[extropy-chat] EU judgement goes agaisnt Microsoft

[Eugen Leitl]

On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 06:56:01AM -0800, Mike Lorrey wrote:

> As if getting looted to the tune of $600 million for out-competing

"Looting" isn't according to consensus legal criteria (could as well call
illegimate copying piracy, pegleg, parrot, eyepatch and cutlass, arrrr!). 
Redmond has not been playing by the rules, and eventually got a slap on 
the wrist (I'd given them the full Ma Bell treatment a decade ago).

I was getting tired of Microsoft's legal shenanigans (via the SCO proxy) of
intimidating industrial and commercial Linux users, so if this makes them
tread more softly in future, it's only fair. Apart from that I regard both
the state and corporate masters with a healthy dose of suspicion. 

> everybody else is not enough to make Bill want to whack someone. Doing

Threats and legal suits isn't a good way of conducting business. Sooner or
later your reputation is going to catch up to you, and, apparently, not all
politicians and judges are up on eBay yet (it depends whether they're going
to have to pay up/trade sanctioned, they're going to use the finest legal
firepower they can buy, which should be enough to stall this indefinitely or
use their lobbying muscle behind the scene, as so many times before).

> so wouldn't be an initiation of force.

Whacking people as an integral part of conducting business is an earmark of
immature business environments. After so much AK-47 and plastique they tend
to settle down, and use hostile takeovers and legal suits. And that's much
for the better.

(Besides, if this was anarchocapitalism Bill/Paul would have been whacked
by the people they cheated a long time ago).

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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