Think about this, if you are in business and your main reason for success is some very effective (never mind if it is ethical or not) marketing strategy and eventually the competitor (that you laughed at and ignored) begins to advance on your market share because your customers realize that the competitive products really are better and start to use the competitors products along with yours and are happy with the arrangement and you start attacking them in court, how long do you think you will stay in business? Here is a real world situation that has already come to pass. The US based General Motors Corporation dominated the automotive world in the 70s and the Oldsmobile Cutlass line of cars alone were the hottest selling cars across the board, out selling all others makes and models combined. The Honda, Toyota and Datsun (now Nissan) had just been introduced to the US market. They were laughed at and ignored by the three US auto manufactures. Coming back to the present The Toyota Corporation has now taken the lions share of the market in the US (and may be else where) and the Oldsmobile line of the US based GM group does not even exist now. GM, Ford and Chrysler are all struggling to stay in business and are beginning to adopt the methods of the other three as well as doing joint ventures with them hoping they will stay in business. I watched the shift in the automotive industry over the last 40 years. I was in it for nearly 20 years. I see a similar thing in the software industry. Said all that to say this, MS can't win, because even if they did win the court battle they still lose the war because they will be biting the hand that feeds them. A business can't attack its customer and its competitors and be able to stay in business for very long after, because the customers and the competitors will retaliate. -- If the word following begins with a vowel, the word you want is... to read the rest of this, go here http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/a.html
