Princeton University professor Edward Felten didn’t give an inch to Microsoft Corp lawyers when he made his deposition in a Washington, DC courthouse on Wednesday May 25. Acting as a rebuttal witness for the US Department of Justice in its antitrust trial against Microsoft, Felten maintained that an internet browser is a set of functions. That means that a program he wrote to disable the functions effectively removes the browser. In contrast, Microsoft maintains that a browser is a particular collection of code, and that as Felten’s program leaves most of the code unchanged, it does not really remove the browser. As is their custom, Microsoft’s attorneys seemed to want to wear Felten down with hours of barely rephrased questions. But Felten stuck to his guns. Next up is IBM Corp executive Garry Norris will make his deposition in Raleigh, North Carolina today, Thursday, May 26.
