“3) The free-software angle. In mid-February, Microsoft
executive Jim Allchin was widely quoted as declaring that
open-source software was a threat to “innovation.” He noted that
Microsoft was busy lobbying policymakers to make sure that the
government didn’t offer undue support to open-source software. It
doesn’t appear that this will be a topic at the hearings, but it’s
a nice subplot. Maybe if the Justice Department is denied by the
appellate court, all the disappointed prosecutors can go to work
for Red Hat and sue for federal aid.”
“4) Monopoly? What monopoly? Over the past year Microsoft’s
share of the OS market and the Web browser market has grown even
mightier. Microsoft is also under investigation for purchasing a
stake in software maker Corel, which not only owns WordPerfect, a
product Microsoft has already made irrelevant, but has had big
plans for a Linux-based operating system. Funny, it abandoned those
plans shortly after the Microsoft deal.”