FSF named in federal antitrust action

Wasn't sure if everybody had seen this yet. That's what I get for writing a web browser I guess. :) -Bill P. Washington, D.C. -- The U.S. Department of Justice today announced a major new antitrust action against the Free Software Foundation of Cambridge, MA. "After our successful prosecution of Microsoft, we feel ready to pursue similar cases elsewhere in the software industry," said Attorney General Janet Reno in a press conference. "The FSF, under the guidance of Mr. Richard M. Stallman, has pursued, and continues to pursue, anti-competitive practices designed to perpetuate its illegal monopoly of the so-called 'free software' market." In particular, the Attorney General cited the FSF's ongoing effort to gain market share in various product categories by illegally bundling other products into their successful Emacs text editor. "Thanks to Judge Jackson, we now have legal precedent that a web browser cannot be considered part of an operating system," she said. "We feel that this finding is also applicable to text editors. Emacs, in fact, does include a web browser as well as e-mail and other capabilities that are not normally considered to be part and parcel of a text editor." Responding to a reporter's question, Ms. Reno confirmed that "Emacs is the primary focus of our action." Ms. Reno also addressed the FSF's ambitions in the operating system niche. "FSF had been attempting for some time to dominate the market for free operating systems with their 'GNU' platform. However, while they produced a number of user-level tools, their kernel was even more mythical than a reliable version of Windows 98 until their successful takeover of the Linux franchise, now known, significantly, as 'GNU/Linux'." Federal prosecutors Joel Klein and David Boies, both veterans of the successful Microsoft suit, are heading up the FSF enquiry. "I realize that some users feel that they use FSF products by choice," said Klein. "But how many Linux systems have you seen that don't have the core GNU utilities installed? Our estimate is that these programs are present on 100% of Linux machines. When such a high percentage of market share is held by one player, it's clear that an illegal monopoly exists." Initial analysis/speculation by various media talking heads failed to find consensus regarding the possible outcome of the government suit. At minimum, the government will most likely seek to have the FSF break out the various functional components of Emacs into separate products and discontinue the use of the anti-competitive GNU Public License, which has been described as a "free-software virus" which forces third-party software developers to release their products under terms dictated by the FSF. Other possibilities include punitive damages and even the breakup of the FSF into separate operating system and application groups.