David Schwartz wrote: > > Do you think it would be immoral if Microsoft said, "we will only sell > Windows wholesale to dealers who don't sell other operating systems?"
That's the crux of the problem, isn't it? When you are a virtual monopoly, it is at least unlawful. The Sherman Anti-trust act as well as the various follow-on anti-trust laws essentially say that what is okay when you have 49% of a market is illegal when you have 51%. You have maintained that Microsoft is not a monopoly, but they clearly are by U.S. Anti-trust law. Congress has set the definition, and the courts have upheld it, explicitly in Microsoft's case. The courts have declared Microsoft a monopoly in the desktop OS market, and that decision stands. You have said that it was unreasonable to expect Microsoft to define the market in the manner required to make them into a monopoly, but it was their primary market. Again, court records show that they not only had a monopoly, they knew they had a monopoly and took steps to preserve their monopoly. Some of those steps were illegal by U.S. law. Also, you have said that it was unreasonable to expect Microsoft to know that they were in violation of the law. In addition to the fact that the laws have been in place since the late 1800's, the consent decree explicitly and in no uncertain terms informed them of their violations, and they continued to violate the law even afterward. I have read some interesting things written by some of the principles involved that the culture in Microsoft explicitly resisted against checking the legality of these matters, not because they wanted to do illegal things, but because Bill Gates viewed the legal vetting process that he saw IBM use as being the primary cause of the inability of IBM to react to the changing market. He didn't want his company to have the same legal baggage. Microsoft resisted having any kind of "working within the law" type of employee training until long after most other large companies had them. -- blu Remember when SOX compliant meant they were both the same color? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Brian Utterback - OP/N1 RPE, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Ph:877-259-7345, Em:brian.utterback-at-ess-you-enn-dot-kom -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
