Gregory Maxwell wrote:
My understanding is that some of the relevant legal minds believe
that
Microsoft's "you can disable it" concession forecloses the possibility
of a successful legal attack on this— the law may care about the
anti-competativeness of this stuff, but not so much as to care about a
$99 signing key or some minor install time hurdle. (and the fact that
fedora is willing to plan this probably justifies this position).
It was arguably a strategic error to blow the whistle in advance and
give Microsoft time to compromise. Their first attempt was much more
likely to have created a civil cause of action as well as to have run
afoul on antitrust grounds. But I can hardly blame anyone for
trying. Hindsight 20/20 and all that.
If having the option to disable the crap even if it's enabled by default is
sufficient to not be anti-competitive, then they would have done just that
after being sued. So I don't think letting them go the most restrictive
possible way and then sueing would have been any more effective than what
actually happened.
Kevin Kofler