Hi dijichi2,
I wanted to respond to the line that Microsoft won't care about the petition. I agree, however, it isn't Microsoft or Yahoo who will be approving this merger. Even if Yahoo accepts Microsoft's offer, it makes no difference. This merger is anti-competitive and Microsoft has already been found to be a monopolist in the desktop OS. They may have a monopoly in the Exchange Server area, or at least an extremely dominant position.
Unlike the board game, Monopoly is a bad thing. A monopoly is when a company is so successful and becomes so dominant, that the competition no longer has a chance. Think of it as capitalism out of control. It is the government's function to fix that and restore healthy competition.
Remember Esso (now Exxon) was broken up? AT&T was broken up, and all the baby bells were spun off. It is not hopeless. Here we aren't even talking about a breakup which is very difficult to oversee, we are talking about not permitting a merger, much simpler. Microsoft getting Zimbra would be extremely anti-competitive. I think the chances we will win are quite good. The only fear I have is do people understand what Exchange Server and Zimbra are? Since we are the experts, it is up to us to get the word out.
And Yahoo and Zimbra together are a stronger competitor to Exchange than Zimbra as a stand-alone company. So while it is possible the government can force Yahoo to spin off Zimbra before the merger is consummated, even that would be anti-competitive and would be a partial win for Microsoft. The Yahoo-Microsoft deal can not be allowed to go through.
We will win. Am I willing to sit back and trust this will go perfectly? No. That is why the time to make some noise is now!
Quote:
Originally Posted by dijichi2  Hi Rusty
I understand your point of thinking, and greatly respect your passion about this issue. However, whether they will benefit or not, the vast majority of people who would read what you were advocating won't have the foggiest idea what you're talking about, and spamming will only serve to blacken the name of Zimbra and be ultimately counterproductive.
Unfortunately at this time getting the general public involved in a grassroots rebellion will accomplish little - at this point of a public hostile takeover I would have thought Yahoo has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders not to throw it's assets out of the aeroplane door, so to speak. Doing something as major as opensourcing Zimbra would require board approval, and given that it is a small but very strategically important piece to Microsoft I just can't see this happening, not unless it is done to deliberately offrail the takeover and there would be shareholder revolt should this be done and legal consequences.
Generally I agree with this, but I strongly disagree with the last sentence. The value of an internet/community/opensource product, which Zimbra partially claims to be, is to various degrees tied to the strength of it's online community and users. In particular with Zimbra, as there is so much overlap with the community and commercial products and clientbase, shouting very loudly that paying customers will jump ship if Microsoft takes over, which costs nothing to do, would in most situations be a very powerful disuading argument.
Unfortunately, in this case, the predator company will almost certainly have no interest in this vocal outburst when they likely just want to kill the product.
Lots of people - including me - were outraged and very pessimistic for the future of Zimbra when Microsoft came onto the scene - it made the sale to Yahoo for such a small sum look like a disastrous decision. For sure the future still looks uncertain but I have a feeling that one way or another, Zimbra will come out the other end even stronger. I think that either regulatory issues or the Zimbra team will ensure that Zimbra lives on in one form or another. I still pay for my commercial licenses, and I am still working on contributing to the community source code. |