LinuxInsider Talkback

Re: The Mystery Deepens: Sinister Views on the TomTom Case
Posted by: Katherine Noyes 2009-03-09 05:04:58

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When we wrote about the Microsoft-TomTom lawsuit a week ago, we thought we had pretty much covered the spectrum of perspectives flying around the blogosphere. But then Jeremy Allison, a leader of the Samba project, posted a comment on Glyn Moody's original Open... post that seems to have changed everything. "What people are missing about this is the either/or choice that Microsoft is giving TomTom," Allison began. "It isn't a case of cross-license and everything is ok."

Yet more to the story and analysis
Posted by: MichaelTiemann 2009-03-09 05:12:40 In reply to: Katherine Noyes

In 1998 Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates accused the government's lead attorney, David Boies, who conducted the deposition, of being "really out to destroy Microsoft" and "really out to take all the good work we've done and make us look very bad." A government official involved in the case said: "The government is not trying to destroy Microsoft, it's simply seeking to compel Microsoft to obey the law. It's quite revealing that Mr. Gates equates the two."

And so Microsoft is at it again, daring the courts to choose between destroying the law and destroying Microsoft. Whatever the arguments may be, by filing against TomTom Microsoft has effectively pulled the pin from their legal grenade and have lobbed it into the center of the open source community.

War is an unpredictable business, and Microsoft has clearly escalated their behavior to the level of outright warfare. As President of the Open Source Initiative and as a witness for the States against Microsoft in their anti-trust remedy trial, I offer this perspective: http://opensource.org/node/399