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Microsoft Hit With 280m Euro Fine
Craig Mason writes "The BBC Reports that "Microsoft has been fined 280.5m euros ($357m; £194m) by the European Commission for failing to comply with an anti-competition ruling.
The software giant was hit by the fine following a long-running dispute between the US firm and EU regulators.
The move follows a landmark EU ruling in 2004, which ordered Microsoft to provide rivals with information about its Windows operating system.
EU regulators also warned Microsoft it could face new fines of 3m euros a day.""
MSFT has a market cap of 230-something billion. Substantial? Not really.
Acording to wikipedia, it will take them 2 days to recover it. Big deal.
Does a guy driving a hummer really notice a 1-inch speedbump? Microsoft's CFO will probably be laughing as he draws the fine from pettycash.....
Add a few zeroes on the tail end, then we'll see if they notice.
What happens if they don't pay?
Meta will eat itself
It seems so far Microsoft isn't really worrying over a fine of 1.5 million/day, this makes me wonder what amount of money is needed to make it an issue they want to comply with. Any ideas?
I think that it is worth $3 million a day to keep your OS closed, don't you?
But being Microsoft, I assume they would pay in pennies and demand a receipt?
If you belive what they say in the newspapers Billy Gates makes $7 Million in the 8 hours he's asleep so it shouldn't take him to long to make this back. The phrase "drop in the ocean" springs to mind.
To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.
what a small slap on the wrist which is small even by the standards that the EU set themselves, typical, the fine should have been over 1.8 bn euros if they'd done what they said (about 3m euros a day backdated to 2004)... why so small?
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
so, you must be living in the United States of Protectionism?
Like, "our documentation wasn't good enough", or "those commissioners are too dumb to understand we don't deserve to be punished?"
The real problem, of course, is that Windows is such a huge hairball -- as Scott McNealy so aptly put it -- that they don't really know how to unbundle. Complying with the law is just as late as everything else is.
But before we all bash them too too hard -- where, again, are the usable Linux desktops that we'd like to have to replace Windows???
To err is human. To forgive is good system design.
The same thing that happens whenever a big company doesnt pay a fine. Absolutly nothing.
Since you cant put a corporate entity in jail, and current structures are such that shareholders and executives face few legal penalties for the actions of the corporation (rather than thier own personal actions, such as in the enron ordeal) there's little real incentive for them to actualy pay up.
"The judgment also called for Microsoft to debundle its Windows Media Player from its Windows operating system, and slapped the software firm with a record fine of 497m euros. " "Microsoft has been fined 280.5m euros ($357m; £194m) by the European Commission for failing to comply with an anti-competition ruling." fines... 497... 280 - did they pay anything? will they? ... it will take time.... plenty of time... they'll try to market this as being the new victim of EU...
94 million redeemable copies of XP/Office/Visual Studio should be good ;)
liqbase
1. 280 million Euros is a drop in the bucket for M$.
2. They will delay, stall, and avoid paying for as long as possible.
3. When #2 fails, they will magically announce that they are in compliance.
4. ?????
5. Profit!
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Ballmer, hand me my personnal checkbook.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
In Microsoft's case this would be about $5.5m-a-day.'
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c55bc756-1047-11db-8f6f-00 00779e2340.html
I would imagine that there would be stiffer penalties (i.e., non-financial aimed at curtailing MSFT's ability to trade in the EU) available if MSFT continued to defy the commission. If there were not this would be a de facto admission that companies can break the law in the EU with impunity if they are rich enough. I very much doubt the commission would tolerate that state of affairs.
... is earmarked for spending on chair-proof windows ;)
Who exactly gets the money? Lucky them. Surprised they don't levy fines like this more often.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
The fine is based on the period december 16th, 2005 till june 20th, 2006. Microsoft had till December 16th to fullfil the requirements of the EC. Remember that this fine is added to the original fined 497M in 2004. And the EC is still counting until Microsoft has delivered all required documentation, but the ticker now says 3m per day. I don't believe there's a deadline set yet.. But i wouldn't be suprised if that would be set anywhere around December 20th 2006 (6 months as of june).
Surely i can't be the only one wondering where all this money goes if/when Microsoft pay. Who gets to keep it? What is it spent on?
The idea is that the EU claims (rather correctly, and you'll see why this is not an issue) that MS used it's desktop monopoly to attempt to gain a monopoly in the media player market. They were then forced to unnbundle WMP, which they did in Windows N. Also to pay that original fine we already heard about last year.
Now here's where you lost the trail; the contention now is NOT ABOUT WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER. It's about underlying windows APIs that the EU claims MS is leveraging to use their DESKTOP os monopoly (which is okay) to shoehorn their way higher up in the server space. What they required MS to do was provide their competition with information about the windows OS that would let competing products interoperate as smoothly as microsoft products.
It's kind of a convoluted, complicated, and misreported case. The EU commision is saying "Look, you can't hide these details about your desktop os just so nobody can make a (whatever server) as good as yours, you can make the whatever server, but your competitors need to have equal footing. SO tell them how (whatever) works."
theres a bunch more, 12000 pages of docs, source code sharing (under a restrictive license competitors must pay for, this is more complicated due to the possibility of DMCA claims) etc.
just imagine what such an action would do to their credit rating
Ohhh I never thought of that. It will be a really huge problem for Microsoft if they ever need to purchase some new company cars but the bank won't loan them the money...
How will they cope?
I'll probably be modded down for this...
It's not really hurting them financially, but maybe all these fines will a.) start adding up and b.) start making average people pay attention to how MS is screwing other companies up. But chances are, the average person doesn't care about MS's tactics, all they want is their damn computer to work, politics be damned. And that is why, at the end of the day, MS wins. (Mayhaps that made no sense, but it's late and I'm dead tired)
Fighting over religion is like seeing whose imaginary friend is best.
***Game Over***Insert Coin***
What would happen to the world if Microsoft said "Ok, enough's enough. 'Frig' you all!" and shuts down! They all have enough money to live comfortably for the rest of their lives (and then some). I think that a lot of people rely on MS software...
Eventually you get fed-up with the fly that buzzes around your head and you kill it.
the same things that's happened every other time they ignored a ruling - some judge ups the ante and slaps a slightly larger fine on them. Ballmer throws a few chairs, Gates sheds a single tear, and we are back to square one.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
EU: MS, you're fined 1.5 M a day.
... I mean, hell, if I didn't pay a speeding ticket I'd be in jail before this year is over, not next or some decade. What's a fine good for if the one fined doesn't bother paying?
MS: Ok.
(pause a year)
EU: MS, you didn't pay, you're fined 2.5m a day.
MS: Ok.
(pause a year)
EU: MS, you still didn't pay, you're fined 3.5m a day.
MS: ok.
Is it me or
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Don't forget that for M$ to stall costs them money in legal fees, etc. as well. It is a very slow bleed, but enough drains like this and they will be in trouble. A 200+ million dollar antitrust type fine definitely is difficult to explain away to shareholders!
stuff |
So a company can, at max, be fined 5% of its income.
I, on the other hand, can be fined for amounts that exceed my income by a few 100 percent.
I'd sue. If I could afford it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What word in the sentence "monopoly" you don't understand?
Microsoft sentenced to death.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
In fact, as with any situation where supply is (actually) relatively inelastic, if the supply side suddenly increased the price would drop dramatically. If Bill wanted to sell all his shares on Monday, how much do you think he would get for them? A lot, but nothing like the current price. The shares would be suspended as they started to go into freefall. Goes for houses, goes for Rembrandts, goes for shares. At one time during the Tokyo land price boom, Tokyo was capitalised at more, I believe, than the entire real estate of the US. Would you have swapped the US for metropolitan Tokyo?
Microsoft's market capitalisation is unimportant and meaningless; what matters is the effect of ongoing fines on their day to day operations, the market perception, and the buying decisions made by large institutions who will be reading all about it in the FT, Handelsblatt etc.
Pining for the fjords
Yes, I noticed that. However, the comparison is actually "Mac vs PC", not "Mac vs Microsoft". I can't buy a PC from Microsoft, I can buy a PC from Dell. Or HP. Or Fred down the road if I give him the cash to build one.
Dell, HP and Fred-down-the-road can bundle whatever applications they like. Years ago a lot of budget places used to bundle Lotus Smartsuite to keep their prices down vs bundling Office. So the comparison is valid. And yes, having no marketshare does rather free you from monopolist rules because, pretty much by definition, you're not a monopolist.
Cheers,
Ian
.. because it's only 2 lines, but exactly explains the whole point of this court case, clearly, without the FUD. thanks!
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
CEO Steve Ballmer was unavailable for comment at his Geneva hotel room today, however in the early hours of this morning Swiss police discovered this...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mar-s/3148634/
No, I come from the United States of Buy Courts
Not only will they not pay, they still won't comply. Why do I think this? Because this is what happens every damn time! For once I'd like someone to grow some balls and follow through. I've yet to see a major announcement against Microsoft actually followed through with. Whether it be the EU, United States, Mass, Germany, and pretty much every other company or government make a declaration against Microsoft.
They will appeal it until their ears bleed. *sigh* I guess that's the way the world works. Big business doesn't have to pay EVER. Did you know Exxon still hasn't paid fines for the Exxon-Valdez?
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
...Ballmer just threw a chair across Microsoft's boardroom and started jumping around like a monkey in his office...
Form a group with your fellow 2nd world countries.
Have you ever compared the GDP of the EU with that of USA?
I'll probably be modded down for this...
1) Yes, the EU can enforce the money. If MS doesn't pay, EU can hit them with sanctions (what do you think, how big is the EU part of MS revenue pool. Right, pretty relevant) and finally seize their physical assets. (Guess what, MS exists outside the US)
2) MS has no threatening potential against the EU. What should they do: Increase prices? --> antitrust case! Threaten to pull out? --> They would cut their own profits significantly. EU could immediately legalize copies from the US (they wouldn't, but let's say Win/Office is declared important for national security or something...)
3) The US government will not put pressure on the EU here. Yes, they may protest, yes, they may have some impact, but come on guys. Where not talking about some small banana republic. Also look at the history of the EU anti-trust comission. Remember the GE/Honeywell-merger?
4) Yes, the fine does matter. 280m is a lot of money also for MS, from end of July on it will be 3m/day=~1b/year=~8% of EBIT (probably increasing over time). Yes, that DOES matter. What will financial markets think of that, what will that do to stock options of MS managers?
Summary: MS will pay, MS will obey and try to comply (they already started, just too slow...) with the ruling, MS will of course continue to use all means of lobbying (which is their good right).
Now the more interesting question is, if they have a chance with their appeal before the European Court of Justice, which doesn't look too bad for them...
One of the judges, acting as prosecutor, had read the charges. ... do you mean?" ... other methods."
"You may now offer whatever plea you wish to make in your own defence," he announced. Facing the platform, his voice inflectionless and peculiarly clear, Bill Gates answered:
"I have no defence."
"Do you --" The judge stumbled; he had not expected it to be that easy. "Do you throw yourself upon the mercy of this court?"
"I do not recognise this court's right to try me."
"What?"
"I do not recognise this court's right to try me."
"But, Mr. Gates, this is the legally appointed court to try this particular category of crime."
"I do not recognise my action as a crime."
"But you have admitted that you have broken our regulations controlling the sale of your software."
"I do not recognise your right to control the sale of my software."
"Is it necessary for me to point out that your recognition was not required?"
"No. I am fully aware of it and I am acting accordingly."
"Do you mean that you are refusing to obey the law?" asked the judge.
"No. I am complying with the law - to the letter. Your law holds that my life, my work and my property may be disposed of without my consent. Very well, you may now dispose of me without my participation in the matter. I will not play the part of defending myself, where no defence is possible, and I will not simulate the illusion of dealing with a tribunal of justice."
"But, Mr. Gates, the law provides specifically that you are to be given an opportunity to present your side of the case and to defend yourself."
"A prisoner brought to trial can defend himself only if there is an objective principle of justice recognised by his judges, a principle upholding his rights, which they may not violate and which he can invoke. The law, by which you are trying me, holds that there are no principles, that I have no rights and that you may do with me whatever you please. Very well. Do it." "Mr. Gates, the law which you are denouncing is based on the highest principle - the principle of the public good. Who is the public? What does it hold as its good? There was a time when men believed that 'the good' was a concept to be defined by a code of moral values and that no man had the right to seek his good through the violation of the rights of another. If it is now believed that my fellow men may sacrifice me in any manner they please for the sake of whatever they deem to e their own good, if they believe that they may seize my property simply because they need it - well, so does any burglar. There is only this difference: the burglar does not ask me to sanction his act."
"Are we to understand," asked the judge, "that you hold your own interests above the interests of the public?"
"I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals."
"What
"I hold that there is no clash of interests among men who do not demand the unearned and do not practice human sacrifices."
"Are we to understand that if the public deems it necessary to curtail your profits, you do not recognise its right to do so?"
"Why, yes, I do. The public may curtail my profits any time it wishes - by refusing to buy my product."
"We are speaking of
"Any other method of curtailing profits is the method of looters - and I recognise it as such."
"Mr. Gates, this is hardly the way to defend yourself."
"I said that I would not defend myself."
"But this is unheard of! Do you realise the gravity of the charge against you?"
"I do not care to consider it."
"Do you realise the possible consequences of your stand?"
"Fully."
"It is the opinion of this court that the facts presented by the prosecution seem to warrant no leniency. The penalty which this court has the power to impose on you is extremely severe."
"Go ahead."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Impose it."
The three judges looked at one another. Then their spokesman turned back to Gates. "This is unprecedented," he said.
"It is completely irregular,
As I see it, the EU is telling Microsoft:
"Ok, Microsoft you had your chance to document your API's two years ago as you were told to, but instead you chose to try and mess with us and we just don't believe you when you said you made an honest effort to comply. So here is your fine. If you think you are going to appeal your way out of this ... good luck to you. Now we know that you are working to better your lives, and we want your compliance more than your money, so we won't hurt you as much as we could have. We actually want you to do business in the EU, and for that reason we will go easy on you this time. Only ... if you think you can make a fool of us again, prepare for fines that *are* hurtful."
There are worse attitudes I suppose.
Antitrust laws are VERY counterintuitive seeming. See, what the EU is saying is that MS has APIs in it's Windows Desktop OS that only microsoft knows how to use. Since everybody uses Windows on the desktop, this allows microsoft to put out an XYZ server that talks to the desktop OS (like exchange or something, I don't know exactly which APIs are in question.) while other companies have no idea how the XYZ works. They're telling MS to tell people how to use parts of the OS so microsoft won't have the advantage of being the only person to know how to make these XYZ servers.
As it stands (or stood depending on how you look at it) people could still make these XYZ servers, but they have to spend a whole lot of time figuring out how windows does XYZ before they can come to market (SAMBA), and by then microsoft could shut them out by beating to them to the punch very easily.
It's not about MS putting out something great, it's about letting others put the same thing out with equal footing. This way companies will be required to make the best software to take over the market instead of possibly just being a defacto monopoly because nobody else can do it, which is good for the overall software climate if you ask me.
It's because they have a monopoly -- all the restaurant/automobile/whatever analogies in the world don't matter, if you don't factor in the anti-competitive aspect of the monopoly. If Microsoft were smaller, they wouldn't be having a problem; it's only because of their extremely dominant position that they have to follow special rules, because otherwise it would be impossible to compete with them.
If you were a niche OS vendor and didn't want to share information on the inner workings of your system, so that you could make more money selling a highly-integrated application stack, that would probably be OK. It becomes anti-competitive when you have such an absurd proportion of the market that it's basically impossible for any company to compete with you, unless they make products that run on your OS. In that case, by keeping the details to yourself, you can suppress realistic competition indefinitely.
Since this suppression of competition hurts the market in general and is bad for the consumer, I think the EU and other regulatory bodies are more than justified in doing whatever they think is necessary in order to remedy the situation. In this case, they're not going after the monopoly itself (as some of the proposed solutions to the US anti-trust case did) but after the behavior that suppresses competition itself: basically acknowledging that Windows is the de-facto standard and will be for some time, and requiring that Microsoft stop tilting the playing field in their own favor.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
It's about the SMB protocols which Microsofts network application-level protocol and it was decided that the documentation that Microsoft offered just wasn't good enough. And the documentation wasn't decided as poor by any EU civil servants sitting in their ivory towers but by an expert that Microsoft THEMSELVES had submitted as a an expert just for that specific task. So step away from the Microsoft kool-aid.
Yes, If (say) Ford had 90%+ of the car market and only let you fit 'Ford Brand' stereos. So in other words it's a totally fatuous comparison and you're an idiot.
Let's see... 3m a day in fines...
check..
How do we make this back? Oh yeah, let's just raise the prices of products in Europe. They've proven they aren't migrating to anything else , even if it's free, so we know they'll pay up. Sony did some groundbreaking work in this field and it seems true.
MS doubles prices of software sold in Europe. There would be minor losses of sales numebrs as some people did switch over because of it. But as long as they don't lose HALF their sales they're still making a profit on the move.
Also that bit about where the fine money goes does seem awful "small town judge pocketing the traffic ticket money".
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Yea? Didn't the US ignore their obligations under NAFTA and continue
the protect their softwood lumber industry from Canadian imports, in the
face of the fact that NAFTA and the WTO both deemed the US action to be
contrary to the NFTA trade agreement?
Free trade with the US works as long as the US gets the best deal; otherwise the protect.
Wrong.
MS is getting a major ass chewing for breaking anti-trust laws in the EU. Break the law == deal with the consequences. It's that simple. The EU even was playing nice. Other businesses would've been sued to chunky kibbles by their competitors allready. It's just that MS is so big, it's competitors are to scared and don't have the resources to go against them in a regular civil court trial. Here's where the EU steps in.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Dell, HP and Fred-down-the-road can bundle whatever applications they like.
Fred-down-the-road can, but big OEMs like Dell and HP usually have bulk windows license agreements that have lots of restrictions on what they can bundle or modify (e.g., can't bundle Firefox and set it as default browser).
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
It's not Mac OS X that bundles more software, it's the Mac computer. To compare apples to apples (no pun intended), you'd need to be comparing an iMac to a Dell or Compaq PC. All the big apps that the commercials brag about are actually part of the iLife suite, that Apple includes in when you buy a Mac. In the event that the EU doesn't like Apple including iLife with all new Macs, they can easily comply and include a mail-in coupon for a free copy of iLife or something like that. It's not like the apps are tightly integrated into the OS and they'd complain that they can't remove iPhoto without breaking the entire OS.
As far as apps that are bundled with the OS, it's mostly all just small utilities (font book, activity monitor, calculator, etc.), OS features (Automator, Dashboard, etc.), and then the only larger apps are Safari, Mail, and iChat. And if you don't like them, you can simply drag them to the trash can and they're gone forever, unlike another popular OS from Redmond. IIRC, iTunes isn't even included as part of the OS but rather part of iLife (but is also a free download).
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
The parent isn't insightful, it's simply wrong. Under WIPO treaties, to which pretty much every major economic power in Europe is a signatory, the EU can do no such thing. All the posts about cancelling Microsoft's copyrights are fantasy. Then again, pretty much every other post in this discussion seems to think this is just an ineffective slap on the wrist, without considering the likely consequences.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Well for this one, at least, there is a close date. 31th July 2006. If at this date MS doesn't comply, the fine will be $3M/day.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
thanks god Europe != USA
Keep that in mind.
First, making a company give competitors trade secrets in immoral.
Sure, it isn't nice. But then again the goal of sanctions isn't to be nice but to remedy the problem. MS was found to be in violation of antitrust law, and forcing MS to document interfaces so that competitors can more efficiently make interoperatible software was seen as the most efficient remedy.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
...next they'll be fining car manufacturers for selling cars with a specific brand of stereo/sound system and being anti-competitive.
Your knee-jerk argument doesn't really hold up. Let's try some slight modification and see if we can get it to work, eh?
Imaging one car manufacturer was responsible for producing 95% of the cars in circulation and aggresively used its position to limit the availability of cars from other manufacturers or the emergence of new manufacturers.
Imagine they not only bundled their own brand stereo with the car, they made it virtually impossible to remove the stereo system without causing severe damage to the car, so that even if you were to install an additional stereo you'd have to keep the original stereo.
Now imagine the car manufacturer starts using its imense wealth and market position to persuade content providers to release music encoded in a format only the above stereo can play (or charging hefty license fees to the smaller car/stereo manufacturers if they want to use this technology themselves to actually be able to play music).
Finally, imagine the car manufacturer went out into the world and used its wealth to influence political decisions in their favour to help them maintain an effective stranglehold on the market and, at the same time, insidiously "educate" people while they're still at school into thinking that only one car manufacturer can give them what they need.
Hope that helps.
Because the customers pay for the OS. The OS is a tool to control your computer [e.g. load tasks, provide files, networking, etc].
When Microsoft hides the OS API so that they can use it and others can't they're effectively selling you half a tool. By not letting competitors use the entire OS that MSFT sells you they're taking away YOUR CHOICE to choose the tools you want. The question is who knows how good the competition can get, because MSFT won't properly document the product they sell you won't know.
That's what I don't get about monopolyogists [people who apologize for monopolies], these anti-monopoly cases are about giving YOU choice. Not about making money [well indirectly] but it's really about YOU. I mean literally YOU, mr. joe sixpack who uses the computer to read emails and whatever. Not Mr. millionaire running Oracle but YOU. The government wants everyone to have a chance to compete and with that competition you get to choose the better product.
Sure MSFT may have better tools/servers today [though I question that] but that's only because they hold back the competition by hiding parts of the OS and misdocumenting other assets.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I was once an Institutional Investor-ranked analyst following Microsoft, although that was a long time ago ...
Market cap does matter. Microsoft can sell stock to get cash -- or rather forgo repurchasing it.
The income statement matters somewhat. If this were a true foreseeable-future ongoing cost, it would matter a lot more. But it will be over soon, one way or the other.
The balance sheet it what matters most directly. They can pay the fines out of cash easily, I should think, not that I've actually looked at their balance sheet for quite a while.
To err is human. To forgive is good system design.
A lot of my friends work on commercial ships. They are not allowed to ship cargo into the USA. Also, most EU airlines are not allowed to fly to destinations inside the USA. I would also like to point out the equal trading agreement that has been made between the USA and Australia. I think the Australians can agree that the USA is competitive... On the other hand, the EU is much worse in the agricultural protection (and some other markets). I think the USA and the EU are equally evil in the protection of their internal markets. They just protect other marketsegments.
Gates: "Balmer, my wallet's in my right front pocket. Oh, and I'll take that statue of Justice, too."
Judge: "Sold!"
Trout's epitaph: Life is no way to treat an animal.
The reason there is no Linux desktops is because there is no commercial software that has been adapted for businesses that everyone else uses. Businsesses need the software they are used to and a switch will cost money, money that needs to be spent on software they will have for a long time. Most businesses have only begun to hear about Linux and most software companies for that matter.
Nice to see you read /. too
/me ducks suborbital chair.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
This is just getting stupid.
M$ is getting F'd in the A because they built an o/s that a business 'chooses' to use. That business wants to get additional software that integrates with their servers as smooth as possible. Business chooses M$ software because it smoother than the competition (and not by much I must add).
I really don't understand???? Whats the problem here?
Because of something called a 'monopoly'. Microsoft have overwhelming dominance on the desktop. They are using that dominance to sell servers, which is a separate market. Using monopoly dominance in one market to influence sales in another is illegal.
Microsoft server software integrates more smoothly than the competition with their desktop systems because their desktop systems require specific protocols for this integration which Microsoft are keeping secret. Other systems have managed to replicate this only by reverse-engineering what is seen to go across networks.
Microsoft could easily have provided good integration with desktop systems using standard or existing protocols (they have proved in the past that they can produce quality implementations of such things).
None of this would matter if Microsoft were not effectively a monopoly presence on the desktop (that does not mean total dominance - it means enough presence to seriously influence other markets).
Clear now?
But it is Apple that bundles more software with its O/S, not Fred.
But what APIs is Microsoft hiding? for what I know, all their APIs are published online on MSDN.
Apparently it won't sting quite enough, though. May I remind you that this charade has been going on for over two years already?
...except I can get pretty comprehensive documentation on any Ford, including any information I need to replace that "specific brand of stereo". That and Ford is hardly in a position to control their particular market.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The funny thing is, the US has unoffically admitted that the EU stance is actually quite a good one - http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,3...39278 431,00.htm
This procedure will benefit everyone; more-opennes == more competition == greater choice for consumers.
throw new NoSignatureException();
I bet they could keep filing appeals until the documentation they are supposed to provide is obsolete, and then just say "OK, here you go. Enjoy."
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
The bar for when Linux is ready for the desktop is constantly on the rise. About all the people who keep raising that bar have left to complain about is compatability/interoperability with Windows software and file formats. Linux is in a state that it could very quickly assume Windows' desktop position if there was a sea change in industry preference. I don't think we will see a change of that magnitude, but I think its adoption rate keeps it very much on Microsoft's radar.
There have always been secret undocumented API calls and other esoteric features with Windows. For example, one secret API call I uesd back in the Windows 9x days allowed me to hide my program from the Control+Alt+Delete program list.
I suppose the problem is that the EU suspects or knows that Microsoft is coding their bundled products to leverage secret preformancing enhancing features of the operating system.
Bundling practices are only illegal if done by corporation in a dominant position on the market of the tying good (OS here) to increase its market shares on the tied good market (media players). Which is the case for Microsoft, and not Apple who's the underdog. Basicaly you're much more free of your commercial practices if you're in a competitive market or not in a dominant position.
It's because they have a monopolyI am sick and tired of this horseshit platitude. Windows is not by any reasonable definition a monopoly. Do valid, usable alternatives exist? YES. Do people use them? YES. Is Microsoft forcibly preventing people from using alternatives? NO. The fact that so many people can go on and on about how "Microsoft is D-O-O-O-MED!" and "OSX cleans Windows' clock!" while simultaneously mouthing bromides about Microsoft being an unaccountable monopoly proves that Orwell was right about the ability for people to hold self-contradictory thoughts.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
A lot of people in Europe would like nothing better than for MS to pull out of the continent. We'd have a brief vacuum which dozens of companies would strive to fill. With the monopolist out of a multi-billion Euro market, there would be huge competition and a massive drive in product development in order to try to get a share of the immense rewards on offer.
Hmmm, competition, product development, advances in the IT industry. Exxxxcellent indeed. But it won't happen. MS might be p!$$ed by this, but they're far too smart to let any competition get such a large foothold.
What will work is redirecting the money wasted on legal action in a bonafide attempt to ascertain the feasibility of switching servers and workstations to Linux. They won't be able to do it everywhere, but they could concentrate on the following:
Investors won't freak out because of a arbitrary fine that Microsoft won't end up paying (they'll settle on a lower amount or give away licenses or something). Investors will freak if an entire continent starts a concerted effort to shut down a significant part of Microsoft's revenue stream.
The EU has telegraphed this fine for a year. It could have easily been avoided. Gates and Ballmer may have a large cash hoard. I doubt if their stockholders appreciate them lighting it on fire.
an ill wind that blows no good
I am as big of a Linux finatic as the next slashdotter, but I am having a hard time understanding the basis for the magnitude of this fine. I am a firm believer that Microsoft has its monopoly because Microsoft Office has consistently been the most robust office package on the market. I have to run VMWare at home just because I can't use another office product.
However, the information that the EU demands seems to be nothing more than an extortion attempt. Samba has worked flawlessly with Microsoft's SMB implementation for years, and I can add linux to a windows domain, authenticate agains a Microsoft ADS and plugin to Microsft Exchange server with Evolution. So what is the real issue, all of these functions have been created without taking anything from Microsoft, but rather from innovation from the Linux community.
I am not going to debate whether or not Microsoft has used its market share for good or ill, but I don't see how it much affects any other operating system. Corporations have always commanded the popular OS and companies choose the OS on what platform will make the employees the most efficient. Microsoft Office is still unreplaceable and it is the main anchor to the Windows platform. Office 2007 is one of the best software products I have used to date, so I don't see that going away. It will be the slow detereriation of the desktop that erodes the grip of Windows, not litigation from governments over non-existent issues
At least this is my take. If I had a car that controlled 90% of the market, would it be fair to make me compete without seats or a stereo? Who even cares, linux and apple technologies and innovations are maturing and besting such commodity apps. such as media players, web browsers, picture managers, etc.
Math
The problem is that despite the theories about taking over the server space via a desktop monopoly is that it hasn't happened and there's little evidence that it ever will. The effect today is that attacking MS is decreasing competition in Europe in the server space. Since this EU issue was first proposed by MS's competitors, decreased competition or payment of protection money by MS has always been the goal. Given the amount of money that MS has paid out, the strategy is working.
The EU is effectively acting as these companies agent and EU citizens have derived no benefit from it.
It is not about giving over the details of the design, it is about publishing sufficient details so that competitors can interoperate with your products. It is not as if Microsoft is the only company that has ever had to publish API's for Inteoperability...
During the early 90's Novell was the dominant force in the LAN Server Market. Microsoft took advantage of the API's that were published / provided by Novell (for the purpose of interoperability) to write their Gateway Services for Netware, this service allowed the NT server (NT 3.51 and 4) to effectively emulate a Novell Server and was designed to ease the migration of users from Novell Netware to Windows NT.
I don't think the market would fall apart completely, but I think the implecations would be bigger than that. Just think about all the people who've never administered anything but windows. Many of them have no clues about generic concepts as simple as DNS. They just understand how to work the tools MS provides for DNS. Home users are an easy switch because they don't do very much and generally have a 1:1 equivalent to another OS. However, there are dozens if not hundreds of tasks an admin has to do. How would those admins survive without any real knowledge of LDAP? HTTP? DNS? FTP? NFS? CIFS? SMTP? God forbid they have to get information from a man page or use a command line tool... Many would just drown.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
I know, isn't it great???
We save them from Nazis, they save us from Microsoft!
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
The difference is that you can't uninstall MS software when it's bundled with Windows. On a Mac, if you don't want iTunes, delete it. Just the same with any other Application bundled with Mac OS, if you don't want it, trash it.
you're comparing the fine for a single region to their world wide profits.
Well that actually makes sense. If they comply with the EU court's demands and share their technology with competition (primarily OSS projects such as SAMBA) it could affect their worldwide market.
iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, GarageBand, and iWeb (i'm sure i missed some) are not bundled with the O/S but with the computer. You wont get them if you buy a copy of Mac OS X. So it is Apple the computer manufacturer and not Apple the operating system maker that does the bundling.
Of course this difference is academic to people buying a new system, but it does matter to people upgrading their software.
Yes, but $1.99 is close enough to two dollars for you to drop that penny, isn't it?
How do corporate secrets keep prices low? They do make a company profitable, but hardly competitive. On the contrary, they keep the competition off the playing field. Why do you think the armaments industry in the states --- sorry, I believe you like to think of it as "defence" industry --- is so darn inefficient? $600 toilet seats and $450 hammers are the funny part, but have a closer look at the JSF story and the disappeared millions in Iraq, it's enlightening reading.
...). Or they were simply bought over. This has nothing to do with "the invisible hand of the market"; customers voting with their dollars. This is abuse of monopolistic power, pure and simple. And that's what the ruling is about.
When a corporation has a talent that they can use to provide a service for a customer, it is in their best interest to keep that information secret -- it causes a decrease in the supply of that service which in the SHORT run increases prices. This is where the confusion usually comes from. The problem with trade secrets is that you MUST be able to keep them secret in order to restrain supply and raise prices. In almost every situation, the secret will leak out, whether through reverse engineering, duplication or a better solution being found. Only through competitive forces do these things occur -- government is there to prevent reverse engineering, duplication and in some cases the finding of a better solution. Copyright and patent laws restrict the first two from happening, regulation and licensing restrict the third from happening.
The defense industry is 100% government-created. It would not exist in a free market in any way, shape or form. This is cronyism at its finest.
Microsoft's competitors were vanquished because the playing field wasn't level, not because customers didn't like their products. Either they were beaten by dodgy sales tactics (remember DRDOS?), by incomplete documentation of system calls, by artificially created incompatibility between systems (closed file formats,
I support Microsoft in the DRDOS situation -- no one was forced to buy Microsoft's DOS unless they wanted to. No company should be forced to restrict how they offer their product. In my businesses, I often times ask my customers to sign non-compete agreements when they use my software/labors for a certain price point. Microsoft is free to contractually obligate their customers to do the same. What protected Microsoft's MS-DOS versus DR-DOS was _GOVERNMENT_ restriction on the market -- namely patents and copyright. Without patents and copyright, DR-DOS would have no problem selling a better and cheaper product. Government created the mess, not Microsoft.
Why should Microsoft document system calls in THEIR product? Microsoft was NOT A MONOPOLIST, except where the State gave them that right through copyrights and patents. You're debating your own position there, friend.
Finally, in Europe the judiciary enforcing the law does not benefit in the least from fines. And the legislators are fairly elected. And lobbying^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcorruption is illegal. Fines are therefore in place because on the whole the population stands behind them. Certainly of you'd do a poll amongst Europe's population you wouldn't find many respondents opposed to the ruling! How is this racketeering?
Because it threatens a company and a group of individuals' rights to maintain trade secrets. Market forces are made bad by EU's overbearing pro-monopoly agenda (copyright, patents, regulations and licensing). Customer happiness goes up when competition goes up, but the EU has become one of the most anti-competitive marketplaces and Europe will suffer in the next 5-10 years because of it. Mark my words, the EU is on the verge of doom if they don't deregulate their markets. The US is in a similar situation.
Ah, but myself, and my company, are those beatniks.
Much like Novell, IBM, Apple, Sun, Oracle.......
Forgive me for running with such a hippie crowd.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
That Microsoft actually proposed some licensing for the protocols, only:
a. They weren't compatible with all licenses (guess what? the GPL was one of them)
b. Small businesses complained that they had to pay a big amount of cash for a lot of material, most of which they didn't even need.
As usual, groklaw had a good coverage of the matter.
A CC-licensed illustrated horror novel
The EU has just spent money on software licenses. To upgrade their Phantom consoles to Vista and Office 2007 including Duke Nukem Forever, the EU has just spent 300m Euro. 280m Euro was spent on Vista and Office licenses. A support contract for 2.5m euro / day was also included.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
First, making a company give competitors trade secrets in immoral.
You're insane.
IP (Intellectual Property) is not a god given right. IP is government assigned monopoly to promote the arts and sciences. IP is a government subsidy!
Furthermore, corporations exist at the behist of a government. Corporate charters, or the right to do business, and hold assets, are not god given, either; you get the from your local powers-that-be.
We don't live in a corporate state. We live in populous states, where corporations are allowed to exist in order to forward the aims of the people. When the aims of the people conflict with the aims of corporations, and it involves Government Subsidy, not god-given rights, than the aims of the people should (and will, in a proper democracy) prevail.
Wake up, and pull your head out of your ass.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Competition: Commission Decision of 12 July 2006 to impose penalty payments on Microsoft - frequently asked questions
What is Microsoft required to do?
The European Commission's Decision of March 2004 required that Microsoft take various steps to put an end to its illegal and anti-competitive conduct (see IP/04/382 and MEMO/04/70). These included obligations to:
On 10 November 2005, the Commission warned Microsoft, pursuant to Article 24(1) of Regulation 1/2003, that should Microsoft not comply with these obligations by 15 December 2005, it would face a daily penalty payment of up to 2 million (see IP/05/1695). Article 24 of Regulation 1/2003 entitles the Commission to impose such penalty payments not exceeding 5% of average daily turnover in the preceding business year per calendar day to compel companies to put an end to infringements of EC Treaty anti-trust rules, where an infringement has been established by a previous Commission anti-trust decision.
Why has the Commission levied a penalty payment for non-compliance on only the failure to provide interoperability information, and not the terms on which that information is provided (i.e. the first and not the second of the two points from the 10th November 2005 Article 24(1) Decision)?
As regards the provision of information on reasonable terms, Microsoft has announced that it will review the pricing of its protocols once revised technical documentation has been submitted. Furthermore, a final assessment on the degree of innovation, if any, that is contained in the interoperability information, and hence the reasonableness of the royalties that Microsoft charges, can only be made once the technical documentation embodying that interoperability information is complete and accurate.
Why has the Commission decided that the fine levied should be 1.5 million per day?
Of the two elements of non-compliance identified in the Article 24(1) Decision, complete and accurate interoperability information is a prerequisite for interoperable work group server operating systems to be developed. Microsoft's non-compliance in this regard has eliminated the effectiveness of the remedy. Consequently, the Commission has taken the view that failure to comply in this respect should at this stage constitute a larger part of the daily penalty payment identified in the Article 24(1) Decision of 10 November 2005.
Why has the Commission taken today's Decision given that Microsoft is in the process of preparing revised technical documentation?
Microsoft's obligation was to comply with the March 2004 decision's requirement to make available the relevant technical documentation as of June 2004. As of 20th June 2006, Microsoft had not done that, and the Commission decided that it was appropriate to levy a fine on Microsoft for its non-compliance so far.
More than two years after the 2004 Decision, the Commission has therefore been obliged to resort to formal measures to ensure compliance. If any revised documentation that Microsoft submits proved to be complete and accurate, then Microsoft would not be subject to further daily penalty payments from the date on which complete and accurate technical documentation was provided. This would be the best outcome. However, if Microsoft continued t
If the late fees were earmarked to fund an open source Windows clone, Microsoft would have a good reason to pay quickly. 5 million euros a day would fund the entire project in about an hour. Just think the scare that would put into Chairman Bill. That'd get Microsoft's attention.
You really don't know what you are talking about.
You can't boot Windows without loading IEHTML. You can boot Linux (or OS X) without loading Gecko, KHTML, Webkit, or whatever.
Glibc != IEHTML. There's no reason that a particular Web Browser's toolkit should be required to start an operating system, and, indeed, when you use Windows Embedded, its not.
It's not about numbers of shared libraries used by each component. It's about the _fact_ that IE's rendering engine is a required part of Windows, regardless of whether or not you ever choose to use IE.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
What do the EU nations have that might be akin to eminent domain seizures in the US? Here, unfortnately IMO, the supremes have ruled that property can be taken (by government) even for simple economic gain of third parties, such as transferring your land for a new golf course because it might bump up the local proerty taxes, etc. Seems like copyrights could fall under that, because they have made provisions for patent takings in the past. Perhaps they could just take the source themselves and open it, I believe the source code has already been provided to various governments...
note: I am not a huge MS fan, far from it, but I think they are treading on thin ice here and could lose out significantly if they keep waffling.
It's not about the size of the fine, it's about the publicity. Microsoft has a virtual monopoly on the operating system market. I don't want to get into an argument about Europe's economic models, but even if you're a capitalist monopolies are bad news. It's proven historical fact that modern monopolies tend to lead to higher prices and lower quality products and services. The whole basis of modern capitalism is competition - competition promotes innovation and leads to higher quality products at lower prices. Most modern companies exist for one reason - to make money. Once a company obtains a monopoly they still want to make more money - and the best ways to do that are:
1) Artificially raise prices.
2) Artificially lower costs (often leading to lower quality).
3) Maintain their monopoly by preventing any possibility of competition.
4) Leverage their monopoly to gain control of other markets, especially ones related to their monopoly.
Microsoft has done all four of these things, but the last one is what they're getting fined for right now. Prices are pretty standard so they don't have much room for #1 and they can't exactly buy Apple or Linux so they've been concentrating on #4 with a natural bit of #2 that's more of a side effect of not having much competition than a conscious decision. For those of you who don't know, Microsoft was found guilty of breaking the law in the US as well. The difference is that Microsoft used its influence to prevent any actual punishment.
Microsoft will pay this fine and the fine itself will not hurt them. What is (and will continue) hurting them is the negative publicity. When headlines read "Microsoft fined $XXX million for breaking the law" it makes investors nervous and hurts their rep with the general public. I can only assume that Microsoft has some sort of plan in place to prevent this from spiraling out of control. Either they are going to continue to ride the line and pay some fines (cost of doing business) or they have a card up their sleeve to make sure this doesn't escalate. Given their business model and practices I find it extremely unlikely they are going to become a good corporate citizen and stop trying to rule the virtual world.
I can only pray that one day the United States Department of Justic will come to its sense and break Microsoft into very little peices. The OS situation is bad enough without Microsoft trying to gain control of every single aspect of computer software. It is absolutely killing innovation and lowering the overall quality of computer software by an absurd amount.
Haiku for you!
3...
2...
1...
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
hahaha.. STFU.. you are killing me
The Free Software Foundation Europe, who has been supporting the European Commission from the start, has launched a press release on the EC's decision.
they would pull an apple and say, ok, we'll take our windows and go. im sure the eu would crap a fat one if that were to happen.
and i would laugh my ass off. can you imagine the chaos?
-.no
First, making a company give competitors trade secrets in immoral.
Obviously you haven't been following the case. The remedies that the EU wanted had nothing to do with trade secrets. The two major remedies.
1. Supply documentation so that competitors can better interoperate with Windows. Like documenting all Windows AD protocols so that Apples and Linux (Samba) boxes can better network with Windows AD servers.
2. Unbundle Windows Media Player.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
"Your honor, I wish to do my time in a British prison"
OK, will somebody please find the receptionist, have her pay this pizza guy or whoever he is from the petty cash drawer so we can all get back to work??
280 meters? That's one hell of a big euro.
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
Thank you for agreeing that trade secrets are bad for competition. True, copyright, licencing and certainly patents prevent competition. Which is why the anti-monopoly laws curb their power when they outlive their purpose. But complete deregulation, as you seem to advocate it, is not the solution, it's complete madness. If you take away copyright, you take away any incentive anyone might have to publish. If you take away patents and licencing in general you take away any incentive to innovate. Government is not evil, it's a huge protection and a necessary burden.
I disagree with you. I've written two books (both becoming free e-books) that I never used copyright to protect my creations. I sold them, and I continue to reap profits from their sale. I maintain about a dozen blogs and websites where I repudiate copyright and allow others to take my words intact and use them as their own. As long as the ideas get out there, my income goes up even if no one knows that I wrote the words. I also use my freely distributed words to reinforce my hourly rate, which goes up each and every year well over inflation's rise.
The blogosphere and F/OSS movement both contradict the idea that people will only create if their works are protected. The garage band and pub band industry also rejects the claim. MOST artists care less about protecting their art as long as they are making an income. No record label would take another artist's works and distribute it as their own -- the label would jeopardize their future if they attempted to defraud the public. The Internet protects the original author's ego more than any other distribution scheme in the past.
What gave MS its edge vs. Digital was the deal with PC makers to buy MSDOS for all their PC's, whether they installed it or not. So if a customer wanted DRDOS he had to pay for MSDOS as well.
So? When I sell my labors, I tell my customers that if they want a discount, they better buy what I recommend. If they don't, my rate doubles. Some customers prefer to go direct, so I charge them a higher rate. Microsoft has EVERY right to contract their stipulations -- PC makers had every right to refuse the contract and sell hardware with opposing operating systems. The consumers decided they wanted Microsoft, not DR-DOS. On top of that, the State's enabling of copyright and patents prevented DR-DOS from legally reverse engineering the MS code to sell a competing product. The State restrained trade, not Microsoft.
Deregulation is what gave California its power outages and England it's shortage of tap water.
Lies. Myth. Completely false. Deregulation NEVER happened in California. In both cases, wholesale costs were partially deregulated, but retail costs were not -- and competition was NEVER allowed into the picture. See this article: The Myth of De-Regulation and this article: The Failure of State-Designed Markets In BOTH cases, government is to blame 100%. Why did only California experience these outages when other states are even more free in energy policy? Corrupt politicians and corrupt public policy.
What you need is not deregulation, it's BALANCED regulation. Protect innovation, production, implementation, commerce, etc. until the players become too rapacious and the disadvantages outweigh the benefits. Which why patents have a limited lifespan, btw.
No patent really seems to work, though. Look at cell phones -- almost all of them are nearly identical in how they work, but every phone has a dozen patents pending. None of the patents mean anything to the cartelized players in the game -- they only serve to restrict new players from competing. We'd have a cheaper and higher quality world without patents.
This had nothing to do with the state, it was the deal with the hardware manufacturer(s) (and the fact that the hardware manufacturer had to honour their contract -- are y
"I am sick and tired of this horseshit platitude. Windows is not by any reasonable definition a monopoly."
o ft_finding/
US federal law does not have a 'reasonable dfinition of a monopoly'?
November 1999, "A federal judge declared Friday that Microsoft Corp. possesses monopoly power in the market for PC operating systems and harmed consumers through its anti-competitive behavior"
http://money.cnn.com/1999/11/05/technology/micros
The current administration overturned the verdict ('break up'), but not the ruling above...
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
If Microsoft don't pay up and comply with the ruling, in addition to confiscating assets and all the normal legal stuff in each of the EU member states, the EU Commission could make it mandatory to use ODF for all document processing and storage in Government within the Union.
That'd basically pull the feet out under MS Office.
The future is in beta
If they do so, then the EU software companies that are there would have to develop for another platform. That would almost certainly become Linux. At that point, companies such SAP would be pushing Linux on the world including America. Then even American software competitors would have no choice but to be on the same platform. MS loses their monopoly and at that time, they would fall faster than netscape did in 2000 or IBM back in 1990-1991.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
However to compare something a bit more similar, compare kde to windows, kde requies gecko to be running to use it's file explorer. So are they breaking the rules too?
I think the real sting is that, probably, in whole Europe, on the news (radio, TV), you could hear Neelie Kroes say that "Nobody is above the law" in regard to the way Microsoft behaved.
There was this little incident in Europe's "capital", Brussels, about eight years ago...I still get the giggles when I think about it.
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
Indeed. but does the EU actually have lawmaking authority? I'm a bit confused over whether it's an economic agreement or some kind of strange franco-germanic empire.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Apple is not a monopoly. MS is. Apple is allowed to do it. MS isn't.
US federal law does not have a 'reasonable dfinition of a monopoly'
No. It is not reasonable. The law is unreasonably vague, rests on unreasonable moral premises, and is unreasonably abitrarily enforced.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
To keep picking at the analogy (Oo, that's gonna leave a scar!), it's more like Ford has 90% of the market, and would only let Ford owners fill up at Ford Petrol stations by using a proprietory petrol cap/nozzle combination.
In this case, Ford would be utilizing its monopoly in vehicles to leverage into the petrol industry, much like MS is using its monopoly to leverage into... well damn near everything.
The U.S. really needs an English to Wisdom dictionary.
Am I the only one who finds it the least bit ironic that while the EU fines MS for bundling application, Apple is bashing MS with comericals bragging about how it bundles MORE software?
You're probably not the only one, but a little understanding of anti-trust law kills the irony.
I guess having no marketshare gives you the right to extra competative advantage?
The other way around, actually. Having a monopoly restricts your competitive options, ensuring that your smaller competition has a chance to get in the game. Apple can compete aggressively just like any other normal company. Microsoft, being a monopoly, has to restrain itself or get slapped down by the courts (sometimes, anyway).
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
is slowly curling into a glowing fist, powered by an evil far greater than...
body massage!
Tragedy of the commons.
-- Alastair
The reason the fine is less than what had been threatened in the press is because in late March 2006, Microsoft met with the EU Trustee Neil Barrett, who "clarified the requirements for the documents". Barrett also provided Microsoft with "aggressive series of deadlines" for providing the documentation in accordance with the clarified requirements.
Since that time, Microsoft has been working overtime to provide the documentation, including rehiring retirees that are more familiar with the issues, pulling people off of other projects such as Vista, staying up till 3AM, etc. And Microsoft has met all milestones in the "series of deadlines" laid down by Barrett. The seventh and final deadline is July 18, which Microsoft expects to meet.
So, since March, Micrsosoft has been acting in good faith, the EU knows this, so there's no need for the harsher fines that had been predicted. And don't hold your breath hoping for larger fines down the road. Why? Because even if the new documentation is still lacking in some manner, the EU knows that Microsoft provided the new documentation in good faith, and they'll just work with Microsoft to address any further deficiencies.
See Microsoft Scrambles to Meet EU Demands, for details on the above.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Well, your actually paying for a license to use their OS.
They are not "taking away your choice". You can use Linux.
The difference is that you can't uninstall MS software when it's bundled with Windows.
You are incorrect. The difference is MS is bundling products with a monopolized product while Apple is not (probably). I say probably because if Apple is found to have a monopoly on portable music players (they have 70% or so now) then it is illegal for them to bundle other products with it (iTunes). Of course several courts are now investigating this issue. Apple and MS are both held to the same standard, most people are failing to understand what that standard is.
Microsoft Hit With 280mm Cannon
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
Glengarry Glen Ross
Demand for trade-secrets to be compromised?
I respectfully disagree. The EU made it clear that they do not *want* any source-code. They want an API specification: (here I quote from the EU decision of 2004).
(see http://news.com.com/EUs+statement+on+end+of+Micros oft+investigation/2100-1014_3-5178465.html?tag=nl) So: no source code. Furthermore I really don't understand how publishing an API specification would disclose trade secrets.
Unclarity?
And besides, what part of (here I quote from the EU decision of 2004):
(see http://news.com.com/EUs+statement+on+end+of+Micros oft+investigation/2100-1014_3-5178465.html?tag=nl) is hard to understand and what part is unclear? I just don't see it.
A good-faith attempt?
Again I have to disagree. Prof. Neil Barrett (proposed as a monitoring trustee by Microsoft itself) characterised the documentation as: "entirely inadequate" (see http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2006/03/11/eu_ms_res ponse/). I absolutely cannot believe that Microsoft, with all its software engineers, would be incapable of documenting their own communication protocol if they put their mind to it. Or alternatively recognising that they couldn't do it in short order and saying as much.
Err ... significant? In what respect? Again I point to the statement by Barrett that the documentation was "entirely inadequate". But it gets better. The commission also quotes from an independent analysis of Microsoft's protocol documentation conducted by Taeus (see http://www.taeus.com/ for general information on this company).
I feel that the above two statements destroy the theory that that Microsoft made a good-faith attempt at documentation. And as to the meaning of the EU's request being uncle
Corporations aren't people. You can't expect them to react like people, so you can't punish them the way you punish people. If you want to modify the behavior of a corporation, you have to endanger its market share. Two ways I can think of to do this would be to place limits on the amount of advertising they can do and to tax _other_ companies for continuing to do business with them.
.. or watch out MS.Astroturfers on board ..
"The reason the fine is less than what had been threatened in the press"
Can you provide any citation from the commision to a reduction in fine for good behavour. There is a December reference to a $2m per day from the Commision. Which if my arithmetic is correct, is one million less then the current fine.
"Microsoft met with the EU Trustee Neil Barrett, who "clarified the requirements for the documents"."
Microsoft were compelled to 'meet' Barrett as they failed to comply with its ruling. What he actually said was the documents were "totally unfit for its intended purpose".
You put that as if MS was the concerned party somehow trying to play honest broker to the nasty Commision. In fact MS were compelled to 'meet' Neil Barrett after they first tried to have him removed. You see the Commision is a legally conviened body in judgement of Microsofts' misconduct. It's not as if the guilty party gets to 'meet' the Judge and 'clarify' things for him.
"Barrett also provided Microsoft with "aggressive series of deadlines" for providing the documentation in accordance with the clarified requirements."
So its the Commision who's at fault for not clarifying requirments. Instead of what is really happening, MS wilfully ignoring the instruction to open the protocols to third party developers.
"Since that time, Microsoft has been working overtime to provide the documentation,"
If they are complient why are they being fined $357m and a further $3m euros per day?
"Microsoft has met all milestones in the "series of deadlines" laid down by Barret"
If they are complient why are they being fined $357m and a further $3m euros per day?
"the EU knows that Microsoft provided the new documentation in good faith, and they'll just work with Microsoft to address any further deficiencies."
If Microsoft provided the new documentation in good faith why are they being fined $3 million per day.
Why does the Commision need to 'work with Microsoft'? Did Leona Helmsley get to 'work' with the Judge when she was caught cheeting on taxes?
In real life, are you a PR hack for Microsoft?
Is slashdot becoming totally overrun with MS.Astroturfers?
davecb5620@gmail.com
The EU can make law, but only in thos areas surrendered by the individual states to the EU.
Europien compertition is one such area
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
Gervase Markham's article for the Times Online would seem to disagree with you on that last point—a previous ruling meant a £1.5/day fine. Markham argued that Microsoft should just pay the fine as that fine was not so big:
Somehow a fine double that of the old fine still doesn't seem terribly significant in their daily take. And according to the BBC, Microsoft will appeal so perhaps this will ultimately result in a fine more to Microsoft's liking.
Digital Citizen
Actually even the US courts found MS guilty of abusing their monopolistic position. Do valid, usable alternatives exist? YES. Are they technically superior? Some would say yes. Do people use them? Very very few. Did MS forcibly prevent people from being able to purchase computers w/o MS products? Yes, according to US courts. If you purchased a computer w/o MS, odds were that you still paid for the MS product because of the OEM's contract. The power to force OEMs into those contracts is not illegal, but to actually use the power to force them is.
But note the qualification "in the market for PC operating systems". It was necessary to carefully carve out a part of the OS market in order to make the charges stick. Now in order to make the EU charges stick, the market has been expanded in full. If the desktop and server markets were really disjoint as the US courts assumed, there would be no way MS's desktop "monopoly" could have any effect on the server market.
The inconsistencies are unimportant however, because the goal of the US and EU efforts was to enrich MS's competitors and this goal has been achieved.
Joyful sob.
This is the happiest day of my life. Sigh.
It's even sunny outside...
It would be like introducing an invasive beetle to an ecosystem to eat an invasive vine you let loose ten years earlier. In the end you still have a problem with an invasive species.
There was this little incident in Europe's "capital", Brussels, about eight years ago...I still get the giggles when I think about it.
"Belgium, man! BELGIUM!"
IP (Intellectual Property) is not a god given right. IP is government assigned monopoly to promote the arts and sciences. IP is a government subsidy!
How generous of the government to allow an individual the right to the products of his/her own mind.
We don't live in a corporate state. We live in populous states, where corporations are allowed to exist in order to forward the aims of the people. When the aims of the people conflict with the aims of corporations, and it involves Government Subsidy, not god-given rights, than the aims of the people should (and will, in a proper democracy) prevail. Wake up, and pull your head out of your ass.
What socialist tripe. If a corporation wants to sell a product to another individual the government has no moral authority to intervene. It is irrelevant whether or not any other group (even a majority) would benefit from a government-imposed looting of that product. Microsoft exists for the benefit of Bill Gates and his share holders, whatever benefit the people derive from it is secondary. Pull your head out of your own ass and stop demanding the world revolve around your own un-earned needs.
They ruled MS has a monopoly for PC OS's, and the monopoly was abused for unfair competition in the market of server OS's (by not disclosing the interface details of their PC OS's, therefore making hidden functionality in their PC OS's that could only be used by their server OS's), which is what the whole EU case is all about.
There is no inconsistency, and no conspiracy either.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
My biggest concern is that Uncle Sam will step in. Junior still has enough time in office to seriously piss of the EU. We're not all that mighty and powerful. Even Conan needed friends.
Have MS headquartered in some EU country. Would the EU be so quick to want to force an EU company to hand over all of it's software to competitors?
First, the EU has convicted and punished dozens of EU headquartered companies for monopoly abuse. Second, "hand over all it's software"?!? They are ordering them to document the interaction between the server and the desktop. There is no software required, just documents that explain how they interact so others are not illegally disadvantaged.
This boils down to the EU hates it that other countries are better at things then they are.
Oh, I see. You're an idiot.
Is it impossible for Linux and apple to use window Servers?
Who cares? The question was can Windows desktops use Linux and Apple servers as easily as Windows servers?
Exchange, one needs an exchange client first.
No, they need to be able to run an exchange server on a non-windows box. That is why the EU ordered them to document the exchange protocol.
And for other application, your dealing with a specific application. Granted MS may have made product ABC, but do they have to make a client for product ABC for every desktop OS?
You have the entire ruling completely backwards. MS doesn't have to create any clients at all. They have to document the protocols well enough so that Linux and Apple and Sun, etc. servers can compete on even ground when serving Windows desktops. This isn't about stopping MS from having a monopoly on desktop OSs. It is about stopping them from using that monopoly to gain another monopoly on Server OSs.
The unregulated monopoly business model goes like this. Take a monopoly (desktop OS). Tie it to a new market (servers OS, web browsers, media players, etc.). You quickly drive everyone else out of business and you have two monopolies. Rinse. Lather. Repeat. Soon you just have a small number of competing monopolies, innovation is pointless, and consumers are screwed. That is why I don't know of a single country where what MS has done is not illegal.
Apparently it won't sting quite enough, though.
Remember though, as in the US, the guilty punishment was very little compared to the payout for all the civil suits which became slam dunks. Expect MS to settle a lot more lawsuits in Europe to server and media player companies.
You're missing the point. The only reason that hidden functionality in Windows has anything to do with servers is that they are really part of the same market.
As for the origin of the EU legal effort, do you claim that it wasn't initiated at the request of MS competitors?
Actually, if you read the artical you will see that they have the opertunity to appeal.
I have a feeling that they will be able to weasel their way out of this one.
"You're missing the point. The only reason that hidden functionality in Windows has anything to do with servers is that they are really part of the same market."
You're missing the point that Windows became a monopoly because they were on all the PCs, and when MS started their server business they had to displace the big iron servers, and did so by making the PCs talk better to their servers than the servers from the competition. And because MS had a monopoly on the PC and not on the server, that is monopoly abuse.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
You don't have the right to profit from the products of your mind. Without government protection, the first person you sold it to could sell it himself. Only the threat of government sanctioned violence keeps people from reproducing any intellectual property whatsoever.
Corporation is an abstract concept created by government. Your free market idealism applies to sole proprietorships only. Once you have more than one owner, you need a power structure and laws to keep things sane. Without corporate charter, you do not have limited liability and any shareholder can be sued for the entire amount of damages or debt a company has. So telling government to stay the hell out of corporate business is nonsensical. Without government, corporations as we know them wouldn't exist. We, the people, created them through the democtratic process and we can impose any kind of limitations we want.
We live in a cooperative society, and just as we have the right to say "we will imprison you for killing someone" we can also say what are legal and illegal ways of making money. You sound like a petulant child who wants all of the rights and privileges of living in a cooperative society with none of resonsiblities, and like petulant children everyhwere you project your own failings onto those who point them out to you. Socialists aren't the ones profiting off the work of others, capitalists are, and they demand the right to keep on profiting. A wage slave is a slave nonetheless, and capitalism is founded on the work of the wage slave.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You don't have the right to profit from the products of your mind. Without government protection, the first person you sold it to could sell it himself. Only the threat of government sanctioned violence keeps people from reproducing any intellectual property whatsoever.
There's a difference between a right to something, and protection from those who take it from you.
And yes, you dont have a right to *profit* from it, but you do have a right to keep it.
Corporation is an abstract concept created by government. Your free market idealism applies to sole proprietorships only. Once you have more than one owner, you need a power structure and laws to keep things sane. Without corporate charter, you do not have limited liability and any shareholder can be sued for the entire amount of damages or debt a company has. So telling government to stay the hell out of corporate business is nonsensical.
Without government, corporations as we know them wouldn't exist. We, the people, created them through the democtratic process and we can impose any kind of limitations we want.
A corporation is only a collection of interested individuals. It is not a government granted privelege or abstract concept. The governments only valid role is to protect the individuals of the corporation and those they deal with in such areas as limited liability, intellectual and capital protection, disputing trade agreements, etc, etc.
The artificial domains of Anti-Trust and/or Anti-competition is what this thread is focusing on.
We live in a cooperative society, and just as we have the right to say "we will imprison you for killing someone" we can also say what are legal and illegal ways of making money.
There is a fundamental difference between murdering someone and trading goods between two voluntary entities. These are not arbitrary democratically chosen laws, subject to the whim of the current government. They stand on their own reasoning. If people had the right to impose any law than this entire conversation would be moot wouldnt it?
You sound like a petulant child who wants all of the rights and privileges of living in a cooperative society with none of resonsiblities, and like petulant children everyhwere you project your own failings onto those who point them out to you.
The only responsiblities are met by delivering the product that was paid for, and paying the wages of those who agreed to make that product.
Point out my failings and who exactly Im projecting them on, or please refrain from attacks ad hominen.
Socialists aren't the ones profiting off the work of others, capitalists are, and they demand
the right to keep on profiting.
You do not have a right to make a profit. Anyone who claims so does not know the first thing
about capitalism.
A wage slave is a slave nonetheless, and capitalism is founded on the work of the wage slave.
Thanks for tip.
No, hell no the EU would be defending the company stating that it has a better product and the consumers decided that.
That is not the point. The consumers may have decided that Windows on the desktop is better, but the issue is that Microsoft are using this position to make their Servers more effective because of their dominance of the desktop. In other words, other companies aren't being allowed to give the consumers full choice of servers.
Is it impossible for Linux and apple to use window Servers? Depending on which server application the answer is yes or no.
Wrong. It is not impossible, but they can't use them as effectively, as they don't know the protocols to use them as effectively.
File server, I see people around campus using macs and Linux boxen and store their files on Linux, apple, and windows servers. So Id say either someone did some serious hacking and created a custom way to write to the Windows file server from other Oss, or the EU is just lazy and doesnt want to read what is available or wants to be handed the product. Again being lazy.
Yes, someone did do some serious hacking, and as a result Linux machines can use Windows servers, and Linux servers can provide services to Windows desktops - but not nearly as effectively as if they used the full correct protocols.
Exchange, one needs an exchange client first. If someone makes a Linux exchange client, then Linux can use exchange.
No, because to use exchange effectively, you need to know the full protocols.
Clear now?
Well ... I'm happy to see what might actually be a response with inside knowledge. However ... first of all I'm afraid that, given its public record in the area of "honesty" and "fair dealing", Microsoft is facing rather serious credibility challenge here.
Could it really be that bad?
So ... are we to understand that Microsoft really had no documentation of its main client-server interaction protocol (whether API or protocol description) that it could use to produce documentation for the EU? Do you really expect us to believe that?
Well ... sadly enough we might, because we remember the efforts by Jim Allchin to put Microsoft's Windows development on a more systematic footing (see: http://asay.blogspot.com/2005/09/news-microsoft-ad mits-its-development.html). So if that holds for Windows development as a whole, then might it not hold as well for something like a communication protocol? *shrugs* Ok ... I give up. It might be that Microsoft as a company really hadn't got a clue what it's most important client-server communication protocol looks like. So ... yes. If you had to dig through mountains of Windows source code to figure out all instances where client-server interaction can occur (because you don't have a clue really) it could take a lot of time. But even if that were so, why didn't Microsoft warn the EU that it wouln't be able to finish withing the alotted time? Perhaps that is why it got the extra year to complete its documentation. But even so why keep mum and come up with hollow-sounding excuses about "formats" at the latest possible time? Could it be that whoever was in charge of this project didn't know how to manage it?
Unfortunately the choice seems to be between
(a) downright incompetence (the project manager in charge of producing the documentation couldn't count and couldn't read a calender)
(b) the problem was too big (we ain't got no docs anywhere boss, honest, only source), or
(c) stonewalling.
Forgive me for being just the tiniest bit sceptical of Microsoft's good intentions and good faith (with Microsoft's long history of outright chicanery in mind whenever things didn't suit them).
So ... the EU caused Microsoft to miss its delivery target for Windows?
And please ... if your company had to actually interrupt its work on Vista to introduce disciplined software engineering, do you really expect me to lend credence to claims that delays in Vista delivery aren't 100% self-inflicted? And all those vanishing features ... caused by the EU's interference as well, yes? I'm sorry, but if you're saying that Microsoft really didn't have its act together when it comes to software engineering, it's very hard for me to lend credence to any claims that the EU's requirements has cause Vista to be delayed by even a single day.
Formats as fig-leaves?
And secondly ... sorry if I sound a bit grumpy, but this "now that we have an idea what format the EU wants" sounds like a poor cop-out. What do you care what format the EU wants? They specified an effect, not a procedure. They didn't specify a format in order not to impose undue constraints on you. If other developers can use your specs to produce something that will be intereoperable, the EU is satisfied. And sorry but if you knew your business, you ought to know what a workable specification looks like. So pushing the EU for a precise definition seems either:
- fishing for an excuse to produce unworkable documentation ("we
To actually complete the analogy the car manufacturer with immense wealth has secured practically all the companies' support meaning the only way to use a companies' product you must use that car manufacturer's products. Doesn't make it so easy to switch now huh? It's like XBOX's situation in Japan. In order for it to sell it needs Japanese games. But because it has pratically none it doesn't sell. But all Japanese games are made by Japanese companies. And they don't want to take the plunge or risk because XBOX hasn't proven itself. But how can it prove itself if it doesn't have the games. And back and forth and back in forth it goes.
"I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes" ~ Laughing Man - GITS:SAC
Warren Buffet came up around 500 million dollars short on his record setting monetary donation, he will, however, forgive him.
You take it, I don't want it...
...has more FOSS developers per capita than any other country in this world.
My hypothesis is that Oz would be the ideal place to first make the upgrade. My business plans are all focussed around this idea. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
(1) The proposition.
A company (Microsoft) has a monopoly if competitors do not exist.
A competitor exists { Apple,<insert Linux distro>, Unix, SCO ; ) , BSD }.
Therefore monopoly doesn’t exit.
Brought to you by modus tollens*
Note: According to cognitive psychologists, although nearly 100% of college students have a solid, intuitive understanding of modus ponens, < 60% can apply modus tollens correctly.***
Corollary: In modern industrialized countries the majority is with those citizens that have not been college educated constitutes approximately 65% of the workforce.
I have a thought experiment.
Suppose nearly a third of educated people are able to apply modus tollens.
In addition grant the uneducated classes this same value (however unlikely).
The outcome in (1) is thus: the majority of voters will evaluate it incorrectly, or are easily misled into thinking that they are correct. It follows that the governments that are elected by the people, unfettered by special interest groups, will not be able to evaluate (1) as well. In conclusion repressive policy will be generated ‘for equality’ at the expense of freedoms. This process will by induction flow from one level of economy to another, all the way to specific personal freedoms by the regulation of the economy of personality. Everyone is equal, competition is staged (Remember competition is a necessity for innovation, but equality must be at all times maintained), everything is protected from the citizen, even themselves.
Closing remarks:
It becomes evident that the adage that ‘democracy is the tyranny of the majority’ has some semblance of reality. Restated in more specific rhetoric, the previous maxim should read: ‘democracy is the tyranny of the incompetent by the deceitful.’ The only redeeming quality democracy has is that domestic revolutions are usually ended in a bloodless coup.
ps.
If the collective body of the EU can compete with Boeing via the creation of Airbus; why isn’t a composite to Microsoft formed? It’s not like alternate OS generation is impossible, Linus did it
*** (Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications, 3rd ed. By John R. Anderson,
New York: Freeman, 1990; pp 292-297)
M$ ripped off code, and included it in Win 95. That's the only plausible reason that they would refuse to release the source. In today's litigous society, a few hundred cases of stealing code would lead to lawsuits that would bankrupt M$.
Andy Out!
I think an easier analogy (even if less exact) is if one company owned 95% of the roads in your country.
Then, they could extend this monopoly to start to specify what brand of cars were allowed to drive on those roads. If they made a car, they could allow only that car to drive.
They could do the same with trucks. Then with the stuff that the trucks carry.
If left unchecked, someone with this kind of monopoly power soon owns EVERYTHING. You can see how.
But there is no significant API hidden by Microsoft. Even all the hidden functions (which are not that many) are published on the web by third parties.
Microsoft's side: a camera's view
I did try to read the reports, but the main themes in them seemed to be:
(1) it's industry standard to have incomplete documentation for something as complicated as that, so Microsoft complied by providing incomplete docs (Broy)
(2) such docs are aimed at specialists anyway, so only people with lots of background knowledge about Windows architecture, and Windows networking will be able to read and use them (Broy)
(3) Barnett asked for silly things and made mistakes (Broy)
(4) Barnett based his opinion on the documentation delivered by October 2005, and there was an update (Broy)
(5) Barnett used the documentation to try and figure out how to do two things: (a) add a user, and (b) propagate a password change (Finkelstein)
Damaging criticism for certain, but of course these reports were written to highlight Microsoft's point of view.
With all respect, but when you read e.g. SCO's pleading without being aware of their context you'd think that they had a point ... and a case. Then when you read Groklaw's comments and IBM's pleadings, you see how wrong you were. Reports like this are like camera's: they show you exactly what they show you, but you have no idea what they skirt. Microsoft does seem to have legitimate gripes, and I tried to find the original trustee report to see for myself, but I couldn't. So could you please tell me where I can find the trustee report so that I can verify the criticism?
But for me the bottom line is that Microsoft choose to describe their protocols in words. Text. Nowadays there are better ways of doing that.
FSFE's take on the matter
The FSFE gives a pertinent suggestio. See this link for FSFE's take on the matter: http://mailman.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-relea se/2006q2/000137.html
They state that Andrew Tridgell (of Samba) estimated that Microsoft's protocols can be described in about 30,000 lines of IDL (Interface Definition Language), of which Samba has deciphered about 13,000 lines.
If what they claim is true (and I admit I can't judge that), then Microsoft could have delivered the entire interface specification in just 30,000 lines of formal description, and simply and deliberately choose the most inefficient method of documentation possible. In that sense directing a major effort at producing text-only documentation could just as well be seen as a major effort to pass the compliance test without actually producing any useful documentation. In other words the "written primarily to maximize volume (page count) while minimizing useful information." accusation by Taeus comes to mind.
Summing up
I'm sorry, but again given Microsoft's track record where it concerns honesty and fair dealing, and its ongoing insistence on providing "solutions" that exclude Opens Source competitors, it's hard not to lend credence to the claims by the FSFE and Taeus. Notwithstanding the reports from admittedly reputable experts provided at Microsoft's behest, which uniformly tend to take the position that protocol documentation can only mean giving dedicated experts a few clues about where to look, I remain deeply sceptical.
The Commission ordered Microsoft to produce "documentation" that's sufficient to allow others to produce intereoperable software, not how. If Microsoft chose to provide terribly voluminous and inefficient documentation, an obfuscation exercise in its own right, then I cannot see why this would excuse Microsoft from providing error-free and self-standing documentation (even though th