Justice identifies 'major' complaints with Microsoft settlement deal

When the government asked the public what it thinks about the Microsoft antitrust-case settlement, two of the most condemning responses came from Microsoft's back yard.

A Kirkland programmer and Seattle-based RealNetworks filed two of the 47 public comments deemed "major" and substantive by the U.S. Department of Justice and made public yesterday.

Only five of the 47 supported the settlement, a few criticized Microsoft for not disclosing political contacts that may have influenced the agreement, and the rest attacked it as an inadequate response to the illegal, monopolistic behavior courts found in the company's business practices.
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Judge Says Microsoft Must Give States Windows Code

Microsoft Corp. will have to supply the computer code for its Windows program to a group of states seeking stiffer antitrust sanctions against the software giant, a federal judge ruled on Friday.

Nine state attorneys general had argued that they needed to see the Windows source code in order to verify Microsoft's claim it could not offer a simpler version of the Windows personal computer operating system, stripped of features like the Internet Explorer browser.

"It seems to me that if your side has access to it, then the other side, frankly, should have access to it," U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly told Microsoft's lawyers in a conference call with attorneys from both sides.
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thanks to DANGEROUSMETA!

I'm sure this caused heart seizures in Redmond.