THE TITLE is of course spinning the words of Linus Torvalds, who is not paying attention to what Microsoft has been up to. Yesterday we wrote about Jeremy Allison's latest warning that Mono should not be used (he said this last year as well [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]) and that Microsoft intends to harass its competition with the help of software patents.
Jeremy Allison Calls Microsoft Dangerous Elephant
[...]
Allison contends the OOXML case shows the lengths Microsoft will go to in order to create lock-in, where consumers are forced to buy software or hardware from one vendor or its partners and freedom of choice is restricted.
"One of the worst things that happened out of that, [is that the ISO] which was previously respected by people that didn't know it so well, became absolutely despised," he said. "There are some countries now thinking of pulling out [of ISO] because it is simply not worth participating in a process that is so obviously corrupted."
However, the result was followed by two European Commission anti-trust probes into Microsoft's behaviour which led to a settlement where the software giant had to offer customers a choice of internet browsers.
The second probe into Microsoft's limiting of file format choices in its Office productivity suite also led to the vendor changing track. In the end, the ODF and other non-proprietary formats were offered to consumers to fend off European Union (EU) antitrust regulators and block massive fines.
A federal judge has killed class-action allegations in a lawsuit that accused Microsoft of misleading consumers when it fed them anti-piracy software under the auspices of a critical security update, according to court documents.
The move means that Microsoft will not be faced with millions in potential damages. Last fall, Microsoft's lawyers argued that a class-action lawsuit could involve "tens of millions" of customers who might be owed "hundreds of millions of dollars" if the company lost the case.
A class-action would have let virtually anyone who owned a Windows XP PC in mid-2006 to join the case without having to hire an attorney.
Comments
Dennis Murczak
2010-01-22 20:37:23
Roy Schestowitz
2010-01-22 21:01:47
your_friend
2010-01-23 05:14:27
Roy Schestowitz
2010-01-23 14:47:48
Dennis Murczak
2010-01-22 23:42:19
Roy Schestowitz
2010-01-22 23:50:48
Dennis Murczak
2010-01-23 00:22:10
Roy Schestowitz
2010-01-23 01:05:30
Also see:
http://boycottnovell.com/wiki/index.php/Tuxera
There's a mess going on in embedded Windows and an SVP quit the company earlier this week. I will write about it tomorrow.
Needs Sunlight
2010-01-23 14:32:09
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/30671/1090/1/1/
Roy Schestowitz
2010-01-23 14:45:53