Anybody using a "real" Linux domain 3741

What you say is likely to be true in many places.

Unfortunately, the cost of getting a judge's legal opinion on the matter is liable to be stupendously more than it's worth.

The problem is that Microsoft, whose "core competency" is not in constructing software, but rather in crafting legal contracts, would be certain to challenge this to the point of making it *way* too costly for you to pursue the case to a win.

There are three choices there:

1. It could be that Microsoft's highly competent set of lawyers would establish the terms to be "reasonable enough." In which case you lose.

2. It could be that those lawyers discover that you have something of a case. In which case they are likely to seek an out-of-court settlement in order to eliminate any risk of a court decision being treated as what common law terms a "precedent," which would automatically take effect on anyone else that ever challenged Microsoft on the matter. In this case, you might get enough out of that out-of-court settlement to exceed your own legal costs.

Perhaps...

3. The only case where you wind up winning in court is if there's a case, you have deep enough pockets to pursue it, and you have pockets deep enough that you don't care throwing away a lot more money than you'll ever see from the court settlement.

Consider that the US Department of Justice pursued such a case against Microsoft with the resources of the US government, and despite millions of dollars worth of budget, have had only limited effects. -- "In the first lecture of a course on complexity theory. If I teach this course thoroughly enough, none of you will attempt the exam questions on this topic, and I shall consider this to be a complete success." -- Arthur Norman