Ideally, I would agree with you, for I too am against government intervention.
But in reality, we are dealing with a crisis that has been and is currently being perpetrated by Microsoft. There are probably many laws that are not enforced in normal situations. But this is an extremely abnormal situation, and I for one am glad that there are laws to give us hope of getting out of this crisis.
BTW, you claim that their fall is inevitable. Sure, but when is "inevitable"? Five years from now, after even more damage is done? Even if Microsoft ends up winning all of its cases, their behavior being put under the microscope has done wonders for the normal competition that we should have had all along. Others have pointed this out, and I agree that it is a victory by itself.
Hey, that is a nice way to liven up this "boring" topic. Maybe another way is to speculate on the size of the settlement. One billion, two billion anyone? However large it may be, maybe it will be a bit small compared to the DOJ remedy.
I apologize for being a bit irresponsible in my post. Though I am a Debian user, I should not let that interfere with my support for Redhat. As has been pointed out to me, Redhat is as committed to free software as Debian. They just goofed on rdist, just as Debian has goofed in the past. Thanks to those who corrected me.
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Sorry to disappoint you, but GNU/Linux is not a company, hence it cannot be destroyed as you suggest. ;)
Ideally, I would agree with you, for I too am against government intervention.
But in reality, we are dealing with a crisis that has been and is currently being perpetrated by Microsoft. There are probably many laws that are not enforced in normal situations. But this is an extremely abnormal situation, and I for one am glad that there are laws to give us hope of getting out of this crisis.
BTW, you claim that their fall is inevitable. Sure, but when is "inevitable"? Five years from now, after even more damage is done? Even if Microsoft ends up winning all of its cases, their behavior being put under the microscope has done wonders for the normal competition that we should have had all along. Others have pointed this out, and I agree that it is a victory by itself.
If you had any real arguments to support your favorite cause, I am sure MSFT would be using them.
Otherwise, the pattern of abuse by MSFT over many years is obvious. Now the only interesting questions involve the remedies.
Hey, that is a nice way to liven up this "boring" topic. Maybe another way is to speculate on the size of the settlement. One billion, two billion anyone? However large it may be, maybe it will be a bit small compared to the DOJ remedy.
It may smell like MS-strategy, but MSFT needs to be corrected. Hopefully a large settlement here will help out on that point.
I apologize for being a bit irresponsible in my post. Though I am a Debian user, I should not let that interfere with my support for Redhat. As has been pointed out to me, Redhat is as committed to free software as Debian. They just goofed on rdist, just as Debian has goofed in the past. Thanks to those who corrected me.