Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 01:00:49 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Frank Pawlak" <fpawlak@execpc.com>, "Bruce Meier" <source@hilo.net>, <freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: FreeBSD and Microsoft Message-ID: <000501c0ffa8$71e51100$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20010627144405.02633958@127.0.0.1>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Frank Pawlak >Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2001 12:51 PM >To: Bruce Meier; freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: Re: FreeBSD and Microsoft > > >I agree. That was the first thought to cross my mind as I read the >article. At the risk of a flame war, (please don't), Linux has the >installed based that could possibly be perceived as a threat to M$. So >lets throw some bones toward FreeBSD, and put the possible competitor in a >bad position. Linux doesn't have a BSD emulator. IMHO, just >another of M$ >ploys to dominate and close a market and then be able to turn to referee, >the Justice Dept and others, and say who plays dirty? Not me! You forget that the Justice department case has been built on damage done to commercial competitors, not to Open Source. It is indeed a creative stretch to say that the Sherman Anti-Trust act even legally _covers_ what is essentially non-commercial software that isn't even sold, only the media is sold. The anti-trust act was written to prevent a sole supplier from dominating a market - well a market is defined as a place that goods and services are sold, not given away. If all the market competitors are NOT making money from the market, and a monopolist takes the market away, then they cannot make any legally valid case that they have suffered damage at the hands of the monopolist, and so I doubt that they even have basis for a legal claim. In fact it's an interesting legal question to even claim that competition (according to the legal definition) even exists in the Open Source market, because nobody is directly profiting from sale of the programs that comprise Open Source. The claims that the Linux vendors that are making their living off of selling support and training for Linux would be damaged by a monopoly on Linux itself, are equivalent to saying that the automobile manufacturers suffered by Standard Oil's monopolization of the Oil Business, because they raised prices on gasoline and thus fewer people bought cars because gas was too expensive. While such claims may be true, they have no little to no legal weight in an anti-trust case. If Microsoft were to point to their work with FreeBSD as evidence they are not a monopoly, I think that Justice would have perfectly legal grounds to object to the testimony as being irrelevant, and I don't see that Microsoft could have any legal grounds to override the objection. While their work with FreeBSD certainly has lots of publicity mileage, I think their lawyers would be morons to even waste time on such an angle. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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