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DOJ Calls EU Microsoft Decision "Unfortunate"

Posted by michael on from the i-find-your-lack-of-faith-disturbing dept.

ogma writes "This one is especially ironic after the recent slashdot story on more of Microsoft's underhanded actions coming to light. It seems that the DOJ thinks Europe was too hard on Microsoft in its anti-trust ruling.. According to Assistant Attorney General Hewitt Pate, the fine 'may send the wrong message about antitrust enforcement priorities'..." Open Council writes "The Register points out that the EU has provided Microsoft with a major victory over its Open Source rivals because it will now be allowed to pursue royalty revenue from the APIs it publishes. Jeremy Allison says that the projects such as Samba, which he jointly leads, may face a prohibitive hurdle. The size of the fine is peanuts to MS but will be a bargain if it can lock out Open Source projects from using its API's."

5 of 671 comments (clear)

  1. Meanwhile, back in Redmond by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Bill Gates revealed his awesome new creation... the Death Star. "It's capable of destroying entire continents, as we'll soon demonstrate." he was quoted as saying.

    1. Re:Meanwhile, back in Redmond by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Microsoft programs are generally bug-free. If you visit the Microsoft hotline, you'll literally have to wait weeks if not months until someone calls in with a bug in one of our programs. 99.99% of calls turn out to be user mistakes. I know not a single less irrelevant reason for an update than bugfixes. The reasons for updates are to present more new features. -- Bill Gates, on code stability, from Focus Magazine

    2. Re:Meanwhile, back in Redmond by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
      99.99% of calls turn out to be user mistakes.

      Naturally, installing "Windows" was the first user mistake.

    3. Re:Meanwhile, back in Redmond by Channard · · Score: 3, Funny
      Bill Gates revealed his awesome new creation... the Death Star. "It's capable of destroying entire continents, as we'll soon demonstrate." he was quoted as saying.

      To which the European Comissioner replied.. 'Puny Gates! You and your 'death star' shall soon face the wrath of EUnicron.'

    4. Re:Meanwhile, back in Redmond by spellraiser · · Score: 3, Funny

      this_ruling = null

      No, no, no ... what are you thinking of ?? Microsoft programmers using Java ?? I think you must mean:

      this_ruling = NULL

      --
      I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots