Microsoft's request to dismiss the antitrust case being pursued against it by nine states and the District of Columbia was denied by a federal judge on Wednesday.
Microsoft had asked U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to dismiss the case in part because the Justice Department and nine other states had separately settled with the software giant. The plaintiff states and the District of Columbia rejected that settlement and chose to continue litigation. But Microsoft pointed to jurisdictional issues, arguing that only the Justice Department should determine national antitrust policy, and that the litigating states were trying to usurp that power.
"The Court concludes that Microsoft's motion is without merit and must be denied," Kollar-Kotelly wrote. Besides rejecting Microsoft's arguments, the judge concluded a court of appeals had already dealt with the jurisdictional issue last year.
In the 35-page memorandum accompanying her order, Kollar-Kotelly also questioned whether the software giant had veiled a different argument as one about jurisdiction. Microsoft's arguments "cannot be couched in terms of jurisdiction and instead appear to raise issues relating to judgment on the (case's) merits," Kollar-Kotelly wrote.
"Microsoft made its jurisdictional argument on constitutional grounds, that the judge essentially didn't have the right to hear the case," said Rich Gray, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based attorney closely following the trial. "Clearly, the judge didn't buy into Microsoft's arguments on their merits."
News source: ZDNet
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Microsoft had asked U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to dismiss the case in part because the Justice Department and nine other states had separately settled with the software giant. The plaintiff states and the District of Columbia rejected that settlement and chose to continue litigation. But Microsoft pointed to jurisdictional issues, arguing that only the Justice Department should determine national antitrust policy, and that the litigating states were trying to usurp that power.
"The Court concludes that Microsoft's motion is without merit and must be denied," Kollar-Kotelly wrote. Besides rejecting Microsoft's arguments, the judge concluded a court of appeals had already dealt with the jurisdictional issue last year.
In the 35-page memorandum accompanying her order, Kollar-Kotelly also questioned whether the software giant had veiled a different argument as one about jurisdiction. Microsoft's arguments "cannot be couched in terms of jurisdiction and instead appear to raise issues relating to judgment on the (case's) merits," Kollar-Kotelly wrote.
"Microsoft made its jurisdictional argument on constitutional grounds, that the judge essentially didn't have the right to hear the case," said Rich Gray, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based attorney closely following the trial. "Clearly, the judge didn't buy into Microsoft's arguments on their merits."
News source: ZDNet View: The entire article
During a blistering attack, not just on open source but on the General Public Licence (GPL), the report states: "A federal agency's decision to use GPL open source from the public domain must accompany the assumption that potential attackers either already have, or could easily acquire, a duplicate copy of the same exact source code."
The argument suggests that proprietary material is more secure from attack, because the code is not available.
"Opening the code to potential attackers provides a free education, inadvertently teaching attackers how to create and mimic the same security techniques," the paper added.
Another consideration for the government is its "productive alliance with private enterprise".
The report said that any decision on a government's behalf to use GPL source code would "inherently turn away many of its partners in government-sponsored research projects".
There is speculation in the open source community that the report is a Microsoft-backed attempt to scare governments away from the increasing interest in open source software.
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