GPL Sued For "Software Price Fixing"

[Terence McCarthy]

On Wed, 4 May 2005 15:41:03 -0400
Bruce Marshall <bmarsh at bmarsh.com> wrote:

> And what about MicroSoft giving away a free browser?  Netscape couldn't 
> compete with that but would you call it price fixing?  Seems to me to be the 
> same situation.

No, I think that would be called "dumping" (or perhaps "predatory pricing"), as the product had a development cost/expense, was designed for the commercial market, and the only reason to give it away was to shaft the competition, by driving it out of the market. 

M$'s wealth enabled it to do that.

On the other hand software under the GPL also has a development cost/expense, but this is underwritten by volunteers or other like minded contributors, and so has, effectively, no cost.

If someone gives something away, whether it is money, time, expertise or a combination of these, it is free to the recipient. Here intent marks the difference,

M$'s intention was to kill Netscape, and gain a commercial, monopolistic, advantage by doing so.

FOSS did not, and does not intend to drive so called "competitors" out of the market by being free, and if it does do that, then that is an unintended consequence, not an aim.

(In fact, what or who is FOSS competition? BSD v. Linux? KDE v. Gnome? SuSE v. Red Hat v. Mandrake?- I don't think so really!)

I don't think the case has a chance (on the other hand, it is in the US of A!).

Terence