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Microsoft Sues EU

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the battlegrounds-masquerading-as-courts dept.

mormop writes "News.com is reporting that Microsoft is hauling the European Commission into court." The case is in response to "imposed sanctions against the software giant, including a record fine of about $621 million (497 million euro) in March 2004, in a case that also covered the bundling of Microsoft's Media Player with Windows, but the company has not entirely carried them out."

7 of 272 comments (clear)

  1. Microsoft Scared of Open Source? by Nerd+Systems · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It looks like these days, that Microsoft is getting a little scared of the Open Source movement... especially having to share how their server software's communication protocols work. Information of this nature is easily available in the Linux community, yet Microsoft seems to have a very tight leash on their communication protocols.

    I wonder what the real underlying reason to all of this legal wrangling is. Is Microsoft really that concerned by Open Source Software putting them out of business, or are they more concerned about the general public seeing how flawed and inefficient their communication protocols are?

    It is all good either way to me, I'll stick with my servers all running Linux, with the communication protocols of them freely able to be examined and understood. I also know that my Linux server can handle way more connections and traffic then a Windows server ever could imagine...

    It is only a matter of time, before Linux totally takes over the server market, making such legal battles a thing of the past...

    Microsoft, stop being a big bully, and start sharing with the little guys...

    --
    Need a Nerd?
    Nerd Systems
    1. Re:Microsoft Scared of Open Source? by garcia · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It looks like these days, that Microsoft is getting a little scared of the Open Source movement... especially having to share how their server software's communication protocols work. Information of this nature is easily available in the Linux community, yet Microsoft seems to have a very tight leash on their communication protocols.

      These days? I see by your UID that you've not been around on Slashdot all that long (at least w/your current username) but Microsoft has been fearing OSS for years. This is no new development.

      Of course they are keeping tight controls on their communications protocols (they always did - SMB). They were never about to open their document formats or networking protocols to the public. Why should they? Their software is only marginally better than any other alternative out there -- it's just that they are the ones that interoperate with it the best because it's their format!

      It is only a matter of time, before Linux totally takes over the server market, making such legal battles a thing of the past...

      Welcome to 1998. This is exactly the rhetoric being tossed around then. We then moved to Linux taking over the desktop. It's 2005. While I see significant strides on both sides of that coin I don't see us "taking over the market" in either.

      Windows will likely always exist. Linux will always be there as well but they certainly won't amass the domination that Microsoft has now.

    2. Re:Microsoft Scared of Open Source? by RetroGeek · · Score: 2, Interesting

      how flawed and inefficient their communication protocols are

      Back in the days of Win95 and OS/2 (v4), I had a application which scanned a directory structure and gathered statistics. I had compiled the source to target both OS/2 and DOS (two executables, one for each OS). It was a command line app. At the time, we had a network traffic analyzer which I could see from my workstation.

      Running the app in Win95 (MS-DOS) used about 20% more bandwidth than running the app under OS/2. Both trails were run from the same machine (dual boot) against the same networked machine. AFAIK all parameters were the same except for the OS.

      So yes, I believe that the MS network code is less efficient than other OS's network code.

      --

      - - - - - - - - - - -
      I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
  2. On the surface by kerohazel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's interesting because, on the surface, Microsoft appears to be actually loosening up a bit about its fistful of secrets. "Why don't we set down some general rules about who can see our code, and let the courts decide on a case-by-case basis?"

    It almost had me fooled, too. Then I remembered that Microsoft, with its army of lawyers, would surely turn any lawsuit with a small F/OSS group into a circus. It seems MS doesn't even have to push through its agenda these days, all it has to do is agree to looser terms and then throw money at it to tighten it further.

    Oh, and first /. post. :)

    --
    Skype is too convoluted... Now I'm reverse-engineering the Kyoto Protocol.
  3. Re:So now... by sconeu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So now you can Sue People who don't buy and use your products. Because they didn't buy and use their products.

    Yep. It's been done. Bus line sues women for car-pooling.

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  4. Re:Talk About Duh ? by cpghost · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Microsoft suing the EU in a European Courtroom...

    It's not unusual for EU institutions to loose lawsuits before european courts. That's why they too employ an army of lawyers.

    --
    cpghost at Cordula's Web.
  5. Re:This is no different than BitKeeper by adtifyj · · Score: 2, Interesting

    But, whether they like it or not, being told to interoperate is the fruit of thier own success. Microsoft is legally classified as a monopoly, and so it is governments responsibility to stand over them to ensure that innovation is not stifled.

    Regarding BitKeeper, paying customers recieve a product that is extremely good at inter-operating, and BitMover always went out of their way to assist open source developers export their data in a variety of ways.

    The objection was about an open source client being developed to talk to the BitKeeper TCP talk. Personally I think the offical client would never have been threatened by the open source client, but I can understand BitMover's response. The approach that was used to develop the open source client was hardly strict clean-room reverse engineering with specifications being developed by one team, and the coding done by another. Consequently, BitMover became scared of a herd of cats, and withdrew their free-to-download client.