—— Forwarded Message From: rudy rouhana
I have always maintained that one of the reasons that Microsoft was a target is because the software industry as a whole scared the US Government.
– Extremely fast growing and large sector of the economy. – Produces no environment polution in production and thus cannot be regulated in that regard. – Products have no health or safety impact on consumers and thus do not need approval or are subject to trial lawyer litigation. – Pays above average wages and benefits and thus has had little need to be unionized.
Nearly every other industry in America is exposed to some degree of regulation that forces them to pay tribute to the government. Perhaps they need to get their pollution standards lowered, protection from trial laywers, or reduction in labor standards for workers.
Microsoft, and the software industry as a whole needed none of that. With the exception of H1B Visa expansion, I can think of no issue that concerned that industry, and it is reflected by they’re complete lack financial donations to the political machines.
That is, up until the Reno led Justice department brought this case against Microsoft. Now donations came from both sides of the table, the Netscape/AOL/Oracle/Sun crowd pumped money into the coffers of the Democrats, and Microsoft pumped money into the Republicans.
Personally, I was and am willing for a company like Microsoft to make business decisions that are questionable by things such as the Sherman Act. Why? Because as upsetting as it might be to some people to have one company dominate, I would rather have that occur then give the government an opportunity to fleece the one industry that really shouldn’t have to bend over to the government. Are we all better now that the software industry is politicized and millions can now be extracted to go towards political campaigns? Do you think this all ends with Microsoft? Why don’t we go after Oracle for extending their monopoly of the enterprise database by creating and pushing applications ontop of it? Let’s break them up into a DB and an Applications company. Hell, let’s just go after anyone who got too big for their britches and isn’t writing me (Senator, Congressman, President) a check. That’s what’s going to happen, and that upsets me more.
Anyway, the pandora’s box has been opened, and the net of government has caught the last free industry and put it in a cage.
Rudy