Free Software Foundation Europe vs. Microsoft
There's an article about FSFE saying there's not much support from the IT industry for European Commision in its case against Microsoft even though it is in the industry's interest to keep a healthy market (to which Microsoft's behavior is obviously a threat).
FSF berates apathy over Microsoft antitrust case
It says:
Greve said that despite the importance of the antitrust case in establishing the bounds of acceptable behaviour in the IT industry, the FSFE has been one of the few organisations that has helped the Commission.
(...)
"I only hope that more companies will help us defending their interests in this — to this date, FSFE has received virtually no support for this case from the industry. Consequently, all the credit belongs to the free software community, including in particular the Fellows of the FSFE."
Now why is this interesting to me? Because I see kind of an irony in all this. Here's an organization that has once been (and still many times is) criticized and mocked as "crusading" some kind of extremist ideology that is anti-economical being almost the only organization defending the actual free market, while those who should be concerned are, so to say, sleeping. How anti-economical is that?
Now, why do you think is it that not many other organization haven't supported EC and FSFE in this case? Is it that they're just not interested (which would of course be very ignorant) or they're just one way or another "in bed" with MS or just too afraid of it to jump on the case against it, or is it something else?
This is indeed interesting, maybe they are frightened of Microsoft? I'm remembering the episode of The Simpsons cartoon where Homer Simpson's internet company is 'baught out' by Bill Gates and Microsoft - which involved a couple of Gate's goons trashing Homer's office, and no monitery etc. transfer.
Microsoft is the biggest company in the computing sector, many companies may not be willing to cross it's path in case they are somehow forbidden from making MS applications.
But one would have thought that they would support the equaling of power the EC is trying to do so that there was a freer market and it was fairer for their companies to compete.
dylunio
I don't think they want to have to port their software.
idontknowctmwhatsthepointofcapitallettersorspacesorpunctuation
dylunio wrote:
This is indeed interesting, maybe they are frightened of Microsoft? I'm remembering the episode of The Simpsons cartoon where Homer Simpson's internet company is 'baught out' by Bill Gates and Microsoft - which involved a couple of Gate's goons trashing Homer's office, and no monitery etc. transfer.
Yeah I watched that one too. It was really an interesting parallel. :-)
dylunio wrote:
But one would have thought that they would support the equaling of power the EC is trying to do so that there was a freer market and it was fairer for their companies to compete.
Exactly, but unfortunately (and if we're right) it may be this fear or whatever reason they're not stepping up with their support is stronger than that incentive..
Here are a two more articles that slighty go in line with this topic:
Microsoft under new legal attacks
According to this one, ECIS organization represents multiple well known companies like IBM, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, RedHat and some others.. And since ECIS issued this newest complaing, thus supporting the EC case we can count all these companies as supporters. Of course, the question still remains about other organizations with smaller companies and businesses in Europe..
IBM demands documents detailing Microsoft's rivalry with Linux - this might get ugly for MS. Here's another related article on that: IBM vs. SCO: Now It's IBM's Turn
It seems Microsoft is currently under a whole salvo of legal attacks right now. I would suppose that if there's any time small companies shouldn't fear MS it is right now, as it becomes more and more vulnerable..