Microsoft Court Loss Might Not Help Open Source, Samba Leader Says

Little known fact.

IBM was in court for similar problems to Microsoft a decade earlier. Also little known was the fact that IBMs lawyer (David Boise) got them off the hook in America (guy has a heck of a track record, he won the case for the U.S. government -- I hope he blows it on SCO, though -- that one has me a bit worried).

Anyway, I digress. IBM beat the rap after 10 years in court in the U.S., only to go before the Europeans and get their butts kicked.

And it was the best thing for them. They insisted on renewing the "sanctions" later (yes, you read that right, when the time period for the "penalty" ran out, they had it made permanent). What penalty? That they open their internal communications so that external entities could make compatible products and be abreast of protocols and internal IBM standards.

At least, this is what I was told about 5 years ago by someone in IBM at a trade show.

Microsoft might help themselves by learning some history -- it just might be good for business.

We don't want MSFT to get a clue though. We want them to get to big and bloated, to get lost and then explode.

Though you might be closer to reality, I actully hope the lesson learned is the opposite from IBM. I would rather MSFT the company on how to NOT run a business.