LWN: Comments on "Free Software Foundation Europe on Microsoft fines"

Free Software Foundation Europe on Microsoft fines

nix — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 10:18:08 +0000

You can never escape
>From this nightmare.

Free Software Foundation Europe on Microsoft fines

nix — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 10:17:16 +0000

I've seen one piece of tourist-directed English shopfront signage in the Alsace area which possessivised English by adding `es'. For a moment I hoped they were putting up signs in early Middle English, but alas no. It wouldn't have been correct German in that instance either. :)

Free Software Foundation Europe on Microsoft fines

nix — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 10:13:51 +0000

There is no grammar flame that does not have a grammatical error.

Thus is the balance kept. :)

Free Software Foundation Europe on Microsoft fines

dark — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 09:31:51 +0000

I really like the >From in that message. Just when you think the dark and scary days are over, mbox quoting rears its head again.

Free Software Foundation Europe on Microsoft fines

MortFurd — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 08:25:32 +0000

Don't bet on Europeans being any better with apostrophes.

I saw this this morning at a gas station that also sells snacks: Donut's (the only word on the sign, obviously meant to be the plural of Donut.)

This isn't an isolated example, either. It is very common to see this kind of thing. Note also: It not proper German to make the possesive form of a word with "apostrophe S."

Check out "Fools's Apostrophe" and some of the links there:
http://www.deppenapostroph.de/

Missing apostrophe mystery solved

man_ls — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 17:03:30 +0000

Aww, you are right, sorry.

Free Software Foundation Europe on Microsoft fines

lysse — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 16:47:51 +0000

He probably meant the one missing from "Microsofts numbers".

Free Software Foundation Europe on Microsoft fines

man_ls — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 16:04:20 +0000

(There's also a missing apostrophe, but native English speakers are now worse at apostrophisation than Europeans are, so I'll not harp on that ;)

What apostrophe? If you are referring to the one in "document its own software", no, it does not have an apostrophe. You are right that English speakers are bad at apostrophisation: after all, Greve is not English and he wrote it right :D

Seize assets - Windows, Office

dwheeler — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 15:17:41 +0000

There are alternatives to fines, though they won't happen. If Microsoft NEVER complied, and no fine seemed to work, there are seizable assets: Windows and Office. Just declare that the copyright to those products has been revoked, and that they and their successors are in the public domain. This is similar to having a property seizure if you don't pay fines. No, that will NEVER happen. And I don't know if the laws are written in a way to make it possible... but it's conceivable. Which suggests that MS will eventually comply with the law, at least enough to make some enforcer happy, or find a way to overturn the ruling.

Free Software Foundation Europe on Microsoft fines

coriordan — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 11:58:39 +0000

> You probably meant 'cease to legitimise', and even then the sentence is
> clumsy: it's ambiguous as to whether buyigng from companies constitutes
> refusal or not, and my first parse was that it would (oops, wrong).

I guess you meant "buying" ;-p

Just kidding. Thanks for pointing out the mistakes, I'll pass them on. The PR process usually catches these things, but sometimes people are very busy, and sometimes the native English speakers are stuck in meetings etc. while deadlines are approaching.

Free Software Foundation Europe on Microsoft fines

nix — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 09:48:51 +0000

The EU does *everything* more slowly than one would expect. It's not corporate bias: if anything it's bureaucratic bias.

Free Software Foundation Europe on Microsoft fines

nix — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 09:40:20 +0000

Nice stuff, but a suggestion to the FSFE: run this sort of thing past a couple of native English speakers before publication.

For example, this brought my inner parser to a screeching halt:

"If we are to believe Microsofts numbers, it appears that 120.000 person days are not enough to document its own software. This is a task that good software developers do during the development of software, and a hallmark of bad engineering,"

This says either that writing documentation is a hallmark of bad engineering or that failing to document your own software is a task that good developers do. (There's also a missing apostrophe, but native English speakers are now worse at apostrophisation than Europeans are, so I'll not harp on that ;) )

And there are typos:

During the main hearing at the European Court of Justice toward the end of April, the president and founder of Samba Dr. Andrew Tridgell presented the work of the Samba Team work.

Proofreading might not catch things like this (humans are notoriously good at missing such things), but it certainly might push up the probability of zapping them.

Oh, and one last pick:

He concludes: "When will society refuse to legitimise such business practices by buying from companies that exhibit such behaviour?"

You probably meant 'cease to legitimise', and even then the sentence is clumsy: it's ambiguous as to whether buyigng from companies constitutes refusal or not, and my first parse was that it would (oops, wrong).

Free Software Foundation Europe on Microsoft fines

ekj — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 08:13:53 +0000

The more I think about it, the less sense I see in a monetary fine for Microsoft. After all, as a monopoly, they can recoup the fine by raising the price of their products.

That doesn't work. It's not a one-time fine. It's a running fine. And the explicit purpose of the fine is to force changed behaviour.

Which means that if it's inadequate to acomplish this, it simply needs to be made an order of magnitude bigger, or more.

Besides, at some point you start facing contempt-charges. Following court-orders is not optional. Refuse to do so for long enough, and eventually "men with guns"(tm) show up and freeze your assets. Resist these, and they'll freeze you instead. (typically by putting you in jail)

It's a disgrace though, that we allow big companies with lots of lawyers to ignore court-orders for such a long time with so little consequence. If any of us had ignored a court-order for such a long time, we'd have had the men with the guns in our homes a long time ago.

Dunno about the EU, but in Norway, for example, it generally takes on the order of 2 months from final, unappealable court-order and until that order is physically enforced. Atleast that's how long it took from I won in small-claims court (over a non-working computer that the seller refused to fix) and until an officer of the state showed up by the seller and demanded that either he pay, or he'd simply walk away with whatever valuable items he could find in the shop and sell them to cover the expenses. (and any attempt at physically preventing this confiscation would be met with police-force)

Microsoft fines

man_ls — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 23:38:45 +0000

And, the fines are probably undermining their morale. It may be a subtle effect, but important nonetheless; witness the letter sent to employees. In it, they took care to say that they were trying to comply; after all, many people don't like working for a racket doing bad things to other people. And those who do like it are already working for the RIAA... nah, just joking ;)

Free Software Foundation Europe on Microsoft fines

drag — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 22:51:42 +0000

probably not.

Looking at day to day price fluctuations in stock prices are pretty worthless. I could not have anything to do with Microsoft or REdhat. Could be something as stupid as 'Blah blah looser announces Tech stocks still over priced' scrolling along the bottom of a screen on some tv news channel.

There is a easy way to remember this when looking at stock prices..
"Stock prices have no relation to reality in any recognizable manner".

It's like reading tea leaves or something.

Free Software Foundation Europe on Microsoft fines

flashydave — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 20:40:27 +0000

Yes but they still have to comply. They couldnt stand increased fines indefinitely and the higher the price the more people will look at potential alternative solutions. GNU/Linux, at least, is becoming better known amongst computer literate people making IT decisions.

What else could the EU realistically do? Banning sales isnt realistic.

btw MS share price dropped significantly (2%) so the marketplace thinks it must have an effect. Interestingly RedHat prices jumped temporarily today before dropping back. Coincidence?

Free Software Foundation Europe on Microsoft fines

MarkVandenBorre — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 20:25:54 +0000

The fine is supposed to go straight into the EU working budget.

The more I think about it, the less sense I see in a monetary fine for Microsoft. After all, as a monopoly, they can recoup the fine by raising the price of their products.

Free Software Foundation Europe on Microsoft fines

flashydave — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 18:31:00 +0000

Assuming MS did eventually pay who gets the money?
Although I can guess the answer its a pity there isnt some mechanism whereby the funds could be made available to "victims". Even a small percentage of the fine would keep many worthwhile Open Source projects going for many a year!