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?

[Uruk]

The fine applies if they can't come to an agreement about the way to fix the issue. The way I read the article, it's not that they are currently dodging the fine, it's that the fine doesn't apply unless a set of conditions are met, and they're trying to avoid meeting that set of conditions, by putting together a different agreement with the EU that supposedly everybody can live with.

From the article:

The U.S. software giant could be hit with a fine of up to $5 million a day if the European Commission concludes that its proposals would not allow non-Microsoft work group servers to achieve full interoperability with Windows PC and servers.

Re:Huh?

[Spad]

The fine is question was related to Microsoft's Proposal for implementing the changes that the EU requested. They had until June 1st to submit said proposal or face a "late" fine.

They've already been fined almost 500 million Euros for their original Monopoloy conviction.

Re:Huh?

[dwlovell]

Laws are not always clear. Thats why a judge's job is to intepret a law's meaning as it applies to a specific case. (Legislators make laws, judges interpret them, and the police enforces them).

So some company is engaging in action X that they dont believe breaks the law by their interpretation. You cry fowl and say it is breaking the law by your interpretation. So you file a lawsuit to have a judge determine the law's meaning for this situation. Even if the judge sides with your interpretation, that doesn't mean the company was knowingly breaking the law. They can show that they felt it was legal. Much of punishment has to do with intent. The key is that the judge will make it clear going forward what is legal and what is not and how to resolve/punish past actions. (ie: are there damages to 3rd parties as a result, was the market damaged? Does the company need to cleanup the results of their actions?) In this way the company is fined based on what damages they are responsible for (maybe none) and the law is clarified for future companies who are unsure how to interpret the law.

There is a common way to handle these agreements in the U.S. that is called a "Consent Decree" where a company effectively says "We didn't do anything wrong, but we promise to never do it again." This EU decision and its resulting consequences/agreements is probably similar to a consent decree.

This is a totally reasonable result for this case. Just saying "Microsoft broke the law" is easy to say after a judge has interpreted the law to agree with you. You can debate all day wether Microsoft or other companies knowingly break laws and then cry "we didn't know", but these consent decrees/settlements protect everyone from getting screwed by vaugely worded laws.

-David

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.

Good Timing

[syntap]

I guess it is pretty smart to get all of the Microsoft Antitrust issues worked out while the EU still exists in present form. Otherwise Microsoft's settlement may have to be made in half Lira, half Euro.

Industry Abuse

[TripMaster Monkey]

The next step is for the proposal to be "market tested" with other industry players before a final assessment is given by the EU.

(Some time in the future...)

EU: OK...our market testing period is over....what do you say, other industry players?

Other Industry Players: (cringing under a withering stare from Microsoft) Oh yes...the proposal is very reasonable...most acceptable...

EU: Are you OK? What happened to your face?

M$: He fell down some stairs.

OIP: (stammering) I fell down some stairs.

^_^

Clarifying Register article

[MathFox]

The Register has an interesting article with a quote from the EU commissioner:

"I remain determined to ensure that all elements of the Decision are properly implemented. This includes the ability for developers of open source software to take advantage of the remedy."

So, MS's problems are not over yet!

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"...

How much do you want to bet....

[suman28]

"I remain determined to ensure that all elements of the Decision are properly implemented. This includes the ability for developers of open source software to take advantage of the remedy." How much do you want to bet that this issue will slowly be pushed into the background and eventually disappear? Microsoft has always found a way out of such situations.

Re:Eu, which EU?

[daniil]

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but your optimism is a bit premature. While the "no" to the constitutional treaty has thrown the EU into a crisis, the union will not, in all likelyhood, suddenly just "go away" because of that. For one, the previous treaties still hold, and because of that, the EU will keep on existing in its current state.

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:Eu, which EU?

[acostin]

I am from Romania, a country scheduled for EU integration in 2007. I might see that my bitter-sweet joke wasn't interpreted as it should. We'd like to have a strong EU, but unfortunately the western europeans are scared by the integration problems ... on the short term, the Eastern-Europeans will invade their workplaces, and thus unemployment will be higher ... however, in the long term, a strong EU will help Europe compete with USA and China. Anyway - Romania will probably be delayed one year... We'll live and see.

$5 million fine per day!

[beej]

At that rate Microsoft will run out of cash in 2037! Sell! Sell!

Communication standard are like language

[what about]

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

Well, this is what Microsoft is doing. You want to talk with Microsoft ? then you have to "licence".

Even better similarity. A Company creates a new language and slowly have half of the world speak it. For the other half of the world you have to "licence" the fact that you can talk that new language.

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.

Microsofts Proposal

[DrugCheese]

You know it's not fair if Microsoft proposed it.

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]

Re:FFS

[ClosedSource]

The market leading browser prior to IE was a non-standard browser. If MS had never entered the broswer market we'd probably be seeing "Best viewed in Netscape XX" on web pages.

If you test the non IE browsers you mentioned I'll bet you'll find none of them are 100% compatabile with standards and none render pages exactly the same.

There's a lot of valid critism's that apply only to IE but non-standard browsing isn't one of them.

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.

Re:even though the sticky question of "open source

[d_jedi]

So you're saying Microsoft...

gasp ..

expects to be PAID for their work?

That's so COMMUNIST of them!..
wait...