:LinuxPlanet: Editor's Note: Waiting for the Black Helicopters
LinuxPlanet: Editor's Note: Waiting for the Black Helicopters Dec 14, 2000, 17 :21 UTC (26 Talkback[s]) (12582 reads) (Other stories by Kevin Reichard)
"I'm speaking of Joe Barr's piece of tripe in LinuxWorld, where he takes Microsoft to task -- calling them the "piracy police" -- for
asking Virginia Beach, Va., to verify that no unauthorized copies of Microsoft products were in use. (I'm not even going to dignify the
article with pointing you toward a URL and a cheap page view.) Let's just say that Barr isn't a lawyer: he throws a lot of stuff against
a wall to see what sticks. He throws out legal concepts like the presumption of innocence (which pertains only in criminal law, not in
civil law) and the role that anti-trust plays in this case (Barr seems genuinely confused by the notion that anti-trust laws exist to
protect the consumer, not competitors) -- neither of which have a thing to do with basic contract law."
"The story in Virginia Beach is simple. Microsoft had a contract that it wanted to enforce. It sent a letter to the municipality, asking for
verification that the terms of the contract were being met -- a verification process that Virginia Beach agreed to when it purchased
the software. Nothing evil in this -- it happens in the corporate world every day...."
"Bashing Microsoft does not elevate Linux. And bashing Microsoft for enforcing a legal contract -- the type of contract, by the way,
that many other firms in the Linux community use -- doesn't even rise to the level of flamebait. We in the Linux community should be
better than that."
