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EU satisfied With Microsoft's Antitrust Plan

Posted by timothy on from the yeah-that's-ok-then dept.

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."

3 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Slap on the wrist by mcc · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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"...
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    Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
  2. Re:Huh? by JamesTRexx · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

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  3. EU Satisfied???? by Inzkeeper · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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]