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| US DoJ Identifies 47 "Major" Comments |
 Posted by Dre on Friday 15/Feb/2002, @12:49
from the justice-oh-justice dept.
Those of you following the US antitrust proceedings against
Microsoft
might be interested to note that the
US DoJ
Antitrust Division
has selected
47 "major" comments from the
30,000+ comments
submitted under the
Tunney Act.
Included amongst those are comments from the
KDE
League, Inc. (nice PDF version, website) as well as
Red Hat,
Inc. (website).
After a brief review, other comments making significant references to
Open Source include
John A. Carroll,
Steven Waldman,
Ralph
Nader and James Love,
The American Antitrust Institute and the
U.S. Senate (mainly Red Hat's testimony),
and comments making some reference to Open Source include
Consumers for Computing Choice and Open Platform Working Group,
Paul Johnson,
Dan Kegel,
Mason
Thomas and
SBC Communications Inc..
Hopefully this volume of comments
will ensure that the district court will pay adequate attention to the
issues confronting Open Source developers in particular when reviewing the
proposed settlement.
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Over 40 comments listed.
Printing out index only. |
Nice.
by Sashmit B. Bhaduri on Friday 15/Feb/2002, @13:56
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Nice comment, Dre. I think it was very well put.
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"Major"
by ac on Friday 15/Feb/2002, @14:29
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Eh, why is "Major" in quotes. Is that supposed to be ironic or something?
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Yes!
by KDE User on Friday 15/Feb/2002, @15:13
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To quote /.:
"wow, I enjoyed reading the response from the KDE league Inc. It seemed more relevant to me than the other responses, was brief and has a nifty introduction to KDE."
Beautiful.
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Zope unstable?
by Andy "Storm" Goossens on Friday 15/Feb/2002, @15:36
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"Zope Error
The Zope server is down temporarily for maintenance, please try again shortly.
..."
I can't count how many times I already saw that on dot.kde.org :-(
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Kudos
by Eric E on Friday 15/Feb/2002, @15:51
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That's a ton of work, and much needed. Thanks to whoever wrote the comment.
Cheers,
Eric
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Now we know
by Wiggle on Friday 15/Feb/2002, @16:30
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where all the money went for the KDE League.
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The League is not KDE
by Neil Stevens on Friday 15/Feb/2002, @17:53
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Now that the League has gotten into a political matter in one country, it had better start making very clear that it does not speak for KDE. KDE is a community built around people sharing software with each other. If the League begins to paint KDE with a political tint, it may do irreparable harm to the KDE community by driving people away, and making people stay away. (Note that by politicizing KDE, the League would achieve the opposite of its stated goals.)
Now that the League has stepped away from its stated purpose of helping KDE by attacking someone else, it had better start making very clear that money given to it may not be used for KDE advocacy. Otherwise that would be dishonest. And we don't want a dishonest body representing KDE to the world.
Now that the League has made clear it does not believe KDE is good enough, that the government has to go steal from someone else for KDE to thrive (although the current state of KDE makes that position obviously false), it has no business claiming to speak for KDE. Some of us feel KDE is doing fine, and can stand up on its own merits, and doesn't need an overbearing government punishing success in the marketplace.
As an immediate measure, I recommend that a link to the League be removed from www.kde.org, and hope that the League website change its look slightly, as to not mislead people into thinking it's a part of KDE.
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My "Major" Comment
by Navindra Umanee on Saturday 16/Feb/2002, @18:19
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I don't give two hoots about Microsoft, and many KDE people don't either. They make nice keyboards/mice and that's about it as far as I'm concerned. Many are not interested in this US DoJ stuff and all that. Microsoft is doing just fine and will continue doing just fine. The US DoJ is just fine and will continue doing just fine.
However, we can view this letter as a means to an end, and this League letter is really quite interesting from a KDE Promotion point of view.
One of the "unofficial" (because I'm not going to read by-laws to back that up) aims of the League has always been to promote KDE in America. Now many will flame saying that the world is bigger than America, which is true, but the point is that marketing KDE in America to the mainstream is where KDE promotion could use the most help. Face it, we do quite well in Europe, but GNOME has traditionally beat the crap out of us in US mainstream press.
No popularity for KDE means fewer new developers and maybe less old developers. KDE needs developers. Ever notice how all the US Unix developers and companies often choose GNOME over KDE?
So worse comes to worse, this letter won't have any effect on Microsoft, but it's certainly a cheap way (I hope) for the League to bring and promote KDE to the mainstream at large. Many people who haven't heard of KDE will suddenly become aware of it, there interest will be piqued by the short KDE introduction in the League letter.
The US government is starting to think about KDE. We are getting KDE into the minds of people. Microsoft will look at KDE even closer. If we're lucky, Microsoft will say something about KDE. It doesn't matter what. Red Hat will have a bigger reason to switch to KDE, if KDE is popular in the US.
So that's quite a cool and cheap (I hope) way of getting some promotion for KDE, it's the beginnings of a marketing effort. Now if we could leverage that letter somehow to get KDE even more promotion, that would be icing on the cake. Personally I hope that the KDE League will continue using smart tactics like this to bring KDE to the americans, with their limited budget.
Some of you will say it's bad thing to make KDE popular. To that I say "nya nya nya".
Cheers,
Navin.
I speak for myself.
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MS Patents?
by Ian on Thursday 28/Feb/2002, @06:09
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Whoa there, have a look at Exhibit H at the end of the Red Hat submission. I assume its a list of all MS software patents awarded since 1988. More than half were awarded in the last 2 years, and the rate of patents in the last few months has exceeded ONE PATENT PER DAY and is apparantly continuing to accelerate.
Scary.
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