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monopolistic practices



About 50 years or so ago, GM was found guilty of the of of buying up
the electric trolly systems of many cities and replacing them with
diesel bus systems.

They paid heavy fines for such actions.
GM had to pay $5000 and each top executive was fined $1.00!




At 11:51 AM -0400 7/30/01, John S. Denker, you wrote about Re: Old Computers:


Fact: Microsoft has been found guilty of intentionally doing this.

If you care about the facts, please read the Court's Finding of Fact
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm
especially sections such as
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm#vi

Note that the appeals court upheld these findings of fact. (There is some
question about what the _penalty_ should be, but that's a separate question.)

Fact: In a non-monopolized situation, there are such things as
standards. There are such things as iterop conferences and bake-offs,
where providers meet to work out any inadvertent
incompatibilities. Example: several of my friends are going to:
http://www.vpnc.org/bakeoff.html

This generally results in a very high degree of interoperability.

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