LeRoy D. Cressy on Sun, 3 Jan 1999 11:36:30 -0500 (EST)


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Upcoming Concerns


Today I read an interresting article in the 
<a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/01/cyber/cyberlaw/01law.html";>NY
Times</a>
about some possible outcomes of the doj vs M$ trial.

<blockquote><i>
   1. U.S. v. Microsoft: Should it happen that Microsoft is found
         liable for antitrust violations, the single most important
legal
         event of 1999 will be the decision as to what do about it. The
         right answer is to make slight compulsory licensing changes to
         allow the volunteer programmers all over the world who write
         the free GNU/Linux operating system to release code freely
         that would make GNU/Linux run Windows applications
         programs. That way anyone who now uses Windows-based
         programs of any kind could run those programs either under
         Windows or under a much more technically sophisticated but
         completely free alternative operating system. Immediately,
         Microsoft would have the strongest possible competition in its
         core market, eliminating the problem of possible coercion of
         other market participants, and with a minimum of
         government intervention in industry. 
</i></blockquote>

My fear is that forcing a company change their licensing to ``allow GNU
programers to write code to run windows programs'' could turn into a
compulsory requirement for Linux programers to include code that will
require Linux to run wondoz binaries.  It seems to me that every time
the government gets involved in trying to help someone the end result is
that the people get stuck!  

Enough of my rambelings, please read the article and maybe we could
include a little discussion in our meeting.

Have a great day:-)

LeRoy
-- 
          0 0      L & R Associates
           "       Home Page:    http://www.netaxs.com/~ldc/
_______ooO ~ Ooo_______________________________________________

LeRoy D. Cressy     	 /\_/\		ldc@netaxs.com
Computer Consulting 	( o.o )		Phone (215) 535-4037
		 	 > ^ <		Fax   (215) 535-4285

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