[NetBehaviour] 'Hairy guys' join EU in fighting Microsoft appeal.

[marc]

'Hairy guys' join EU in fighting Microsoft appeal.

By James Kanter.

LUXEMBOURG Carlo Piana is part of a motley brigade of software activists 
and lawyers who have forced even the most dapper Microsoft executives to 
loosen a button or two in court here this past week.

It was only two years ago that Piana, a lawyer from Milan with a dark 
scraggly beard and a passion for technology, woke up to news that the 
European Union had slapped Microsoft with a record fine of €497 million, 
or $627.5 million at current exchange rates, for abusing its dominant 
position in the software market by designing and marketing software in 
ways that exclude rivals from the market.

After Microsoft vowed to overturn the EU decision on appeal, Piana got a 
call from a friend who is a member of the Free Software Foundation 
Europe, or FSFE, a campaign group that supports making software code 
more accessible to the public.

more...
http://iht.com/articles/2006/04/28/yourmoney/msft.php