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As can be expected, there are a lot of funny aftershocks to the ruling at the Microsoft trial. Here are a few comments by a completely biased observer (buy more MSFT shares NOW!)
AP (through Yahoo Finance) says:
Sun Microsystems Inc., long one of Microsoft's harshest critics, urged the nine states that objected to the settlement to appeal the ruling by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.
One of Microsoft't harshest critics? That's bad journalism. They are a rival (as the title correctly makes out).
"Choice, innovation and competition form the foundation of the technology industry," said Sun Microsystems attorney Michael Morris. "(Friday's) ruling does little to advance these principles or to protect the millions of developers and businesses that want an open marketplace."
That's funny coming from an attorney. How is that a legal argument? It isn't. We're talking politics here, falks.
Microsoft nearly drove Netscape out of business in the late 1990s when Microsoft melded its own Internet Explorer browser into the Windows operating system that controls more than 90 percent of all personal computers.
What drove Netscape out of the business was their own bad decisions. While Microsoft's anticompetitive actions played, at least in part, a role in driving customers to using IE instead of NN, Netscape was not making money on NN. It's business model was to sell server software. This model failed, but not because of Microsoft. Truth is, Apache probably had more in choking Netscape than Microsoft did.
The chief executive of another Web browser maker, Opera Software in Oslo, Norway, also expressed disappointment with Kollar-Kotelly's decision.
"It isn't very much of a settlement at all," Jon von Tetzchner said. "Microsoft was found guilty. There were no real remedies, no actual punishment."
Opera is in a peculiar position, because it tries to make money selling a product everyone else is giving for free. While NN funs (I was one!) might argue that IE won because of "illegal bundling", Opera can not. The cry about the punishment is particularly strange -- Opera was not a part in this battle, so it can't expect to get something out of it. Say the ruling was for Microsoft to pay a fine of 5bn dollars -- how would that help Opera?
Morris said Palo Alto-based Sun will continue to pursue its civil lawsuit against Microsoft so the company "does not continue to use its monopoly position to become the gatekeeper of the Internet."
Sun's position is also somewhat delicate here. Microsoft has been declared a monopoly in the desktop area. Sun has two major products it tries to push in this area -- their Office lookalike and Java. Let's focus on Java/J2EE. Can Sun really claim "illegal bundling" here? Sun was perfectly happy when Microsoft bundled a JVM in Windows, so they can't in good faith say that bundling JVM is okay, but bundling .NET is not.
Reuters (again, via Yahoo Finance) says:
Santa Clara, California-based Sun filed suit in March seeking more than $1 billion in damages and claiming its business was damaged by Microsoft's abusive monopoly, which impeded the use of Sun's Java software platform.
Sun has no shame. Microsoft licensed Java, wrote a JVM (which many considered the best in the business), and bundled it with their browser which it pushed as much as it could. How was that damaging to Sun? Sun argues that the non-portable extensions Microsoft put in Java impeded its use. That's nonsense. All of these were extensions, so one could simply ignore them if one wanted to. Can Sun show a single developer who didn't use Java because Microsoft's Java had a few extensions not endorsed by Sun (and conflicting with the license Microsoft had)? Of course they can't.
If there was anybody damaging Java, it was Sun's poor handling of this matter. Forcing Microsoft to use an ancient Java engine in Windows XP is a case in point.
Update (1): Den Beste covers some common legal misunderstandings related to the trial.
Update (2): Thanks, Chris.
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