[Am-info] Gateway Official Hits Microsoft Licensing In Testimony

[John Poltorak]

On Mon, Mar 25, 2002 at 08:24:36PM -0800, Mitch Stone wrote:
> And according to the Yahoo story,
> 
> "Gateway also faulted another provision of the new licensing agreement, 
> which requires PC makers to pay a Windows royalty on every PC shipped, 
> even if it didn't include Windows. To top it off, to qualify for market 
> development funds, PC makers have to put a Microsoft OS on every PC. As a 
> result, trying to sell non-Windows PCs, or even PCs without software, is a 
> financial loser for computer makers."
> 
> My eyes practically fell out of my head when I read this. Wasn't this 
> tactic expressly  prohibited by the 1995 consent decree?

My God, how long does it take for this to sink in?

Microsoft is above the Law!

The DOJ has more or less admitted that it is too expensive to try and 
pursue Microsoft for its wrong doing.

After a four year trial which provided damning evidence of the company's 
misdeeds through the findings of fact and a verdict which found it guilty
of breaking the Anti-trust Laws, its monopoly position on the desktop has 
more or less been sanctioned by the DOJ and it has been carte blanche to 
leverage that monopoly position into what ever industry it wishes to take 
over next, the server market, digital photography, the music business, the 
film industry, games market, PDA's, mobile phones, embedded computers, 
even the Internet.

The nightmare of 'Windows everywhere' is definitely becoming a reality, 
and the minor fact that something was expressly prohibited a few years ago 
is not going to stop Microsoft ignoring it since they now know that no one 
has the balls to stop them doing whatever they choose to do. 

 
> On Monday, March 25, 2002, at 03:34 PM, madodel@ptdprolog.net wrote:
> 
> > From: Computerworld_Daily@Computerworld.com
> >
> > Gateway official hits Microsoft licensing terms in court testimony
> >
> > Gateway's general counsel said Microsoft's new "uniform" licensing terms
> > are more restrictive on PC makers than the ones they had reached in
> > separate agreements with the company.
> >
> > http://computerworld.com/nlt/1%2C3590%2CNAV47_STO69541_NLTPM%2C00.html


-- 
John