/. links to a story on the BBC which says Microsoft might have to raise prices to pay for its exorbitant legal fees and fines.
From the BBC story:
Microsoft is objecting to the size of legal bills submitted by lawyers who brought an anti-trust case in California against the software giant.
Microsoft told a California court that consumers could suffer if it has to pay the full $258m (‘/£146.7m) bill.
The legal costs are part of Microsoft’s settlement for over-charging consumers buying its software in California.
“I wouldn’t have put it in if I didn’t think we earned it,” said Eugene Crew, the lead attorney against Microsoft.
“Somebody ends up paying for this,” said Microsoft attorney Robert Rosenfeld. “These large fee awards get passed on to consumers.”
Insightful commentary from the Slashdot poster:
Do they really understand why there are laws?”
Spoken like a professionally overpaid, but open-source free-software-loving burgeois Marxist. Let me explain, once again, the real world. Companies want to make money. To make money, they design, build, or provide things or services. They then offer to exchange same for a quantity of money that covers their costs as well as make a tidy profit. The profit margin’s really determined by the demand for the thing or service, and it cannot equal zero or a greater number (m >=0). So when the cost of providing the good or service goes up, such as a result of regulation or litigation, the price of the good or service goes up. End of story.
Information wants to be free, quoth some developers making upper five or lower six figures, who don’t work for enough soup to sustain themselves and a simple pallet in the corner upon which to sleep.
