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EU Fines for Microsoft Approved, Off the Record
mattaw writes "The Register is carrying a report that all 25 member states of the EU have found Microsoft guilty of non-compliance, off the record. Microsoft is in line for a fine of $2.51 million per day backdated to December 15th 2004 for failing to meet the terms of the EU commission's ruling."
It doesn't really mean all that much. Microsoft will do some kind of wheeling and dealing efforts to 1) lower the fine and 2) establish an even stronger marketshare in the EU such as giving away windows/office/etc to schools, businesses, etc. Sadly, in the end it all works out for redmond.
It's just too bad that the only one they ever seem to go after is Microsoft.
So roughly that's a year plus 7 months is ~575 days * 2.51 million, that's ONE BILLION DOLLARS! (1,443,250,000) Who let Dr. Evil run Europe?
WikiAfterDark.com It's a sex wiki, go now!
If you think a goverment is anything more than a corporation with guns, you're fooling yourself.
Gosh, it really sucks now that Bill is gone.
As of July 5th, 2006: 567 days * 2.51 million per day = $1.423 BILLION Is there any way to avoid this fine?
From TFA: "I can assure you that we are continuing to work day and night with our 300 dedicated engineers to create documentation which is complete and accurate to satisfy the European Commission."
No wonder then! If it takes 300 engineers, several nights and days to document the protocols of an obsolete OS..... we should be surprised if Vista ships before 2010!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
hmm, ~1.4 billion...
guess bill can only buy 2 small countrys this year,
My first reaction was "w00t, MS is being fined > 1 billion". But, then I thought about it for a bit. Does even microsoft deserve that kind of ruling? They actually have made some changes, like the windows version without windows media player. And > 1 billion hardly seems to be a fair amount to charge for not documenting your software properly, even if you are a monopoly. It just somehow feels like theres something not right about it, even if it does give me the "eat that microsoft" feelings... call me strange if you want.
I'm not a fan of M$'s business tactics, but the fuggin EU stepping up and trying to get a billion dollar slice of the pie is ridiculous. I hope Microsoft doesnt pay any of that.. If anyones gonna try to gorge M$'s bank account let that be the US, so US citizens might reap some of the benefits..
An EC spokesman was unwilling to comment.
Seconds earlier that night, said EC spokesman was was overheard in an Amsterdam cafe, "Dude! Can you believe it? $1.4 Billion. Pass that shit over here, some jackass American reporter is ringing my mobile."
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
I know this is gonna burn me by saying so, but i honestly see this as a money grab more than anything else. Microsoft isnt going to change its business strategy anytime soon because of this. If they really cared about this fine they'd refuse to pay it and watch the uproar that would ensue when it became illegal to sell Windows in the EU. Do you really believe the majority would accept that they could not use the most popular OS in the world? The really sad part is that judgements like this are the reason windows sells for $300-400 instead of 50-100, as future judgements like this are part of their pricing model
drunk chemists
1.5 years of 2.51 mln dollars a day would be somewhere around 1.35 bln dollars. Before all the
Microsoft hating Microsoft users that actually depend on their products (your stupid choice)
get all excited all it means is that everything from their Desktop OS to their smallbusiness
database offering, including support, training, certification and "professional" services
costs EUR 50 - EUR 300 more / item. That money then goes straight to the glorious EU your
Ubergovernment in Brussels and Strasbourg that is also living off of your back right alongside
your respective national government leeches.
We can always hope that Microsoft will tell Europe to stuff it, and it will pull all it's marbles out of Europe, and people will switch to OSS...
300 engineers to document some protocols? I could believe 10, maybe 20 could get the job done in a few weeks. How on earth could 300 engineers work together on such a (excuse my ignorance/naivete) trivial job for two years? Hasn't this guy heard of The Mythical Man Month? MS aren't idiots; they've designed the process to fail. They deserve every cent of the fines.
Is that like double secret probation?
I do think some aspects of what Microsoft does will have to change, the fine is not just backdated but also continues every day until Microsoft compiles. Yes Microsoft has a lot of money but that's a lot of money to bleed every year and shareholders will not like it at all.
I do not know what will change, but it's a situation that cannot stand - not to mention that if Microsoft simply coughts up the fine indefinatley it will be raised to an amount they cannot ignore as easily.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, it should be just as easy to get high level "corporate" people in jail as it is to get non corporate regular old folks in jail. YOU try telling some court "no" to this or that demand and stalling for time, you'll find youreself in the pokey within days, not years, days. Yet MS and other corporate fascist enterprises can get away with most anything and just pay fines, which their customers pay for anyway.
I'd like to see top execs jailed, and shareholders lose all their investment money when stock is officially declared to be worthless, as in, no longer worth being sold, no value other than it's weight as a novelty item or scrap paper may be assigned to it, by court decree. Kill off crooked corporations, revoke their charters, make their stock worthless overnight.
THEN maybe mostly clueless "investors" would wake up to the fact they they have an interest and DUTY in seeing the companies they "invest" in don't do criminal acts, and these various managers and owners of large cororations can't continually hide behind lawyers just because of their sheer economic size. And if that means the end of mutual funds because people can't be assed enough to do a little research into what they "invest" in-who the heck cares? really, whoi cares besides a handful of middleman stock skimmers? Make people take an active role in their investments, increase the risk potential substantially and you wil also see a more stable and more sane stockmarket.
Bill Gates and Ballmer need to be in JAIL for what they did over the years. They are CROOKS, conmen, thieves, strong arm specialists, fraudsters, and etc. MS shouldn't be "on trial", named high level executives should be under investigation, there is no such thing as a living MS, named human beings made the decisions. Those that decide and give illegal orders to working stiff minions need to go to jail for criminal acts, no fine is necessary then other then court costs. Once a passle of jet setting fatcats start getting locked up we just might see some global corporate changes in how business is done. I say give companies the same "three strikes and you are out" treatment most regular humans get in the court system, commit three felonies, that's it, you can easily get a life sentence now. For corporations, same deal, three criminal convictions, it should be *automatic dissolution of charter*, nullification of stock worth, and jail sentences for the entire board of directors.
THAT is the only way to get corporate responsibility in todays greed based world, make humans ALWAYS respnsible for their actions, take away that totally insane "corporate personhood" status and the shield of near immunity from liability for actions. That system is just SO broken...chuck it out, it doesn't work, not worth fixing.
The price of windows has gone up by $10 with Microsoft sighting 'increased costs'.
And a Microsoft exec responds: "$1.4 billion, *yawn*. Do you take visa or should I pay with cash?"
Letsee... 1.5 years @ $2.51 million a day....
That's the sort of coin that Bill Gates finds in his sofa.
"say, MS has been abusing their monopoly.. maybe we could uh, fine them. Let's put it to a vote and see if anyone else wants money from MS?"
To me it's a sad day for America when we have to rely on other countries to police our corporations for us. Of course, I wonder if the EU would have been as hard on Microsoft if it were based in, say, France?
may i inquire who will acctually get to have
:P
the MS money? i mean, is someone (in the eu)
going to pay for a hamburger at McDs, buy a car,
a house, or bring their "other" wife to a fancy
restaurant?
curious mind want to know!
2.5 million a day, going to which bank account exactly
and who has the right to withdraw from that said account?
please! i want to know!
maybe the "goverment" offices in eu is going to use
that money to get new compis with vista on them?
around and around it goes
(im from eu, or the only country in it which doesn't
belong to it)
Now roll that 1 billion dollars into OSS development to bring an open source OS and applications up to truly competitive levels with MS. Hell I'd even be satisfied if they paid EU software companies to port their application software to OSX. Just get some freaking competition in there already...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Sure, MS could abide by local laws and not drag out a case where they know they're in the wrong.
Oh, unless you were asking if there was any way for them to to avoid it now?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It might be "chump change", but it seriously eats the daily profits of the company all the same (As in the damn fine eats approximately 1/20th of the profits per day...)- and ultimately they're answerable to the shareholders. They could have avoided this drag on profits- which is what is going to be the only thing they're going to see.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
It's not like Microsoft's OS in inreplacable. If the government really wanted to force them out of business, they could just make'em pay back all license fees in fines and spend those money on developing Free Software.
That'd be the Right Thing to create a Free Market.
Yes, and if by some miracle they win a boat race against Sun and Novell, not only will any multiple secret probation be rescinded, but José Barroso will be forced to grandmaster a parade in Microsoft's honor.
The ruling was in 2004 but the fines were to start on Dec. 12 2005 if MS had not complied by then. The actual current fine would be about $530M.
With all hte pr0n on the internet why the fuck would people pay for T&A softcore like Girls Gone Wild? Fuck, people are dumb.
MS should pay the fine in MS shares. :P
i'm sure this way this won't be an issue
in the future then
An United States flag above an European Union article ;)
/. is carrying enough european/international topics
maybe time to add a template for overseas too? since
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
2.51 million per day backdated to december 15th
202 days
$507,020,000 USD
plus 2.51 each day til they are im compliance.
thatsa pretty big chunk o cash.
they expect to make 11.5 - 11.7 billion this year, losing 5% is pretty bad.
Even though I'm a fanatical Linux user who dislikes Microsoft for just about everything, this is absurd.
First they want MS to remove WMP. Okay. They do that, they rebrand Windows XP, provide millions of redesigned software boxes, change their ad campaigns... And what happens? Almost nobody wants to buy "Windows XP N", the one without WMP. The old version sells several orders of magnitude more.
Then they want MS to document stuff. Okay. They start doing that, they offer source code, but documenting is not a trivial task - there are probably hundreds of protocols to document and tens of thousands of pages of documentation to write and proofread... In several different languages, with a high documenting standard. And bam, there goes a fine.
What's to stop the EU from doing the same thing with other companies? How about Oracle or IBM? Or Apple, whose FairPlay DRM is already deeply entrenched in everyone's iPod? Source code access obviously isn't enough... And what if they require Linus to provide full legally-acceptable documentation for the Linux kernel? Who is going to write it?
This sounds like a very bad move... If source code and hobbyist documentation really isn't enough. I fear that legal action could even spread against small open source companies, such as my own. I don't have the resources to hire documentation writers.
Microsoft is not a human being. Although corporations are sometimes technically given the same status as a "person" for certain legal purposes (like copyright law), this is a legal abstraction and not real. Microsoft can not be "punished" like a naughty puppy.
Money is an abstraction used to medium to facilitate the exchange of goods and service based on supply and demand. It is a tool for expressing the consumer/producer relationship. If you take more pieces of paper (or bits in a computer, nowadays) from Microsoft, you are not fundamentally altering the consumer/producer relationship. Neither the demand nor the supply of the software has changed. Microsoft still demands x share of the total goods and services in the economy in exchange for it's software, nomatter how you juggle the means of exchange. Money is how we measure the relationship, but it is not the relationship itself.
Microsoft, being at the top of the OS market, will simply add the costs of the fines to the price they charge for their OS. It is not like having to sell a version of Windows without Windows Media Player is seriously going to cut into their bottom line. The consumers of Europe are going to pay this fine in the form of higher software costs (both from Microsoft which will recoup the costs in the software price, and Microsoft's competitors who will have less incentive to lower their price if Microsoft is charging more).
This "fine" is simply a tax on European consumers. It is a way for the EU to allocate a larger share of the total goods and services in the economy, and at the same time posturing that they are somehow "helping" Europeans.
-1, Insightful. You win.
It amuses me, how many people don't understand this and think of government as some benevolent protective force.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
If it's off the record it should not exist. What is the EU anyway to have such a provision.
Yea I loath microsoft but choosing which evil is worse gets difficult.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Man, it's weird how much pro-Microsoft shilling appears on Slashdot whenever there's a EU discussion. All Microsoft had to do was document their APIs as requested by the commission. Why do MS fanbois hate that idea so much?
"Sufferin' succotash."
Italy maybe somewhere close to that. But Germany? Never! And they bought the whole frigin' EU for the price of France?
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Still, it's the corporation you're employed in. You work for it, you get certain benefits, and if you play foul, you get punished, or fired (=jailed) for a certain period of time. It's bad if your corporation is getting ripped off by other corporations.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
(n/t)
Will Microsoft cough up and pay, or will the EU have to raid their european headquarters, confiscate property and put it all on sale. All these computers with Windows sources on their harddrives on public auction, that would be an interesting turn of events.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
well, that's got more to do with the reporting than with the eu.
Money represents goods and services. Microsoft is being fined for non-compliance. The fine will either be pad by cheque or by having goods and services to that value conviscated. Unless legal relief is obtained, the fine will be collected. It is Microsoft that must pay the bill. I don't knw if it is Microsoft EU being fined or Microsoft in general. But I can assure you that if Microsoft EU raised its prices in response and Microsoft global did not Microsoft EU would shortly cease to exist. So it will not be a tax on EU users of Windos but a tax on all users of Windows (if it can be considered a tax at all).
That's gotta hurt!
They new IN ADVANCE that not being compliant from this date onwards would lead to this fine, 2.51 PER DAY.
They chose themselves to be not compliant, and wait and see. MSFT has become used to getting away with illegal practices, and up to now never gave a damn about law and justice, they think special rules exist for them.
What choice does the EU commission have? It was all known in advance, MSFT is to blame themselves for not complying but to go to court instead.
You have got to be kidding. Microsoft is the only one _you_ see on the news probably. The EU is very strict on this sort of things. Have a look at the EU vs Alitalia or the EU vs Olympic Airlines, or the EU vs BMW and GM. The EU even goes against its own country members if they fail to comply with EU law. No matter how people want to see it, microsoft is not the innocent victim here...
[Offtopic]Congrats to Italy for Barrying Germany 'Squadra Azzurra' Style! I hope you guys lift the cup in the end![/offtopic]
Well it's a corporation. You can't jail it so you have to fine it.
... but one building has all the server farms, and the other building has all the presentation boardrooms ... so they just walk back and forth like it's a regular day at Microsoft. Perhaps they mutter under their breath about the wastefulness of the court's judgment as they go.
Ahh, but there is an alternative punishment - something we can do to corporations that we can't do to people. Cut them in half!
However this raises an immediate question: How do you ensure that the resulting two (or more) entities don't just collude and price-fix their way along as if they were still whole?
It's easy to imagine - two big campuses in Redmond, one given the MS Office suite, one given the Windows codebase - each told by judicial decree that they can no longer cooperate
This is why I wish that as part of a Windows interoperability and documentation settlement, the EU had the authority to say, "Okay, Microsoft. You know that corporate branch you have in Mountain View, where you run all the hotmail services? They're a separate company now, and THEY own MS Office. Expect a phone call from the department chief down there in about a week, asking for all the source code. I'm sure he'll want to establish a relocation package for all your Office coders, too. By the way, the new company is called Officesoft. Play nice with them."
You'd be amazed what a difference physical separation can make in terms of corporate attitude... Unfortunately, the opportunity for a remedy like this for Microsoft withered down to nothing in the first year of Bush Jr(tm)(r)(c)'s reign. Now innovation on the OS front has been STALLED, for 95% of the world, for the past FIFTEEN YEARS. >:(
... as actual corporations generally provide a service to their customers when they spend billions of dollars a year.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Why do MS fanbois hate that idea so much?
Because their high priests are being dismantled and the pagan FOSS hordes are threatening to run over the MSC* bastions?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
How could this be considered insightful? Read these, insightful, comments
and I really doubt that the region derives actual profit from paying to use MS products.
There are two different situations here, short term and long term.
In the short term people would be quite happy to pirate windows, it worked for years it will work again.
In the long term you are dead wrong, if the EU simply outlawed windows then we'd see massive investments in Mac and Linux (both OS and apps) and eventually even games availability would be on par with windows.
MS is a money pit that's sucking many GigaEUR out of EU every year and leaves us with less freedom than we had, so I would really like to see all MS products outlawed or at least their EU profits taxed 100%.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
MS just needs to include a copy of Linux with each copy of Windows. If you don't want to use IE (or whatever the specific product is - Messenger?) then you install Linux instead.
Of course the net outcome of this will probably be that MS products go up in price (hopefully just in the EU) to cover the fines and MS rolls on as normal. EU get's its pile of money, MS doesn't care and the users are the ones that pay for the EU's stupidity.
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
...the EU default to linuxes and BSDs...
...the EU can't afford for them to back out of their country...
...The effect of MS backing out would be disastrous to the economy...
If all goes to crap, MS doesn't pull out of the EU, EU refuses to enforce MS IP ownership. Everyone keeps using MS products, and pirated versions are available for download within the EU for free. THAT is the nightmare scenario and we will never see it.
MS knows that they will always make more money by squirming and partially-complying than they will by leaving a market. Also, the US is not going to start a trade war to protect MS when they know what what would happen if it went before the WTO.
Prediction: Wriggle, squirm, writhe, followed by minimal compliance (to stop the fine) coupled with rapid API evolution/development to make it hard for competitors to keep up.
PS: Other firms are not going to be afraid of their products being treated like MS products because everyone with a business big enough to matter knows how MS has behaved in the market (although I do think many are worried about the EU regulatory environment in general).
I'm totally for the Free Software.
Because I want to be free to write whatever code I want. And be free to do with my code whatever I want.
So I also want others to be free to write code they want. And be free to do with their code whatever they want.
Including selling for a buck or for a credit (assuming there's someone who wants to buy/use it).
This judgement is just plain robbery. Remeber when MS was ordered to prepare a version of Windows without WMP? What for? Show me at lease ONE person who bought it...
It's not a troll.. I just hate governments punishing people for writing e.g. dvd decryption code or an os.
Watch out.. as RMS pointed out in one of his essays, you may soon be fined for using a debugger.
The fine is backdated to Dec 15 2004.
The headlines are wrong. The fine is retroactive to December 15, 2005.
my other sig is a 500 page novel
$2.51 million per day is an operating expense, not a fine. Their revenue is $25 million per day.
I'm thinking the cost of having competition would be greater. If I were Microsoft, I'd just keep not complying. It's worked these past two years.
Let's see...as of their last quarterly statement (ended March 2006), Microsoft has $33.51 Billion dollars in cash. At the rate of $2.51 million in fines per day, and backdating it to 2004, they should have another 33 years and some before they run out of cash. And that assumes they don't make another single penny profit in sales to add to their cash. It also ignores non-cash holdings.
I'm sure they're really sweating at Microsoft now...
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
A humorous typo that works out either way - thanks for the laugh (even if at my own expense...) :-)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When I say "It" I refer to the huge fines that the EU typically uses to punish pricefixing.
What americans don't seem to understand is that the EU is first and foremost a common market, it's an organization built to enable free (and fair) trade, restraint of trade and of competetion in EU is a capital crime and is punished until it stops.
I, for one, have no doubt that the EU will fine MS until it complies with the demands as MS' crime strikes right at the heart and soul of EU by limiting competetion.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
...at least you hope that's still the case.
But they can prohibit Microsoft from selling Windows Vista.
How do you imagine thats going to happen ?
1) there are no laws that i know of that would prohibit the selling of an item that is not dangerous in any way based on some abstract ruling
2) they would have to make a precedential law that would prohibit the selling of a specific product, created by this specific company - something that nobody in their right mind would actually support (i hope)
3) even if they did all that - all the members of the EU may choose to follow that directive, nobody can really force them
4) the EC cannot make such a directive pass go and collect 200 all by themselves
the most they can do is propose one like it, and the majority of the members of the EU would have to support it, which they probably wont.
What they can (can they?) do is revoke microsofts patents as a means of covering the fine and make them public domain - something that would actually cause an interesting turn of events.
1 billion worth of patents must cover quite a couple of areas and would allow competitors to legally hack away at microsofts binaries on order to create the documentation themselves.
... or because they are really US fanbois that will defend any USian entity against any outsider no matter what.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
"$1.4 billion, *yawn*. Do you take visa or should I pay with cash?"
"Cargo ship loaded with cash would be nice."
"That will fit in four ISO size containers, we can send it by air freight."
"I think no more than $1.5 milliard fits in a container. You need a ship to send $1.4 billion dollars."
"milliard? What the fuck is that?"
"I think you call these 'billions' back in the US. A billion here is a thousand milliards or a million millions."
"*cough* *choke*"
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Some people here already pointed out, that the fines will be a total of about 1.4 Billion USD.
Does anyone know what those fines will be used for? I doubt they will be donated to open source projects. I'd appreciate some more info.
If they break the treaty, the WTO will assign a fine. Not paying the fine will increase the fine, then all these people complaining about the size of THIS fine will complain about the size of the WTO fine.
I mean, if the EU is fined, they will just raise taxes and so be fining us, the constituents and that is bad, yes?
IIRC, the only part of the ruling that M$ refused to abide by was the release of the Win 95 source code. That proves that they have something worth $2,510,000.00 per day to hide. Given the current state if IP law, pirated code in Win 95 could easily be worth 10 times that amount.
You tell me - what else could M$ be hiding? Why else would they be funding SCO to fraudulently claim that the Linux Kernel contains SCO's code?
Andy Out!
Bill Gates will resign from Microsoft in the future because he wants to create the same strategy w/ the Enron's executives and one of the major reasons is this.
when will EU IPO? it is a good way to make money like this. if EU decides to IPO, i will buy a lot of EU stocks and hold it for a long long time. If I am the CEO of EU, I will kill MSFT in 3 years, and GOOG next, and then AAPL ... easy money.
This is what happens when state-enforced monopoly (copyright) and state-enforced competition (anti-trust laws) collide.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
After seing many of the posts here on /. i don't understand this "poor Microsoft evil EU mentality".
You see, my biguest personal grip with the law in capitalist countries at the moment is how disproportionaly harsher it is on individuals that it is on companies - for example, if an individual kills someone due to negligence he/she goes to prison, while if a company kills multiple people they get a fine.
Even more relevant to this situation is the disparity when both the individual and the company do something for which they are fined: the issue here is that, proportionaly to the annual income of the individual and the company, a fine with the same value usually is a much higher burden for an individual than for a company. Worse still, for equally harming crimes, companies often get lower fines than individuals since they have beter lawyers, beter connections and the law is (thanks to many years of lobbying) skewed to be harsher on the types of crimes done by individuals than one those done by companies even when both crimes do the same amount of harm.
So back to the fine on MS and to put things in perspective:
- MS had in the year of 2005 a net (thus after taxes) income of $12254 millions, a fine of 1.400 millions is thus 11,4% of their net income.
- For an individual making $150000 bruto per month, with a 30% flat income tax (thus $105000 net income), an equivalent fine (thus 11,4% of their yearly net income) would be $11970
Thus, Microsoft's fine is equivalent to a $11970 (in one year) fine for an individual with an well above average income.
Actually, it sounds like a small thing because that's not the whole thing, and it's the least of the non-compliance problems too. MS was basically ordered there to _also_ sell a version without it, which isn't even much of a punishment when they can keep selling the version _with_ Media Player too.
The current fighting is over the other, and more important part there, namely APIs and protocols. MS has been given a list of stuff it must provide adequate documentation for, and to everyone. That's all.
Basically what the EU is saying is "wtf? A situation where only Windows workstations can talk to a Windows server is a recipe for a monopoly. Do be so kind and provide the documentation for those protocols." It's just telling MS that its products should compete with others on their merits, not on being the only thing that can interoperate with their other products. It shouldn't be years of guesswork and reverse engineering just to get a Linux or Solaris box to talk to a Windows server.
And MS so far has been playing hardball and turning it into a media battle. It started by pulling stunts like selling some libraries and docs preferentially and putting some stupid conditions on getting them. (E.g., literally, you can't use them in an OSS product. Literally.) Then it offered a bunch of undocumented and incomplete implementation code. (The EU says: sorry guys, we asked for protocol documentation. Be so kind and provide the docs.) And so on. And, again, it's been busy astroturfing and turning it into a media posing contest.
And IMHO the court has played pretty nice so far. Even the fine is "backdated" and thus so large, because, seriously that was the final date at which MS was ordered to provide those docs. At some point, after giving MS ample time and letting them delay for years, the court basically said, "No, this is final. At date X you must provide those docs or pay a fine per day." It still gave MS more timeouts even after that, and a chance to not pay those fines, but under the explicit condition that, seriously, if MS still doesn't comply than the original date still stands.
Basically, seriously, if I did half that shit in a court of law, I'd be in contempt and probably facing some quality time behind bars. I'm not anti-MS or anything, but at some point a court of law must be able to enforce compliance or it becomes just a joke. You can't allow someone to basically just refuse to obey for years.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
*=I'm guessing that was the Games Division's fault.
That turned out to be all of Microsoft's "home" division, which included the Xbox as well as... wait for it... MSN. Microsoft had earlier said they were going to dip into their warchest to do a massive 1 billion dollar blitz to pull MSN out of the dumps. If it's the same year I'm thinking of, that was the year Halo 2 was released. By most people's estimations the Xbox had a probably profitable if not simply less lossy year. So it is quite plausible that the major losses from Microsoft that year came from fruitlessly advertising a dial-up service that nobody uses anymore, along with a search engine that was desperately in need of a revamp. And any other secret iLoo projects they may have canned, development of the X360, etc.
The ______ Agenda
Man, it's weird how much pro-Microsoft shilling appears on Slashdot whenever there's a EU discussion. All Microsoft had to do was document their APIs as requested by the commission. Why do MS fanbois hate that idea so much?
They don't. The problem is that the EU commission won't specify exactly what's "good enough" documentation.
It's like I asked you to give me some fruit. You're looking for a kumquat. I give you an orange, and you say "no, that's not good enough". I give you a lime, and you say "no, that won't do either". I ask you what kind of fruit you really want, and you say "no, you just have to give me the fruit".
Not really fair is it?
Coming soon - pyrogyra
eh... Italy should not be proud of the way they won through... especially the match against the Aussies :(
Your post started to nice and well-informed. To bad it ended like that :-)
Fleur de Sel
"I'm not saying that something shouldn't be done, but you can't just say "Sorry, you can't do business here" when 95% of your PCs being used every day need them."
Actually, yes you can and further if a company is breaking the law you must. If 2.5 million per day does not impress Microsoft then the EU should keep raising the fine until it does make an impression.
No corporation should be allowed to ignore the law. Period.
It is unlikely that Microsoft will stop selling there products in the EU. But this should not be a bluff. If Microsoft decides to cut off their own noses then so be it. There are alternatives and people will adapt.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
If you think that a corporation is anything more than a government without laws, representation or even a theoretical interest in human life and dignity, you are fooling yourself.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
In other news, the EU threatened to fine SCO $14.95, but the SCO corporate treasurer protested, saying the magnitude of the fine was totally unfair and beyond their capability to pay. IBM then spit up its coffee.
A billion is bi-million which is a million squared (10^12)
A trillion is a trillion which is a million cubed (10^18)
etc.
Sometime in the 1920s American journalists started using billion for a "thousand million" and it caught on. Prior to that the term wasn't commonly used. Sometime in the 1980s the BBC gave in and started to mis-use the term as well. It causes a lot of confusion in the rest of the world (except India, which has its own plethora of names) where they do use the term milliard.
(completely offtopic) The prize money in the TV quiz show "Who wants to be a millionaire?" in Indonesia is 10 Milliard Rupiah.
what part of better interoperability with third-party applications you don't understand?
Putting those directly responsible (e.g. managers or heck even the CEO) in prison however is.
I am NaN
This table is correct up to and including 10^12 - trillion - billion. Then it becomes horribly wrong. The key fact is: With the long scale used internationally, the numeral prefix (bi-, tri-, quadri-, ...) counts groups of six zeroes, or two steps on
the scientific magnitude scale (kilo-, mega-, ...). The short scale used in US english counts
groups of three zeroes above thousand.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
At this point, I don't think there's anything that SCO could say that would truly surprise anyone.
http://outcampaign.org/
Yes, very insightful.
Apart from the fact that Debian would include several media players and browsers, none of which were produced by themselves and would probably be delighted to include others of sufficient quality. So the monopoly abuse question (which is what the MS issue is all about) would never arise and your example is total bollocks.
Also the fact that anyone is free to take the debian source, make a totally compatable distro and include whatever media players etc. that they like (which can't be done with windows) makes your example double extra mega total bollocks.
I wish I wasn't forced to post as AC (by slashdot's bizarre IP address blocking which seems to exclude entire ranges from logging on for no apparant reason) so I could see if you attempt to justify your amazingly ignorant opinion which always crops up at least once every time the MS/EU issue is discussed.
So microsoft build themselves a successful model, and the governments decides that they are too successful, so fines them.
So whats next? apple get fined because the ipod only works with itunes? how about real player getting upset because no mp3 players use their format?
Maybe lotus notes will come out the woodwork and say there system really isn't crap, its microsofts fault for providing a system that people can actually use.
maybe coke will start on starbucks and gloria jeans for not selling their drinks?
How about christmas being banned and not a public holiday because other religions do not have their days off?
they got to where they are by being a successful company. what message does this send to companies? you can be successful up to a certain point, then you have to stop doing what you did to become successful, and give away all your IP.
Relieving Microsoft of their copyrights within EU member states would only serve to worsen the addiction to Microsoft's proprietary software. The present path is best: financial incentives to comply with a demand for documentation so that other software companies can develop software to inter-operate with Microsoft's offerings on the same footing as MS has.
Were the EU to deny Microsoft copyright protection in its member states, I suspect that the Microsoft would lobby the US Government to act in WIPO and WTO (with other small countries bullied) to impose sanctions upon Europe. It's been a while since we've had some empire-wrangling (well, since the allegations that Saddam Hussein was planning to sell Iraq's oil in Euros before 2003's 'liberation') and that could interesting times indeed.
Despite my soon to be status of a "M$ fanboi," I'd like to try and attempt something a crowd of engineers has disappointingly failed to do. Take apart the issue and consider it in context.
I see there being two issues here, outside of MS being the embodiment of the Prince of Darkness himself.
1) MS has failed to properly document their OS this makes them evil AND incompetent.
2) This lack of documentation is what led to the demise of Real Player, WinAmp and other fine audio players.
My analysis,
1) MS has failed to properly document their OS this makes them evil AND incompetent.
My guess is that MS is just like every other software developer in the world. They don't document their code well and they don't really enjoy doing it. I suspect the fact that the reason their software is integrated so well and works so much better than competitors software (a point I would be willing to argue) is because the guys writing the Media Player can call up the Windows folks and ask them what the hell is going on.
However it's fair to hold MS to higher standards, after all they are a monopoly. Yet I'd like these standards to be applied universally. What if you were providing a service, that you that was more competitive than another offering? One day the government knocks on your door and says you need to pay offer better health insurance because you're doing so well, but your competitors need not because they are less efficient. I'd be pissed. Europe has been promoting a culture that punishes success (corps) and competition (labor laws and taxes), and if you look at their economy over the last 10 years you'll see its effects.
If MS is required to write up sufficient docs then Real Networks, NullSoft, and Apple should all be included to. Instead of whipping out the "your big and bad so we are gonna punish you" stick, why not just codify into law requirements for software development. Only then will innovation truly prosper, otherwise we will just strike down companies who may have a record of innovation. I suppose you could just force MS to go open source, but understanding open source codes without docs has proven difficult to me. Maybe I am just not as infinitely talented as all the other Software Devs are.
2) This lack of documentation is what leads to the demise of Real Player, WinAmp and other fine audio players.
Hmm. Last I checked RealPlayer fell apart around the time it started coming with Real "Lets send you daily ads and call them important messages providing no method of suppression" and Real "lets take over the download function of your browser just because we feel like it" and WinAmp fell apart because of WinAmp 3 and well AOL. Additionally, last I checked Windows Media Player isn't exactly the king of media players. iTunes (never minds it's 10 meg xml library file, helper TSRs, undocumented and un-licensable FairPlay, compatibility with only one brand of music players, and it being a required download as part of Quicktime, and bundling with OSX, does any one else find those commercials where apple blasts MS for not including a MediaPlayer, which is a lie, amusing in this context?) seems to have done just fine, fairy quickly in this supposedly impossible to penetrate market. If a program as awesome as iTunes can succeed I have a feeling the monopoly that Microsoft supposedly took advantage of in promoting their wildly successful media player, might have been well, not successful as the EU seems to claim they have been.
Welcome our new monopoly-abbusing and >US$2500000/person paying overlords
Not relevant. In. The. Slightest. Debian wouldn't be locking you in to using only that free media player and web browser, like MS are.
You have to have IE loaded on your Windows box for it to work. Media Player cannot be removed entirely from the system. MS' protocols are undocumented heaps of proprietary shit.
Hell, it took the Samba team months/years to reverse engineer the protocols Windows uses for networking. How much less time would it have taken if it had been documented? How much closer to 100% compatibility would Wine be if it had full documentation for the Windows APIs?
Goten Xiao
If my calculations are correct, then as of 7/5/2006, 568 days have passed, and therefore, Microsoft owes the EU $1.42 billion. From this perspective, piracy just might not look that bad of a statistic after all! Additionally, I'm afraid that Microsoft now has an excuse to jack those dang prices up... -.-
The EU is a woman?
On topic stuff comes later in my post.
The matches against the US and Australia are fairly common for us (I'm italian). Our overpaid players can't concentrate when playing teams considered too inferior, and sometimes we get badly beaten. It was hard for some of us to celebrate Italy's victories though because of the skandal going on in our country; the things many of us knew for decades now are coming out in public, but it's clear that not every single guilty will be punished. Also, many of us don't feel represented by this team, being some players and the coach itself strongly connected to most people under investigation. Just fire up your p2p client and look for a video containing the name "cannavaro" in it.
Now back on the MS topic, I think the EU will somehow force MS to open their protocol, but the ultimate goal IMO is not to have a documented Windows (Vista, whatever) but competitive Open Source alternatives. Unless Windows will be completely open sourced the EU (and any other world country besides the US govt. for that matter) cannot know what the systems does behind the curtain. In a connected world the risk associated with this are huge; just think about corporate or military espionage.
They don't. The problem is that the EU commission won't specify exactly what's "good enough" documentation. It's like I asked you to give me some fruit. You're looking for a kumquat. I give you an orange, and you say "no, that's not good enough". I give you a lime, and you say "no, that won't do either". I ask you what kind of fruit you really want, and you say "no, you just have to give me the fruit". Actually it's more like this EU: we need you to reveal your kumquats. MS: How about we give you something better (reveals an apple) EU: No that is not good enough you need to show your kumquats. MS: OK we will give you something better (reveals loads of apples) EU: those are not what we want or need, why don't you give us the kumquats we asked for? MS (in a press conference): We don't know what the EU is asking for so we think a fine is unfair. MS fanboy on Slashdot: how is it fair that Microsoft are fined when they don't know what the EU wants? (Uses an analogy that they think proves there point despite the majority of slashdotters showing they (unlike Microsoft ) do understand what the EU wants. How come your average slashdotter can understand it yet MS and there lawyers can't?)
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
Why not use the SI (metric system) prefixes and avoid any ambiguity?
US Imperial SI
10^3 - thousand - thousand - kilo
10^6 - million - million - mega
10^9 - billion - milliard - giga
10^12 - trillion - billion - tera
10^15 - quadrillion - trillion - peta
10^18 - quintyllion - quadrillion - exa
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
That would be the largest economy in the world...
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
I see where you are coming from. I think everyone knew about Juventus and Milan at least! ;) Here (Greece), corruption in football is rampant. It's really funny when the theoretically best team in Greece almost always performs poorly in the Champions Leaugue and the runner up's have a respectful run. There are actually audio files where the president of the Greek Football Organization is practically spelling out how he is involved in the corruption, yet no actions where taken. It's all about the money. At least you guys are doing something about it, even if it means ripping apart the campionato... :) Anyway, in an age of football were everybody, even Brazil, is playing only for the outcome, catenaccio rulez! Forza Italia!
:)
On topic now, I don't think open sourcing windows is the solution (while it could be a good thing). Microsoft is just dragging its feet and playing the press along in their favor. They're not the first to employ this tactic. We mediteranians know this tactic all too well, to 'buy into it'... Una fatsa, una ratsa!
If you take how many days it has been since the December backdate till today, July 5th, then the total fine is a whopping:
$1,425,680,000
I wish I was a benefactor of that much cash...
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Answer?t ed+software+Europe&btnG=Google+Search
The level of pirated software in Europe is the highest in the world?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=percent+pira
Excuse me, second to China.
Too bad MS, doesn't actually have that "off" switch.
That would get a giggle now, wouldn't it?
"Why not Try Gentoo, here is a link to a help forum."
***
This is no joke though.
Brits see right through it, love you guys.
EU aspires to socialist supergovernment control.
Economically it is a complete disaster,developing into an open criminal conspiracy to usurp the powers of the indivdual member countries.
Thier inability to levy taxes inspires this fixed "court ordered" regulation.
Inspired by the successful US model, the now faded dream of a true United States of Europe has become a corrupt ultra-leftist controlled beast.
The promise of a bright future has been stolen by the bitter elitist remnants of a failed idea that historically at its best, enhanced and insured misery
and impoverishment. and at its worst killed millions.
Rather than spawning trade and economic growth, it is devouring political borders via regulation and an increasingly intransigent layer of minority control.
This anti Microsoft agenda amounts to simple blackmail.
Jan
I know this is a little upside down compared to other parts of the legal system, and that counterintuitive element is probably one reason why the issue is sticky. For example, in the realm of personal conduct, the law works better when it tells people what they can't do (you can't hurt other people) instead of what they can do (Conduct Code Article 2,334,202 (a)(iv): you may brush your teeth with either your left or right hand).
But with the Microsoft situation, it's different. I think it hurts consumers when you tell Microsoft they can't bundle office and media player and IE and whatever other functionality in with the operating system. I'm a consumer, and I would like those things bundled. So I don't think it is necessarily a good thing for the courts to tell Microsoft "you can't include this or that feature with Windows." But I think the court definitely should be able to say, "you must provide documentation and APIs and whatever else to make your stuff interoperable with other company's products and services." That makes much more sense to me.
Basically, it levels the playing field not be crippling Microsoft, but instead by enabling others to better get a toe in.
In principle, I don't think it is fair to cripple the more-able just for the sake of making things fair for the less-able. When I was a kid in Michigan we had 'accelerated' gradeschool classes for gifted kids in math and whatnot. Then during the political correctness craze they got shut down for being 'unfair' to other kids. Maybe it has since changed back, I'm not sure.
It's basically the Harrison Bergeron Principle (after the 1961 Kurt Vonnegut short story). In that story, "equality has been achieved by handicapping the most intelligent, athletic or beautiful members of society down to the level of the lowest common denominator." [wikipedia]. The point is, that is the wrong approach. While I may not be Microsoft's biggest fan, I think it is the wrong approach with Microsoft as well.
A-Bomb
US Government announces Operation Europe Freedom which will liberate the country of Europe led by an evil terrorist regime.
But Italy were excellent against Germany...by far the best game of this World Cup I have seen.
Drifting even further off-topic, vive la France! As an Englishman I want to see you (sportingly) destroy the Portugese.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Hey, up in the sky, its a bird, its a plane, its Tim O'Reilly!
Think global, act loco
The EU competition minister, in addition to imposing fines, also has the power to void contracts. Normally this is used in specific cases, like for example, if airbus made an illegal deal to undercut some other vendor, their contract could be voided. It would be interesting to speculate how that power could be applied on behalf of a market as a whole. The logical application would be to void the Microsoft EULA europe-wide, since it is essentially a contract of unfair barganing. This would answer the question, first, on how one could punish Microsoft by removing it's ability to operate in the market, and secondly, how to do so without disrupting current users. Given the potential powers granted to the EU competition minister, perhaps they should be thankful they are only being fined.
How exactly do you shut down or prohibit a company from operating when they have that type of a market share?
You simply go out and round up all the most senior highest-level employees of the company who happen to be physically present in your country at the time, and throw them all in jail charging them with criminal conspiracy since they are de-facto representatives of a corporation which is continuously commiting the offenses. Do not release them, or even blink, until the offending corporation's feet are held to the fire and justice is served to fruition.
And I believe this link may be of some use to me!
(In my defense, coffee is stil 2~5 minutes away.)
In Kentucky a few years ago it was time for the state police forces to replace their side-arms. They tested several models and chose some model of glock (I'm not a gun person, I dunno). At the same time, some government fancy pants worked out a deal with Smith and Wesson for a 7 year contract for S&W firearms. 1,000 of the guns were purchased. The first set were handed out to the SWAT and other special forces for testing. Their report was VERY poor. The guns were totally inaccurate. Anyways, to make a short story long several of the officers wrote the state legislature. When S&W refused to let them out of the contract the state legislature drew up a bill to not allow any law enforcement officer in the state to ever carry a S&W firearm. Three days later S&W withdrew the contract and now all the officers carry the glocks. What's the point of this long stupid story? Don't discount the power of the government, even local government, to throw around very big weight in order to get the right thing done. They really just need one person who's up for election to get on a soap box. [I am not affiliated with any gun manufacturing companies]
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
If you think a goverment is anything more than a corporation with guns, you're fooling yourself.
All the more reason to keep the corps and the gov against each other since when gang up together against us it's the worst of both worlds.
So why doesn't the EU (or the US DoJ) fine Honda because VW parts won't work in their vehicles?
This is such total bullshit. They are arbitrary taxes, pure and simple, why not call it that.
I can run a mixed Windows and Linux system in either a flat TCP/IP network or a Microsoft style Active Directory. I can even use a Linux box as the DC. How exactly does that not mean "interoperability"?
Because MS does everything in its' power to make it not interoperate.
because offering a peek at the goddamned source code didn't go far enough, right?
No, it didn't. Not when the "peek" meant that you can't actually fscking use anything you might learn from it. If the "offer" didn't include a draconian NDA, then it might have come close.
What great MS spin you have there. You must work for the justice department.
... but f**k the EU. Its not that i'm a big fan of MS, but when foriegners(sp?) start doodling with American companies, it kinda upsets me. Not to mention, I'm sick and tired of Europe telling us how much our prez sucks, our culture sucks, etc.. etc.. etc.. Although the majority of applications written today is for Windows, many people can get away with using Mac or Linux. Both are very usable, its not like Windows is the only player in town, like it use to be. Thank you.
Pro-MS shilling has long been a Slashdot staple. What's weird is how here many still don't see it and think of this place as 'the bastion of fervent Linux zealots'. (It would be no surprise to see a bot auto-mod this up based on that last phrase alone.)
Let me tell you a fable.
Let's say that one day I come to work and decide to park my car right under a "no parking" sign. Hey, it beats walking all the way from the parking ground, and surely I'm so big and important that such laws and city ordinances don't apply to me. So a cop comes around and writes me a parking ticket. Let's say (as a number pulled out of the butt) for 25$. So I ignore it and park my car in the same place tomorrow. So I get the same fine tomorrow. And ignore it again the next day.
So after almost two years I look at the total bill and go "whaaa? A whole 14,000$ for just parking my car??? It's so wrong and unjust! I'm being victimized by the police!"
I'm sure then you'd say, "well then you should have fucking stopped doing that earlier. If for a whole 19 months you decided to ignore the fine, it's _your_ fault that it added up to such a large sum."
The same applies to MS. It's been given a daily fine for each day when they don't comply with the court's order. And they continued to ignore the court's order for 19 months straight. So now it's added up to 1.4 billion dollars.
Well I say the same thing: "then they should have fucking stopped doing it earlier."
It's that simple. It's not some number that was pulled out of the hat now. It's been the daily fine that MS knew about all along. If MS chose to ignore it for so long, tough shit, but it's their problem then.
Heck, in this case the EU had been kinder than even the cop in my example. MS only had to comply at any point in the last 19 months, to be forgiven of the whole fine retroactively. Imagine a cop giving you the same deal: "dude, if you stop parking your car there, I'm going to forgive you of the whole last year's worth of parking tickets." Because seriously that's the deal that MS was given.
So excuse me if I don't see it as disproportionate or anything. They could have stopped at any time, if the total sum was getting too high for their taste.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"American" companies? I guess all those offices MS has in Europe (and likely everywhere else but Antartica) doesn't qualify it as an European company. Or more accurately, an international business. Except for tiny mom&pop outfits, there's no such thing as a $COUNTRY business anymore.
They want to do business in the EU, they play by the EU's rules. MS doesn't have some inalienable right to do what they please.
Better hope they take Visa... rake in those frequent flyer miles!
That's cool, like The Linux Apocalypse. No sign of Transmeta anymore though :)
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
I will probably modded down as troll with this, but..
Now let me be Microsoft. Ok, I have to pay $1.5billion or so + daily fines.
Right. Now what does the EU if I don't pay and don't comply?
More than probably nothing but more fines which I don't see why I would pay...
Honestly, the only way to make them comply is to declare MS illegal and make illegal the use of their products and fine people who still use it. But I don't think that's possible either.
I gave up with the idea of an useful sig...
Personally, I'd rather NOT see microsoft fined, but their copyright and patent monopoly privileges revoked. It's simply absurd to punish them for having a monopoly while handing them monopolies on a plate. This just seems like the EU commission saying "we'll give you software patents, if you pay us XYZ".
Just because some propagandists (including the EU commission) call patent and copyright monopolies intellectual "property" doesn't make them worthy of defence.
"Why should a corporation as a whole be held to a lesser moral standard than an individual is?"
Because legality is not morality. You cannot hold a corporation to a moral standard any more than you can hold a person to one. Morality varies from person to person, country to country. Legality is defined rather more specifically. So specifically, in fact, that it takes lawyers, judges and a massive system to interpret it.
We don't hold companies to morals. And we shouldn't. A judge might be able to tell me what's illegal, but I'll be damned if I'll let one tell me what's wrong.
What are you talking about? You can't find Microsoft! They've patented all their code!
4 227&special=1998
see?
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29130?issue=
i hate windows but even i think the way MS is being treated over there is unfair
i mean.. wtf? they bunded a media player with their windows WOOPTY DAMN DOO...
how many billions of dollars should they have to pay out for giving you free software with their commercial software..
microsoft has done plenty of other shady things that they got away with, for them to be getting skewered and raked over the coals for something that ISNT WRONG is pretty stupid..
Near as I can figure the gist of the EU's complaint is that they can't take a monkey who can slap away at a typewriter and train him to work with network protocols using the Microsoft-provided documentation.
Microsoft has maintained the position that the documentation provided is sufficient if the reader is already familiar with general OS and network design principles. Is that really an unreasonable assumption?
Clearly that documentation IS usable - Microsoft has used it successfully for many years, through many generations of coders. The EU didn't "like" what they got - and made that decision within days of receiving an huge shipment of documentation. How could they evaluate it so quickly? Frankly, there's no way. I don't defend Microsoft as a rule - I leave zealotry for those with more time on their hands - but I still say that in this case the EU's position is a load of horse crap.
is it really easier for competitors to write applications that interface with misrosoft software than it is for microsoft to document how to interface with its own software?
there is no conspiracy. get over it.
Microsoft has been suspected of using illegal practices a long time ago. In the early days of Windows 1.0, Windows would crash on Dr. DOS and not on M$ DOS. People stopped using Dr. DOS. It is suspected that Microsoft wrote code into Windows to crash on Dr. DOS.
Then comes Netscape with their Navigator. I was a boy at the time and I was wondering which was better, Navigator or Explorer. My dad insisted on Navigator, which I didn't mind. Eventually, Navigator crashed when I used it and so I switched to Explorer and found it not so crashy. I hear the same thing with SAMBA and other such projects. Microsoft is also suspected of having secret interfaces in their Windows operating system so that Office runs better than other products.
Microsoft may be trying hard to hide this information. If they are forced to document their protocols, it may become obvious that the eccentricies found in the protocols, and maybe interfaces, are anti-competitive. Everyone will sue Microsoft, and there maybe supeneas (sp?) for experts to review Windows code for evidence. This could get very nasty for Microsoft as they will be forced to pay out to oblivion.
If the Dec 15th was just last year, as of right now Microsoft's fine would be $507,020,000.00
Now if it was for Dec 15th, 2004, that's another story. Try $1,423,170,000.00
You forgot that a corporation can't use force to get you to do something, and that they compete, and that you are free to associate with a corporation or not.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
So what you're saying is a joint ESA/NASA project is doomed to failure.
We have enough trouble with the footmeter problem. Allowing NASA to calculate how many liters of fuel are needed to send a probe a billion miles could be a real problem.
Just out of curiousity, is the same true goint the other direction (milli-, micro-, nano-...)?
All MS has to do is remove their money from EU banks, sell off their EU assets, and write into the Windows/Office/etc TOS that you cannot run the software anywhere in Europe. The European economy will take a MAJOR hit. Civilians will be pissed because they can't use their computers with their favorite programs. The current EU market for software will disentegrate. Given enough time, it will rebuild itself, but the fact of the matter is, Bill Gates > EU.
Nobody can tell me what to do with my own product. If I don't feel like documenting my source, I'm not going to. If you want to use my product, you'll have to deal with that, or find another product.
Admittedly, it depends on the country, but there is such a thing as immigration...
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
And I quote...
o verview.aspx
Q: Why can't I distribute my implementation in source code form? And why does Microsoft care about "other licenses?"
A: The specifications used to create your protocol implementations are confidential and, along with the source code of those implementations, include Microsoft trade secrets. However, because other MCPP licensees have agreed to MCPP license terms (including distribution and confidentiality provisions), you can distribute the source code of your implementation to them. The license agreement also permits you to allow others to view the source code of your implementations on-site at your place of business for evaluation purposes, under suitable non-disclosure agreements.
In addition to not disclosing your source code directly (other than as just described), you also need to make sure not to subject your implementation to any other licenses that would require such source code disclosure. For example, under certain circumstances, other licenses may require your implementation to be disclosed in source code form when you distribute your implementation with other technology that is already subject to that other license. In short, you can't subject your authorized implementations to any license that requires you do things that are contrary to the scope of your license and your obligations under the license agreement.
http://members.microsoft.com/consent/info/License
It doesn't really mean all that much. Microsoft will do some kind of wheeling and dealing efforts to 1) lower the fine and 2) establish an even stronger marketshare in the EU
Except the EU is notorious for not caring about wheeling or dealing and thus not lowering the fine and not enabling MSFT to increase marketshare.
We tried to warn them, but they just don't grok that the EU is not the US.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You forgot that a corporation can't use force to get you to do something
the only reason they can't in modern western society (they do in some others) is that the goverments won't let them.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
you cease to enforce their copyright. (Which they regard as "property rights", but isn't.)
Well, Wikipedia lists more free trade aggreements:
EU Agreements with third states with FTA provisions: Algeria, Croatia, Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Mexico, Chile, South Africa, Faroe Islands, Switzerland, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Andorra, San Marino, Turkey
I have yet to find a list of US Agreements with third states with FTA provisions.
Europeans have an enduring/mind-altering lust to tax Americans. They have so over-taxed their own capital-base that it resembles a 2CV with a Bentley's options. Thus their quest to tax Americans. But how? Kyoto looked good. They cut themselves out of the tax by dating CO2 emissions to 1994, just before East Germany's old industries collapsed and some coal-fired English power-plants were closed. They let the rest of the world off the hook by calling it "developing". The entire Kyoto tax was meant for the United States. Call George Bush what you will, he put his chin on the line with this and Kyoto is l'histoire. Now the Europeans are at it again. $2.5 mil does not sound so big, except it is per day, back-dated to 2004. Their inability to find more to tax in Europe - ever gas a car there? - inevitably leads them to want to tax US. We need to tell them to get a life.
Regardless of the EU's decision, M$ will still roll on, doing whatever it pleases. This observation is based upon past events.
2.4 million per day retroactive to Dec 2004 is nothing to M$. This is merely a "cost of doing business" to their accountants. Having a legion of the finest legal swindlers on retainer can have M$ resting and sleeping the sleep of the unaffected.
All this will do is cause M$ to change some minor clauses which are ineffective in the overall and it will continue to steamroll its happy way through whatever
Now, if the EU were to strictly forbid M$ software to be used on the client machines, then there may be some reaction. More bribes; more bribes and more bribes. This is the way of current politics. Hell, this has always been the way of politics.
Can one trust a politician? The answer is obvious by the current ranking on the food-chain list - "0". How come this ranking is a constant all the way back to biblical and pre-biblical days?
The only thing that is consistent and reliable about politicains is their inherent susestibility and acceptance of the infuse of large amounts of lucre.
This will blow over after all parties have been given their condos, Swiss bank accounts and high-priced whores.
Then, there will be a resurgence by the next generation of self-gratifying, supposed do-gooders and the cycle will merely repeat itself.
Sorry for expressing this cynical view, but it really does seem to be a fact of Life. One cannot spank M$ and expect decent results.
Au contraire, M$ is so huge and powerful that it can dictate its own terms
Go Penguin, go!
Giving money and power to government is like giving whisky and car keys to teenage boys.
Why not give it to Oracle?
You are forgetting that we are talking about politicians.
That money us not going anywhere!
They would rather spend it on more confortable chairs and new cars.
Most of it will go into administrational costs...