[Am-info] Re: MS Depositions

[Bockhorst, Roland]

Marcus;

Your points are good ones. 

Please elaborate on
"quietly switch to other, better, and cheaper ways of
computing. It's what I did in 1993 and I can't say I regret it."

Roland


-----Original Message-----
From: Marcus de Geus [mailto:am-info@degeus.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 8:29 AM
To: am-info@venice.essential.org
Subject: Re: [Am-info] Re: MS Depositions


In reply to a message from "John J. Urbaniak" <jjurban@attglobal.net> dated
2002-01-31 08:24:34 -0500 (Thu):

> This is a myth.  Microsoft is very vulnerable in court.  They have a long
history of losses.  And *the loser* can be held responsible for legal fees.

John,

I'm afraid you missed my point, which is that even if (or when, depending on
your point of view) Microsoft are found guilty or liable, and have to pay
their opponents' legal costs and damages, they will still be ahead.

The simple fact is that with all that money to burn, Microsoft can outlast
most litigants (perhaps even the U.S. itself) by the simple expedient of
making sure that the cost and duration of the legal proceedings will outlast
the funding capacity of the other party. Faced with that prospect, many
parties (perhaps even the U.S. itself) will prefer not to take the risk. The
winner in a case may be awarded the cost of astronomical legal fees,
severely denting Micosoft's bank balance, but even so, they will have to put
up the money so they can take the case to court. Most parties simply cannot
afford that luxury. I'm certain this is one of the reasons why Microsoft
like to settle cases. They can afford to throw their money about, and by the
time proceedings have reached that stage, they will have bled their opponent
dry, enabling them to extract whatever they need to make sure the settlement
does not cost them too much in any way other than financially.

Whatever the case, even after a guilty verdict against Microsoft, who is
there to enforce the sentence? I haven't noticed any difference in behaviour
by Microsoft in the past few years, in spite of their losses in court.

In my opinion, the only real way to tackle the Microsoft stranglehold on the
world (and that is what it is, just look at the ridiculous cost and low
yield of most IT operations over the past decade) is to ignore both them and
the hype, and quietly switch to other, better, and cheaper ways of
computing. It's what I did in 1993 and I can't say I regret it. Mind you,
I've never used any variety of Windows, so perhaps I'm not the best judge.
#;-)

BTW, people, I'm sorry about the abundance of '='s in some of my previous
messages, but I simply keep forgetting to send them out as plain 7-bit ASCII
instead of quoted-printable MIME. In order to prevent future problems, I'd
appreciate it if this list could follow my standard from now on. Why don't
you, anyway? What's wrong with you? Don't you realize you're about to miss
out on things? Technology has moved on, you know. Plus, everybody does it my
way now. And you could have graphics, too. And sound. And movies. Think
about it. See you in court.

Regards,

Marcus de Geus
--
marcus@degeus.com
http://www.degeus.com

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