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Should We Follow Novell v. MS in Detail?
e6003 writes "Groklaw has a fascinating article written by a retired attorney. In short, he believes FOSS advocates should be following the recently announced Novell anti-trust case against Microsoft with as much vigour as we do the SCO-IBM case. Whilst the latter is to all intents and purposes settled in favour of the Good Guys, the article points out how Novell v. MS is far harder to call. Evidence produced during this new case, he argues, may be valuable for proving anti-competitive intent on Microsoft's behalf should MS (or a proxy) go on a patent rampage against FOSS. Finally, the article points out that Microsoft either destroys evidence itself (see the Burst.com case) or requires evidence to be destroyed as part of settlements (as in the Caldera DR-DOS case)."
This phrase is so loaded that it's hard to broach anything resembling a middle ground here. If you refer to Microsoft as the "enemy" and everyone else (excluding SCO) the "Good Guys", how can you expect to be partial when delivering judgement.
Take a look at what's going on in Iraq. The American "Good Guys" are wiping out the "Bad Guys". From the other perspective, the Iraqi "Good Guys" are being slaughtered at the hands of the American "Bad Guys". It all depends on your perspective. Until you give up the notion of "good vs. evil" in your considerations, you will never be able to find a common ground and eventually peace.
You have to understand that not only are Microsoft and Novell's hands completely clean, they are not completely dirty either. The Iraqi resistor may be shooting at the American soldier because he believes that the occupation is unjust. The American soldier may be shooting back only because he has been trained to kill instead of think. Each one has their reasons, and to them, their actions are perfectly reasonable.
Until you can find a way to reason with the "enemy" and truly come to an understanding, you will never win. You will only fight.
There's an old saying, "The only way to destroy an enemy is to make him your friend."
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The other reason this is important is that (according to the article) Microsoft tends to destroy evidence at the conclusion of each anti-trust case. So apparantly unless we collect it at Groklaw, it will be gone by the time we really need it.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Anticompetitive misuse of a given patent attracts more researchers to search for prior art that would invalidate that patent. In addition, 35 USC 271(d)(5) implies a narrow exception to the definition of patent infringement where one with "market power" (that is, a monopolist) ties the purchase of a patented product to another specific product.
If you read the sources carefully especially this you will see that it was Canopy, the successors of Caldera that wanted to destroy their evidence because it was costing them too much to maintain it, and they didnt need it anymore because their case was finished.
The key line is "The Canopy Group, Inc. ("Canopy"), filed a motion to this court seeking permission to dispose of hundreds of boxes in its possession..", "the primary issues relate to Canopy's desire to avoid further burden and expense.."
The sort of fudging of facts in the headline here is how you get people who are nearly insane with hatred who post here making the linux crowd look totally unstable to the mainstream.
Back in the bad old days of the railroad - one of the barrons bought up much of the 'good' crossing point land up and down a river. This allowed said barron to 'have control' over access. Eventually the courts declared that the other railroads could not be denyed the crossing point under the idea that access to critical resources can not be denied.
It is possible this chestnut could be dusted off and used VS Microsoft.
Naturally, if the evidence is destroyed, there is no evidence to show that there was evidence, unless someone speaks up.
But, the trouble with this approach is that somebody always saves evidence, either through sloppiness or because something gets written in the margins of a technical manual, etc. Thus, not everything gets shredded, so that this gambit has its risks.
Even as we speak, there may be an MS employee, or former MS employee holding the key to all of this. This is pure speculation of course, but maybe the reason Novell is on this trail is because it knows such a person. Even if that person has signed all the NDA forms in the world, such a person might still be willing to come forward in exchange for some immunity.
I know its not really the 'thing to do' but I RTFA.
What it is about is starting a repository where data about all companies can be stored.
As it shows in the article companies (i.e. M$) destroy all of _their_ copies of data and otherwise, meaning that if in the future there is a problem we will have no proof in a court of law those events occured(Those 'haloween' emails for example) By making a repository where we can keep them we will alway be able to pin M$ to the stake rather than letting them get away on technicalities
This will help FOSS as it will be a very good way to keep companies on their toes and know once something makes it to the public domain it will never be forgotten. And as well TFA also states that this case envolves ENORMOUS amounts of emails and other info that will most certainly be *DESTROYED* after the final judgement
If this data can some way be preserved then if we need it to show as an example of oh well lets say monopolistic behaviour, we can show it as we can all guarentee M$ will sweep that puppy under the rug as soon and as quickly as possible.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.