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From: Ingo Marks <adv@region-nord.de>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Open Source: in conflict with the development process in the Ada
 community?
Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 13:13:51 +0200
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Florian Weimer wrote:

> "Frank J. Lhota" <NOSPAM.FrankLho@rcn.com> writes:
> 
>> Under what law (in either Germany or the U.S.) would forbid a company
>> from giving away a compiler?
> 
> Regulations against unfair competition.  Hmm, I couldn't find a
> reference to specific German law, but I remember a few cases in which
> companies were forced to stop giving services away for free.  However,
> I'm no longer sure if general provisions against unfair competition
> were applied, or some special case law (telco regulations, for
> example).

As far I remember a telco (Deutsche Telekom?) was forced to stop a free 
service that customers usually had to pay for. But they gave this free 
service away just to decoy oodles of new customers who normally had went to 
several other telcos. This was a serious unfair competition with a clear
monopolistic tendency.

But as long you don't gain a monopoly then of course you can give products 
and services away for free in Germany. Even Microsoft does it :-) You can 
buy cheap computer magazines with free Microsoft Visual C++ compilers on CD.

Regards,
Ingo