Sun Microsystems and Be Inc. lost bids to keep their antitrust cases against Microsoft from being sent to a court handling more than 100 other lawsuits against the world’s biggest software maker. A panel of federal judges said it moved the California cases to a Maryland court to expedite pretrial fact-finding proceedings. Lawyers have said that the East Coast court is more conservative on antitrust issues and that could favor Microsoft. Read more here and here.
Sun, Be Inc.’s Cases Against Microsoft Moved to Maryland
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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is Microsoft’s $40 billion in cash going down the drain (in the form of litigation settlements).
If you haven’t read Be’s case against MS, I highly recommend it. Go to http://www.beincorporated.com and check it out. Be’s filing brief cites some really nasty actions that MS took against Be that go beyond the whole dual-boot issue…specifically preventing them from getting additional financing to continue the business. I can’t wait until the case begins and we hear all the details and see the evidence.
In short, what you’ll read in the brief are descriptions of actions that MS took that have nothing whatsoever to do with actual competition; just actions designed solely to put Be out of business.
BE where weak when it came to selling their product. If they don’t know how to do business then thats their problem.
:If they [Be] don’t know how to do business then thats their problem.
Not if Microsoft used its position as a monopoly to injure Be sales.
—
Michael
BE where weak when it came to selling their product. If they don’t know how to do business then thats their problem.
Be may or may not have been weak, but that is of little or no relevance. If a monopoly such as Microsoft has used its power and influence to put Be out of business, which is against the law, then they deserve to be punished big for it.
If Be was as poor at doing business, as you suggest, then Microsoft should have not interfered at all and let Be crumble under their own incompetence. As it is, they didn’t and hopefully they will have to pay big.
On another note, I think it’s funny how many people on OSNews nowdays are qualified to be business analysts and critics.
“BE where weak when it came to selling their product.”
Yeah, what kind of idiot would have deals lined up to have their product installed on Dell and Hitachi systems? They sure were crazy.
“On another note, I think it’s funny how many people on OSNews nowdays are qualified to be business analysts and critics.”
I actually am a business analyst =)
Be only had a problem marketing because they had a bad ass monopoly preventing them from properly marketing and selling their product.
This is exactly why Be Inc. is taking microsoft to court to rape them of their precious moola.
I think Be Inc. could have taken advantage of the Mac clone situation when Apple pulled the licensing option for Mac OS. Though Power Computing was flirting with Be Inc., it didn’t get much further from that! Of course the focus shifts until Be’s focus was totally blurry didn’t help!
Ehrm… wake up call from Be Land… it’s not how many times you fall but about how many times you stand up again…
Be is Back in a new form, a new organisation…. expect R1 from OBOS pretty soon, then we’ll see who will gain market shares =)
I actually am a business analyst =)
Okay. That’s one.
Yes, BeOS is back (was it ever gone?). But to be realistic, it’s very optimistic of you to expect OBOS R1 “pretty soon”. But I guess that depends on how you define “pretty soon”
It will take some time, but I’m in no hurry, it will be worth it. I’ll just keep developing BeOS apps while I’m waiting.
>>I’ll just keep developing BeOS apps while I’m waiting.<<
what are you working on at the moment?
I don’t want to say, cause it’s still too early in development. Don’t want to dissapoint people if I decide one day to stop(for some stupid reason)
so if they don’t know about it, they won’t miss it.
all I can say is that it’s audio related, cause that’s what I want to use BeOS for.
It’s so good to have R5 as a dev platform while waiting for OBOS.
BE where weak when it came to selling their product. If they don’t know how to do business then thats their problem.
Were they bad at selling their product or were they bad because Microsft put an impossible hurdle in their way.
Be could have had deals with people like Dell but Microsoft stopped them. Be was even willing to give BeOS away for free and still nobody took them up on it, do you really think all OEMs would pass up the chance to give their customers something when it would cost them nothing???
Try finding an OEM selling a dual boot Windows/Linux system even today, I doubt you’ll find any, why do you think that is? An open competitive market or anti-competitive practices by the largest player.
Microsofts behaviour with Be is the single biggest example of MS killing competition, don’t beleive me if you want, have a read of Scott Hackers comments about it at http://www.byte.com
okie dokie
🙂
let me help with the byte story;
http://www.byte.com/documents/s=1115/byt20010824s0001/0827_hacker.h…
Nicholas,
hey it’s been a year since that article. I wonder what Scot Hacker is up to these days?
20yrs ago, we had Amiga, Atari, Commodore, Apple, IBM & quite a few others & MS was still just noise level. But atleast the env seemed friendly to all comers, that was an exciting time for me as you could not predict who would be the winner & most of what was to come could only be dreamed. The roads were all open.
Todays computer env is entirely different from 20yrs ago, today MS rules 97% or so & pc are incredibly cheap & powerful? but boring. The roads have all become toll pikes that all seem to lead NWest.
Todays computer env is entirely different from 20yrs ago, today MS rules 97% or so & pc are incredibly cheap & powerful? but boring. The roads have all become toll pikes that all seem to lead NWest.
———–
…that was just so well put. I agree. The innovation has gone.
Be was even willing to give BeOS
away for free and still nobody took them up on it, do you really think all OEMs would pass up the chance to give
their customers something when it would cost them nothing???
It wouldn’t cost them nothing. Support and education costs money for example. But still, it would be cheaper than Windows.
One thing is that BeOS wasn’t a competetive product until R5 in my opinion. So I can’t blame them for not marketing more earlier.
PE turned out to be a great marketing move, but sadly Be shifted focus before harvesting time and most companies dropped their development for the BeOS.
However, all this has been discussed too much allready and isn’t really getting anywhere. It’s too late to do anything about it. But let’s learn from their mistakes and move forward, cause the “war” isn’t over yet, we’ve only lost a few battles.
What happend during the 80’s. IBM made the pc. Microsoft walked into the IBM-building and offered them DOS. They would give IBM a licenses but only if they where allowed to give also a license to other companies. Since IBM thougth you couldn’t make money out of software, they agreed.
Also IBM gave other companies the abbility to clone there pc’s. IBM lost market share because of the new arrival from apple. To win market share back, IBM gave permission to clone the pc. This is how Compaq started. Many manufacters started to clone the pc. So it became a standard. IBM thougth the clones couldn’t match there own machines so customers would buy a real IBM. How wrong.
Since Microsoft made the operating system and had a agreement that they could sell also a license to other manufacters, they became the “standard”.
Software develepers saw all kind of brand’s being compatible so started to make software for these machines. Customers saw all kind of brand’s being compatible, so were buying these machines.
Anybody know’s DR-DOS?
IBM did NOT give permission for their hardware to be cloned. Compaq reverse engineered it. Phoenix reversed engineered the BIOS, and IBM sued them for it, and lost.
“hey it’s been a year since that article. I wonder what Scot Hacker is up to these days?”
http://shacker.livejournal.com/
He and his wife are prepping for a Bundle of Joy. :o)
Literally speaking, a monopoly can only occur with government intervention: when the government expressly forbids competitors from entering the market. Microsoft is not a monopoly. They may control most of the desktop market. But the existence of desktop Linux, Apple, etc., makes it simply wrong to say Microsoft is a monopoly, except under the anti-conceptual, moving-target definitions of the Justice Department.
Now, let me stress emphatically that I am not saying Microsoft has done nothing wrong. It has played some dirty pool, but it should be punished for each specific improper action, not for dominating the market, which is the goal of any company that goes into business.
Everyone seems to think that Microsoft’s market dominance is somehow based solely on the evil voodoo that it allegedly does. There are many other factors, many of which are outside the control even of Microsoft itself.
By the way, I was a big fan of Be and enjoyed writing code with its spiffy little C++ API. I was sad to see it go.
http://www.objectivistcenter.org
http://www.capitalism.net
First…”capitalism” is a very broad economic term and should not be taken as religious dogma, especially in the US, which utilizes a mix of socialist and capitalist systems (right tool for the job, etc.). Heck, a corporation can only exist because we the people have laws to allow them to exist. It’s a quasi socialist legal structure.
A monopoly does not mean someone is the only player in the market, they just have to be large enough to influence or control the market. And that is not illegal itself…just abusing the system.
Microsoft is not being punished for being a monopoly; they are being punished for abusing their monopoly power and the specific actions they took. As its been mentioned before, you don’t see Cisco getting in trouble even though they make almost every router that the net runs on. Cisco doesn’t take actions that are merely designed to kill competitors.