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Microsoft Accepts Most EU Demands, But Not Over Source
JoeGi writes "Microsoft sent a letter to EU regulators Monday accepting 20 out of the Commission's 26 demands. According to BetaNews, 'The remaining stumbling block to full compliance is source code licensing' as Microsoft is refusing access to open source projects. Microsoft officials told BetaNews they are trying 'to find a way that companies can implement these technologies in code that would get distributed with open source products, but the source code wouldn't be published itself.'"
The article says "accepts", as if they have a choice? This is the law, is it not?
Microsoft's got the same problem Sun has with the JRE. They might be able to use Sun as an excuse.
I wasn't aware Microsoft had a choice regarding which demands they would accept and would not accept.
Because not being allowed to distribute code is totally opensource.
Really, wtf are these people on?
The Yasashii Syndicate ||
As an act of goodwill Microsoft has decided to open source minesweeper.
.. they're trying to circumvent the GPL and similar?
I would tell them to meet all 26 or hit the road.
Eu doesn't need microsoft - microsoft needs them so I would tell them to fsck off if they don't comply with everything. after all you are their customers and being Microsoft they should be wanting to meet the customers demands - isn't this the reason they implement their crap - you know like put out the next IE7 - cause their customers asked them for it.
Government agency tells Microsoft "You've been bad. Here is your punishment." Microsoft tells government agency "Your punishment is bad, yes. But we do not accept your punishment. Instead, here is what we'd rather the punishment be." Government agency tells Microsoft "No, you will comply." Microsoft gives some money to the government agency. Government agency says "Aaah. We've reconsidered. Microsoft has actually chosen a very reasonable punishment for itself."
fifth sigma, inc.
I'm sure we can get some people to upload a torrent with the code in question...oh wait!
Licensing the source-code does not do much, a much better solution would be to require them to open the patents and specifications up for their drm and media formats. This gives their competitors a firm standing to enter the market with them. It would also allow opensource implementations of their media formats on linux with full drm support.
I know, Microsoft is evil and Linux rules, but I can see their point of biew for reasons other than trying to strangle Linux. Microsoft probably does not want their software licensed in a GPL-like format. If these protocols can be implemented in Linux without forcing MS's software to be opened under the GPL, they should be forced to do that. If there's no way to integrate Microsoft's software with Linux without it being licensed under the GPL, then I think Linux is out of luck. It could still be used with a BSD-style license. But forcing MS to license any of their software under the GPL seems grossly anti-capitalistic.
Of course, MS is evil, so this whole thing might just be because they see Linux as a threat and want to hurt it any way they can. It could go either way.
Sorry about the pun, but it seems like accountability is easily trumped by bank account ability.
I'd give anything to see the EU tell Microsoft to follow all 26 or face a continent-wide ban. Can you imagine any single one of us, after being found guilty of something, picking and choosing our punishments in a court of law?
First time i read it i thought it said "Microsoft sent a letter to EU regulators Money accepting 20 out of the Commission's 26 demands..."
CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL!!
Why is Microsoft evil and Linux rules? I understand you maybe don't like the products they offer, but calling it evil for what they do is simply brainless. They do things, *the American way*(TM), does that mean USA (in general) is evil?
WARNING: DO NOT LET DR. MARIO TOUCH YOUR GENITALS. HE IS NOT A REAL DOCTOR!
I don't see why Microsoft should have to turn over their source code without any kind of compensation. They did develop the product, and it seems to me that they should be able to profit from it. In my opinion the demands of the EU are in this case unreasonable.
If Microsoft pulled out of the Market, it would prove they're using their Monopoly status (and that they have one) to pull the Market and Law in their favor.
No, they'll do what they need to do to wiggle out, and sneak back into their old ways as fast as they can, even if it means more lawsuits. They don't care about those things, they just need to keep the Monopoly going on.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
MS' code being out there would cause nothing but SCO style problems anyway. What is needed is to force (full) disclosure of (actual) protocols and formats. The last thing we need is accusations of improperly using MS' own implementation.
Other people's code isn't necessarily good documentation and usually won't drop into another project's tree anyway. Why is there such emphasis on code? Should we be talking about specifications?
Umm, how would it being under a BDS liscence be any different? You can re-liscence BSD code as GPL you know.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
open formats/standards? They should force Microsoft to use the .odf format that KOffice and OpenOffice now use as default?
If they would just take away Microsoft's virtual monopoly on the office document format it would make it easier for users to switch to open alternatives.
I have always said that switching people to open software on Windows is the first step to switching people to open software period.
To me the lack of forced open document formats and standards compliance is the only thing keeping open software from grabbing large market share from Microsoft.
The preceding message was based on actual events. Only the names, locations and events have been changed.
Yes yes, I know I made a typo and put an "N" where I shouldn't have...
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
That's called paying homage to the Slashdot crowd to avoid being modded as a "Troll" while making pro-Microsoft statements.
the EU should render Ms to Syria. IE7 might get improved with a little torture.
Why is Microsoft expected to open its source? Sure, they've done plenty of bad things, but that seems to be a judgement incommensurate with the crime. If the US finds that SAP has done something wrong, should an American court be allowed to insist it open its source to continue selling in America?
Plus, the government agency with the judgement isn't even Microsoft's home country, although it certainly represents plenty of Microsoft's customers. In America, this might seem to amount to a confiscation of Microsoft's software assets.
I think the biggest problems with Microsoft are with bundling (browser and media player part of the OS, which has also been addressed) and unfair arrangments with OEMs (they pay for a copy of Windows per unit shipped regardless of whether it has Windows or not, or some similar tactic). Neither of these is properly remedied by forcing the opening of the source.
forcing MS to license any of their software under the GPL seems grossly anti-capitalistic.
No country in the world has a straight capitalism. The reason is that in an unmanaged capitalism, eventually all the money gravitates to one place. One monopoly is leveraged into another then another and eventually there is only one company. Monopolies break all the advantages offered by capitalism. They remove all incentive for innovation, supply an demand, and for making the customer happy.
Allowing MS to leverage one monopoly into multiple monopolies breaks capitalism, which is why monopolies have to follow special rules. Get it?
Microsoft can not allow the EU to go non-MS. That would create a market large enough to support true competitors.
Once/if OS competition comes to a large enough market, it will come to the entire world. The EU is large enough.
And with all the good will they've built up over the years, MS will go the way of all buggy whip manufacturers once they lose the competitive advantage of their desktop monopoly.
And their loss of that monopoly is inevitable. Look at the history of large-scale, money-making products. They almost always get displaced by smaller, cheaper, products from "upstart" companies or countries. And the MS OS is going to be displaced eventually by a free, open-source OS, if only because an OS is a commodity, and the price of a commodity product approaches the marginal cost to produce another copy. Which, in the case of software, is zero.
There's so many wrong things in your post... I don't have time to correct them all. Suffice it to say:
:)
1) BSD is open source.
2) Anything released under BSD can be forked and re-released under GPL.
3) It's absolutely possible to "integrate" software in Linux without it being GPL.
Probably missed some things... no doubt others will pick them up
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
As far as I can see, in theory, full and accurate specifications of the APIs and protocols ought to be sufficient to allow interoperability and prevent Microsoft from having an unfair advantage over competitors. The problem is that nobody trusts Microsoft to publish full and honest specs and adhere to them. They are known for having undocumented interfaces and for departing from standards. Forcing them to publish the source would let others determine the actual APIs and protocols by inspection, and we'd know whether the source they published was real because its behavior could be compared with that of Microsoft's binaries. However, this doesn't require that Microsoft license its source under the GPL. People can perfectly well implement Microsoft's APIs and protocols with their own code. What it does require, other than publishing the software with terms that do not prohibit use of the information gleaned in GPL-ed software, is freedom from patents.
Insofar as Microsoft has been convicted of monopolistic behavior, I don't think it has a choice if publishing source code under the GPL is the only way of adressing its improper behavior. It's not like something that is insufficiently in line with capitalism is "cruel and unusual punishment". If Microsoft really doesn't want to publish its source, it seems to me that the only thing to do is to force them to stand behind their specs by imposing significant penalties for differences in behavior between their software and the specs. This could even be a way of diverting the efforts of some crackers - finding discrepancies would be a thrill, and could even be remunerative if a percentage of the fine were awarded as a bounty.
I'm sure SuSE would be more than happy to take up the slack, as would many other non-American companies! This could be a really good thing for the EU.
Unfortunately, this isn't going to happen as the market is lucrative in Europe and there's NO WAY that Microsoft would give it up.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Not to quibble, but MSFT played a waiting game
in the USA -- it only took a regime change for
MSFT to be able to dictate their own punishment.
No doubt, MSFT is playing this same waiting
game in the EU.
Politicians are pretty much alike the whole
world over; money talks, and more money talks
louder. American politicians may find (to their
consternation) that they were bought far too
cheaply compared to their brethern in the EU.
That will just accelerate the creation of viable alternatives to MS products.
Do you think companies like DaimlerChrysler would stick to MS products if those aren't used in the EU? And then what happens in the US when DC starts sending documents in some other format to all their suppliers, marketers, advertisers, car dealerships, and government agencies in those formats? Yep, those other entities would then have to open up to non-MS data.
And that chain of events would be set off by just one mostly EU-based multinational that I pulled out my ass going non-MS.
This isn't about microsoft's license on their code. This is about them demanding that you don't open source your own implementation after you have read their documentation.
This has more information than the BetaNews article - full AP Text.
Microsoft says it will meet most EU demands
By ALLISON LINN
AP BUSINESS WRITER
Microsoft Corp. says it will meet most demands by European Union regulators on making software blueprints available to competitors, including lowering licensing fees, but is seeking further talks on some issues.
Microsoft said it delivered a letter to EU regulators on Monday detailing its intentions.
The EU last month threatened new fines if Microsoft doesn't make it easier and cheaper for competitors to see the blueprints, known as source code.
Brad Smith, Microsoft's top lawyer, said the Redmond, Wash.-based company told the European Union it isn't opposed to licensing the code to open-source developers as long as it's assured that its intellectual property will be safeguarded.
Open-source programs led by the Linux operating system pose perhaps the most serious threat to Microsoft because their code is freely shared, while Microsoft closely guards its source code.
Click Here
Smith said Microsoft also wants clarification on whether concerns that view its source code can develop and distribute software outside of Europe.
EU spokesman Jonathan Todd said Monday afternoon that he could not yet confirm that the Commission received Microsoft's latest letter, but said "We have received a letter in response" to our questions that Microsoft sent before Easter.
He said the EU was "studying it carefully." He gave no further comment on the content of Microsoft's letter or on Monday's announcement
The EU compelled Microsoft, in a March 2004 antitrust ruling in which it fined the company 497 million euros ($640 million dollars), to share the source code with competitors who make server software so their products can better communicate with Windows-powered computers.
European regulators also ordered Microsoft to produce a Windows version minus its multimedia player to provide a more level playing field for competitors such as RealNetworks Inc.
Microsoft has complied with that order but says it will only make the software available in Europe. Dow Jones Newswires reported last week that Dell Inc., a leading computer maker, would not offer the stripped-down Windows version as an option.
Company officials would not provide The Associated Press with a copy of the letter they submitted to the EU on Monday.
But they listed these changes that they said they had accepted in the server source code reviewing procedure:
-Microsoft will customize licenses for developers who want to pick and choose from source code rather than buying a preset package.
-The company will give competitors a price break on reviewing source code and more time to decide whether they want to license it - charging 500 euros ($645) a day for up to eight days instead of allowing a maximum of two days at 3,850 euros ($4,965) for the first day or 5,390 euros ($6,950) for two days.
Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler said the company was working on a new set of prices for licenses to address the commission's concerns that previously proposed fees of $100 to $600 (77 euros to 465 euros) per server were too high.
Desler would not elaborate on any details of the new royalty fee structure.
Andy Gavil, a Howard University law professor who is co-writing a book on Microsoft's antitrust battles, says the company has good reason to try to elongate the process, especially given its plans to appeal the March 2004 order.
Microsoft has been ordered to comply with the ruling even as it seeks an appeal.
Gavil said Microsoft is concerned about losing the freedom to build new features into its operating systems and that sharing too much with competitors will weaken its business.
"In a sense, they're trying to define a software philosophy and a business strategy," Gavil said.
Smith emphatically denied that the company has any interest in slowing down the proces
Waiting for Microsoft themselves, to put out a form of GPL they can use, to their advantage of course.
"To be is to do." -Socrates
"To do is to be." -Jean-Paul Sartre
"Do-be-do-be-do." -Frank Sinatra
Opensourcing beeing a threat to Microsoft? All they need to do is come up with a perfectly legal open source license but dismember it just enough so it isn't compatible with the GPL. I think an advertisment clause in the style of "Microsoft(r) property" might just be enough.
If not there's always the "changes may not be redistributable in source form" clause.
"We are working with the Commission to try to find a way that companies can implement these technologies in code that would get distributed with open source products, but the source code wouldn't be published itself so that the confidentiality of our information is preserved," the spokesperson added.
OK, now that statement has me very confused. Are they saying that M$ doesn't want their own code put into an open source app that would be distributed for all to see, or do they not want to make available the protocols that would enable independent implementation to be performed by open source projects. I think it is the latter, but this article does such a bad job of explaining the situation that reading it I honestly can't tell.
Don't forget for a second that there is a good deal of anti-Americanism pushing the EU to crap on MS.
Not that MS doesn't deserve to get crapped on, but that sentiment will quite usefully prevent the EU from letting MS get away at all in this case.
For craps sake. If the government takes me to court and slaps the shit out of me, I do my god damned punishment or the police stick their boots up my ass. I didn't realize these things were open for negotiation. Lets all just get it out in the open: Big companies own us... pretty much literally.
It seems like everyone in this thread is assuming the EU is just going to take it, but no where in that story did I read that they had made a response or statement. They haven't given in yet, it'll be interesting to see how this story unfolds.
If you want to know why MS doesn't want to open up, just read most of the comments in this thread. Almost all of them are gloating, and many of them are looking forward to MS market share being decimated.
Tell me again why MS should be happy about this.
Interestingly if MS does pull out of the EU then they wouldn't (without breaking their own laws) be able to use MS products. Needless to say they would just turn around and pass new laws or just ignore the inconvenient existing laws like they do for everything else.
Open source != Linux. There's more involved here than a few nasty proprietary protocols people want to port to Linux.
For instance:
- On the Windows platform itself, there's a number of open source apps which can't do everything MS apps can because the MS apps are using undocumented API's.
- non-Windows media players can't make use of extensions to AVI/WMA and DRM because of closed MS specifications.
It would be a big win for open source if MS just released full documentation of all of their API's - it would certainly level the playing field somewhat.
A "sponsor program" to allow patents or core algorithms to be used in a royalty-free fashion would be another big win, but I doubt that would ever happen.
Both Microsoft and the European Community government are new entities. Neither has the limits of their powers defined or tested.
Many people besides the programming community and the politicians are watching this fight as it will define how the other major oligopalistic corporations will deal with the EU bureaucrats in the future.
Microsoft needs the EU enforcement apparatice to maintain its monopoly and the European Union bureaucracy runs on Microsoft's software.
This whole showdown is a 'tempest in a teacup' or 'tussles in Brussels' and will die down to an endless Eurocratic paper shuffle that will never be fully resolved. It's the kind of money-making machine for upper-class European lawyers that Brussels is becoming world-famous for. It will become just one more of the million and one things that makes Europe less attractive to do business in. It will be 'resolved' in the same matter that all European Community business issues get resolved; with local flavor. In Italy by bribe, in Germany by rigorous preparation of ten thousand pages of chickenshit regulations, and in France by a nod and wink that enables the enarcs to get their customary payoffs and the rest of the people to bask in the 'gloire de la republic'; that is, series of substance-less but emotionally-charged gestures.
What's more important is that Microsoft would release all APIs and specifications for protocols and file formats royalty free to the open source community. While source might help, APIs and specifications are more important.
So is the stipulation that Microsoft release their source code for current products only, or for current AND future products? I'd say that makes a pretty big difference. If it's just current products, they'll probably go along with the EU eventually and just release a new version of Windows real quick like (Windows 2005? XP and a half?) before Longhorn ever comes out. If it's both current and future, then I'd say the EU is being a bit unreasonable...
The EU could just forcibly Open Source everything that Microsoft-Europe has on the spot, and Microsoft would become a completely ephemeral entity as far as the EU was concerned.
Do European countries have a counterpart to the takings clause of the U.S. Bill of Rights? If they do, then the EU may not have power to take away the exclusive rights granted under the Berne Convention.
I agree with you, the GPL is bad for Microsoft. Bad GPL! Bad! I also think you're right, that Microsoft should be forced to publish all their code under the less evil BSD license.
Perhaps dealing with the EU is new to MS - they're just used to telling the DOJ what to do.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
As is often the case, the press is completely misreporting the issue. The EU never demanded that Microsoft release their own source code. What MSFT is required to do is license their network protocols and provide sufficient documentation to licensees so they can create their own implementations. A similar condition was part of the US antitrust case.
The license that MSFT offered is (1) expensive, and (2) specifically prevents licensees from releasing the source code to their own implementations. The EU is mostly upset about the cost, and is therefore completely missing the point. The only effective remedy would be to require that MSFT publish the protocol specs and allow anybody (e.g. the SAMBA team) to implement them.
Some would say that such a compulsory license amounts to the EU stealing MSFT's intellectual property. Bullshit! Do you believe that making them pay a fine is stealing their money? You can oppose the whole concept of antitrust regulation on Libertarian grounds, but that battle was fought and lost, the argument is over, and antitrust is settled law. The EU has the right to set antitrust rules and punish the violators.
The key sequence to access my Slashdot bookmark in Firefox is Alt-B-S. I don't believe this is a coincidence.
Nothing has taken place in America hence the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America have no say in what goes on.
RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is a member of IFPI (International Federation for the Phonographic Industry). BPI (British Phonographic Industry) is also a member of IFPI. Several other national record label interest groups are members of IFPI, and record labels' international divisions are often members of those groups. MPAA has a division called Motion Picture Association that does the MPAA's bidding outside the United States.
It's a touchy situation for both Microsoft and Open Source development.
The only way to write fully interoperable code is to have access to the source code, says the EU. Microsoft counters with a system that allows access to *some* code, and it's very expensive to gain access to it.
This would cut most Open Source projects out because they don't have the bankroll to pay for these fees, and even if they did most of them would be unwilling to pay for Microsoft code they can only look at.
Many commercial firms spend gobs of money on all things most companies spend gobs of money on anyways, and can pay these fees.
On the other hand, Microsoft may also be worried that if they allow access to the source without a high barrier to entry, it could mean lots of Microsoft code floating around the Internet. This is a distinct possibility, considering that you can already get every Microsoft product online.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Microsoft does not want to open its source code, they like the entire proprietary software industry equate copyright with the right to keep the code secret. THe EU is saying, among other things, open your code thats an order and if you don't do it you get fined 5 million Euro per day (and likely to increase if they do not comply) in addition to the 500 million Euro they already have been fined.
They don't have nearly the kind of influence over Europe as they do in the US and European countries have always been tougher on corporations.
Nice. Nothing like moderating a post with a score of *2* as over rated. He's probably afraid of the meta-mods.
The Mozilla Public License permits linking MPL covered code to proprietary code. So does the GNU Lesser General Public License. For instance, the Gecko layout engine is licensed under the embedder's choice of MPL, GPL, or LGPL, and the Netscape 7 Internet suite was distributed as binaries that consisted of MPL'd Gecko linked against Netscape proprietary code.
Read about Windows not working on DR-DOS because they specifically introduced a detection mechanism to prevent it, then tell me if they are evil.
5 millions a day is not anything. In long term the OSS would cut more than that for sure.
I keep seeing the distinction between the API and the source code, but more often than not the code is the only reliable documentation of the API anyway - original API specs get horribly out of date during implementation. Many API specs include sample implementations too. So saying MS needs to license the API but not the source is somewhat contradictory.
The easiest and cheapest way for MS to "license the API" is simply to license the source and let the purchaser dig through and find what they need.
Just a glance through the rantings of the Samba team will show you that the protocols they are trying to use are full of bugs and special cases that change with the operating system you are communicating with. The "full API" is probably a combination of the original design specs patched with bug reports and the comments within the implementation code.
To publish a complete API (without implementation code) would cost MS a decent amount of money to simply produce it in the first place.
Wouldn't it be something if MS had trouble functioning in markets because of their past and current monopoly abuses? Sounds like, I dunno, justice or something.
You can either complain, or do nothing. You don't get both.
Microsoft patents ASF media file format, stops reverse engineering.
opening the source would be admitting that they are infringing a number of patents
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Reading the article, I have to agree with a previous poster; the hang up is that, as near as I can tell, Microsoft is still not willing to provide full and accurate descriptions of it's protocols, api's, and file formats under a license that is comaptible with the GPL. This is what they consider their 'IP'. Again, as near as I can tell, Microsoft is inventing a ficticious requirement that it thinks will seem unfair to people, the requirement that they give away their source code. NOBODY has asked for this. NOBODY in the GPL world wants their source code. Tuis requirement seems to be an invention of Microsoft's PR department.
given that MS and friends have recently managed to bribe the European Commission into implementing the software patent directive against the express wishes of the European Parliament, Microsift stand to lose a lot more than they might gain by pulling out of the EU..
This is just the EU trying to look tough, talking big and giving the monopolist a gentle slap on the wrist. MS will take this on the chin, secure in the knowledge that their bribery and threats have bought them free money in perpetuity across the EU.
Luxembourg = the fucking enemy. Oh yes cunts, you'll get yours, just you wait....
In other news, Microsoft is looking for a way to have its cake and eat it too.
Your parent isn't saying that MS should (be forced to) license their code under a BSD license; he is saying that if even if it's released with a non-GPL compatible license, BSD code can still be used with it.
(I had to read that statement twice.)
Informative. (though there is no citation.)
"We are working with the Commission to try to find a way that companies can implement these technologies in code that would get distributed with open source products, but the source code wouldn't be published itself so that the confidentiality of our information is preserved," the spokesperson added.
It sounds like Microsoft is not even talking about access to their source code, they are talking about whether open source projects are permitted to distribute their own code necessary for interoperating with Microsoft code in open source form.
In different words, Microsoft is trying to keep "confidential" exactly what the commission is requiring them to make public.
Furthermore, since the only group of people they are trying to impose restrictions on is open source (since binary-only vendors have full access under the agreement already), this is a direct attack by Microsoft on open source.
Well, it's good to see that Microsoft is validating open source through their action. Let's hope that the EU doesn't let them get away with this.
I'm really sick of all the commies on slashdot these days.. I wish MS would just pull out of EU..
Silly MSFT... I really wish they would play by the rules a bit more, and not fight everything tooth and nail. It really makes them look bad!
I keep seeing this claim of undocumented APIs, but to be honest, I've never seen any proof. Yes, I know about the kernel API that's not published, but that's not a guaranteed interface - it's subject to change every version (which would break old apps running a newer version of Windows).
Where are these "sekrit APIs"?
Microsoft seems unwilling to comply with the EU. However, they seem to be pushing against Microsoft, pretty hard.
If the EU is really up to it, they could seize Microsoft's copyright. In other words, make all copies of windows becoem public dowmain.
If that happened, I suppose it would be the e-boslhevik revolution. However, I don't know if the EU is prepared to go that far, but I also don't see any other for the EU to really hit Microsoft.
Internationally, things could get complicated. It would set a precedent against American business interest in Europe. However, what could they do? Europe is big enough, and powerful that I don't what could be done.
Would the US invade Europe? Would the US wage a covert campaign against European leadership? I'm just not sure that would work. So, then what?
"Intellectual property" amounts to an artificial government-granted monopoly, anyway. Companies like Microsoft would not be able to exist at all without it.
Anti-trust suits are really the government suing another part of itself.
Most countries, including the U.S., do not typically extradict their own citizens for economic crimes.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Why should MS be forced to allow source-form redistrubution of derived works from their IP?
This might be an unpopular idea, but developers don't have to release their source. The SAMBA team can choose between having an all-open-source project, a binary-only project that allows them to redistribute their own MS-derived implementation, or a hybrid of the two (mostly open-source, with the sections derived from MS' spec being binary-only).
As I understand the GPL, you're allowed to link to proprietary code - it's when others link to your code that they have to open up. (Correct me if I'm wrong, please.) Sure, free software purists won't want binary-only code on their systems, but you're free to choose between ideology and practicality.
The governments represented by the EU cannot pass any law they like; they must respect the treaties they've signed, including those on copyrights and patents. These treaties do not permit confiscation of the copyrights or patents of a US-based company, and the U.S. could pursue trade sanctions if the EU attempted this.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Hey, that's business, chief. It gets dirty. But evil? I generally reserve that category for more serious things, like, say, the state-ordered theft of other people's property.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Confirmed here by Luna Development, a Microsoft Partner!
To me, EU is like the Polish-Lithuanian Republic - a beautiful concept, eventually brought to its knees by undemocratic technicalities like the Liberum Veto
The Raven
The problem for MS is that:
1. "EU government" really means something fundamentally different than "USA government". No, I'm not gonna bash the USA or anything. The EU just isn't one country. The U stands for UNION, and it's a union of independent nations.
What passes for "EU government" or "EU agency" is just a shifty diplomatic treaty between countries that follow their own interests and have their own population to impress. If you bribe, say, a German bureaucrat in an EU agency, you'll have all the other EU countries screaming bloody murder, if only to push their own bureaucrat in his/her place.
(Which also answers the usual "bet the EU wouldn't do that to their own companies" moans: there isn't such a thing as an EU company. If the EU failed to punish, say, a German monopoly, it would have France, Italy, Belgium, Holland, etc, screaming bloody murder.)
So there isn't just one government to bribe. By the time you went through all the governments to bribe, one of them would have the next election.
2. Speaking of elections, most EU countries have more interesting politics. They don't have two parties, both cattering to the corporations, for a start. Your average European's country's election is "won" by an unstable alliance of parties, neither of which usually has a majority on its own.
It's a system which works precisely _because_ politicians are, well, politicians. (Said in all possible contempt.) It's a system where, in fact, they make populism and demagogy work.
The "winner" doesn't get 4 years in which they can just rake in bribes and catter to the higher bidder with impunity, and the opposition doesn't just wait for their turn to rake in the bribes with impunity. There isn't any such thing as having an almost guaranteed turn at it: lose enough popularity and you can turn from an alliance leader to a minor member of someone else's alliance in the next elections. And even if you "won", the more other parties you need in a coalition for a majority, the more concessions you'll have to make to get them to support you, so better not end up too low.
And more importantly, even if you won, alliances can be formed the other way around at any moment, if that is perceived as the more populist thing to do for those small parties in your coalition. If the "winning" party has, say, 41% of the places in the parliament, they might at any moment find themselves switched from leading a majority coalition of parties, to being the opposition because everyone else made a 59% coalition against them. The small members of a coalition really have nothing to lose from switching sides like that: they'll end up members of the majority coalition either way, so they might as well just pick the side that looks more popular.
Bribery does exist in Europe's politics, but it's usually a lot more subtle than that, and offers more subtle benefits. You won't see a politician just openly being bought by a cartel and lobbying full time for them, or a party just openly forcing the DOJ to bend over for a corporation. That's the kind of thing that's plain political suicide down here, one way or the other: if you don't get kicked out by your party to save face, that party becomes the opposition very quickly as alliances form the other way around.
So basically short of bribing every single political party in Europe, it's not easy for MS to just "give some money to the government" and get a free ride out. And bribing every single political party would be a pretty costly exercise even for MS.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
A sample conversation among international friends:
European: "Well, but you see friend, this is necessary for the people. We're doing it for the people, after all."
American: "Yeah, I get that, but aren't you afraid they'll just withdraw from the market?"
European: "Ha! They wouldn't dare lose such a large piece of our thriving market. Why, why, that's 25 billion a year! Besides, do you really think our government would allow it? We could force them to stay after all. We could nationalize their entire business! What would they do then? Huh?"
American: "I dunno... *shrugs* Who is John Galt?"
What it does require, other than publishing the software with terms that do not prohibit use of the information gleaned in GPL-ed software, is freedom from patents.
Well, that really depends on the intention of the Commission. There are many licences other than the GPL, so I could see a compromise in which the GPL is technically excluded (due to some term of the licence) but the majority of other open source licences are ok. (I'm not saying necessarily that I'd approve, but that's irrelevant, I'm not the Commission)
Also, technically, freedom from patents is not required - what is required is that a royalty-free licence be granted to use/implement/etc anything that is patented, as long as the implementation is covered by a recognised open source licence (or something similar). Again, that might hamstring the GPL, but would leave a lot (most?) OS licences clear, something that the Commission might go for.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
The idea behind this settlement is for new competition to enter the server market. Open Soure is an important force in the industry and should therefor be able to compete. At this moment Microsoft is going for an easy ride.
By the way, this insightful post gives a nice idea of why this license is incompatiable with open source. It's not all about the money. There are aspects of this license that go beyond the question of whether or not it can be implemented in open source. The license also cripples closed source implementations.
Under this license, if you implement the server interfaces, you cannot deviate from what MS says your implementation has to be. This poses a great problem for companies that want to innovate beyond Microsofts "standards" or that do not want to implement such features as DRM.
The EU should aim for a healthy server market in the best interest of its citizans. This would include multiple, unencumbered and independant implementations, some of which will probably be open source.
There are many things Microsoft has locked down to prevent others from getting into, but one that pisses me off the most, is DirectX.
DirectX being so vastly closed, and having dragged the hadrware market with it, has caused fundamental flaws in 3D/SDL in Linux. Now i know a few people are gonna go "oh thats not true, such and such a program works", but in general, they did majorly stifle 3D, Games, etc. on Linux. They also promoted complex standards, and secrecy. Only now is the ball beginning to roll, and things are quite buggy - even worse than Windows Networking. lol.
And how many legal mp3 stores that use software offer a Linux version? Or even music files that can play on Linux... theres too many closed-apps that even refuse to make a closed-source linux version, or a (closed) Linux-decoder.
If they wont release any open apps, then they can at least release closed libraries so that open source can "function" at all. At least thats for some things, like DRM stuff, "trade secrets" like DirectX, etc. Its better than nothing, and thats all weve got so far. Once they give us that much, we can bitch and try to force even more open standards! Ya gotta take it slow.
"MS Europe"
I almost threw up my hot coco when I read that.
"No one walks away from 25 billion in profit a year to avoid being fined 1.4 billion. No one with any brains creates a giant new market for their competition."
I guess you can add those with values and integrity to your list of no-bodies.
But than again if Microsoft or any other corrupt body gave me money that I could literly retire on I'd start my own business in the opensource market, donate to Libertarian groups such as CATO and donate to OpenSource projects.
There's probably more but I can't think of any right now.
Point is, any closed source company gives me money, they're only fu**ing them selves over.
"The code" is a particular implementation of "an API", ie: there is more than one way to skin a cat. If a developer implements code that is different to the API then the code is wrong. Don't belive me, then ask any IBM tester or the IEEE or ISO or any other half reputible organisation who doesn't give a rats arse about "the code".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I specifically was looking for someone who made the point you did, and would have modded you up if you had not already been at +5.
Who the fuck do Microsoft think they are to say what parts of a court decision they accept or not?
Basically, while I realise that asking a lawyer to admit guilt is like asking a lion to become a vegetarian, I think Microsoft is treading a very fine line of how far they can go. I know a lot of Americans think the EU is just another banana republic where the Marines go and clean up before breakfast (And the EU commissioners sometimes don't do all that much to dispell the notion either), but I think that Microsoft could land itself in a huge pile of shit if they try to play the arrogant American card too much with the Commission.
The EU could do whatever they please with Microsoft's European business, and there would be nothing, short of Microsoft bribing Bush and co into starting a trade war with the EU, that Microsoft could do. The EU could declare Microsoft's code public domain in the EU, and you can be sure that that will kill Microsoft faster than anything else would as that code would find its way across the Atlantic very quickly.
One of the few posts worth reading.
A small correction: for one DRM has nothing to do with server protocols. This has to do with media formats and the logic behind this is not to allow implementations which can decrypt the content and defeat the whole purpose of DRM.
Second, if you have application which accesses data in the ActiveDirectory (tm) it is reasonable to require the application not to expose user passwords out in the open and not to corrupt the data.
If you want to innovate feel free to imlement your own network protocols and stuff, nothing prevents you from doing so.
If you want to innovate on top of Microsoft's protocols (I wonder why on eatrh one would do so), then MS have to make sure their furure implementation (extensions) does not clash with your "extensions".
In that, MS published, what, 3500 API specifications. This after many years of saying "there are no undocumented API's. We tell you all of them with MSDN".
Also, check Samba and Wine. If there were no undocumented API's, why are these projects having such a bad time getting interoperability? Wine just has to show the external kernel API and translate them to Linux API calls. Still so very many programs do not work, however.
Yeah, terrible. Ask for your /. subscription fees back.
If that's just business, then there is a NEED for government intervention to make business moral. We ordinary humans have laws to stop us acting immorally - e.g. "thou shall not kill", "thou shall not commit adultery". Theft, etc. So if us ordinary citizens are forced to act morally by government enforced rules, why not companies?
Noboddy requires MS to open sources. What is requested is MS to open APIs to be licensed for $$$.
What the argument is: once company A has paid $$$ and licensed the APIs, if they publish the source of the implementation (aka open source) then nobody in their right mind will pay MS to license the protocols.
Naturally MS thinks this is unfair, since the commision has agreed that MS has the right to collect $$$ for licensing the APIs, but now the commision wants to allow open source implementations, which would mean no $$$ for MS.
Or more fun still, you can buy it for EUR5 from the EU government's bailiffs until such time as the revenues equal MS' unpaid fine.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
You are suggesting holding businesses to a standard higher than mere morality; something more like altruism. It is already against the law for companies to kill and steal; you seem to be suggesting something more.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Mandrake is still an EU company though, and doing rather well lately. Any reduction of the MS presence in Europe would be a very welcome development for them.
Microsoft currently has 2 choices:
- Comply and nothing painful happens.
- Don't comply and be in for a world of pain.
There are *no* alternatives to these options.
There is *no* negociation possible.
This is the EU, not the US.
That is just so likely. Maybe you went to school outside of europe based on your capability of logical reasoning? So, lets pull out from a 25b market just to teach those dirty europeans a lesson. Walking away from this market in pride is in the shareholders best interest? You know that there are laws that say that the board have to act in the best interest of the shareholders? Walking away from a 25b market and the inevitable plunge in share price is in the shareholders best interest? I think it is fair to assume that no matter what, ms will NEVER walk away from the european market unless the board members want to be targeted by massive class-act lawsuits the size of the world has not seen before and spend significant time in jail. the stupidity of /. posters never ceases to surprise you.
The position of Microsoft is understandable. It doesn't want its protocols to be available to everybody free of charge. But it's exactly what will happen if they allow source distribution.
Now I think there is a workaround for the OSS community if, at the end of the day, source code redistribution isn't allowed. Isn't it possible to license a protocol on Microsofts terms and then create a closed source program designed in a way that permits full and convenient reverse engineering of the underlying protocol? You can also output a lot of debugging information which IMHO shouldn't count as source code distribution. Then just give this program in binary form to a third party that will do a clean-room reverse engineering, and I don't think there is much Microsoft can do to prevent it...
EU: We find that you (MS) are breaking competition laws, and we order you to take these here 26 measures to allow other companies to enter into fair competition. You either take all these steps unconditionally, pay a fine per unit of time of non-compliance, or ultimately could be denied access to the EU market.
MS: Of course we respect your decision and intend to comply fully. Well, almost fully. You see, some of the measures you have ordered would tend to interfere with our monopoly and our capacity to abuse it. We are in a position to negotiate the terms of your punishment, because.. Well, because all your base are belong to us! EU customers are so completely locked in our proprietary formats that they will revolt if you deny them our products!
This is like Don Corleone telling the court: yes, your honour, it's true, I am a mafia don. And I accept your punishment, except if it is too severe I will naturally have to use my position as criminal mastermind and have you whacked.
What am I missing?
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
What the EU is doing to Microsoft of disgusting. They are doing this because they can, because MS is such an easy target.. American target and because EU knows MS has money.
Its one thing to lay a fine and require the unbundling of Media Player from the Operating System , I don't believe its right, but its liveable and doable. Its a completely different matter to force MS to give up its property by forcing it to relicense it under Open Source. This just seems so wrong for a governing body to do.
Besides I think the Microsoft monopoly is crock. Maybe it was true 10 years ago, but not anymore. If MS jacks up the price of Windows to $2000, you will see a lot of people switching to Linux. Linux can do all the essential tasks just as well as Windows, sometimes better, sometimes cheaper. People aren't switching (or switching but not as fast as some slashdotters would like to) because they don't really want to.
Just because the European Commission doesn't have a big role in foreign policy, and therefore doesn't appear to have much leverage in international politics, people shouldn't assume that it doesn't have enormous lawmaking and enforcing power within the EU. It does.
You propose, what? That MS bribes every single political party in every single country in Europe?
You may find that "Europe" is not a single state, like the USA. It's a helluva lot of states in what's just slightly more than a diplomatic treaty. So who are you proposing to bribe? _All_ of them?
You may also find that the political landscape in Europe is a _lot_ different than in the USA. Politicians here actually have to fight for their votes, rather than just sell themselves openly to the highest bidder. The result is a system which is _far_ less inclined to bend over to a corporation and shaft their voters. Au contraire, if in doubt they'll shaft the corporations for extra votes.
Political majority means a fragile alliance of parties, neither of which has the majority, and all of which are trying to exploit their allies mistakes for their own benefit. Any one party who'd publicly bend over to a monopoly, would quickly find themselves switched from leader of the majority coalition to being _the_ opposition, because all their former allies did the populist thing and formed a coalition without them.
More importantly, that wouldn't even buy a whole term for MS. If the political alliances form the other way around, who's the current leader can change right in the middle of a term.
So what do you propose? That MS bribes every single political party, in every single country in Europe? I'm sure you can see how that's impractical.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I don't see how MS could possibly see that as a good thing. It's not about having MS code opensourced, it's about having any implementation opensourced. If I have understood things correctly.
MS was simply asked to license their APIs and protocols fairly to everyone, without discrimination. (E.g., no pulling a stunt like "nope, we won't license them to Mozilla because we still want to kill that threat to our monopoly.")
That's all its about. APIs and protocol specs. No MS source code has to be involved, other than a few _header_ files. Or not even those, in the case of protocols.
So MS thinks it's smart and comes up with a scheme that says "sure, you can get our specs if you sign this license saying that you can't open source _your_ code that implements those specs."
Basically a way to say "grr, ok, you can see our specs but only as long as you're not one of those OSS commies. Then screw you, you can't interface with our products."
"If these protocols can be implemented in Linux without forcing MS's software to be opened under the GPL, they should be forced to do that."
Which is exactly what the EU asked. That's what this fight is all about.
Noone asked MS to provide implementation code of its own, nor to GPL any of its implementation code. It's just basically saying "let others interface with your code." Including, yes, Linux programs, MacOS programs, or whoever else wants to use those protocols.
And MS is basically saying "Nope, no OSS guys will talk to _our_ servers."
That's what this is all about. MS is trying to kill OSS via a license that discriminates against OSS developpers. The EU says "sorry, you can't do that. We said non-discriminating and we meant it."
But again, that never was about GPL-in any of _Microsoft's_ code. It just has to do with whether MS is allowed to say you can't GPL _your_ code (that incidentally calls their APIs or talks to one of their servers via a proprietary MS protocol.)
And frankly, much as I'm not even pro-OSS, I don't think MS should be allowed to decide that. They (think they) make a good OS. Fine. But they shouldn't be in a position to dictate whose programs are allowed to run on it.
Because allowing that is the shortest way to a monopoly.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
'to find a way that companies can implement these technologies in code that would get distributed with open source products, but the source code wouldn't be published itself.'
This indicates, where MS sees danger for their business/monopoly.
This also indicates, where people should look for solutions to the "MS monopoly".
hany
What SW firms need is a good descriptions of their APIS and a good pile of documentation.
If you sell Windows you should allow everybody to use your apps on it. Imagine tahat only M$ could make mallocs. And it should be royalty free or nobody will be able to make gpl programs on it.
It is a side-effect of considering all windows the operating system. If it is the case, every programer should be able to access the same resources in the same way.
In Linux, for example, you may sell non-gpl programs on it (VMWARE). There is a free market. On windows there may be some competition, but not a good one if M$ has better access to apis.
is anyone passing laws and making rules elected in Europe? Or is it just one big bureaucracy? Are these laws or bureaucratic rules? That may be the same thing in Europe for all I know.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
When the judge sentences you to 2months in jail, a $5000 fine, 100 hours community service, and probation for 2 years, just tell him that you agree to the fine, community service, and probation. Then see what happens.
Why should MS be forced to allow source-form redistrubution of derived works from their IP?
Because they're a convicted monopolist and antitrust violator. They broke the law, and now they're being punished. It's supposed to hurt. Perhaps the EU should offer MSFT a choice: They can open up their protocols, or Gates and Balmer can spend some time in jail. That's what happens to other convicted criminals.
The key sequence to access my Slashdot bookmark in Firefox is Alt-B-S. I don't believe this is a coincidence.
It's supposed to hurt them, not kill them.
However, let me restate my question: what purpose is served by forcing MS to allow source redistribution of software implementing licensed IP, that isn't served by allowing binary-only redistribution?
Open source developers can still provide binaries for interoperability with Windows, or they can forgo the licensed IP if they insist on being able to provide every single line of source code.
One monopoly is leveraged into another then another and eventually there is only one company.
And you're basing this on what? Intuition?
Monopolies break all the advantages offered by capitalism. They remove all incentive for innovation, supply an demand, and for making the customer happy.
Allowing MS to leverage one monopoly into multiple monopolies breaks capitalism, which is why monopolies have to follow special rules. Get it?
Economics will tell you competition good, monopoly bad; but economics != capitalism. Under capaitalism a monopoly can do whatever it wants with its property, just as every other company, big or small. One set of rules for everyone. Get it?
"What MSFT is required to do is license their network protocols and provide sufficient documentation to licensees so they can create their own implementations. " Exactly. They still don't have to offer access to there libraries when they don't want to. Third party aps might be required to include redundant libraries separately.
It is 'stealing' their intellectual property. The only problem is that IP is an artificial construct that can be taken away. IP is just a social contract: Society enforces Pantents and Copyrights as far as your use of your rights helps better society in some way. If at any point you break the social contract by abusing your rights, all that the government has to do is stop enforcing IP laws as far as a certain company's IP is concerned. Just like in most european countries the government can expropiate land for a bargain price to build a highway, your IP can be taken away. The difference is you can still use your network standards after you've lost your property, so AFAIK, the government won't pay you a dime.
Did you ever wonder why Brazil has ignored pharmaceutical patents for the last 20 years? What about Chinese and Japanese cloning of American products on the 80s? Governments do it because they can.
And you're basing this on what? Intuition?
History.
One set of rules for everyone. Get it?
Thier is one set of rules for everyone. It just says that if you establish a monopoly, you cannot leverage that monopoly to take over more markets. Any company that establishes a monopoly has to abide by these rules. If not, they are punished by the law for the good of everyone, just like every other law.
You seem to be more in favor the the U.S. approach to MS. When convicted of breaking the law, abusing the legal system, lying to the courts, and bribing officials, pay huge sums of money to the political parties and wait. Then after you are convicted your punishment is decided to be nothing. I hear it works for murderers who stole billions of dollars from their victims as well.
And you're basing this on what? Intuition?
History.
You won't share? When in history has there existed a corporation that has consolidated all markets?
Any company that establishes a monopoly has to abide by these rules. If not, they are punished by the law for the good of everyone, just like every other law.
What rules? Monopoly laws in general are a complete joke. "Leverage monpoly to take over other markets".. pfft. The Windows OS consists of many applications, if you want to be technical MS could be fined for anyone of them.
So far MS has only been burned over IE and Media Player. Do you think they'll get burned with their Longhorn's Desktop search or the upcoming ad-ware scanner? The answer is we don't know. Monopoly laws are so subjective that MS doesn't know if their actions to provide these tools will result in a $500 million fine 5 years down the line.
This is all moot with respect to the original argument. Capitalism "allows" a monopoly to do what they please with their property. End of story.
When convicted of breaking the law, abusing the legal system, lying to the courts, and bribing officials, pay huge sums of money to the political parties and wait.
Before the anti-trust suit, MS had minimal number of lobbyists in Washington. Apple, Netscape, IBM had a substantial presence. Look what happened.
I hear it works for murderers who stole billions of dollars from their victims as well
MS never killed anyone, never ran sweatshops, and I hear they treat their employees really well. What is your problem?
The reason is that in an unmanaged capitalism, eventually all the money gravitates to one place.
Typical left-wing liberal claptrap. The fact that there's no supporting evidence for this view doesn't seem to stop anyone from spouting it.
Monopolies break all the advantages offered by capitalism.
Monopolies are the result of governments having too much power in the marketplace. It becomes possible for the rich to buy legislation giving them government-enforced advantages while keeping out the competition and startups. How else do you think monopolies are maintained, kimosabe? Through magic?
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
why don't they just supply library.h files so the interfaces are known. Having the entire source tree to a library is really excessive and more than is needed.
From a development perspective, it's not necessary...
The fact that there's no supporting evidence...
Try investigating corporate behavior in 19th century America, and the resulting anti-trust legislation.
Monopolies are the result of governments having too much power in the marketplace.
I see no evidence for this. Some government types have been pro-monopoly (Monarchy, Despotism, Communist & Nazism), but most have recognised their negative impact on the national economy.
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Above post is flamebait and/or a troll.
It would also be contrary to international trade agreements and, depending on how the lawyers spin it, possibly state-sponsored piracy. Whole new kettle of worms there.
Your example is flawed in that it assumes that only the money won through ill-gotten gain is taken... this is much much more.
If you steal my car, and sell it, and if, years later, the judge only fines you the cost of the car, and returns my money to me: you have a financial interest in continuing to steal cars.
Why? Well, you make money every time you get don't get caught, and if you do get caught, all you have to hand back is the money you stole! Potential for profit; zero change of a loss: a businessman's dream come true!
If, say, you lose your house, and your car, and everything you ever owned for stealing my car, you lose a ton of money, if you get caught. If the punishement is bad enough, the crime may not be worth the risk of getting caught and punished.
Basic economics suggest that unless the statistical expected value of the profit from criminal transaction is negative, crime will occur. To deter crimes, punish criminals harshly. It just makes economic sense.
--
AC
I think the solution would be not to do what the EU is demanding but instead to point to the Novell type solution. Novell writes a client for Windows to alllow it to use an NDS Tree. That is MS's way out - do what the EU wants from that angle and make it really easy for a competitor to recreate all the functionality of AD with their own client/architecture/protocol hooked into the Windows desktop OS and basically tell the competitors to write their own implementation of a directory/file/print server client and server.
At the same time they should also release AD as a seperate product/service availible in both client and server varieties under a few OSes (Linux, MacOSX, etc). Basically tell them if they want something free they can write their own but if they want full AD functionality then they can run it anywhere but they will be buying it from MS. I think that is a fair and equitable solution. I would be interested to see what Samba could come up with if they were able to innovate their own solution to the problem instead of reverse-engineering the MS one.
"Money and power are universal forces in politics, they just manifest differently in different systems."
Well, the "they manifest differently" is my whole point.
I'm not naive enough to believe that politicians in Europe are any different deep down inside. All I'm saying is that here corruption manifests a lot more subtly. Politicians will _not_ be overt about being on someone's payroll, and will be a lot more moderate and discreet in what they provide for the money.
Basically, could Microsoft gain some benefits by bribing key people here and there? Well, most probably. But not in the way of having someone outright stop an anti-trust lawsuit for the money.
There's entirely too much to lose by doing that kind of an obvious deal.
Stuff like a politician being overtly all about representing a corporation or cartel (*cough* RIAA *cough*), and not even caring about anything else than representing those, is political suicide here. They'll be dropped like a hot potato by even their own party.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Perhaps you're not familiar with the Berne convention on copyrights. If the EU invalidates a US copyright (worth $25 billion a year) without the consent of the US, that's a major treaty violation. The fallout on this would be insane. That is not an option in the slightest. The value of the Windows copyright to the US is so substantial that siezing it in the US anti-trust case was never even considdered.
bance.net
There has not been such a company. ( Those "complete joke" laws. ). Look up Standard Oil. Notice how large companies "diversify". Look up "rollups".
There are anti trust laws. MS signed a consent decree in 94 to avoid prosecution. The latest lawsuits were a slap on the wrist, but they *were* punishment. So, in a sense, you have a very good point. But that is mainly because the new administration seemingly decided to let them off the hook.
emt 377 emt 4
Or more fun still, you can buy it for EUR5 from the EU government's bailiffs until such time as the revenues equal MS' unpaid fine.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
There is an alternative to Direct3D. It's called OpenGL.
Both ATI and nVidia are voting members of the OpenGL Architecture Review Board, which writes the OpenGL standard.
The problem is, OpenGL sat there at version 1.x for several years longer than it should have. OpenGL 2.0 introduced Shader support in 2004. Direct3D introduced it in 2001. Had this been the other way around, OpenGL would most likely be the market leader and we wouldn't have this problem.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
You won't share? When in history has there existed a corporation that has consolidated all markets?
Obviously never on a global scale. On a small scale look to any mining town in the 1800's. On a medium scale there was the Medeci trading empire, the East India company, etc.
So far MS has only been burned over IE and Media Player. Do you think they'll get burned with their Longhorn's Desktop search or the upcoming ad-ware scanner? The answer is we don't know. Monopoly laws are so subjective that MS doesn't know if their actions to provide these tools will result in a $500 million fine 5 years down the line.
I'll give you a hint. Whenever they enter a market and use their existing monopoly to give them an advantage they are breaking the law. Or maybe they should be split in OS and application companies so that they don't have to worry about being so confused.
Capitalism "allows" a monopoly to do what they please with their property. End of story.
Capitalism is a concept. It "allows" nothing and no one has ever been so stupid as to implement a pure capitalism since it is such a basically flawed concept.
Before the anti-trust suit, MS had minimal number of lobbyists in Washington. Apple, Netscape, IBM had a substantial presence. Look what happened.
So you're saying because MS donated more money to the democrats and republicans than anyone else they should be allowed to break the law? Politicians can be bribed, what is your point?
What is your problem?
I work in computers and have to deal with MS's incompetence and illegal behavior. They have held the whole damn industry back for years by buying out innovative companies and letting their technologies rot. They have destroyed open standards, interoperability and the internet has basically made no progress in six years due to their bundling of IE and refusal to support new technologies. As a company they have gutted one of my passions. If not for their illegal behaviors a few executives would be a whole lot poorer and the state of the art would be years ahead of where it is today.
Let's see they make money by overcharging everyone and simultaneously hold back progress, what's not to like?
not to allow implementations which can decrypt the content and defeat the whole purpose of DRM.
And exactly what right does Microsoft have to prohibit someone else from not including DRM in their own application?
not to corrupt the data
Authorized changes to my own data are never "curruption". If I want to make useful changes to my data I have every right to do so. If I want to buy or sell a product to make useful changes to my own data I have every right to do so.
Might I remind you that it is already perfectly legal for me to write any interoperable software however I like, and Microsoft has no right to restrict how I implement it. It is merely easier to do so with proper documentation available.
You are suggesting that Microsoft gets some magic right to restrict other people's software if they read the documentation.
Might I further remind you that Microsoft has to release this documentation as a legal remedy for their ILLEGAL acts to restrict or prohibit interoperable software. You are suggesting they get some magic right to restrict other people's software as part of the remedy for breaking the law.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I'm talking about redistribution, not licensing. If Lotus developers are licensing MS' technology, they'd have to have some sort of specification, and likely some source as well.
No, the question is, if Lotus decides they want to give away their source code, why do they have to be able to give away the parts derived from MS' tech?
Since when capitalism is moral? -- Also, morality is a very subjective and relative matter.
WARNING: DO NOT LET DR. MARIO TOUCH YOUR GENITALS. HE IS NOT A REAL DOCTOR!
Microsoft is being required to document how communication protocols work. They are not being required to Open Sorce Windows.
People are already free to write interoperable software, and to write their own software however they please and distribute their own software however they please. It's merely extremely difficult to do so without documentation. Particularly because Microsoft deliberately makes it difficult to interoperate in an illegal effort to exclude interoperable competitors.
What Microsoft is asking for is some magic right to restrict how people may write their own software and restrict how otehr people may distribute their own software if those other people reads this documentation that Microsoft is legally required to make available. Microsft wants to slap handcuffs on anyone who reads this documentation to prohibit them from doing things that would be perfectly legal for them to have done had they done so by trial and error without the documentation.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
If MS break the law, they can lose ownership. If they don't own it, then they dont control it.
As for trade wars, don't think that the EU won't vote for one. We have constant trade wars: eg the USA trying to force us to buy GM food we don't want, and refusing to buy Scotch Whisky if we don't eat beaf contaminated with hormones. This could go VERY BAD for MS.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Indeed it is. Which is why the State writes down the unwritten moral code inherent in society, adds some more and enforces it.
It is good to know more about the founders of companies to know how the roots of that particular corporate ethos. IBM's founder used to physically damage competitor's products and resell them just to make them look bad while at his previous business. At the same time he gave lots of money to social causes, so he was pardoned. Bill Gates used to go through other people's trash to read their source code.
A fine that large is a symbolic action. A fine of $650,000 would seriously expect to be received by the government. But a $650 million fine is just something that governments levy on a major corporation to get their attention. It's not something that they would actually expect to ever receive.
It's sort of like those $250,000 fines that the RIAA charges some 13-year-old girl when they catch her downloading a Lindsey Lohan song.
It's not a serious fine, it's a media stunt.
A thousand or so years ago the Holy Roman Emperor had a disagreement with the Pope.
"Fuck the pope," said Emperor Hildebrand. "I control the land, the armies, the food, the markets, the people, everything. All he controls is the church."
The pope told the priests to tell the people that they would be excommunicated and go to hell if they obeyed the Emperor instead of the church. Six months later, Emperor Hildebrand was begging the Pope to allow him to administer the churches' 'guidance' in politics. The Pope was so mad that he made Hildebrand walk barefoot in the snow until his feet were frozen and had to be amputated.
This matters today because although Brussels controls the government, Microsoft controls the operating system that EVERYBODY depends on to feed their families and bring order to their lives. Microsoft will win this one because there is no realistic alternative to Windows. Linux is simply not ready yet.
The purpose of forcing Microsoft to allow distribution of source code that uses its APIs is to make sure that there are no more hidden anticompetitive APIs.
"I think so, Brain, but 'instant karma' always gets so lumpy." - Pinky
"Decepticons FOREVER!!!" - Ravage
This is clearly a reference to Microsoft using their operating system monopoly to block competition in applications by frigging around with the APIs.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's more than enough to bribe the unelected people in the EU Commission, which are supposed to work for the people, but instead push big corporate interests such as software patents. When voted down by the European parliament, which IS voted in, they continue to push their own agenda which everybody else hates.
Even countries not member of EU like Norway have to include EU laws by default through the EC (former EEC). Europe is A LOT different today than 20 years ago, unfortunately mimicing USA.
If it was in the same spirit of Declaration of Independence, it would be great with globalization. But it's only for short-sighted money and profit, which erodes the whole purpose.
You are wrong WRONG WRONG!
You certainly can explain it in a way that is more complicated and difficult. I suggest you try using a thesaurus. Use more commas, lots and lots of commas. Try writing it in Cantonese. And if all else fails, let Clippy offer you some advice.
My mind boggles at the hipocricy needed to make such a statement without _ANY_ backing up.
It doesn't exactly help your case to cry like a 6 year old and shout using bold either.
In general people can be extridited as long as the crime for which they are requested is a crim in both countries involved.
Of course each country put exceptions (i.e. most civilized countries will not extradite anybody to a country where the alleged crime could carry the death penalty).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
YOu would not want to keep bozos fighting vendettas against sovereing legal systems with your money.
I concur with the previous poster, the board would be fired, and this reason is exactly why his is not going to happen.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
MS, the US telecomms, the steel monopolies of the 19th century, all of them are figments of our imagination.
Whould would have known that our imagination was a pinko-anarchist-left-liberal entity?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
France and Germany, for example, will never extradite their own citizens for any crime. They do offer to prosecute them locally on behalf of a foreign country upon request, but won't ever extradite anyone except for non-citizens.
Many other countries specify that they will only extradite people for violent crimes, or for crimes carrying a potential sentence of over 2 years.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I see no evidence for this.
I see you somehow managed to miss the history behind "eminent domain" and the rail barons. Or the regulation which ended all competition with the Edison Power Company overnight, with a snap of the bureaucratic fingers. Or the government-enforced oligopolies in telecommunications and air transportation which only recently ended. I could go on here if you like.
Without the power of government to enforce the will of a corporate entity at gunpoint it's very difficult to build a monopoly, or an oligopoly. The only recent example I can think of in this regard is Microsoft, and even here we have government complicity in that through executive interference MS was let off the hook and allowed to get away with the CRIMINAL acts (matter of record, not opinion) which it used to obtain that monopoly in the first place.
Yep, government is *real* effective at putting the lid on those evil monopolies. Not.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
But without Government, the monopolies hire private armies to enforce their will. Nice as the idea of anarcho-sydicalism may be, I suspect they are not particulary realistic.
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
But without Government, the monopolies hire private armies to enforce their will. Nice as the idea of anarcho-sydicalism may be, I suspect they are not particulary realistic.
This is the very definition of "dictatorship". At this point the corporation *is* the government.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
He's clueless, I'm not. Maybe my "Funny" mod will do something about his cluelessness (and yer welcome to the karma).