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Microsoft Hands Over Docs To EU

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the are-they-allowed-to-redact dept.

hankwang writes "Reuters reports that Microsoft has handed over technical documents to the EU in order to enable the competition to make interoperable software. So far, the EU has imposed fines of €497 M and €280 M onto Microsoft for abuse of its monopoly. The deadline for this documentation was today. According to Microsoft, the documentation is over 8500 pages."

9 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. Nobody To Cheer For by Petersko · · Score: -1, Troll

    I think the EU is even less reasonable than Microsoft, which is clearly saying something. They'll say the documentation is unusable because a preschool student can't write an OS with it. They'll claim it's incomplete, but be unable to say why. And they'll demand something else, without saying what exactly they want, levy another fine, and the fun will continue.

    1. Re:Nobody To Cheer For by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      "global european market"

      "He's world famous in Newcastle!" - Gilbert.

    2. Re:Nobody To Cheer For by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      That's ridiculous. Sure the EU says it is for free competitions and no monopolies, but it never steps in when France/Germany/Italy all promote their national tel-com/air/etc... companies and make sure that they're not bought out by foreigners. Thats about as anti-competitive as it gets. If Microsoft was a European company, it would be lauded as a world leader and protected by European national governments.

    3. Re:Nobody To Cheer For by NineNine · · Score: -1, Troll

      So, when a private person or company gets to a certain arbitrary size in terms of assets, then the government is allowed to use force to take property from them? That sounds soooo enlightened.

      If I were running Microsoft, I would stop all shipments of all products to Europe (which is within their rights), and vigorously prosecute all copyright infrigment. That'll teach the government to mess with private property.

    4. Re:Nobody To Cheer For by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      Having governments intrude into areas they have no business is a Bad Thing. Especially when they start extorting money. Now, the documentation might be nice, but it'd be better if Microsoft had refused to give in to this nonsense.

      Beyond that, Microsoft does not have a monopoly. The only people locked into it are those that lock themselves in. Note the migrations to OSS in many parts of Europe.

    5. Re:Nobody To Cheer For by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      In other words, they need to be punished for being successful? Sounds like socialism if not communism to me.

  2. Another question remains by Teresh · · Score: -1, Troll

    How many babies will Samba developers need to kill to be able to implement ActiveDirectory properly?

    --
    Do you Gentoo?
  3. Re:Error in TFB by Adeptus_Luminati · · Score: 0, Troll

    What they should have done was increased Microsoft's software by a magnitude of 497 Euros (for pro) and 280 Euros... PER COPY THAT IS SOLD... that would devistate their sales, and more important the spread of their software and in general would sure add up to a lot more than some obscure 497Million Euros and 280Million Euros, that has no tie to volumes sold.

    But hey I have a heart... I would even settle for the EU to charge them 25% of that fine, and give 10% of the proceedings to Open Source Linux... maybe.. maaaaaybe then Microsoft would change its ways. LOL

    --
    No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
  4. Bullshit by bugbu · · Score: -1, Troll

    EU just want to thwart competition by punishing US companies-- it's like some stupid kind of import tax. If people don't like MS, just don't buy its software. I personally think the quality of MS software has been constantly dropping and I don't use MS a lot more. But that doesn't mean I support this kind of irrational actions by government. As a long time windows application developer I can say that there is so much in the OS that even 8 million pages would not be enough, and such document is a total waste of man power to put together, and to read as well.