Caveat: IANAL.
Charging for one's SDK is, in and of itself, not
anti-competitive. But if you add it into the context of consumer lockin,
competition lockout - it starts raising serious questions along the
anti-competition lines. Follow the article link and track it down to the
specific comment I quoted and you'll find it under a subject
title:
Hindering open source development
Along with
further clarification by the author:
But going forward, Microsoft
won't have any suitable development environment for projects like this to
target.
Also keeping in mind: a company that does not have a
monopoly type position can act in certain ways of "anti-competition" legally
while a company that is in a monopoly position can not.
For example,
while the US Ruling made it clear Microsoft was not allowed to enter into OEM
agreements on such terms as requiring an OEM to pay for a copy of Microsoft
Software even if a computer was sold without it... a non-monopoly business would
be free to enter into ... hmm... I can't remember the specific term.
It's
when Company X enters into an agreement to only deal with Company Y. For
example, if a Farmer entered an agreement to only sell his produce to a specific
restaurant. With many farmers in the area, and many restaurants, that's not an
action that would fall afoul of anti-competition Laws.
However, if Farmer
X was the primary farmer with few competitive farmers, to require the restaurant
to only buy from Farmer X could very well end up running afoul of
anti-competition Laws.
So... while all that currently added up does not
necessarily mean Microsoft is behaving anti-competitively... it sure does raise
red flags to watch for.
I hope that's clarified your mistaken impression
that I alluded to "charging for an SDK is anti-competitive" because I certainly
did not say that. And the clarification above should be clear that I certainly
did not mean to allude to such a statement.
As I said:
Some of us are
more familiar with Standard Microsoft anti-competitive behavioral
patterns.
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