EU Crosshair Still Points at Microsoft

T-Kir writes "The BBC has an interesting article saying that now Microsoft has had the settlement granted in the US, it still faces EU sanctions concerning software bundling (or should that be bungling?) into its OS and deliberate attempts at inoperability with non-MS server operating systems."

Comments

Maybe the people in EU actualy have....

[2000 Britneys]

Some common sense. I mean cmon if quacks like a duck, looks like a duck it must be a duck.

As for myself I would love to see some of the major computer makers (Dell, Gateway, Compaq, IBM) start pushing Linux and other OSes with their hardware.

Different point of view

[InrdZQdxdqn]

"Our case is quite different from a factual point of view," (Quoted from the article)

Yes, it is.

For Europe the question is more like:

Do we want an american company to control nearly all desktops in Europe (in the world) ?

The answer in the US might be "yes, that's fine". But I hope we'll do better in Europe.

Remember Echelon?

This will hopefully put M$ in the right place

[suman28]

We have seen the EU take on Honeywell before and the deal was struck down. Hopefully, M$ will be found guilty and be forced to reduce their market share at least in Europe. This with the addition of some govts promoting Linux as a cheaper alternative will eventually cut M$ down to size. Then ofcourse, there is the M$ driving their "customers" away with promoting valid licenses. With Longhorn, I can see less and less people buying/installing Windows to avoid the hassle. M$ won't go down over night, but every dog has its day, though I would hate to call M$ a dog, because atleast my dog is my very best friend.

A lesson in Slashdot Article submission

[M.C. Hampster]

1) Make sure the article is on Microsoft.
2) Include some childish comment like: concerning software bundling (or should that be bungling?) into its OS
3) ???
4) SUBMIT!

Re:Damnit

[ninthwave]

I remember when Oem's were selling beOS in a dual boot configuration with Microsoft. Microsoft began using its market control to force the Oem's to drop Beos. BeOS is a dead OS now but it was very good at what it did and had potential. But in the market environment it had no chance. This isn't just Linux getting better than Windows, it is about the software that was better than Windows getting a chance. If Microsoft didn't force BeOS out of the ipaq they would have had capital to keep developing. If they would have had device manufacturers working with them instead of scared of losing the works with window logo on their packaging it would have had more hardware support. And this is just one example of the problem with a monopoly affecting innovation. There are more out there. So by all means for me it is not about Linux or Microsoft, it is about a market that allows the best product to surface.

Re:Does the EU have power?

[MoobY]

> Could someone explain what the EU has power to do?

Note that Europe is growing bigger than the US every minute, not only in population, which will soon be over 500 million (200million more than the US, IIRC), but also economically. Europe isn't some small kid the US can wack down! It's insane to think that Europe doesn't have any power and pretty US-narrow-minded.

Maybe by 2010...

[Kjella]

The EU beaurocracy is not exactly known for being speed, and I'm sure MS will manage to get loopholes in any ruling big enough to ram a small country through, at least on the first try.

If anything, MS will try to break compatibility somehow using their "Trusted Computing" newspeak, before the Linux marked share gets too big to handle. While Linux might not be the big home desktop hit, it is making inroads in the corporate and educational community.

Problem is, that these lawsuits are kinda like submarine patent suits.

1. They take way too long before they are filed (by desire by the submariners, by beaurocracy by EU/US)
2. By the time they actually do everybody is using it (gif patent or IE)
3. Any ruling won't do anything about that, and when they try to resolve it the technology has evolved beyond that point to new problems (.gif patent by .png, but lots of other submarines. IE now removable, but WMP/Messenger/whatever is not)

Don't expect laws to help Linux. If anything, pray that the pirates won't find any ways to pirate secure Windows/Office/whatever. Then we'll see how many who will truly cough up $$$ for those products.

Kjella

Re:Maybe by 2010...

[pubjames]

The EU beaurocracy is not exactly known for being speed

2001 Simultaneously introduce new currency across 11 countries

2004 Expand union to include another 10 countries

Yep, they sure look like slow movers to me.

It's not about you...

[danro]

Keep in mind that there are over 60 thousand employees at Microsoft. All of us have families and mortgages to pay just like you

And what those 60 000 people do, or more to the point, what their executives do effects millions of people all over the world in a negative way. No wonder people are "anti-microsoft".
I have no beef with MS emplyees, but the pracices of MS the company is a daily annoyance to me and gets _me_ home later to _my_ family.

Even if you work at MS you must be blind not to see why a lot of computer professionals have no trouble finding reasons to dislike MS products.

...and of course there is the howling mass of teenage slashroids. They annoy me too sometimes.

Re:Three problems

[sql*kitten]

1) US courts regularly deny the authority of courts abroad

2) US courts regularly assume their rules apply abroad.


The EU courts don't always agree with the courts of the member countries, which is fortunate since it is far from unanimous amongst voters that the EU should take precedence over national sovereignty. And EU member countries freely ignore the EU courts.

So what will probably happen is MS will rightly be found guilty, they will ignore the remedy

More likely is that MS will ignore the EU court, as most EU members do, and nothing will happen until national governments (most likely the Germans or Spanish, who seem to be the most unfriendly to MS) take an interest.

Re:Three problems

[ninthwave]

That might have to do with the fact that steel tarifs were pushed through with no regard to Europe or Asia. And the EU has decided that if the US will use tarifs against the global rules it pushes than they have to be flexible when it comes to their own local interests also. The US economy is currently bolster by 2/3s income coming from internal consumer spending and debt. Consumer confidence is starting to slip. Foreign markets are important and not pissing off large markets will need to be taken into account. With China developing its own os and chipsets, India moving to open source. The foreign market is shrinking for Microsoft. So it might want to play ball with documentation of its api's. Or it can squeeze more money out of its current customers with subscriber based liscenses (wait I believe that is happening). I don't like governments interferring with trade but this includes governments enforcing global trade laws that limit countries from starting their own products. All and all it is silly but at the end a government needs to take care of its industries and peoples and if it needs to limit an external company than it has a right to do such. Be it the EU telling off microsoft or GWBush and steel tarifs.

Re:What the EU can do...

[Mr_Dyqik]

The limit of the fines that the EU can levy is 10% of either profits or revenue (can't remember which) which would be a nice addition to the EU budget.

I assume they can also impose conditions that Microsoft have to meet to avoid the above.

They might also be able to recommend that EU governments stop using Microsoft products.

Most likely EU response

[ites]

Will be a punative fine set high enough to hurt Microsoft.
The US response will be very significant. If the US government complains and retaliates, its intentions WRT Microsoft will be clear.
If OTOH the US government keeps quiet, as it did with the Honeywell case, MS is in for a beating in Europe.
It cannot afford to stop trading in Europe. It cannot escape a fine, since it has a financial presence in Europe.
The EU may choose to combine this with other moves, such as a well-timed announcement that Windows will be phased out in favor of Linux, Sun, and IBM products in the EU itself.
Microsoft only really has one card to play, and that is bribery and corruption.

Re:Most likely EU response

[sphealey]

Result:

a) South America switches completely to Open Source as they have already threathened so often. No more sales in South America .

Believe me, I wish I could agree with you. But as October_30th describes below, it doesn't seem to be happening that way. A fair number of people are somewhat upset about Microsoft's licensing policies and costs. Hundreds of millions are physically, legally, and/or psychologically locked into Microsoft products, particuarly Office. Think about law offices in North America - they are still locked into WordPerfect, 10 years after that product lost the fight. Now multiply that by several 100,000,000s.

And realistically, does the typical purchaser care if he pays $213 or $232 for that bundled copy of Office on his shiny new Dude PC? Does he even know?

I am afraid that while there may be some smoke around the idea of replacing Microsoft on the desktop, it isn't happening yet.

sPh

Airbus, Eurofighter, A400M

[sphealey]

If one looks at the entire history of Airbus, or the more recent histories of the Eurofigher and the A400M projects, it isn't much of a stretch to conclude that those who direct the EU do not want their agglomeration to be dependent on the United States in any way for critical technology. And that that they are willing to pay (or have their taxpayers pay) a substantial price to avoid that dependence.

The A400M is particularly instructive: the required capabilities are available today, off-the-shelf, at lower cost, in the form of the C-17 and C-130J. But the EU continues to push the A400 project despite it being 10 years late and at least 8 years from availability. And I suspect they will get their plane, in the end.

So, does the EU plan the same process with Microsoft? Remember that those who direct the EU behind the scenes don't have the same concerns about "cost" as managers of private companies, because they impose "directives" that governments and private companies must obey. Are the recent announcements by SuSE a testing of the waters for the imposition of a Linux desktop on EU organizations?

sPh

Stick it to them

[attobyte]

If the EU stick it to MS I might have to move.

Re:Muhaha!

[OrangeSpyderMan]

Fool. And what about those who worked for BeOS? Or any of those who worked for any of the companies that MS has tried to crush into oblivion (Netscape, RealAudio, SGI, Corel, Lotus, need I go on?). I don't mind you earning a living at all, but don't try and make out that MS is all about feeding children and building families, cos it ain't, it's about a handful of people getting really wealthy at the expense of a lot of other people. They only pay you at all because the haven't (yet) found a way to get wealthy without paying you. If they had, you'd know about it very quickly. I am, unfortunately, one of the people for whom MS does everything but get me home to my family early.

Re:Muhaha!

[OrangeSpyderMan]

Did any one of the mentioned company shell out a budget to support an alternate OS such as LINUX, BSD, BeOS or even MAC

In a word, yes. Netscape was available on just about everything, BeOS obviously spent a great deal of their time supporting non-MS Windows platforms, given that they were one themselves (WTF?). Corel not only had WordPerfect running on Linux (albeit with WINE), they even had a linux distro. SGI, apart from their IRIX platform has a technology called OpenGL that is available on just about anything. What was your point again?

Re:Could care less about MS.

[October_30th]

We already have tons of killer apps for Linux

There are killer apps and then there are Killer Apps like MS Office and Adobe Photoshop. No suitable replacement exists for these two. OpenOffice will not do since it does not import/export with 100% success and the fonts (at least in Linux) look like shit. I don't see either how Gimp could replace Photoshop (color calibration, for instance) in professional work environment in years.

For an average user there cannot be "better than Windows" because that's what he/she can use already. The path of least resistance means that something must really upset these people before they even try changing the OS. And most of those who do try a different OS/Office package would quickly return when they realise that they'd have to learn a new GUI or - god forbid - think about "mounting a floppy" before accessing it (or do the recent distributions have an automatic mount that works as in Windows?).

Re:Basically, the EU is mean to american companies

[prisonernumber7]

The EU decisions makers are also not as knowledgable in computer technical issues as even the virtually computer-illiterate american judges.

What makes you think so, Qwerpafw? Is it that we Europeans are so much less educated than you americans are?

The EU "decision makers" as you call them have started this ordeal by ordering a study on the case. This for the sole purpose of having experts judge.


I, as an European Citizen[tm], sometimes find the views of some of you americans on the EU and our legislation quite pitiable, because people such as you in particular share uneducated views without hesitation:

The EU also has a long history of setting ridiculous tariffs, or banning, imported products from companies they don't like or that have policies the EU disagrees with.

... as shown here. The European Union was formed to guarantee the freedom of trade.

You troll, I byte

[CaptainZapp]

Basically, the EU is mean to american companies

No, the EU (or better, their competition commision) is mean to anybody who violates the law. Ask Volkswagen, Tetra Pack or Roche, which are all European companies (they are nummerous more).

Recall that the heavily subsidized Airbus was started by these people basically because they didn't like having to buy american planes.

Ah, here we go again. The Airbus consortium is a private company which received funding capital as a credit. Airbus is in no way subsidized nowadays as opposed to (e.g.) Boieng which relies heavily on defense contracts, which can be construed a subsidy in itself.

The reason why Airbus is vastly successful is that they sell better planes which are cheaper to maintain. At least that's the take of a lot of airlines, including major ones in the US.

and how europe has basically banned american GM food?

The issue is (same as with growth hormones, which are banned here) that European consumers just don't want to buy this crap. Don't you think it's a little bit odd that Novartis is heavily opposed towards GM crop in Europe and tell an entire different story in the US? In a nutshell: It's not an evil conspiracy towards the good people of the US (Novartis and Aventis are European companies after all) it's just that consumers - with the ultimate buying power - don't want this shit here; end of story.

I wouldn't count on microsoft getting off easy in europe.

If they violated the law, which is subject of an ongoing investigation, you can bank on it that they won't get off easy.

The EU decisions makers are also not as knowledgable in computer technical issues as even the virtually computer-illiterate american judges.

I'm sure you can provide us with data to back up this assessment; because otherwise: Go away, troll!

Re:Requirements

[mormop]

After 3 years selling Linux, Open Office being able to open MS Office docs 100% would without a doubt cause many of my customers to dump MS and go Linux.

Reasons:

The one customer I have who has gone 100% Linux, server desktop and all rates it for:

1: Stability - No crashes in months
2: Lack of Viruses - No Viruses in over a year
3: Cost - They couldn't have afforded the network they have with MS licence fees
4: Flexibility - We can write them scripts to do pretty much anything they want.
5: Positive attitude of community to cries for help

Downsides:

1: Had to redo Publisher docs in OO.org Draw
2: Old MS Office docs come out mangled on OO.org if anything beyond text,tables and pics are used.

Messgae to the EU competition commision:

FORCE THE FILE FORMATS INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN AND THE MONOPOLY WILL BE BROKEN!!!!!!

This includes IE5/6 extensions.