“Some reports today suggest that Microsoft witness Stuart E
Madnick, a computer science professor at MIT, might have made
desperate claims in court that KDE and GNOME were operating
systems. This, fortunately for the good prof’s career, is not true,
but he most certainly had a desperate and unsuccessful struggle
with States’ attorney Kevin Hodges, and it’s worth reporting in
some detail.“Hodges opened the skirmish with: “is there any other operating
system you’re aware of in which the Web browsing functionality is
commingled with the operating system?”“A. Yes, I do, if we take the view that the Web browsing
functionality is also relied upon in other parts of the operating
system.“Q. Which operating systems would those be?
“A. Well, some examples, and there may be many others, would be
the KDE user interface or GUI that exists on the Linux operating
system…”
Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.
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