____/ High Plains Thumper on Tuesday 17 July 2007 22:47 : \____
> http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2118681/microsoft-convicted-software-piracy
>
> or http://tinyurl.com/2xcpvk
>
> Microsoft convicted of software piracy
>
> James Middleton, vnunet.com 09 May 2002
>
> [quote]
> Microsoft was found guilty of software piracy last year by a French court,
> according to facts unearthed today by the geek community.
>
> But the Redmond giant's conviction and three million franc (£285,000)
> fine somehow managed to escape the headlines. In fact, until today the
> only place the story has appeared is in French newspaper Le Monde
> Informatique.
>
> <SNIP>
>
> According to the article, the Commercial Court of Nanterre fined Microsoft
> because it had illegally included another company's proprietary source
> code in SoftImage 3D, a top-level animation package that it acquired from
> SoftImage in 1994.
>
> During the six-year court wrangle that followed, the French company which
> originally owned the code used in SoftImage, Syn'X Relief, ran out of cash
> and went bankrupt.
>
> The fight was then taken up by the original individual authors of the code
> in question and, in September last year, Microsoft was found guilty and
> fined.
>
> The software giant said that it would appeal against the decision, but the
> strange thing is why the story remained in obscurity until now.
>
> One school of thought is that because the court decision followed so close
> behind the 11 September attacks, the world simply missed the 'Microsoft in
> piracy shock' story.
> [/quote]
Ouch. That's nasty. How about this one?
http://www.consumerfed.org/pdfs/WINXP_anticompetitive_study.PDF
[quote]
The New Challenge: “Windows XP/.NET”
These findings are especially critical because Microsoft is in the process of
rolling out the most aggressive bundle of products in its history – an
operating system (Windows XP) with a host of embedded applications (browser,
messenger, media player) that is intertwined with a wide array of Internet
services (Hailstorm and the .NET initiative). The bundle covers all of the
functionalities that are converging on the Internet including:
• Communications: E-Mail (Hotmail), Messaging (Microsoft
Messenger)
• Commerce: Identity Verification (Passport—names and addresses),
Utilities (e.g. Calendars, Contact Lists), Transactions (e.g. documents,
payment records)
• Multimedia Applications: Music and Video (Media Player 8), Digital
Photography (My Pictures)
• Internet Services: MSN
Today these Internet activities are vigorously competitive, just as the browser
was before Microsoft launched its monopolistic assault, but Microsoft requires
computer manufacturers to buy all of “Windows XP/.NET”, and laces the bundle
with technological and business practices that have already been ruled illegal
by the courts, such as the following:
• commingled code,
• proprietary languages,
• exclusive functionalities promoted by restrictive licenses,
• refusal to support competing applications, ii
• embedded links, and
• deceptive messages.
[/quote]
--
~~ Best of wishes
http://Schestowitz.com | GNU is Not UNIX | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
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