Open Source Software Survives Antitrust Challenge FindLaw By Kevin Fayle, Does giving something away violate the Sherman Act's prohibition on predatory pricing? Does encouraging a price of zero constitute price-fixing? No on both counts, according to a recent Seventh Circuit decision in an antitrust suit against companies distributing software under the GNU Public License (GPL).
The suit, filed by an independent software developer against IBM, Red Hat and Novell, alleged that the GPL constitutes a conspiracy to drive out potential competitors of the Linux operating system. By fixing the price at zero, he argued, the companies conspired to drive out competition in the software market by distributing Linux at a price other developers couldn't beat - free. read more ..... http://technology.findlaw.com/articles/00006/010425.html -- Neil Schneider pacneil_at_linuxgeek_dot_net http://www.paccomp.com Key fingerprint = 67F0 E493 FCC0 0A8C 769B 8209 32D7 1DB1 8460 C47D I started with nothing and I still have most of it. -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
