West Virginia Joins Massachusetts in MS Appeal Bid

diwolf writes "West Virginia is seeking to join Massachusetts in appealing a U.S. District Court decision that rejected a tough antitrust remedy sought by nine states in the Microsoft Corp. antitrust case. This is also being reported at CNN and ZDNet."

Comments

Where's Virginia?

[swordboy]

You'd think that Virginia would want a piece of them too...

Microsoft Nervous About Something

[Alien54]

As seen in this report on the Register, Microsoft Sales Reps have even gone so far as to offer FREE Windows server software licenses to companies considering the move to Open Source.

Of Course, they have confused Free (as is speech) Software with free (as in beer) software, and didn't always realise that Linux is not the only free software out there.

and note: they didn't save the sale for Microsoft.

Re:Why?

[zombiepopper]

I'm from MA as well and I have heard that part of the reason we are pursuing the case is that we have already incurred most of the legal costs of the case in the initial stages (according Tom O'Reilly, our attorney general for non massholes). I suppose that makes some sense if you consider how much preparation must go into a case like this; I can see how the research and paperwork might be the most expensive part.

Re:Its good to see

[radicalsubversiv]

That's his call, and if we don't like it we can pick someone else in two years.

That's how it's supposed to work, at least.

The reality is that we're not going to get the option to elect a president who stands for rigorous enforcement of anti-trust laws, because such a candidate would have great difficulty raising money from business interests who aren't particularly fond of such laws.

Of course, probably the only reason we ever saw an anti-trust case brought against Microsoft to begin with was that Gates & co. hadn't wised up to the need to make generous campaign contributions. With $4.6 million in contributions in the 2000 cycle, I'd say they've now figured things out, and the DoJ's antitrust division can now go back to sleep.

Got a friend who quit M$ a few months ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Met his quarterly sales quota in his first three weeks - thereby pissing off everyone in the office. Since he had already make big bucks riding Oracle to the top, he quickly bolted. He said

1. M$ is scared shitless of Linux. They have no real strategy to deal with something that even they know is more stable and secure, and know they can't compete on price.

2. Win XP and M$'s licensing went over with customers even worse than what you read - even here. M$ kept a tight lid on how badly Win XP cratered in the corporate world.

3. M$ rank-and-file are a bunch of arrogant asswipes who think big corporations and gov't have no choice but to buy M$

Re:Imagine if all this money were spent on Linux!!

[El]

What if every government or private entity that disaproved of Micro$oft tactics simply stopped buying their products??? That would punish them far more than anything the courts are going to acheive, and would do much to promote alternatives such as Free/Open Source Software.