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To: Gerald R. Lampton who wrote (20191)6/24/1998 4:24:00 AM
From: Charles Hughes  Respond to of 24154
 
Gerry, thanks for the play by play and taking the time to post the whole thing.

I found the dichotomy between Wald and the other two somewhat familiar. For the last few days you and I and several others have been trying the positions on, in fact, pretty much in the same way as the judges here did: 2 judges following the Bork World/Chicago school Antitrust-as-consumer protection route, and one following a more traditional and activist trail.

I don't need to say which one I favor, with you I never know when you are trying on some devils advocate cloak that will drive me crazy. I presume that as a lawyer at least some of the time you are merely experimenting with the plausibility of arguments.

I take it that while the injunction is out, the district court is free to try again, perhaps following Wald's formulation. Meanwhile the DOJ is up to other things.

It's interesting.

You know, last year I did a short job for a month for a development tools company that folded up a few months later, as I knew it would after being there a short time (I quickly bailed out). The problem was, these guys had gone into business with no better plan than to get a few sales to show there was a market, and then to sell out to MSFT. Seriously. Imagine their shock when MSFT talked to them and then just hired their key people, before the product was really complete.

As Sun Tzu said (approximately), the best way to win a war is to simply sit with ovewhelming power on the opponents border. Eventually they will beg to surrender, and ransom themselves without a drop of blood being spilled.

That is what the software (and hardware) industry is doing left and right.

Perhaps the real hope for progress in this technology will lie overseas. Unfortunately, some other country will be selling the US whatever is new OS technology in ten years, I suspect. Half a million American technologists and professionals move to Europe and elsewhere every year now, and they will contribute to that.

Whether this court had a chance to staunch the flow of blood in the software business I don't know. There seem to have been insurmountable technical problems with the injunction, not to mention the pathetic consent decree.

Ah well, tomorrow's another day. And there are a lot of battles to come.

Cheers,
Chaz



To: Gerald R. Lampton who wrote (20191)6/24/1998 10:15:00 AM
From: Bearded One  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 24154
 
I also think the court's characterization of Windows 95 as an integration of DOS and Windows 3.11 may be a fundamental factual error on which the opinion is premised. Pleae correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that Windows 95 is NOT an integration of DOS and Windows 3.11. Although Windows 95 will emulate DOS, the kernal is different, as I understand it. It is, in a very real sense, a single product, not just a combination of DOS and Windows, as both the majority and the dissent seem to assume.

Windows 95 is certainly not simply an integration of DOS and Windows 3.11. What I found interesting about that whole discussion is that there is currently a lawsuit by Caldera against Microsoft on the exact topic. It seems that Microsoft claimed that Windows 95 and DOS were integrated during the consent decree negotiations. However, Caldera has been able to show that one can easily substitute Caldera's version of DOS ("DR. DOS", then owned by Novell) for the version of DOS which comes with Windows 95. Thus, they argue, Windows 95 and DOS were never integrated and Microsoft lied so as to destroy the market for Dr. DOS. That is why Caldera was able to expand their lawsuit to include Windows 95. I believe the trial is this fall.

There was always a question of how linked this lawsuit was to the DOJ/States lawsuit. I think the linkage is now much much stronger.

Two questions: How will the appeal's court notion of 'integration' affect this Caldera lawsuit? And if Microsoft is found to have misstated their case to the DOJ in 1994, how will that affect the DOJ lawsuit?



To: Gerald R. Lampton who wrote (20191)6/24/1998 12:34:00 PM
From: Flair  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 24154
 
Gerald,

Thanks for your efforts for posting the Court's rulings
on this thread. It is very informative.
I agreed on your analysis. After reading your posts, I am
under an impression that DOJ may need to do something to
fulfill the "criterion test" by either Judges Williams
and Randolph or Judge Wald. That is, to prove Microsoft
is guilty, DOJ needs to prove that (1) the integration
is not "better" than separation or (2) the integration
is a simply product "tying" to kill competition.



To: Gerald R. Lampton who wrote (20191)6/24/1998 1:17:00 PM
From: Bearded One  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 24154
 
One more question: How can the court say that the courts are ill-prepared to deal with technical matters and in the same breath say that the appointment of Special Master Lessig was inappropriate?