Your point on the manner of response is well taken, but a deposition is not the place to add to an answer with an opinion or explanation. The additional information can be completely discarded by the opposing party. Of course, if he did that, we probably wouldn't have the current charades, so you make a good point.
Your statement that the DOJ wanted to play the whole thing at once, but Microsoft didn't is a distortion of the facts. Microsoft first argued not to display the deposition at all. When the judge ruled that it could be displayed, Microsoft argued for it to be displayed all at once. The DOJ and Judge refused.
don't introduce new keywords into Java(they really thought they could get away with that?)
I assume that you know something about programming languages, so you should know better than your last statement. First, as determined in the Ashton-Tate, xBase case, a language itself cannot be copyrighted, period. Second, all computer languages today are an evolution of some previous language (Eiffel, Modula 3, Java, C++, JavaScript, VB, VBScript, etc.) Until this ruling, no one has ever, to my knowledge, been prevented from innovating in a language. Finally, Microsoft specifically negotiated for this right in its license. This was up front and clear between the parties and, while I am not an attorney, I was assured by attorneys that this was embodied in the Agreement. The judge chose to ignore that fact and interpret the language to mean that Microsoft had the right to compile Java considered non-standard only when that was really an older version of Sun's definition, not at all what Sun and Microsoft agreed. I believe that this will come out in evidence.
I'm sure we'll all see how this turns out, and I hope for the future of our industry, the lynchmob does not prevail.
Thanks,
Mike |
