Microsoft Facing European Sanctions

Shakrai writes "CNN and Money Magazine are reporting that a draft decision by the EU committee overseeing the Microsoft investigation appears to recommend fairly severe sanctions against our favorite software company. The article states that the ruling will likely force Microsoft to offer a second version of Windows without 'built-in audiovisual software' (Windows Media Player) for EU customers. While this sounds like a good thing, the article also mentions that Microsoft has an appeals process and will likely get an injunction against enforcement while they pursue said appeal, which may take years."

Comments

Re:I'd fine them a dime for each security problem.

[DocSnyder]

How about apache? It dominates the web server market. BIND for the DNS market?

Neither are tied to a distribution by force. If you want to run GNU/Linux without a DNS or web server (or with alternative software), maybe on a notebook or a PDA, nobody and nothing prevents you from doing so.

On many Windows machines (especially servers), Media Player, Internet Explorer and Outlook Express are unnecessary and don't contribute any needed features, only security risks. So if Microsoft still believes that bundling these software products to each Windows installation would be necessary, they should pay for the damage - per incident multiplied with affected Windows systems including sold but never used OEM licenes (aka M$ tax). A worldwide severe M$IE hole which gets exploited by worms would result in fines which are high enough to hurt even Microsoft.

You may be opposed to bundled media players...

[sean.peters]

... but what have you got against embedded punctuation? How the hell is anyone supposed to read your post?

Sean