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Tim Bray writes:
> > The clause is there to avoid the classic problem of people
> > disregarding all published best-practices, and write a test which
> > shows that the product is X times slower than some other product,
> > i.e. it helps protect against overly contrived benchmarks.
>
> This is *no* excuse. What a complete utter unmitigated atrocity.
I agree with Tim -- this is not standard industry practice, and it's
not just your typical stupid lawyer boilerplate. Time and I (and many
others on this list) have both dealt with enough of both to tell the
difference.
On the other hand, it sounds like a wonderful marketing opportunity
for Oracle, Sun, or IBM: publish an ad with benchmarks for competing
software, but put a "0" in every Microsoft column (or "9999999," as
appropriate). Other possibilities:
Our brand X is 1.2 times faster than Oracle and 1.5 times faster
than IBM ...
... and it's so much faster than Microsoft that they've taken legal
steps to keep us from telling you!
or
We're proud of our performance, and we're not afraid to let people
publish their test results.
etc.
I'm sure that either the market or the courts will sort this one out
eventually (I'm betting on the markets, since they're a little more
efficient).
All the best,
David
--
David Megginson, david@megginson.com, http://www.megginson.com/
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