JC -
I see the DOJ attorneys pushing for headlines, the States attorneys pushing for a windfall of big money, the MSFT attorneys pushing for any interpretation that they can later spin on appeal, facts be damned... and Jackson picking a course based on the finding of fact, and probably working the application of law in a way that will reduce his chances of being overturned on appeal.
If there is no settlement the case will drag on for years. By that time Win9X will be ancient history, W2K will have morphed into something a lot different - maybe PCs will truly be a commodity and the money will be in middleware...
What I don't see is anything changing in the near term no matter what Jackson decides. No remedy will be applied while the case is under appeal. So the only chance for a quick resolution would be a settlement, and if MSFT offers up source in a settlement, it will not be NT or W2K source.
You're too logical - data's in, facts are now a matter of record, time for the last act... but I don't expect anything reasonable to ever come out of this, I will be pleased if MSFT is restrained from some of their more outrageous practices... in the meantime the landscape is changing and MSFT is now too big and too slow to follow. Whatever remedy gets applied in 2002 or 2003 will be appropriate for the problem as defined in 1998. That's certainly what happened in the IBM boondoggle.
My other concern is that the attorneys involved here have been having too good a time. Like the Texas law firm that won big on the tobacco settlement, making some of the lawyers 100's of millions for a year's work. Then they went after Toshiba for a 15 year old problem that never actually affected anyone, and was fixed 10 years ago. Toshiba caved because they recognized that the legal system has nothing to do with facts. OK, now lets go after CPQ, HP, IBM, even though those companies did not even USE the suspect technology, maybe they'll cave too... What will the next fat target be? Is this going to be like "smash the groundhog" at Chuckie Cheese, any company which becomes dominant gets its hammered with its own DOJ action? These lawyers are parasites who thrive on their potential to wreak havoc. In the MSFT case, who the bad guys were has been pretty obvious from the outset. Who the good guys are is less obvious to me. |
