Compromising with Injustice is Cowardice -- Gandhi
I see no way in which the settlement US-DOJ has reached with Microsoft provides for justice. This is a classic case of making peace with injustice to avoid a conflict.
Of course, as an independent software developer there's nothing I can do to about the settlement. But the next time the Bush Administration talks about justice and freedom, I will say, "Yeah, Right", and swallow my anger.
I am not Anti-Microsoft
Most of my friends think I am anti-Microsoft. I am not. In fact I have advocated Microsoft software such as Access, Visual Basic, Active Server Pages, and Front Page for a long time in spite of severe criticism by peers. They have been key products that have made life easy for a lot of people. I used to maintain a Visual Basic Page in the early 1990s (see whom you find for Visual Basic Source Code on Yahoo!).
It is inferior Microsoft technologies that I am against -- like COM, or Outlook Express and the security holes in IIS and Outlook and NT.
I am also against hand-twisting business approaches of Microsoft like SmartTags, and XP licensing Manager. Time and again Microsoft has destroyed its competitors, a long list of which includes Borland, Netscape, Novell, Sybase, WordPerfect, and Corel, and the process of which I find anti-competitive, and immoral, and illegal.
BTW, when is the last time you heard of a PC-startup?
