=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Claus_F=E4rber?= list-fsf-eu-discussion@faerber.muc.de wrote:
In the example mentioned, the Court applied anti-trust rules to the Deutsches Rote Kreuz (German Red Cross), which clearly is a non-profit organisation (at least approved by the tax office).
But they are still a single organisation.
[...]
Please note that this does not necessarily apply to the Apache Foundation, which does write the software, but merely supports the authors of Apache. It does apply to the Apache authors as a group, however. Writing Open Soruce software does not excuse you from competing with other (non-Open Source) software vendors in a fair manner.
Does being an informal alliance of competing vendors not prevent antitrust action against them? How can you make an antitrust case against an entire industry sector? I think it's like saying that orange sellers have the market for oranges sewn up because they won't allow the apple sellers to call their fruit oranges...