EU satisfied With Microsoft's Antitrust Plan

rcrc writes "According to Reuters, Microsoft's proposal to avoid paying a fine of $5 million a day has almost been approved by the European Union in a long-running antitrust case. The case deals with the interoperability between the Windows PC and servers. The next step is for the proposal to be "market tested" with other industry players before a final assessment is given by the EU."

Comments

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft's "proposal to avoid paying the fine"? How is anything other than complying with the court's decision acceptable?

If I steal a car and get a suspended sentence, then go out and steal another car, do I get to make a "proposal to avoid going to jail"?

Microsoft broke the law. Why are they not facing the consequences of their actions? Since when do criminals get to decide how they should be punished?

Re:Huh?

[lotrtrotk]

Read: $$$

Re:Huh?

[alecks]

Man, if I was Bill, I'd give the EU the middle finger and stop selling them my software. So it'll put a little dent in my billion dollar revenues... but fuck em. You don't like my os, don't buy it!

Re:Huh?

[JamesTRexx]

If he did that MS would lose a whole lot more than just the European market. The EU would pour a lot of money into development of OSS and maybe in a year or less you'd have your "desktop" BSD and GNU/Linux. Software companies all over the world would start porting their software to OSS platforms. And at that point the rest of the world would ask themselves why'd they pay for MS software when they can get most of the same for free. Although I see this thing happening anyway, MS doesn't want to speed up the process so they comply.

Re:Huh?

[drsmithy]

So what if i'd be bankrupt in about two weeks, for hey, at least i'd still have my pride: noone would be able to say that i subjugated myself to my customers' demands.

Customers aren't the one making the demands here, the EU is.

Re:In all honesty...

[PyWiz]

Every year more EU countries and even non-EU countries switch over to Linux. No, they won't. Entire countries are not just going to switch over, they have too much invested in MS products to make this even close to feasible. Consider that MS now controls upwards of 90% of the desktop market. People aren't going to wake up one day and think "Oh, in spite of all the money I've spent on MS software and all the time I've invested in learning how to use MS products, I think I'll switch to Linux because it's free and allows people who know how to modify the source code (I don't have the first clue LOL). Regardless of the fact that it will require me to learn an entire new way of doing things and probably greatly eliminate my productivity in the short run, it's worth it for me to switch to linux because of it's socialist model which I find unacceptable in other areas of business but completely support when it comes to software."

No, I'm sorry, just no. Personally, I use both MS products and Linux. Why? Well Linux works better for many of programming related projects I am involved in and I can get great free development tools. When it comes to gaming and general desktop applications though, I fire up my WinXP box because, well, it just works.

It's just a matter of time before MS is not even on the radar.

You have got to be kidding me. Honestly, I cannot believe someone would say something like this without any sort of evidence or support for their statement. You think MS's huge marketshare is just going to disappear? Excuse me, but what fantasy business world do you live in where that is even remotely plausible?

Looks guys, I'm not trying to be mean here, but I'm honestly sick and tired of misinformed people claiming Linux is going to take over and replace microsoft. It's just not going to happen. Linux is good for some things, and MS is good for others. They are not mutually exclusive. Live with it.

Slap on the wrist

[mcc]

But the EU executive voiced satisfaction with Microsoft's proposed solution -- even though the sticky question of "open source" licenses was not fully resolved -- and said the plan would now be put to industry peers for their opinion.

1. Gradually and systematically remove all your competitors from the market, except the open source ones.
   
2. Gain freedom from regulators by agreeing to cooperate with your competitors, except the open source ones.
   
3. ???
   
4. Profit

The ???, in case you're wondering, stands for "artificial barriers to entry".

I can only hope they count SUSE as an "industry peer"...

Re:But will Microsoft have a monopoly in the futur

[GweeDo]

How is apple "hedgin into Microsoft's PC market"? Apple is switching their CPU...nothing else. Still gotta buy the Mac to run the OS X...this doesn't affect MS like you are trying to make it sound. +1 Interesting...hurm...good work mods!

great

[cahiha]

But the EU executive voiced satisfaction with Microsoft's proposed solution -- even though the sticky question of "open source" licenses was not fully resolved -- and said the plan would now be put to industry peers for their opinion.

Uh, huh. Those "industry peers" are likely still companies wedded to proprietary software. Microsoft loves to put out licenses that permit commercial implementations (even royalty-free) but are incompatible with open source. "Industry peers" are not the right group to ask--legislators need to think for themselves.

Re:Communication standard are like language

[WillAffleckUW]

What would you think if some big company asked you to "licence" the right to talk English, or French, or Chineese ?

Well, English is Open Source with many homes, French is BSD with the official provider the Academie Francaise (and some variants in Canada etc), and Chinese is a bunch of languages - Mandarin for example is one.

Re:Eu, which EU?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is not the integration. The problem is what you (I mean all who lives in the soon EU countries) get paid for your work. The problem is that this piece of sh1t that they call a treaty has only 4 pages about social rights in a 350 pages book. What most of us (Western European) would like to see is an integration where not only the market is integrated but the people is too integrated. What we like is that you come here and get paid the same that we are paid, not less, and work just as much as we do, not more. Or if you like it another way: we want you to get paid as many euro/hour as we are. Then it will be no problem in expanding the EU to any other country.

What would you think of your politics if they changed your laws to allow kids to substitute adults being paid with toys? much less expensive than paing an adult, isn't it? Would you say "hey, let kids work and let's make a party while we get fired!". I don't think so.

The REAL problem are not the workers. The real problem are those bastards that only watch their wallets and don't give a sh1t about people. And this treaty gives power to those bastards.

And I know you are as good as we to make the same jobs (given the same training). So, why we have to say yes to "same job, less money"?

EU Satisfied????

[Inzkeeper]

The article title is too funny!
Compare that to other news sites:
TheReg/Tom's: MS and EU inch towards agreement
InternetNews: Microsoft And Europe Getting Closer
Groklaw: Microsoft is still sparring with the EU Commission

Does that sound like the EU is satisfied?
[IRONY] What kinda pro-MS rag is this?! [/IRONY]

Not to mention all of the internationals...

[leonbrooks]

...who would drop MS-Windows etc like a smoking potato globally if they couldn't keep their European branches updated, and the companies headquartered in Europe who would require their outliers to follow suit.

That happy thought should sustain me through the day.