Caldera Trial Update

In yet another decision from the Caldera vs. Microsoft trial, a judge has ruled that Caldera can sue Microsoft for "alleged violations outside the United States", because Microsoft apparently has a global impact. With any luck, the pretrial will start in August. You know, I'm beginning to wonder who has the bigger legal team these days.

Comments

Get a grip... Re:Darn...

[Ethelred Unraed]

Antitrust law is retroactive, which means that even if something was perfectly legal when you actually did it, if it is subsequently declared illegal you are still liable.

This is flat-out false. Read the U.S. Constitution, bub. Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3: "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." In other words, ain't no such thing as retroactive law.

This means that there is no way to tell if you are breaking the law when you do something, because the law doesn't exist yet!

You been reading Kafka too much?

Microsoft's phalanx of corporate lawyers would never have broken existing laws, Bill is too smart for that.

Ridiculous. Bill just interprets the law the way it suits him--until he gets caught bending the rules just a little too far. Reminds me of another Bill we all know.

If you were to take a straw poll on /. you'd find many people who believe that all software should only come from the open source community by divine right.

Does open source hold a monopoly? By definition, no. Open source is not a monolith--it's a process. Microsoft IS a monolith, and a monopoly. You simply can't compare the two.

Bill's simply more successful than anyone else because he was the first to realise the truth: There is no such thing as a software project, there are only business projects with a software element.

No one blames Microsoft for being successful. We do blame them for abusing their position. That's where they broke the law.

Force is the sole monopoly of governments.

Ah. A card-carrying member of the Libertarian Party, I see. Mmmm-hmmm...

Repeat that statement while someone is pointing a .357 Magnum at your head and demanding your wallet.

The only force here is that applied by the DOJ.

Baloney. Microsoft also forced numerous companies to either be subsumed by them or be forced out of the game (WebTV, Hotmail, DR-DOS, Netscape, etc. etc. etc.). My Lord, they even had Intel majorly worried, incredibly enough. If you try to claim Microsoft doesn't use "moral force" (to use that giddy Libertarian term), then your credibility is at around null.

Just because someone is in government does not make them inherently an abuser of "moral force"--and, conversely, just because someone is NOT in government does not make them incapable or unwilling to do so, either.

Microsoft has no guns and no laws to compel people to obey, only the free judgement of the rational individuals who freely trade with them, everyone from the home PC user to megacorporations like Compaq and IBM. No-one has ever compelled you to trade with MS, you have always done do freely - it is a central fact that no-one has the right to buy whatever they want, only what they are offered for sale.

Right. Uh-huh. Now just TRY and get along WITHOUT using Microsoft products in the corporate workplace. Just TRY to see how far you make it. Your customers will abandon you, because you're incapable of opening even the simplest MS-Works document when they communicate with you. If things get worse, soon your Mac/Linux/Sun box will be unable to communicate with the other computers because they're using MS-TCP...thus cutting you off from the 90% of desktop computers in the workplace that are running Windows.

This is why we HAVE antitrust law!

Jeez...

cya

Ye Olde Webdesigner