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Microsoft Fails to Comply With EU Requirements
sebFlyte writes "ZDNet is reporting the news that the EU has rejected Microsoft's attempt to wriggle out of it's legal obligation to open up Windows protocols. Microsoft was attempting to bypass the regulation by offering a license totally incompatible with the GPL and which has an absurdly high fee attached. If Microsoft don't come up with a solution that the EU finds acceptable, then they can be fined $5m a day. They've also got some commentary on why Microsoft's behaviour cannot be allowed to stand." The BBC has commentary as well.
what will European Average Joe consumer reaction be?
Sacre bleu!
Find a clue stick and hit yourself, many many many times.
Whats the basis of this nonsense ??? Nobody is holding a gun to anybody's head in the EU to use MS products. Yet again this sounds like US bashing. I say fuck em.... bastages... there are plenty of "other" OS's out there in most ways better than MS. Read Linux ....Use those.....
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
As a european, I agree. Sounds good, right? Read on...
Microsoft can do whatever they please, in the US. Once they want to sell here, they have to abide by our rules. Simple isn't it? And why isn't Microsoft simply pulling out? Have you had a look at population and economy here lately? Europe can quite easily rival (not necessarily beat, but they're in the same order of magnitude) the US on these accounts and thus there's shitloads of money to made...
Oh, and, get your f**king army out of my country, BTW! There's no need for self-proclaimed world-police US (rather world-bully) to "protect" me from communism anymore (and no terrorism-discussion, please, it's utter bullshit from my point of view).
the whole idea in the first place was to make that info available to everyone.
And Microsoft's proposed license does just that!
They just want to make sure that if you want information about their APIs or protocols, you go directly to the horse's ass^H^H^H mouth to get it. No games of "telephone", where the information passes through several parties and gets just a little more distorted on each hop. No campaigns of deliberate misinformation coming from unofficial sources, no attempt to embrace/extend/extinguish.
Microsoft's license would not benefit the OSS community in the same way that releasing MS source under the GPL would, true. But the EU's directive doesn't exist solely for the benefit of the OSS community. Closed-source developers, even those in direct competition with Microsoft, have a lot to gain from the arrangement.
Microsoft hasn't done anything wrong -- if they are in violation of supposed laws, then those laws are bullshit. Microsoft made a good product and knows how to sell it -- that is NOT illegal. They are far from being a monopoly (if you don't agree, read up on some of the old monopolies like Carnagie and such). Could Microsoft make a better product? Yes, but their product is good enough for the average person which, sad to say, is all that matters in this society. The only reason I like Micosoft is that companies support it (games, device drivers, etc) and I can get everything to work quickly and easily. If I found a linux distro that would run all my games and wouldn't give me shit about drivers for my hardware I'd switch faster than the goverment steals money. Bottom line though is that Microsoft didn't do anything wrong, goverments are just looking at a quick way to make money while keeping the public happy by not raising taxes.