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The 'Hairy Guys' Vs. Microsoft
Jeremy Allison - Sam writes "The IHT is running the best write-up I've seen on the Microsoft vs EU Anti-Trust case, featuring quotes from tridge (Creator of Samba) and Carlo Piana (the FSFE lawyer). Nicely contrasts the difference between the Microsoft legal Team and the resources the FSFE has to work with. I was the FSFE witness for the initial hearing and the first trial, and this article nicely explains what it's like to be there." From the article: "The settlements left a group of computer programmers and activists, united under the banner of the Free Software Foundation Europe, with a bigger-than-expected role in supporting the EU's goal of loosening Microsoft's grip over the software industry. Only half-joking, one observer at the court this past week called some members FSFE and allies 'the hairy guys' - in contrast to the well- groomed legal teams fielded by Microsoft."
Microsoft likes to present itself as well groomed and well mannered. It's a nice cover for their back alley tactics (which contine to this day, and will for all time). They appear like the Don polishing his favorite apple which he took from the poor lady on the street (without paying for it). "HOW DARE YOU CHARGE ME" would be his reply if she asked for compensation. He might just tip over her cart and knock her to the ground instead. Microsoft has wrung protection out of millions. Now a group from the community is banding together. The internet ties them. Microsoft and it's BSA brute squad can only kick down so many doors before a large group starts kicking down the BSA's (and Microsoft's) doors. You can call that collected community group hairy if you want to, but unlike Microsoft, they are respectable and non-crimminal.
...our hirsute, bespectacled overlords.
*OR*, have other interests than selling products through 'selling themselves'. Make no mistake, 'the hairy guys' are the people who truly love what they do. More often than not, these are also the people who give birth to new technologies. The suits just take their innovation and sell it as their own. All-time classic: 'who do you trust, me or that guy who doesn't even care about his haircut?'. The right answer is 'Never trust a suit'...
Well, FWIW, I know one of the "smooth suited professionals" that Microsoft employs. And his opinion? That the arguments that Microsoft wanted deployed in court were, in summary "We are so important and so essential to the IT world that you must allow us to do whatever we want." Unfortunately, judges do not take warmly to this kind of argument. Judges like John Cooke have a clue about things like Firefox (and now knows a lot more about how kernels work and that Windows Embedded means that the Microsoft kernel need not be monolithic). They are also used to academic expert witnesses, and European academics can be very unusual indeed. I don't know what the outcome will be, but it is far from clear that the FOSS movement will lose, at least in the Eurozone.
Pining for the fjords
Microsoft can't be let off the hook twice, both the US and EU cases have cost US and EU tax payers a lot of money.
The US case was largely dropped due to a change of US leadership and a short sighted attitude that it's best to have a big US IT monopoly than let things go abroad.
The EU case could easily disappear for similar reasons, the EU commissioners aren't democratically elected and have been known to take backhanders in the past.
... if computer makers were prohibited from bundling Windows with every Intel-based PC.
Having to pay a premium to get a box without Windows is the definition of arm-twisting.
The "I'm too busy to care about personal hygiene and appearance" pose is usually a cover for deep seated feelings of self loathing, usually brought on by an overbearing mother and distant (or absent) father during childhood.
We're not talking about wearing a suit and obsessing over your nostril hairs. Nobody expects a geek to be a metro. But would it kill you to get your haircut every six weeks, or wear a shirt with a collar? The answer is, no, it wouldn't kill you. In fact, it might even feel good, instead of staying up all night coding and drinking mountain dew, or worse, taking drugs.
That's where this dressing like a slob and not getting your haircut leads you to, in case you didn't know. Drug addiction, insanity, and no date on a Friday night.
I'm free of false drugs. When I want to get high, I get my hair cut, shine my shoes, fill up the tank, clean the windshield and hit the open road. I swear to God that there's nothing that beats the feeling of having shiny shoes.
So, get your hair cut. It'll make your mother happy.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
From the point of view of the incoming administration, Microsoft has been very successful, and was being punished for their success. They simply stopped what they thought was a wrong.
The logic is at least partially self-consistent. The best and brightest people are those who have succeeded at the American Way - ie, the richest and most powerful. It's not right to punish success, success should be rewarded. View the Bush Administration's domestic actions in this perspective, and it all makes sense. It also makes a kind of sense on the morality front. Jesus Christ wasn't so hot on the wealthy, so the rich and powerful have to take a moral stand, and what easier moral stand is there to take than against the marginalized.
This of course presumes you agree with this perspective. Others of us have no problem with success, as long as you get there fairly. Some of us also believe that having been raised on the parent's silver spoon says nothing at all about your superior skills and wit - it just says you handed a better shot at success. Then again, read the 4 Gospels, and see the group who attracted the greatest contempt from Jesus Christ - the rich and powerful who look down on others' sins.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
> No one is twisting your arm to use Microsoft products..
...
... you guessed it.
Then why does it hurt?
1. My kids go to school, where they run - guess what. They come home and insist they need MS Word, or Publisher, or Powerpoint, etc.. They don't say "I need to do so and so", because that isn't what they are taught. Oh, and guess who volunteered early on in the term of the present British government to provide IT training for teachers.
2. I do Unix support, and the machine I'm given to do it with runs - guess what. My working life is spent going through Win-to-Unix kludges to get needlessly limited access to the systems.
3. The kids come home, and want to play games. These come in versions that run on various proprietary consoles and
freedom, n. Allowing people you don't like to do things you disapprove of.
Right on. The REAL issue is not bundling. That legal strategy was designed by Real, Netscape and others to yield compensation dollars. The real issue is Inter Process Communication (IPC). A file is a form of IPC. A network message is IPC. If the details of the various forms of IPC are widely available products can interoperate and that is good. I believe that a product that is completely dominant in a market the details regarding it's IPC should be made available so as to reduce the liability associated with using that product. In this particular case that liability is the unfair business practice of forcing other companies out of a market by leveraging undisclosed IPCs. Secondarily there are a number of other very good reasons for having alternative programs that understand the same IPCs but it's not clear that they have legal bearing.