nessuno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
High Plains Thumper wrote:
No boundaries like?:
http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2005/07/14/microsofts-law...
or http://tinyurl.com/59wley
[quote] Microsoft's lawsuit payouts amount to around $9
billion Updated Twice the GDP of Cambodia By Désiré Athow:
Thursday, 14 July 2005, 2:35 PM * UPDATE Additional material
at the end of this article.
MICROSOFT HAS had a long, a very long history of litigation,
court orders, patent infringements and antitrust lawsuits
against it since the very beginning of its history. We;ve
managed to draw up a partial list of these.
The surprising thing is not only the number of those
lawsuits against Microsoft - at one time, it had more than
130 pending - but more importantly, the sheer amount of
money it represents.
The Redmond giant has been ordered to pay nearly $9 billion,
a figure which is set to rise with some lawsuits still to be
ruled on.
[.... Table below rearranged according to award amount,
header added]
Award Amount Plaintiff
-------------- ------------------
$1,950,000,000 Sun
$1,100,000,000 California
$850,000,000 IBM
$750,000,000 AOL
$613,000,000 EU
$536,000,000 Novell
$521,000,000 Eolas
$500,000,000 DR DOS/Caldera
$440,000,000 Intertrust
$250,000,000 Apple
$240,000,000 Minnesota
$202,000,000 Florida
$150,000,000 Gateway
$104,600,000 Arizona
<SNIP>
Was it Tim recently who implied that IBM, Apple, Cisco and who
knows else are just as bad as Microsoft? It was just too
tedious to reply to this, and besides, he knows better. "We
all sin, so the devil is not so bad," is the logic, so
convenient for Microsoft.
I put little credence in what Tim posts. He is just another shill.
Microsoft may be no worse than Standard Oil was in the 1880s.
I don't know the history well enough to say. But the
monopolies of that era led to bad associations in the minds of
the public with monopolies, and also to reforms (Sherman
anti-trust, etc).
We'll see if there are any reforms in the works in the
technical field. Probably the best you could hope for in the
US in the next 20 years would be patent reform (like
abolishment of software patents), and some consumer friendly
legislation regarding ISPs and Telcos.
I think that there is a great struggle over ethical issues within
the US. On one hand I see a desire to encourage open and fair
competition. OTOH, the action by courts in US have served
nothing more than a slap on the wrist. It may seem to be great
amounts, the fines, but as it appears, for a multi-billion dollar
corporation, it is just the cost of doing business.
And some increased action by the EU against Microsoft lock-in
efforts. And the best you could hope for is usually not what
you get.
I am in a wait and see mode, hoping for the best.
Right now competitors (mainly Apple and Google) are doing a
good job of chipping at Microsoft's monopoly, forcing them to
compete on the merits of their product (where they don't do so
well).
Any competition and alternatives including Linux provide
opportunities for improvements in quality and help to drive down
prices to that reasonable.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is helping its competitors by continuing
to rely on the same old tactics of lock-in, embrace, extend,
extinguish.
Of course, competition is not in their best interest. It reduces
the monopoly advantage.
As for FOSS, what's remarkable to me in the last couple of
years is the huge increase in awareness of FOSS in minds of
the public, media, legislators, commentators, etc.
Of course the dollar amounts above are rather small compared
to Microsoft's profits. It's just the cost of doing
"business" for them.
You know they say robbing a bank is about the stupidest way of
making money. You get maybe $10,000 if you're lucky (hard to
carry away more than that), with a high probability of being
caught. To be a successful thief, you have to think much,
much bigger.
There are things done in the dark that would shame the average
citizen, if they knew what was really going on.
--
HPT
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