power to states gives companies (and criminals) silly-ass easy loopholes to jump through...
"Content's a bitch."
Like this guy, maybe?
Here is a link to another article on the same story. From that article:
Sounds as if it's working already.See what I've been reading.
Slashdot headline: Massachusetts Appealing Microsoft Ruling
The NYT, WSJ, and McNews seem to agree with Slashdot's perspective, FWIW.
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"There is no point in going on after the other states have settled."
You make it sound like it's time to give up.
I can tell you one thing for sure, if Microsoft saw no opposition to its buisness practices why should they give a damn about reforming them? In this regard, even one voice is better than none.
Oh well - I will admit the days of hope (however false it was) during the early days of the whole States vs. Microsoft thing has long since faded, but at least one state is willing to prolong the fight.
More power to them! I only wish my state (OH) had some ballz.
Regardless of the merits of the case I don't see the Appeals court overturning a settlement. One of the major problems with the case was that attempts at settlement were made impossible by the states who were determined to hold out for electoral reasons.
As for the case itself, it was blown once that nitwit Jackson got involved. It is one thing to be a judge with opinions, if you discuss them with the press during the trial those opinions are very likely to be considered bias. Once the appeals court threw out the penalty phase of the trial there was no prospect of a final judgement against Microsoft for a decade. Microsoft could reasonably expect the Supreme court to be sympathetic to the argument that having found the judge to have been biased they were entitled to a completely new trial.
I also thing that the DoJ could have put up a much better case if they had concentrated on the contractual issues where there were real problems and not getting side tracked into the Web browser issue. Netscape failed for a simple reason, the business model was to sell Web server software and that rapidly became a commodity item, particularly once Apache started to gain traction. There were 10 free Web browsers before Marc had heard of the Web, the idea that Web browsers would be a paid application was wierd. Netscape would not have had the market share it did if it had been really charging for the browser.
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Being the home of the Free Software Foundation, the state's appealing is the natural thing to do...
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
Why are all of theses comments so negative about MA and their efforts?
/. bashes MS for sport. Aside from all of the childish MS bashing, a REAL problem DOES exist. The practices of MS DO threaten other software makers.
I know
Think about how far along MS has come in a short time. Where will it end? If they are not stopped - it won't end. It sounds cliche, but MS is clearly on the path to world domination (ok, that was maybe just added for dramatic effect).
MS will control "digital currency", "digital passports", etc. Mostly because of naive public acceptance.. but nobody else will ever gain a voice with that same public if MS can continue on their path as they have been.
In the end, I think logic and common sense will sweep the masses - but I don't see that end for many years (if not decades). Good for MA if they can impose some restrictions on MS early in the game (or maybe we are about mid-game).
Maybe you can say to yourself "MS can't decide what I can and cannot do" - and you may be right (for the time being). But you are a minority and MS is quickly moving into a position to decide what the general public can and cannot do with PC's, what hardware manufacturers can and cannot do (corporate politics), what software makers can and cannot do (neophyte strangling). Outside of the technology sector, MS has a great deal of pull in the media and even in politics.
Please, don't sluff off the efforts of MA as "wasted" or "useless" - instead, you should show support for their efforts as MA really is looking for a solution in the interest of the public. (and I know, there is always political motives involved)
..mork
Small quibble - it's "embrace and extend", a two phase process of privitizing open protocols involving 1) embrace - announce that your product will conform to industry standards to lure customers in, and 2) extend - make proprietary 'improvements'* to the standard that make it incompatible with competing products, locking their investment into a single vendor solution.
Saying "extend and embrace" is kinda like saying "conquor and divide".
*most times the 'improvements' are indeed real and should be paid for, they just have the 'unfortunate' side effect of locking out competition from less innovative companies, just like progress in the technical arts has the unfortunate side effect of forcing you to throw out a perfectly good machine and buy a new one. Sorry about that. But sometimes the incompatible extensions largely ARE anticompetitive. I think that's one way to nail Msft's tactics is get a judge to consider something like the Kerberos extensions that make Msft's incompatible with other implementations. Is the inconvenience of this incompatibility actually a real 'improvement' of such value to a customer that it's worth ditching competitors and going with the alledgedly superior single vendor solution? I think not - it's incompatibility for the purpose of leveraging a monopoly position in one segment into others.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
The whole thing, to me, boils down to the following:
/clueless to understand how it happened and how to fix it.
1) Federal laws, people's right to choice, etc. clearly violated--not just once, but many, many times.
2) USA justice dept. and judicial branch too corrupt
3) Federal gov't and MS have "buddy deal" to make MS the USA standard, and let the rest of the world choose between Linux or MS, much the way they choose between Metric and English units. (I hope Linux ends up being the international equivalent of Metric units--successful).
So, is it legal for a state government to declare itself "Microsoft Free", now that they are a convicted criminal organization? Why don't the "solaris seven" use this option, and rather than fight the biased judicial and federal justice dept., that is, just declare themselves microsoft free, as far as state government purchases, and let people use whatever they choose, but urge them to choose freedom?
It seems fairly obvious to me that we will soon see the politicians shrilly supporting the US "corporate welfare for microsoft program" as they did the use of british units in the seventies--even though the rest of the world was switching to metric right in front of them.
That will be a sick sight indeed..a bunch of fat ass senators screaming about america, god, the flag, apple pie and microsoft. Sickening, but it will probably come to that.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Other states reps' argument about keeping MS on their toes by watching and enforcing rulling if necesarry is a very weak one. Actually, it's a load of crap, complete and utter bullshit and good sign that MS have shelled out few milion bucks where it was needed.
You can try keeping MS on their toes only if you take the battle to the next level, which is what Mass AG is doing. And rightfully so, since settlement was not the propper remmedy for breaking the law. In fact, it was big win for Microsoft.
Kudos to Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly, he deserves all help he may need. I'll do my part:
1. Show how neat Linux is to at least 2 people a week and help them run penguin on their PC.
2. Activelly advocate Linux and Open Source anywhere, anytime.
3. Keep the fight for Linux at my workplace going, despite the fact that some guys have already been sacked for doing so.
That's what I can do. Have you asked yourselves what can you do and have you started doing it?