[TriLUG] A little off topic

[Bill Vinson]

First off, let me say we should keep this discussion friendly and
productive :)

On Fri, 07 Sep 2001, rpjday wrote:

> and now that you've finished frothing at the mouth, allow me to
> enlighten you.  the issue here is not whether the federal government
> has the right to tell Microsoft how to run its business.  the issue
> is whether the federal government has the power to tell microsoft
> to *stop* *breaking* *the* *law*.
> 
> did i type that slowly enough for you?
> 
> i am thoroughly tired of people who, apparently without a clue, keep
> harping on how the government should get off microsoft's case, leave
> them alone, stop telling them how to run their business, etc, etc.
> blah blah...
> 
> the issue here is very simple:  microsoft broke the law.  this is not
> in dispute -- it's been established beyond any reasonable doubt that
> microsoft abused their monopoly position using tactics like predatory
> pricing, exclusionary contracts and so on, to cripple and/or outright
> destroy their competitors.
> 
> the issue now before the courts is -- what should the punishment be?
> that's what you get when you *break* *the* *law*.  is this starting
> to make any sense?

I don't have any doubt that they have broken the law.  However, Justin
is correct in stating that the constitution does not give the government
the right to interfere.  However, various federal and state laws do as
does the Sherman Antitrust Act.  I don't believe that bundling IE with
Windows should be illegal.  I believe that bundling does improve the
product.  What I don't agree with is their
agreements/licenses/unremovable bundled applications.  They have bundled
which is fine, but they attempted to make the bundling become a weapon
that could defeat the competition by not allowing their customers to
unbundle and include competing products.  I believe this is where we get
into the monopolistic behavior in this instance.

M$ is definitely predatory, but the bundling of IE in itself was not
wrong.  I don't belive breaking the company is necessarily warranted,
nor do I believe it will work in ANY WAY.  There are other remedies and
it is shown that broken up companies continue to thrive historically,
whereas remediated companies can find that their power over the
competition is cut out from under them.

Regards,
Bill