The last time a company that had such an extensive pyramid scheme with their stocks was in existence was 1929 - Edison. They had a margin call scheme involving their stock that eventually led to the great depression. Checks and balances being what they are today, I would be surprised if that happened.. but all of MS's pratcies are in question, so let's not lose perspective on that. They pay employees with stock options that are based on a 3 month point of employment strike price... translated, when an employee joined in 1991, the value of their stock options was written as the value at the 3 month period of employment. The employee gets vested 3 years later when the stock is worth considerably more in 1994 - where did the money come from for this? Expenses among otehr things. MS does not perform their accounting properly and in accordance with acepted practices. Employees are paid with money that exists only in the value of the stock... this leads to a loss in value for all programmers. They jump ship. Where does that leave MS? When you developed a competing software package to anything MS was doing, they would levy a fee for you using their tools of about 6 bucks per packge... you don't see anything remotely monopolistic in this? I can't install TCP/IP without MSIE on my system. If I have a low resource PC, it will get dragged into an upgrade cycle. Granted, HW vendors appear to benefit with all of this support and cost associated and referred to as "value" but when all is said and done the only winner in thie has been heir Billy. This matters SO MUCH to the software industry... it signals a coopetive model is now to be the norm. MS is in a win-win position though... They have the existing user base. They stand to stay a large corporation with tax losses going forward they will benefit from forever. They stand to be broken up into accountable, profitable sub entities just like during the AT&T divestiture. They already have a greater mindshare due to the lockstep support structure hat they have fostered in the industry. For a million reasons, this is likely the watershed ruling of the industry and the beginning of the need for a digital economic laws model to be implemented. We all won. Judge Jackson is spot on in all his findings. MS is attempting excercises in blame management and damage control, but as a couple writers have pointed out, you can ask to have an appeal heard, but this decision could be relatively final. 50 million is the very tip of the iceberg for MS. If I owned MS stock I'd sell "today" and wait for the buying opp next week... the stock will go down until this is sorted out. Oh... and I'd buy Sun with the money I had. it will go up in the short term as a knee jerk to all this.
Slashdot Mirror
The last time a company that had such an extensive pyramid scheme with their stocks was in existence was 1929 - Edison. They had a margin call scheme involving their stock that eventually led to the great depression. Checks and balances being what they are today, I would be surprised if that happened .. but all of MS's pratcies are in question, so let's not lose perspective on that. They pay employees with stock options that are based on a 3 month point of employment strike price ... translated, when an employee joined in 1991, the value of their stock options was written as the value at the 3 month period of employment. The employee gets vested 3 years later when the stock is worth considerably more in 1994 - where did the money come from for this? Expenses among otehr things. MS does not perform their accounting properly and in accordance with acepted practices. Employees are paid with money that exists only in the value of the stock ... this leads to a loss in value for all programmers. They jump ship. Where does that leave MS? When you developed a competing software package to anything MS was doing, they would levy a fee for you using their tools of about 6 bucks per packge ... you don't see anything remotely monopolistic in this? I can't install TCP/IP without MSIE on my system. If I have a low resource PC, it will get dragged into an upgrade cycle. Granted, HW vendors appear to benefit with all of this support and cost associated and referred to as "value" but when all is said and done the only winner in thie has been heir Billy. This matters SO MUCH to the software industry ... it signals a coopetive model is now to be the norm. MS is in a win-win position though ... They have the existing user base. They stand to stay a large corporation with tax losses going forward they will benefit from forever. They stand to be broken up into accountable, profitable sub entities just like during the AT&T divestiture. They already have a greater mindshare due to the lockstep support structure hat they have fostered in the industry. For a million reasons, this is likely the watershed ruling of the industry and the beginning of the need for a digital economic laws model to be implemented. We all won. Judge Jackson is spot on in all his findings. MS is attempting excercises in blame management and damage control, but as a couple writers have pointed out, you can ask to have an appeal heard, but this decision could be relatively final. 50 million is the very tip of the iceberg for MS. If I owned MS stock I'd sell "today" and wait for the buying opp next week ... the stock will go down until this is sorted out. Oh ... and I'd buy Sun with the money I had. it will go up in the short term as a knee jerk to all this.