Re: Petreley on commercial support for non-MS OSes

[Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>]

At 01:44 AM 1/2/99 -0500, stan johnson wrote:
 
>** Reply to note from brett@lariat.org Fri, 1 Jan 1999 23:07:05 -0500 
> (When one runs into a "line-drawing" problem, it virtually always 
> means that one has taken a wrong turn on the way to a solution.) 
> 
>An interesting statement. The only time I can imagine not having to   
>draw a line is when there are no shades of gray in a decision. Only a   
>dogmatic and/or simplistic point of view sees only black and white.

If you can't easily justify drawing a line in a specific place,
it's probably because you're trying to draw the wrong line. It's
time to reframe the problem.

This doesn't mean that one cannot draw a line in a situation which 
is not purely black and white. Phenomena that are continuous rather 
than discrete can be described by curves that have minima, maxima, 
and inflection points -- all of which may be justifiable places
in which to draw lines under some circumstances.

In the case under discussion, however, there is no justifiable place
to draw a line because any distinction would be artificial. It is as 
wrong to exhibit anti-competitive behavior in the realm of operating
systems as it is in, say, game software or spreadsheets or browsers.
This is the point of the Caldera case.

--Brett