OSNews

They most certainly have. Documentation bought by the Samba team is already being used to great effect. I will also happily enter into any reasonable wager that the outcome of forcing MS to open up their specs will lead to major repercussions in the private sector. It's plain to see that only after MS had any serious competition in a market did they decided to improve their offerings, i.e. IE in case you haven't noticed. Forcing these robber barrens to play fair is the only way we will ever get a level playing field, something somebody with anti socialist sentiments surely would approve of.


How about the sum of $9 million to both US parties since 1999? http://www.campaignmoney.com/microsoft.asp
Mind you, those figures are only what the company contributed. There is also a list of personal contributions further down the page.
As for getting of lightly due to government involvement, first link provided by Google did the trick there. Here is an interesting excerpt.


http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/28/business/28WIRE-SOFT.html
Remember, Google is your friend.


I don't and never said I do. I just find it hard to believe anything you say, that's all. Straw man indeed.

First, if Samba has been able to make good use of the documentation, then clearly the EU and its agent (Barrett) were full of CRAP when they claimed that the docs were useless; and therefore, the fine was unwarranted. Second, as I've pointed out elsewhere on this thread, Samba has ALWAYS had the option of getting the technical information that it needs by participating in Microsoft's Shared Source License program for customers. It enables customers to get view-access to Microsoft source code. Samba didn't want to pay for access. Even with the EU on its side, Samba had to pay $10K for the docs. So, from a practical standpoint, the EU didn't do anything that wasn't already available through normal market conditions.



I wasn't referring to campaign contributions. I was was referring to the SO-CALLED influence that you cited on the U.S. Supreme Court. You claimed that the Supreme Court was influenced by campaign contributions to the Bush Administration. I realize that you're in Europe and, therefore, may not be familiar with the way that our government and court system are organized. But the U.S. Supreme Court is wholly independent of the Bush Administration and Congress. Members of the USSC are appointed by various presidential administrations -- both liberal and conservative -- for a life term. They don't need campaign money and they don't need to run for public office. And, given that you have ZERO evidence that they were improperly influenced to side with Microsoft, the point goes to me. Quite frankly, given how badly Microsoft was antagonized by Judge Jackson during the federal circuit court trial, I'm surprised that you would even try to suggest that campaign money influenced the outcome of the case in the courts. It just doesn't follow reality.



Finally, we can agree on something meaningful.



And yet, somehow, you convinced yourself that the U.S. Supreme Court decision was improperly influenced by campaign contributions. You might want to reexamine your thought processes. You're not thinking clearly.