Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Meets EU Antitrust Deadline
An anonymous reader writes to mention a News.com article, which reports on Microsoft's attempt to meet the EU's requirements in their ongoing antitrust case. The updated documents that Microsoft has delivered, they hope, will put off the leveling of a several-millions-of-dollars-a-day fine against the OS maker. Whether or not the documents have accomplished that task will not be known for several months yet. From the article: "The commission set a deadline of July but delayed it until a court proceeding finished in December, 2004. In July, 2006, the commission fined Microsoft $357.3 million for dragging its feet, on top of a fine of almost $646 million in 2004 for its initial violation. In a statement calling the submission of documents a 'milestone,' Microsoft said it had completed the review and editing of some 100 documents, which number 8,500 pages."
Almost a year ago, Microsoft released documents to the EU, which later responded with an epigram similar to, "There is indeed more page volume, but the content is still worthless." As much as I'd like to believe Microsoft is still not contributing to what they were required to do, you can only stretch the English language so far, then the fluff becomes thinner. There may actually be something within those pages this time. Maybe.
Just maybe.
The updated documents that Microsoft has delivered, they hope, will put off the leveling of a several-millions-of-dollars-a-day fine against the OS maker. Whether or not the documents have accomplished that task will not be known for several months yet.
Being that they have already dragged their feet for years on this, they should be required to pay the fine (or at least a percentage of it) into escrow (which can bear interest for the benefit of the EU citizenry). Once the documentation is judged to have met the requirements of the EU regulators, the money can be returned.
Not sure if it would be possible, but I think it would help dissuade MS from future delay tactics.
Slashdot meets dupe quota. The number of duplicate stories is now 1,000,000. Slashdot spokesman and frequent poster Zonk called it a 'milestone'.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
I didn't know it was possible to meet the same deadline twice. Oh, its a dupe.
The documents were submitted in Office 2007 format, with extensions that only run under Vista. Next month, Microsoft will announce the fast adoption of Vista by the European Commission. After all, if the commission is buying so many copies, it must be good. Soon, thereafter, they will announce a record adoption of Vista by leading open source developers.
Moo Ha Ha
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
Does anyone know what things (protocols, file formats, whatever) the doucments that Microsoft have given the EU and/or that the EU has been asking for actually cover?
Then you'd get fired. Because you forfeited a large market to the competition as well as committing a large scale breach of contract (causing Billions of Euros of damage which the government WILL recoup from your company). Your local assets (MS has subsidiaries in Europe) get confiscated, you might be subject to extradition and a group of twenty countries will heavily invest in opensource while software developers will need to make Linux or OS X (most likely Linux because that's supported on the hardware that's already out there) versions of their software in order to reach that market.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Personally, I'd increment the fine by an order of magnitude each time they do this. Last time it was a million euros a day, this time should be ten million a day. Either that, or the EU should just seize Microsoft's European property on the grounds that Microsoft has clearly neither any intent of paying nor of complying with the law.
(This isn't just a Microsoft thing. I'd say this about any company that perpetrated deliberate malpractice to get ahead. I can't understand why British Airways was allowed to bankrupt Freddy Laker and conduct several attempts to cripple/destroy Richard Branson. Sometimes I think the Romans err'd in wiping out the Druids - they would be so much more effective at bringing these corporations in line than the courts are being.)
In Capitalist West, Microsoft emails new EU Antitrust laws to you!
But as a dissident or competitor you know how it will end.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Well, there were two fines already: one for antitrust violations and another for failure to comply. Second one was also deadline. IOW, the article should be titled "Microsoft Meets Second EU Antitrust Deadline."
And I suspect that is not last dead line M$ is going to push up to its limit. Because, as of now, if there is something wrong with submitted documents, M$ wouldn't have time to correct raised issues and would breach the deadline.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
You're talking about the world's largest, horribly coded software. Of course most of the content in documents are worthless. If we're going to nitpick about the content of documents, we should go after the U.S. tax code.
Please mail your insightful comment to Steve Ballmer. I'm sure he'll implement your wise suggestion immediately. Imagine the joy the Microsoft shareholders would have from just telling us Europeans to go fly a kite. Imagine the sorrow on our European faces when we hear we'll no longer be privileged to use the magnificent software flowing from Redmond.
Thanks
"Whether or not the documents have accomplished that task will not be known for several months yet"
By which time Vista will be in the market, making it difficult to recall if MS is found to be still in breech of the ruling.
davecb5620@gmail.com
Msft won't ever supply what the EU is actually asking. Msft prefers to play games, and waste time, while bill is working in the background to undermine the EU's authority.
The EU won't EVER be satisfied by what Microsoft supplies. It's just a way of damaging Microsoft and by implication American interests in Europe, so that the EU can "catch up" with its own pathetic software industry.
If this were the case, there would have to be some European-based alternatives to Microsoft software that had to catch up.
Perhaps you could tell us what these are?
Microsoft has complied with all of the EC decision except the interoperability documentation, one of the squabbles is what the 'license terms' should be for the interface info - MS doesnt want it to be free, and heaven forbid GPL-friendly.
Novell has now validated MS claim that the interface info is indeed license worthy, notice they are paying royalties, so now MS can say to the EU that Novell found their license terms "Reasonable and Non Discriminatory". The Novell deal will undermine the EC ruling, and ensure that anyone wanting to interoperate with MS will need to license and pay royalties (and NOT REDISTRIBUTE).
Novell sold the community out, why did they pay MS for the interoperability info that the EC was forcing them to hand over? The deal was about interoperability after all, but that may be worse.
--10scjed IANAL,AFAIK
if you think about it for 2 seconds you may come to that conclusion but if U think about it for 5+ seconds, you'd realize that govs taking over Linux development would spell disaster for it because they're control freaks.
No idea who Mr. U is but if he thinks Linu can be easily controlled he forgot about a funny little thing called the GPL.
And it's not like the government had any control over Windows.
Some new thing, I think SP2 had something in it saying that Microsoft could disable your version Windows whenever they wanted for any reason at all so XP at least could be shot legally.
Yes, well, except EU law does not allow a non-negotiated contract to be cancelled by the company without compensating the customer appropriately and notifying him some time prior to the effective cancellation if there's no breach of contract by the customer.
and they wouldn't have gotten sued and with the lawsuit they'll never turn a profit on Vista, especially with the amount of pirates in Europe.
Um, what? Are you saying the fines and/or the cost of documenting the API are greater than the profit they'd lose from ceeding an entire market to Linux and giving governments even more reasons to heavily invest in the advancement of opensource? Sorry but that's bullshit.
Speaking of that, with them out of the picture they could get rid of a lot of the fancy crap like WGA and scale it down a bit to something less anti-Germany and just make the not work in Europe code better.
What makes you think people only use illegal copies in Europe?
Plus if NO copies of windows past ME are supposed to be there, it'd be really easy for whistle blowers, especially with a cash reward incentive from Microsoft.
Ahahaha, yeah, like MS could enforce their copyright in the EU after being practically an outlaw in the area.
Plus eventually after they're practically amish and their half working eurolinux OS crashes for the millionth time and they're back to using abacuses, the gov would realize what dumbasses they've been and let Windows include whatever they want. Movie maker sucks! Sound recorded sucks! It makes no difference and people want their computer to do something without spending a ton more money right out of the box!
WTF? Last I checked the govt was pretty happy with the performance of Linux over Windows while the only thing holding them back were the locked down file formats MS uses taking time and money to convert.
Do you seriously believe that over 400 million people with lots of disposable income starting to use Linux wouldn't increase software support for the platform?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I thought you weren't suppose to "edit" documents before you submitted them to the courts. Isn't this called evidence tampering?
Do the one possible thing that would effectively and instantly break Microsoft monopoly forever? Yes please! Oh why oh why aren't you in charge of MS...?
Spine World
In what other industry would the government (ANY government) have the right to force a company to release its trade secrets to its competitors in order for them to 'compete'?
/. but true nonetheless -- Microsoft developed these technologies, and is now being forced to hand them over to their direct competitors. Where's the incentive to innovate if you can't capitalize and have your intellectual property protected? How would you like YOUR work handed over to YOUR competitors?
Do drug makers have to release their formulae to their competitors to release competing (or even complimentary) products?
Does Boeing send their engineering specifications to Airbus? Does Ford have to send the documentation on their latest engine design to General Motors or Volkswagen?
Microsoft is the "American Dream" -- it has produced more millionaires than probably any other company in America. How many other companies have generated so much money for the American taxpayer coffers -- from the taxes on everything they consume, to every employee they hire world-wide.
How many businesses 'live off' Microsoft technologies? (Every software company in the world that develops any kind of software or system based on the Windows platform -- that's who.) How many workers across the entire planet work faster, easier and better because they have access to Windows and Microsoft Office?
Probably the wrong message for
Devil's advocate OUT...
so you think the famously non-technical governments taking over the development of a version of Linux would turn out to be a great OS?
Do you think they'll put politicians in front of computers and tell them to write code?
I've used Linux as it is now and it completely and utterly sucks. There was almost no thought put into ease of use or easy user understandability.
Or maybe you need to get a brain and try reading the manuals that come with many distros. No OS is perfectly intuitive, Windows only manages to get by because everyone is forced to learn it.
They have to pay almost a billion to those greedy idiots after a corrupt, biased, bullshit trial and go ahead and google search what % of windows copies in Europe are pirated.
Yeah, because pirated copies of Windows cost them SO MUCH money. The piracy rates matter jack shit (and in your plan would just hit 100% anyway), what matters is how many legal copies are sold in the area. You can't tell me that all Microsoft software and hardware combined doesn't make more than a billion dollars a year in Europe. They'd lose all Office, Windows and Xbox sales in the area permanently (returning would get them arrested after all) and give the competition a free victory. Their shareholders would run into their headquarters and strangle Ballmer.
If they pulled it from there, which is easy as pie to enforce no matter what you think, they'd have saved probably 2 billion or more and showed those idiots what happens when they create their own bullshit lawsuits and run them through their own bullshit courts just to get some money.
Yeah because governments really have no business punishing corporations that violate the law as long as they are big enough, right? And because it's really impossible to just FUCKING DOCUMENT THE API OF AN OS YOU WROTE YOURSELF WITHIN A TIMEFRAME OF TWO YEARS. Clearly documenting the Windows API is so expensive that you'd rather ceede an entire continent to the competition.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.