Microsoft's European License Dissected

An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet has published a step-by-step explanation of Microsoft's proposed server interoperability license, which was just rejected by the European Commission. The EC said the license excluded open-source vendors and charged unjustifiably high royalty fees -- all bad for business."

Comments

Two lines....

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

Two lines sum up the entire article:

Can I trust that?
This is Microsoft.

Here is a question

[orin]

Is it reasonable to force Microsoft to produce a license that is royalty free - or are people concerned about the cost here.

By looking at the article it seems as though Microsoft wants to charge people royalties who create a competing product when those people have looked at Microsoft's secret API. This seems reasonable - why should someone be able to sell a competing product that does the same thing as a domain controller of global catalog server after they've been able to look at Microsoft's secret APIs?

The reverse engineering clause seems to cover SAMBA and so on - they don't have to pay a license fee because they haven't seen all the secret stuff.

Re:Here is a question

[FLAGGR]

Because the royalties are extremly high, didn't you read the article? Plus, it bars you from doing open source stuff with your code.

Re:Here is a question

[lachlan76]

Because Microsoft are a monopoly, and as such, forcing secret APIs bars most competition out of the market.

Re:Here is a question

[jhdevos]

The reverse engineering clause seems to cover SAMBA and so on - they don't have to pay a license fee because they haven't seen all the secret stuff.

The licence effectively says: if you never ever look at anything this licence covers, then this licence does not apply to you. Sort of like some country having a law that anyone who never sets foot in that country or has any sort of dealings with it, does not have to adhere to that countries laws.

That seems pretty obvious to me. In other words, whatever this licence has to say about SAMBA is moot -- since SAMBA has nothing to do with the licence in the first place.

Jan

Re:Here is a question

[orin]

Yes, but the restriction against "doing open source stuff" is very specific. You are only restricted IF you look at the secret stuff. If you reverse engineer - no restrictions apply. Why should you be able to look at Microsoft's secrets and then build a competing product that does exactly the same thing for free? Reverse engineering is quite different (no look at the crown jewels) and doesn't apply to this license.

Re:Here is a question

[Scarblac]

Is it reasonable to force Microsoft to produce a license that is royalty free - or are people concerned about the cost here.

Remember that this is a punishment for a crime. It's supposed to hurt.

Re:Here is a question

[Godwin O'Hitler]

I could explain why they are a monopoly but I'd rather use this opportunity to ridicule you for using the word boxen.

Re:Here is a question

[ciroknight]

I understand you are a Microsoft apologist, but I'll explain things in simple terms for you.

Microsoft broke the law. They've repeatedly shut out/down other competing products that do the same thing, either by changing APIs to break compatibility, or releasing their own product that forces the general market to break compatibility (in the case of Open Standards). By forcing Microsoft to release the simple documentation of the APIs, they are asking Microsoft to standarize themselves.

Look at it this way. With the APIs remaining "secret", and engineers reverse engineering them for compatibility, all Microsoft has to do to change compatibility is to change a bit, or shift a few bits around, or some other nonsensical thing. Open Source projects /may/ be able to keep up, but if a company were developing a closed source solution, this could slow down their release time by months, if not years.

Forcing Microsoft to release their API information basically puts a standard on the table for other companies/programmers to conform to. They don't lose any market dominance. They don't lose any time. They simply are forced to be compatible. And if that's unreasonable, then Microsoft has won, and Open Source is all for naught.

Re:Here is a question

[ciroknight]

But that's just it. They don't have to reveil a single line of code to publish an Application Programmer's Interface. All the API is, is a guidelines of how to build your product, so that it will be compatible with their product. It's like a car company telling a company that builds transmissions how to hook their transmission up to the car company's Whizbang new V8. Normally companies see this as being a good thing, meaning their original product will sell more. But when you have a monopoly over the market, publishing interoperability information is the very LAST thing you'd want to do. It's like the old saying "Give a man a fish, he knows where to go for fish. Teach a man to fish, you give up your monopoly on fisheries".

Re:Here is a question

[ciroknight]

If you're a convincted monopolist, many things than otherwise would be legal are considered a breach of the rules.

That may be true (aside from some wording issues), but I wasn't aware that trying to run a business and make money without providing valuable gifts to your direct competitors was one of them.

Valuable gift? This isn't a cheese wheel and some bologna we're talking about here. This is a Monopolistic company, deemed guilty, who won't give up the specifications on how to build a compatible product. This is like a car company, not only welding the hood shut, but bolting on the tires with a patented bolt head (only unscrewable by paying the licencing fees), and making the engine run on a special formulation of fuel (a mixture of shit and octane..), that is non-reproducable except from direct sample and duplication. This allows Microsoft to change the Fuel-to-Shit ratio as they please, making your car undriveable on Alternative pumpgas.

Face it. This is a last ditch effort for a brute of a company to stay alive in the business they've dominated for too long. The European Union is only doing what their public ask of them, and their public has been crying out for far too long about Microsoft's shenanigans.

Re:Here is a question

[Anonymous Coward]

> In a free market,

Stop right there. The U.S. is *not* a free market, it's a regulated market that is somewhat free.

To be a free market, the U.S. would need to get rid of:

* Greenspan and the FED
* All federal regulations
* All intellectual property laws (copyright, trademarks, patents)
* corporate law (Corporations no longer have special status over fly-by-night lone vendors or individuals. There would be no limitted liability for companies either.)

Do you *really* want a free market? I sure don't. Given that the U.S. market is not a free market, such regulations are perfectly justified.

Ironically, if you read Adam Smith, you'd realize that he was in favour of regulating Monopolies precisely because when monopolies become big enough: they essentially become their own governments able to make their own laws (contra the free market) and charge their own taxes against competitors (contra the free market) to shut them out.

In essense, an unregulated free market inevitably leads to Oligarchy, which is contra-free market. However, there is a sweet spot where regulated free markets are sustainable, and this, in Adam Smith's words, is what we should be striving for.

Re:Here is a question

[Ithika]

Thank you for saying that. Someone with a bit of knowledge, finally! :)

I wouldn't ever count myself as a free-market capitalist type, but it pisses me off even more that people who are don't even understand what it means.

I'd be inclined to suggest that the economic situation in the USA is too free, with the continued consolidation of media companies etc remaining unopposed.

Too many people on Slashdot seem to think the be-all and end-all reason for corporations is to make money. As if money was inherently useful in itself. Businesses are only useful if they benefit society; otherwise they destructive.

Open source software will never benefit

[jhdevos]

The European commission has said that the royalties MS asks are 'excessive'. That means that they don't think it is unreasonable to ask for royalties at all. And asking 'per-user' or 'per-server' royalties effectively makes it impossable for free software to get such a licence.

Obviously, the rest of the licence is ridiculous -- MS getting all your code, you having to implement any DRM they choose to put into it, audit-trails, very excessive royalties -- so MS has a lot of room to get closer to what the EU wants without having to let OS benefit as well.

Jan

Re:Open source software will never benefit

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably the european union is going around this in the wrong way. Instead of having Microsoft publish their interfaces to the public, which arguably contain trade secrets important to Microsoft, waranting them to ask for a license fee, they should have imposed on microsoft to comply with a set of open standards (which should be royalty free) that allow for the same kind of interoperability.

Make them share printers using ipp, files using NFS v4, authenticate users using ldap, without extending those standards in incompatible ways.
In such a way, interoperability with microsoft servers could be guaranteed. As an added bonus, Microsoft gets the burden of implementing the interoperability, instead of the third party having to comply with every funny requirement Microsoft chooses to add.

Article summary

[ites]

1. You will pay royalties
2. Open source is explicitly disallowed
3. Microsoft can audit your development
4. They get to see your code
5. They get to see your technology
6. They get to choose the auditor
7. You may have to pay the audit
8. Microsoft suggest you "trust them".

ROTFL. Excellent article.

If this is the price of interconnection, it makes it all the easier to justify why Microsoft's server technology should be isolated, relegated, and eventually thrown discarded.

There are, after all, alternatives.

interoperability as in beer

[FidelCatsro]

". The EC said the license excluded open-source vendors and charged unjustifiably high royalty fees -- all bad for business."

The EU Gouvernance may be highly flawed in several areas ,Though it is not made up of total idiots.
I do belive MS really needs to fire its consultants and contract lawyers as Really they should have known this one would get them in trouble.

If you get orderd by a court to comply with an order ,you dont start acting like a 3 year old who has had their crayons taken away for drawing on the walls.
This is exactly what MS tried to do , basically they are saying "Honestly Mother i wont draw on the walls anymore , i will stick to painting on the floor"

""And this is the same Microsoft whose chairman Bill Gates recently lectured the industry that boosting interoperability "will be the only way for companies to make customers' lives easier"?
The very same."
He was telling the truth , but i doubt he cares about making our peoples lives easier , only making the proffits and market share larger

NOPE

[Anonymous Coward]

NO code is required to be released by the EU compliance request. None. Nada (Not NDA). Zip.

MS have broken the law. Either they open up the API to competitors or they go (all of them) to jail. As an individual, I don't get the choice of charging for my time if I am forced to do community service, am I. If I pay a fine, I don't get to deduct costs, do I. If I'm under a restriction order, I don't get to break it because it stops me from going anywhere I want.

So why does MS get to charge for interoperability?

Note also that the EUCD means that if interoperability requires breaking DRM, then you CANNOT reverse engineer. If the protocols are patented, then you cannot bypass them.

See how easy it is.

What I don't get

[Anonymous Coward]

One.

Why fees? Why any? This is not something Microsoft is fucking selling. This is a legal judgement. What, next will Ken Lay be charging hourly consulting wages for the time the government keeps him in jail? By what right can Microsoft even consider this? Is the law that illogical?

Two.

They say this is incompatible with open source. How could it not be? The GPL is very plain; no encumbrances, period. If there are any limitations on how this information can be used, it's incompatible with the GPL. If it's incompatible with the GPL it's incompatible with almost all important open source out there. Microsoft can't put licensing restrictions of any kind on this information and still claim compatibility with open source.

---

So what now? If Europe doesn't want this, what would they accept? Would they accept something that something BSD-ish can be used with, but not the GPL? Would they accept licensing fees if they were smaller? Would they move from Microsoft's anticompetitive actions being an unconvicted illegal action to a legal tax Microsoft may put on open source in exchange for compatibility with SMB? Will they settle for forcing all of open source to adopt some new bizarre unique license which offers the rights of the GPL except for the tentacles of Microsoft's NDAs still reaching through? What does Europe want, what will they settle for? And will they accept the next license? Can we expect hundreds of licenses, all just ever so slightly superficially more giving on Microsoft's part but all still specifically engineered to keep SMB out of SUSE, rejected over and over until a year and a half from now the EU gives in and just accepts whatever Microsoft handed them the week before?

Someone explain to me.

Re:Because

[lachlan76]

There's a difference between the implementation and the API.

I like this:

[FoboldFKY]

The licenses granted in Section 2.1(a) do not include any license right, power or other authority to subject Licensed Server Implementations or derivative works thereof in whole or in part to any of the terms of any other license that requires such Licensed Server Implementations or derivative works thereof to be disclosed or distributed in source code form.

That's all one sentence... I guess MS wanted the OSS guys to suffocate just by reading the license. A truly insidious plan...

So what next Windows API's?

[NigelJohnstone]

So if they're doing this for server protocol, what next, future Windows API with a license?

i.e.:

1. You build your corporate application on Windows.
2. Your company becomes dependent on it.
3. Windows XP is discontinued. The new version has a 'new' 'enhanced' slightly different API.
4. You want the documentation.
5. Microsoft says, no problem, but it will cost you.
6. Your screwed, you take the hit of shifting your people over to a new platform, or you take the hit and give Microsoft what it wants.

Re:Because

[Catskul]

The were charged with opening up interoperablity. Publishing the API is probably sufficient to do this. No one needs to look at their code. Its like publishing the pinouts to a chip... no. they do NOT need to be *compensated* for this. No one needs to see the guts.

Royalties for some servers, but not for others...

[OwlWhacker]

Do you have to pay royalties for accessing a Web server?

Does the Firefox team have to pay royalties to Microsoft because the browser could access an IIS server?

Do you have to pay royalties for creating an e-mail client that collects via POP3 from Microsoft Exchange?

No.

So why should anybody be expected to pay in order to develop an application that accesses a file/print server?

I believe that it's in the best interest of the end-user that such servers should have open protocols and APIs.

This would certainly help prevent illegal monopolies from maintaining their anti-competitive actions.

Re:What does Microsoft have aginst the GPL anyway?

[RotateLeftByte]

Yes.
I guess that there could be a lot of GPL code inside Windows and they don't want to get caught. Therefore, if the GPL dies then they can breathe a big sigh of relief.
Imagine the scale of the damages if they got caught like this. $x for the infringement and $y for each copy of the software sold. If they sufficiently pissed off the Judge (Who Me Surely not says BillG) it could make their stock become Junk. The Judge could even order it all opened up for inspection by interested companies(Now where have I seen that before. Yep SCO) so there is a precident for this type of order. Then watch the numbers of law suits escalate. Naturally, this is just speculation and guesswork and I have no evidence that this is true but...
This is Microsoft...

Re:Amazing

[Dr_Barnowl]

Burger King employees don't speak a different language. You don't need to buy a phrase book to have a hope of ordering a Whopper and Fries. The same is also true in McDonalds, Wendys and many other smaller burger establishments.

Now imagine that instead of a phrasebook, you had to buy a universal translator. And the only people that made them was the burger vendors ; the translator is expensive enough that you'd really only want to buy one. And they don't work as well in the other big chains, and forget using it at Honest Als Burger Shack. And Pizza Hut? Ahahaha.

You're pretty much gonna have to eat Whoppers. The language of burger flippers is complicated, some say deliberately so, and people have a hard time deciphering it. Now, some of the other establishments produce translators that work on BurgerKing-ese. But they're not perfect (although in some cases their grammar is technically better). It would be so much easier if they had access to a proper BK dictionary.

But BK don't want that. They want people to keep buying Whoppers, and avoid the other chains because they speak a "funny" language (some of them don't even have pretty menus!) Now some politos are pestering them. They don't want them to give away the secret recipe (although it's not really a secret anymore, and there are a lot of people who say that the other chains have better sandwiches, or even prefer grilling their own). They don't have to give away the secret recipe ; they just have to make it easier for people to order burgers.

I guess Microsoft are a bit like Burger King ; they do want us to keep buying Whoppers....