On Friday 16 February 2001 10:12 am, Lucas Vogel wrote:

> It's a good insight to the views some of the MS executives have on
> open source, but I really don't think it has any teeth - even if MS
> does.

What Microsoft learned from the DOJ lawsuit is the influence that the 
government can have on the software industry. They have finally started 
giving donations to political groups. And like any other tool they 
discover, they are going to wield this new one with one end in mind: to 
preserve their current market share and to grow into new markets. Our 
politicians are quite cheap by corporate standards (remember, Keating 
got five senators on his side for $100K apiece). If Microsoft just 
drops a few tens of millions in the right spots, we could be looking at 
some severe restrictions on free software as a result. This has been 
one of my fears for some time.

-- 
Pete Buechler
peter.buechler@home.com