US Justice Dept requests comment on MS settlement

[petral]

This was forwarded to the NY Perl Mongers list:

Subject: (ai) Do the Right Thing
From: Robert Bushman <[e-mail]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 08:02:20 -0500 (EST)
To: News Subsystem <[e-mail]>, <[e-mail]>

The Tunney Act gives us the right to comment
on the Microsoft settlement. Please do so.
Send an email.

http://www.codeweavers.com/~jwhite/tunney.html

It doesn't have to be long:

"I do not support the proposed settlement
because I do not think it provides sufficient
punishment to balance Microsoft's offenses,
nor sufficient incentive to prevent them from
doing the same in the future. Furthermore, the
idea of punishing a monopoly by requiring them
to extend their monopoly into the US educational
system is incomprehensible."

or even if you are in favour:

"I support the proposed settlement because
while it is not fair to anyone but Microsoft,
I think Bill Gates should be encouraged to
continue to steal from the citizens and
corporations of the world."

  p

[tilly]

If you are looking for ideas of comments you can use to make your response look a little different than the rest, I have not seen anybody else making any of the points I did in my response. (A careful read of the proposed agreement shows that there are lots more ways for Microsoft to walk around the agreement.)

Also please note that responses should be reviewed for spelling and grammar. They can be short, but they should not make you look stupid.

[petral]

A follow-up from posted by Jay Sulzberger to [e-mail] (the NYC Perl Mongers list):

My letter is at

http://www.panix.com/~jays/tunney.letter

oo--JS.



>From: Dan Kegel <[e-mail]>
>Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
>Subject: [OT] Last Chance to comment on Microsoft Settlement
>Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 19:58:23 GMT
>NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 11:58:23 PST
>Xref: news.panix.com gnu.misc.discuss:85533


The DOJ's proposed settlement, which could have a serious
negative impact on the free software and open software communities,
will probably go into effect unless enough people argue against it.
The deadline for commenting on the proposed settlement
is *this Monday Jan 28*.  If you have any interest in the
issue, and have not yet written the DOJ to comment, I urge
you to do so *now*.

For a fine call-to-action, see

http://www.codeweavers.com/~jwhite/tunney.html

Or, if you're on the Microsoft side, visit
http://www.microsoft.com/freedomtoinnovate/
They make you register before they'll tell you
how they want you to help, but they do sell
a cool 'Freedom to Innovate' t-shirt
( http://www.msftstores.com/enginepublic/product1.cfm?itemid=534 ;
note the tasteful use of the American flag).

I've put together a site about the proposed
settlement and reaction from the press and the Open Source
community (at

http://www.kegel.com/remedy/

 )
and an open letter to the DOJ
( http://www.kegel.com/remedy/letter.html ).
I invite US citizens and residents (unfortunately,
the DOJ will probably ignore comments from outside the US)
to join my open letter; instructions for joining are at the
top of the letter.  I'll be sending it in first thing
Monday morning.

- Dan

**Majordomo list services provided by PANIX <URL:http://www.panix.com>
+**
**To Unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe ny" to [e-mail]**



  p