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Microsoft Hands Over Docs To EU
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."
497... no presents for Bill's kids this Xmas...
fines of E497 and E280 is off by 6 orders of magnitude. Should be E497M and E280M.
That would be "so far, the EU has imposed fines of 497 MILLION and 280 MILLION onto Microsoft". Of course, it's still spare change for Microsoft.
Million, Presumably
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.
Now it truly is a Happy Thanksgiving. 8500 pages.... They seem to be hoping that it takes a year or two to read through all of that.
Wow. That's something like the price of two or three MS Office licences. I bet Bill is shaking in his boots.... :-) ... maybe the editors missed "million" in the headline?
Rather cheap for being a fine!
/. editors: I think you forgot an "M" after those)
(note to
A CC-licensed illustrated horror novel
does anyone know where to actually get the specs?
They gave ".doc" documents, don't they ? ;)
-- Rastignac was here.
Is it to be made publically available or do you have to request it from the commission?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
According to Microsoft, the documentation is over 8500 pages.
Microsoft were then fined another 5 Million Euros for photocopying and stapling charges because the EU needed more copies...
Summation 2
Competition: update on Microsoft's compliance with March 2004 Decision (23 Nov 2006)
Reduce, reuse, cycle
The question still remains...Are these documents up to date? Or if they are at the time they were handed over, will they remain up to date in a perpetual manner? Microsoft could submit "up to date" documents and later change interoperability metrics of what these docs represent. They have done something similar before.
...in Office 2007 format, forcing the commission to buy a licence to read them?
:)
Oh, that'd be so funny.
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
How many babies will Samba developers need to kill to be able to implement ActiveDirectory properly?
Do you Gentoo?
I personally would stay away from that documentation unless it is in some form of open documentation licenses.
What is going to stop Microsoft coming back a year or two later and sue every competitor for patent infringement because they produced their products by reading this documentation?
Beware.
"These are not the docs we are looking for"
</stormtrooper_voice>
'This page intentionally left blank.'
Will the documents be usable outside the EU? The EU may allow Mac and Linux developers documentation, but that documentation may have the status of trade secret in the US.
So Microsoft has given documentation... Can they actually be implemented legally worldwide?
Do you Gentoo?
``fines of € 497 and € 280''
Look, I don't know what they teach kids in schools these days, but just because a lone 0 is nothing doesn't mean you can just go and leave out zeroes whenever you like.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
All work and no play makes Steve a dull boy. All work and no play makes Steve a dull boy. All work and no play makes Steve a dull boy...
Indeed. Requiring Microsoft to submit this documentation, while helpful, isn't a full solution to the root problem. The root problem is that Microsoft implements proprietary formats, protocols, and APIs in the first place, and that so many people rely on these.
IMO, it would be better to mandate the use of open standards inside the EU government. This is (1) less heavy-handed than imposing a fine, (2) ensures the details of formats, protocols and APIs used by the EU are publicly available, (3) allows anyone to implement these formats, protocols, and APIs, and (4) requires anyone who wants to sell software to the EU to support them. It also gives parties other than the government the option to use these open standards, or proprietary alternatives, as they see fit.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
that would be 8450 pages of "this page is left intentionally blank"
http://chimpbox.us
I believe the truth is that the Euro has been more worth than the U.S. Dollar for most of its existence and certainly since July 2002. At its introduction in 1999, the euro was traded at US$1.18. It declined and rose again. Over the last 365 days it has been worth an average 1.25 Dollars - never falling below 1.1697 since Dec 2005.
Waiting until the last possible moment before the deadline to hand over the docs. Which are no doubt horrendously incomplete and out-of-date...but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Anyone have a link to the torrent?
For those of you asking how to get the documents: they're not available free of charge. Microsoft has handed over documents for checking, and has explained how it wants to license them.
The EU is going to decide three things: whether the documents satisfy their requirements, whether the price is reasonable (based on Microsoft's original contribution instead of their monopoly position), and whether the proposed license is reasonable.
If they decide this will do, then Microsoft has to make the documentation available for people wanting to buy it under those license terms for that price; if they decide against, then Microsoft still hasn't complied and will get more fines.
It never was about documentation available without strings attached, that would be too unreasonable.
See the Washington Post: The Commission's decision, it recalled, required Microsoft to "disclose and license complete and accurate interface documentation [...] and Microsoft could face further fines if the Commission finds that the price was based on Microsoft's exercise of monopoly power, rather than on the originality of its product.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
It's not just big companies, this monopoly poroblem. I remember on my most recent trip to Europe, I tried to pay for something with fake money from a board game. I was arrested and charged with abusing my Monopoly...
My sentence was to be sent to jail, sent directly to jail, not to pass go, not to collect 200Million...
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
You obviously have no idea what you are talking about
That funny, considering the fact that your reply had nothing to do with my post. I commented on the EU's handling of the fine process and how they've treated the information they've already been given in the past.
Your post never really discussed my post, other than to make some incorrect assessments of my position on the validity of the EU's original claims, which I never once mentioned.
You even got the events wrong.
So your string of unrelated crap gets +5 informative, and I get -1 troll.
In fact, Microsoft succeeded in imposing on the EU DG Comp an encrypted-DVD ROM format which I understand runs only on Windows. In addition, it seems MS required a clickthrough EULA which thoroughly annoyed the Commission officers and the Monitoring Trustee. As Microsoft's game is to delay as much as possible (see EU statement at http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?refe rence=MEMO/06/445&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&g uiLanguage=en ), the time spent negotiating the "security" of the pile of electronic "documents" has served them well (the fines aside) while awaiting the Court of First Instance appeal decision awaited between now and April.
Ah what bloat will do to you. At 8,500 pages it probably took up the better part of a DVD. On closer inspection, you might find that Steve Balmer accidentally attached his whole Outlook file. Lots of "fucking" and "killing" there. Hoist by their own dogfood.
Then there might also be the usual M$ inside jokes and "Easter Eggs." An example would be a movie of the whole Redmond staff mooning you if you hold down the control and shift key while mousing over the section on SAMBA. Then there's the old M$ pilot game used by people training for the WTC, which will be modified with a Brussels city scape. It's still an official part of Excel. They may or may not have cleaned up the Thesaurus entry which contained, "Unable to read a manual" for "impotent." Now it's "Needs a manual we never wrote."
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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.
Heh, I had a compulsory business economics lecture this morning -- ooh lookey, a chance to show off my mad economikz skillz.
In a normal competitive or semi-competitive market, firms try to maximise their profit by following the supply and demand curve. The cost for a firm to enter or leave a market is negligible, and consumers will always go for the best product at the lowest price (i.e. the optimal price/quality point). This is the optimal sort of market from almost everyones' point of view the best product will always win, and it turns out that this is a really good thing for the economy.
Let's assume that to start off with, the market for audio player software is a perfect competitive market. All media files are stored in an easy to implement format (e.g. MP3 or WAV) and so one audio player can easily be replaced by another.
Now, Microsoft decides to enter the market. They realise that they can get a huge install base by bundling their audio software with their operating system (which is more or less a monopoly product). This is an attempt to gain a monopoly in one market by leveraging a monopoly in another, which is illegal in some places such as the USA and EU. They then decide to reduce the contestability of the market by making their audio software default to creating files which competing firms' software cannot read without a license from Microsoft.
There are many more examles of Microsoft doing (or attempting to do) this.
All involve deliberate breakage of interoperability and backwards compatibility by either undocumented protocols/file formats or perversion of existing standards for them.
Pirate Party UK
"screw you guys, I'm going home".
I'd like to see Microsoft just stop selling any products to the EU. Then they would not be in violation.
That'd be interesting.
Microsoft could submit "up to date" documents and later change interoperability metrics of what these docs represent. They have done something similar before.
When you consider that it was 2004 when they were asked to present this document, you can say they have yet to even pretend to co-operate. It's possible that they will document 2003 software, which they have worked over and are about to replaced entirely.
The only way to win the M$ game is not to play.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
- no single producer is powerful enough to have a decisive influence on the market (i.e. no monopoly!)
- no customer likewise
- only one product is traded in unrestricted quantities, and every producer provides the same quality at the same production cost
- every producer can enter and leave the market freely, which means: you can immediately start selling without having to invest into infrastructure etc.
- I think there was a fifth precondition but I forgot what it was, sorry...
It is generally assumed that only one product fits these rules approximately, namely petrol (or gas, if you like), but even this is debatable.If any of these preconditions is missing, you don't have a free market! Most business people forget this fact.
So, don't expect the market to take care of eventually solving all economical problems. Sometimes it does by chance, but actually there is no guarantee.
Say out loud: I'm an Aspie and I'm somewhat proud, I guess. Uh. Can I write an email in all caps instead? Hm...
Is 8500 pages really that much? I remember that in July, when MS protested against the fines, they said that 300 employees had been working for over a year with writing the documentation. This makes 8500/(300*12)=2.4 pages per employee and month, which means that I'd really like to have that job..
I seriously and strenuously doubt that this 8500 pages constitutes the purported documentation. Far more likely it is a masterwork of corporate techno-drivel. I expect to hear from independent qualified judges that this material is not, in fact, necessary and sufficient information to enable an expert to create a system capable of reliably interacting with M$ machines on a network. Likewise with file formats, &etc. This present waste of paper is nothing more than yet another chess move by M$. The EU will have to burn months deciphering and testing the documents, more months filing reports on how extrmely bogus it actually is. The EU bureaucracy machine will piss away many more months spinning up. M$ will whine and wail to the press about how the oppressive socialist regime is never satisfied no matter how many earnest efforts poor little M$ makes to comply with the the horrible old EU's draconian and anti-competitive rules. Neelie Kroes will impose more very impressive sounding, but ultimately trivial fines on M$. The EU will decree that M$ can not distribute software in their constituent countries. M$ will instantly appeal. An automatic injunction will take effect, nullifying the decree. The decree was, after all, nothing but hollow posturing from the get go. M$ will pay the fines -- which have been for years factored into the cost of doing business in the EU. M$ accountants will treat the whole matter as a simple, standard, albeit largish, bribe. The wheels on the bus will go round and round. Macchielvelli's rotten, grinning corpse will cum in it's shorts again. Same Old Shit. Repeat after me: M$ will NEVER give up their wire protocols, APIS, ABIs, or file formats. Ever. Not until doing so presents itself as the most profitable course of action. At present, such a disclosure would be nothing short of financially catastrophic for them. Complying with the EU's demands is quite out of the question. So forget about it. Now. Do it.
this is only the US ruling, you can go google for other nations rulings, I believe also they have some problems at least in japan and korea (perhaps, don't recall)
0 03342909_webmssuit03.html
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/msdoj/
In the US the case still isn't over yet either, there is at least one more state going after them, Iowa, and the head cheeses have to travel and go testify in person
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/microsoft/2
Will Neelie Kroes (the lady who set this all in motion) be using OSS?
I am willing to bet a Debian CD that she doesn't even know the principal difference between OSS and OS.
Just another trick to give EU ICT firms an edge.
(I am from the EU.)
That's about 1 SAMs book on VB
Parent has a very good point (aside from criticizing Ayn Rand), Please mod up.
You still think that the 'free market' will fix it self?
Think again.
There are cases when this is simply not true.
And if you don't believe me perhaps you will believe the findings of an Nobel laureate.
George Akerlof who got it for his paper "The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism".
Read more about it on Wikipedia.
So in the case at the heart of this discussion the market has clearly tipped in Microsofts favor, so I think that everyone
will benefit if some of its dominance is taken away.
A certain level of regulation is good and needed in most cases, especially in this one.
Everything else is just anarchy.
What a company has a monopoly on one area, they can use that to give them an unfair advantage on other areas. This has been strategy used for every single successful MS product launch since MS DOS.
Demanding that a company with a monopoly publish the interfaces so competitors gets equal access means that competition again becomes possible.
You're free not to sell your software here. While you choose to sell your software here you'll do so by our rules or not at all. It really is as simple as that. You're neither compelled nor forced to sell your software here.
The US most definitely does regulate the means by which foreign trade happens. You'll just have to get used to the EU doing likewise. The European Commission is merely doing what the DoJ didn't have the balls to do.
First of all, noone got taken to court for just being big. Maybe you don't make that confusion, but a lot of (other) people seem to think that anti-trust somehow means "punished for being big" or "punished for being successful." That's not the case. Coca-Cola is still perfectly on the safe side of the law, for example. And noone orders McDonald to give the recipe to its secret sauce.
The thing sorta goes like this:
1. It must be proven that you've actually abused your might in a non-lawful way, and there was an actual harm to the consumers. (Harm to competing companies actually doesn't matter.)
If you will, it's like taking the school bully to court. He's not tried or punished for being big, he's tried for punching people in the face. There's a not-so-subtle difference there.
2. It must be proven that you were in a monopoly position, in which it was artifficially unfeasible for someone else to undo the harm you did. I.e., that in that situation, the free market just didn't work.
Basically that's the reality check to your Ayn Rand-inspired musings. If it can be proven that the free market can neutralize the harm on its own, then the company _doesn't_ get the legal equivalent of a kick in the nuts.
E.g., if two pharmacies aggree to fix prices on vitamins, it's _not_ an anti-trust case. The market can work around such minor speedbumps. People will just go buy their vitamins at the super-market, or go to the other pharmacy down the road. Or maybe someone will open their own pharmacy across the road. But when (as has at least once happened) the major pharma companies fix prices, that may well be an anti-trust case.
Look... noone is against the notion of a free market. We quite like it in Europe too. We don't go asking companies for their secrets just for the heck of it, but only when there's no other recourse left to force an aberrant situation back to being a free market.
The free market is actually a lot less robust on its own than some libertarians seem to assume. The whole notion and theory is centred around some assumptions: there are many identical/interchangeable products, the buyers are perfectly informed, it's trivial for a new competitor to enter that market, etc. _That_ situation can balance itself all right. But the whole mechanism falls apart when those pre-conditions aren't true any more. There are some actions and some kinds of damage that it can't work around, and there are people who have the financial interest to try to do just that: destroy that ideal free market.
And that's the other thing: the assumption that it's in everyone's interest to play nice, is false. It's in society's interest that they play nice, but for the individual competitors it's most often the exact opposite: you make more money if you can get in a situation where you don't have to play nice.
E.g., as a simple example, if there are two smiths in the same medieval town, sure, it's in everyone else's interest that they start acting like in a free market and undercut each other's prices. But those two smiths can make more money if, say, they make a secret aggreement to fix prices. Then they're the only supplier in town and can fleece everyone else with impunity. Or maybe one of them will decide that instead of even that, he'll hire a couple of mercenaries to beat the other up. Or whatever.
So to make a long story short: expecting the free market to always just work on its own, is a bit like expecting a city to work without a police station. Sooner or later someone will have the means and the incentive to ruin all that for everyone else.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The most noble purpose of the government is to ensure the free market, something that cannot exist without government intervention. It is always more profitable to make a fixed pricing deal with your "competitors" rather than actually trying to compete with them.
Libertarians tend to be very confused about this fact, as their central dogmas of their religion is that government is bad and free market is good.
(It's turkey day...)
Hmmm, perhaps a large anti-competitive turkey didn't want their head cut off today.
.... they have put off getting fined by the EU for a couple of months. It's a stall tactic plain and simple. Criminal defense lawyers do it all the time.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Could Microsoft be sued for not offering it's products for sale in Europe? <citations please>
Heard any good sigs lately?
> If people don't like MS, just don't buy its software.
We can't, our external partners send us and expect to receive data in proprietary MS formats.
I understand that you live in your moms basement, and thus have no need to exchange data with other people, but some of us live in the real world and our only choices are 1) to use MS software, or 2) to use 100% compatible software.
Requiring MS to publish specifications is a way to ensure that #2 remain at least theoretically possible.
What EU is doing is what any government should do, to keep the market alive is the finest reason for governments.
And no, because you are unable to imagine any other reason than petty protectionism for an action does not mean it is irrational. There is another option. At least you choosed the proper subject for your message.
is a huge Word .doc
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
1. Eat
2. Rant on Slashdot
3. Check value of $FilthyLucre counter running at top left of screen, notice that value has increased by more than the fine since starting #2.
4. Cackle evilly
5. Sleep
You mean what the DoJ was told by the new administration not to do.
You know, it would be nice if all the "it's like some stupid kind of import tax" or "it's punishing US companies" people actually bothered to read the way it all went before posting crap.
First of all, MS was initially _not_ fined a single dime. They were ordered to release the docs for certain protocols needed for interoperability. (I.e., no, not to document all of Windows. Dunno what gave you _that_ idea.) It was even allowed to give a list of which independent experts are qualified to judge whether the docs are enough or not. And the commission picked one of them. Pay attention, because it's important: it was someone suggested by MS judging these docs all the time.
That's it. The original ruling had _no_ punitive aspect as such. It was aimed strictly at correcting the monopoly situation that made it possible to break the trade laws.
MS _only_ got finally fined when months after months went by, and it showed no intention to comply with the ruling. It engaged in anti-EU astroturfing wars, it tried lame threats, it did stuff that was at best mocking the court, etc. You try doing that as a private person and you'd probably get some time in jail for holding the court in contempt.
Even then the fine was (A) per day that they keep ignoring the court ruling (which is how it eventually got to be hundreds of millions), and (B) with various generous deadlines and in between, and the provision that if MS complies until the deadline, it doesn't pay a dime.
So how the heck does that support such assertions as "it's like some stupid kind of import tax"?
And if you want to talk about punishing US companies, have a look at the long list of EU-based companies which have been slapped with hundreds of millions in fines from day 1 for breaking the trade laws. If anything the EU is giving a US-based company an unfair advantage and preferential treatment there. Because, again, any EU-based company in a similar situation was _not_ given the kind of sweet deal that MS was given.
Unfortunately, MS has mis-interpreted this as weakness and tried to pretty much just defy the court. Well, it didn't quite work that way.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I am inclided tofavour the cockup theory of history on this one.
I think microsoft is prevaricating because they dont actualy have the specs!
Hard to believe, well not if youve ever debugged a program with a ActiveX/COM/OLE
component inside.
For years the MS development methodoligy of choice seems to have been wrap a new C++
class around the old C++ class and hope it works. Which is sort of OK as it gives
you the reuse promised by OO. The downside is that you end up with something like
one of those old cannons dug up from the sea bed covered in layers of corrosion,weeds and
crustations. You can sort of see its cannon shaped but you cannot see any cannon!
The main PIA comes when you serialise the object, Every enclosed class gets involved in
this, and, its very hard to work out whats going on.
As far as I have been able to work out MS never seems to formally specifiy actual file formats
whatever the C++ serialize method spits out IS the file format.
As long as you use the same class to read it back in there is no problem.
Ven some naasty judge wif a ooroopeean akzent arks you vor the vormats zen you aveing a problum.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
Oh yes. By its shareholders. See, the EU is a market twice the size of the USA. Giving up on that market would send MS's shares into quite a bit of a dive.
But here's the funnier part: Not only it would make a lot of investors sell (thus speeding up the dive), but it would put quite a big dent into Bill Gates's personal fortune. See, his being such a rich guy isn't calculated just in money in the bank, but mostly in MS shares.
So between paying a couple hundred million of MS's money and losing a few _billion_ off your own worth, which would _you_ choose?
Plus, it's precisely that kind of thing that MS has worked hard to avoid. See a large part of the "secret sauce" in MS's monopoly of interlocking parts, is its products being ubiquitous. It's not just that you can't replace product X because product Y depends on it, it's also the mentality that product Y is the de-facto standard, everyone else has it, and you can't just give up on it without becoming the odd guy out of the loop.
MS has worked hard to maintain that illusion of ubiquity, world-wide. It has been known to offer massive price cuts and even prefer to overlook piracy than allow whole markets which are proof that you can jolly well live without both X and Y.
So forcing the whole of Europe standardize on something else than Windows and Office? Ooer. That would be the day when IBM', Sun' and the others' managers ejaculate in their pin-striped pants out of joy. It's not just the loss of the European market as such, but that would be the day when almost every single US corporation's executive starts hearing stuff like "sir, we can't send that document in Excel format, because they don't use Excel in Germany. No, sir, neither in France." It's the day when people start hearing that MS file formats aren't, in fact, the ubiquitous de-facto standard and can't be an ubiquitous de-facto standard.
So, heh, yeah, I'd _love_ to see MS do something _that_ stupid. Sadly it won't happen, because they're not stupid. But it would be comedy gold.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I wrote papers in university that took roughly that time in pages/month that were worth almost a whole course worth of credits...quantity doesn't equal effort, or quality.
Of course, this is Microsoft, so it's probably 8500 pages of diarrhea.
According to Microsoft, the documentation is over 8500 pages."
And if I know Microsoft, it's all disorganized, incomplete, unusable crap... Anything to be able to claim that they have fulfilled the EU's request without making any real progress toward interoperability. Please Microsoft, prove me wrong!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
From http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advoca cy
This is absolutely hilarious. From the title change to the lame, outdated jokes. That's why I come to Slashdot, for the high-rolling comedians. Thanks a lot.
And who would they sue too? The EU? Oops, they just pissed them off and found that a goverment is the one who decides what exactly copyright means.
Not that MS would ever be stupid enough to do something like that but if any cooperation wich supplied a common public need ever decided to use bully tactics against states it would find very quickly exactly how tiny any cooperation is compared to the power of even the smallest countries.
Workers have found this out for decades. Essential services are NOT allowed to strike and when they do the army can be used to either replace them, liberate essential assets or even force them back to work. Look at the strike among firemen in england from a few years back. It was getting really nasty with threaths of sending the army to get the red (modern) firetrucks by force if needed if the armies own green (obsolete) firetrucks were not going to be enough.
If a private company tried to deny an essential service, say a rail company decides to pull service because it doesn't agree with goverment policy or say a Shell decides to stop all fuel shipments because it wants to protest yet an other tax increase on fuel, the goverment would quickly step in, with force if needed.
Fortunally the real world isn't run by idiots like you so this situation almost never occurs because real business leaders don't want this kinda shit to happen.
Ah but wouldn't the US protect MS? How exactly? Start a trade war with europe. Not another one. Tradewars are hated by all sides and while they happen they are not for the sake of industry but for the sake of the voters who like their local politician to seem to be taking care of them.
If MS was stupid enough to actually follow your advice it would quickly learn that the law is what goverments decide. Not private industry, MS would find copyright totally unenforcable and it would just have lost a billion dollar market and have practically given its competitors that same billion dollar market.
Your argument is about as sensible as say the car industry pulling out of california, refusing to sell any cars there because of their high standards on enviroment regulations. "No way", ford was heard to say,"we just ain't going to do it. We won't be producing any cars for california, the EU and JP car makers can just take that market from us but we will not give into goverment pressure."
Idiot.
Legally speaking, 8500 pages isn't really that much at all. A pretty straightforward medical case can easily comprise well over 4,000 pages, and it'd be magnitudes upon magnitudes less value than this Microsoft case. I would have expected tens of thousands of pages for something like this. I suspect it's either extraordinarily well thought out and thus very concise, or intentionally glossed over to the point of being a debacle.
Maybe they are docs for MS Dos and Win 3.11
the preview word is Tiresome
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Is that in 1" margins, or those stupid 1.25" margins I keep having to change for my professors preference?
I'm a Linux user at home, and at work I prefer Linux and/or Unix, but sometimes use Windows. I've supported Macs and used Free BSD, Xenix, Solaris and SCO. I've read a good bit about Hurd and tried FreeDOS. I read judge Jackson's ruling in full, carefully. I dislike Microsoft as a company because of its business practices.
That said, I disagree with that ruling because I believe that the Sherman Anti-Trust laws were meant for and specifically address different types of actions. I believe that the ruling was unjust because Microsoft was not guilty of breaking the letter of those particular laws. Laws should mean what they say rather than what someone thinks they were meant to accomplish. With all due respect for judge Jackson, I disagree with the application of the law in that particular instance.
The rulings for Sun were an example of how I think the problems should have been addressed instead. I believe that what should have happened on a larger scale was instead a change in the laws that would have made the unfair practices Microsoft employed illegal in the letter of the law.
Now in the EU case, I haven't read the laws or the judgements, just related articles. I'm curious how they justify requiring a corporate entity to enable more effective competition. It seems anti-capitalist in my gut to say that it is a successful company's obligation to help less successful companies take more of their business away from them.
Can someone tell me if the EU's actions were based on law rather than on opinions? If so, what laws? Is there anyone trying to lead a movement to change the laws surrounding IP? Who can I cheer for? Is it reasonable to require companies to enable interactivity?
While I'm on my soapbox, I really want some things to change. I want every piece of software sold for profit to be required to have source code and building processes registered with the Library of Congress (or a similar entity) before it can be offered for sale. I want the copyright laws changed so that every piece of software sold for profit is to be made open source in the event of the absence of a supporting company or after 10 years, whichever comes first. I want every document standard to be required to be open sourced and documented to provide full interoperability after a period of 5 years and every data storage format to allow the same after 10 years. I believe these changes to the laws would increase innovation, company stability, competition and reliable software. If there is anybody trying to do something like this, who are they? If you think those are bad ideas, why?
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Maybe it's just that Friday morning feeling, but I was quite amused to mis-read the summary: "Reuters reports that Microsoft has handed over technical documents to the EU in order to enable the competition to make inpenetrable software."
Unless you are only making software in the EU then it probably doesn't matter. If you plan on selling your software outside the EU (like the US) you can't use the code.
Linux integration outside the EU jurisdiction will really make Linux corporate customers vulnerable to MS suits.
I like interoperability, but I don't like to see it being forced like this.So you're waiting that a company that does own 95% of a market helps other companies to make products that allow them to steal marketshare?
LOL
I support comercial liberalism, but why I should support comercial libertinism? Capitalism is all about consumer choosing the best alternative. With Microsoft, there're only a single choice. I can't choose a better product (Microsoft won't allow me running a different OS in my AD-powered office), so I can't make the world better by giving my money to the best company. What Microsoft is doing is pure communism. It's funny that liberals hate to see a monopolistic company be forced to help competitors to allow users have more choices, much in the same way communists didn't wanted to allow people to vote to choose a better government.
These conditions will apply to all future versions of Windows _ including the upcoming Vista operating system.
So, at the going rate, we can expect Vista documentation sometime in the next four to six years. I'd say it mostly depends on how quickly M$ comes up with a new version. I hope the EU people get fed up and fine them sooner this time. If their intention was interoperability and preventing monoply abuse, they failed.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.