GNU Emacs also abuses its dominant position in the editor market by shipping all this bundled Lisp code. Over twenty years ago I was a making killing, hand over fist, selling a Usenet news reading add-on for Emacs. Then those anti-trust bastards included some Lisp code which does that, and I went down the tubes. I mean, what gave them the right , you know? It's as if not only did they disrespect my sense of entitleme…
I'm assuming this is a sarcastic post. It's an interesting thought experiment to extrapolate antitrust ideas onto free software. If Linux grew big enough could it attract antitrust lawsuits despite not being the product of any single company? My first impression was to draw the line at organizations that make money, but that leaves the possibility for free software growing so big as to hinder progress, which isn't ne…
More like satirical.
I just returned to this tab 56 minutes after the fact, and wanted to delete the comment, but when I clicked the delete link, "1 point" flipped to "13 points". :)
My point is, why is something like GNU Emacs or GNU/Linux above anti-trust with regard to bundling? Suppose that GNU/Linux had only one distribution, and it was so popular that it was on 99% of the world's desktops. There wouldn't be any anti-trust hoopla regarding that distribution having a preferred web browser, no matter how deeply integrated.
Morally, the users of this platform would be just as locked in as users of Windows and IE. (Or Google Android and some Google Service app or what have you).
Anti-trust somehow only picks targets from which it can squeeze money. That's what it's about, not any morality of the situation or what is good for consumers. Those are just pretexts.
(The very fact that Russia is eagerly aping this concept speaks volumes).
Auntie Ayn on anti-trust laws: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/antitrust_laws.html