Bill Gates going to appear in court?

[{P²P}Apocalypse]

Oh please, say it is'nt so. Not bill. He, he, he. According to CNN it is a good possibility he may have to appear. Lets see Windows bail him out of this one. So what does everyone think. Will Bill get MS out of this one or will they nail him to the wall?

The link: http://money.cnn.com/2002/02/11/tech.../microsoft_re/

The article:
Gates may appear at hearingFebruary 11, 2002: 7:20 a.m. ET

Ballmer, 10 other officials also named as possible witnesses at settlement hearing.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates and other top executives may testify in upcoming court hearings in a bid to convince a federal judge to reject any stricter sanctions against the giant software company.

Microsoft (MSFT: Research, Estimates) named Gates, along with Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and 10 other company officials, as possible witnesses for the hearings on sanctions, which are scheduled to start March 11.

Gates and the other officials will argue that Federal Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly should not impose any sanctions beyond those that the company agreed to in November in a settlement with the Justice Department and nine states of the federal government's landmark antitrust case against Microsoft.

In particular, they will be trying to fend off more severe remedies that have been proposed by nine other states, which have refused to sign on to the settlement and are continuing to press the case in court.

Gates will tell the judge that the stricter sanctions would hobble collaboration in the computer industry and thus be bad for the business and consumers, Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler said Sunday.

Gates did not testify in person during the trial, and some legal analysts have said that decision damaged Microsoft's defense. Instead, the Justice Department showed the trial judge parts of Gates videotaped deposition, in which he appeared evasive.

The settlement would, among other things, give computer makers more freedom to feature rival software and more freedom to decide what software to put on the machines they sell.

But the dissenting states are pressing the judge to impose stronger remedies, including a provision that would force the company to sell a stripped-down version of its Windows operating system.

One of the people that Microsoft's attorneys may want to call for the hearing is Oracle Corp. executive Ken Glueck, whom Microsoft contends helped write the tougher antitrust sanctions being sought by the dissenting state attorneys general.

In a federal court filing on Friday, Microsoft said Glueck was one of the "prime movers" behind the remedies being sought as an alternative to a settlement of the government's antitrust case against the world's largest independent software company.

[Focmaester]

Well wil show him that donating billions doesn't make him a better person.
I have spent countless hours explaining to pc users that windows is not a good product and that M$ is not an innovator. When it comes to phone companies/airliners etc. we have a choice. But when itcomes to what OS you run for your PC there is no alternative. And no Linux is also not an alternative for normal people who just want to do multimedia stuff.

[ac1dsp3ctrum]

I use Linux but I also have Win2k on my machine... So I do care.... I dont think the'll let him go this time...The supreme court is pissed at him.... Hell... everybodys pissed at him I think they should break up Micro$oft into like 20 little companioes and make it all open-source... That will make windows a little better because the average programmer can add/edit modules

[uraloony]

I disagree... A company in a free democracy should not be broken apart.

[Alcatraz]

I disagree... A company in a free democracy should not be broken apart.

The problem is that MS is a monopoly. And monopolys (obviously) control almost all business in their industries. MS has taken control of the computer world and made it impossible for other companies to get their foot in the door. And subsequently, this takes away all freedom from the small companies which is why MS should be broken up.

The only problem with having many smaller companies is the compatability. Most would surely make their software specific enough to have problems when used with that of competing companies. The world would then be cast into a confused mass of angry operating systems and programs. Of course, that's the worst case scenario. I'm sure the government will do what's best, like always(heh).

[TechieChick]

I shudder at the very thought of having to teach my clients Linux after dealing with a darling man that kept screaming "MY DOCUMENTS!!!" in reply to my question...Sir....what program are you using to look at the invoice with? [sigh]

Sadly the average end user isn't capable of a more complex OS than windows only becouse they've been fed the pablum that is windows for so long.

Open source sounds good, options sound good...variety sounds exciting.

TC

[gold eagle]

I like to think he'll eventually be called to account for something.


If there ever is a problem and he gets pinned by it, he will more than likely pay a fine and that's it.

[Kezil]

Alcatraz raised an interesting point: If M$ were to break up, we would have many little companies competing with each other.

Unfortunately, they'll all probably have different environments/languages/etc. making life very hard for software developers since no OS will have a very sizeable portion of the market yet.

So before we start trying to shoot down M$, perhaps we should start making some of the current, established, useful OSs (l)user-friendly (not meant derogatively). By doing this, when MS [i]is[/is] forced to break up there's an easy to use and learn alternative to the various post-M$ windows-clone OSs that are sure to come after.

btw, when M$ breaks up, does one of them get to keep the name?

[ac1dsp3ctrum]

Yeah.. M$ is a monopoly...It controls the market in a particular item (in this case operating systems)... The courts are trying to either
a) Break it up into smaller companies or
b) Make the Windows operating systems open source so companies can have a competative edge over M$

But the courts have been unsuccesfull so far.. Hopefully thell suceed this time around

[rcgreen]

1. In spite of what the government says, Microsoft is
not a monopoly. No company has ever had a monopoly
unless it was licensed by the government to be a monopoly.
AT&T was a monopoly because the government licensed
it to be the national phone Co.
Your local electric utility is a monopoly because the
gov't will not permit anyone to compete with them.

2.Bill Gates never gave political contributions to anyone
until all this **** started. Guess who bribed the politicians
to attack Gates. Sun Microsystems and AOL!

3.Now Gates is also buying politicians (out of self-defense)
so he will not suffer the breakup of Microsoft

4.If you really care about the issue, why don't you
steal the source code for windows and post it on
the net.