Now that Addamax Inc has filed its antitrust action against the Open Software Foundation, Digital Equipment Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co, the consortium and its founders have got to be worried that other independent software vendors are going to become emboldened by the Addamax example: there have been rumours of other companies talking to their lawyers. A software vendor has to have considerable courage to make such a move. It’s expensive, hard to find a major league lawyer who could take the case without being in conflict of interest with one of the founder members and all told – for a small firm – means giving up the technology business for full-time legal manoeuvring, which means that such actions are largely confined to companies that have lost so much already by the perceived offence that they feel they have little more to lose.
