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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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...

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.