Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Gives In To the EU
An anonymous reader writes with word that Redmond Developer News is reporting
that Microsoft has given in to EU threats of further fines. The company has opened up a whole host of protocols, including the Exchange protocol, under a license, the terms of which are not known. No other news outlet has picked up this story so far.
Microsoft isn't bowing down for nothing, this is all just the next step in their plan to buy the EU. Just watch, you heard it here first!
Their moves wont satisfy critics, because they will do everything in their power to stop Open Source from using these protocols.
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
FTA:
Of course, the licenses are not free. And, to a large extent, Microsoft is bowing to the European Commission, which decreed the company must make the interfaces public so rivals can compete on what they claim will be a more level playing field.
It appears that this wont make its way into the Open Source community; however, it does open up the market to competition. More competition is better than zero competition.
"The specifications covered by this license cannot be used in programs released under the GPL" (or rather, license terms that are intended to have the same effect without mentioning the GPL by name)
Stupid corrupt bureaucrats. A monopoly trying to punish a free market made winner.
Euros need better paying jobs? Get the government out of the market. Government doesn't have any business trying to run companies. They can't even run their own stuff.
MS is not willing to go the whole way. They give lip service to many things, but their business model is about SELLING software. The whole F/OSS environment is killing them, and those folks that want open standards are considered terrorists in Redmond. MS cannot be open or convenient anymore than a car can be an airplane.
MS has to fight tooth and nail against all common sense or change their business model completely. Guess which will happen as long as they are able to buy congressmen?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
How does the copyright of documentation require people buy a license? AFAIK, you have to patent the protocols to make them licensable, like VRRP. This is the same Spiel MySQL AB tries to pull on people. Once you release documentation, you are NOT required to buy a license for use of the knowledge. Sure, you can charge for the documentation, but not the use. MS is being ridiculous.
> No other news outlet has picked up this story so far.
Did you check CNN? FOX? The BBC?
I would like to announce that I, Anonymous Coward, have also given in to threats from the Government and will be complying with local laws, subject to certain conditions that I don't yet choose to reveal. This is my latest claim to have complied with the laws that supposedly bind me. The many many previous times I've made similar claims, it has been nothing more than wordplay with no basis in reality but please don't allow that to distract you from treating this as Headline News. Just because I'm a serial liar doesn't mean I shouldn't be given the same respect and trust as everyone else. Thanks.
There he is again! I just don't know why these journalists keep on asking his opinion!!
God, I can't stand him. "Principal analyst for market researcher Enderle Group" - yes, principal and only "analyst" for a one-person "group", consisting of him.
Any article that quotes him, is suspect. Any journalist that contacts him for an "analysis" - is at best clueless, and at worst incompetent to write on technological matters.
Fucking Rob Enderle! When will the world be rid of this know-nothing stooge? He's like Herpes, he just won't fucking go away.
For the love of Christ, begone with you, Rob Enderle!
Sure looks like they are getting killed to me......
Unfortunately, I would guess that Microsoft's license tries to deal with this problem. Probably in a way analogous to Numerical Recipes' clause:
Too bad the EU couldn't force them to go totally open.
Al Capone would be proud of the strong-arm racket the EU has going.
Every time MS announces a profitable quarter, the EU seems to cook up another justification for suing them.
As a former member of the original Exchange group, of course you can't imagine anyone being creative ;) Bitch.
Microsoft's power over the computing world is very broad but very shallow. One of their execs came right out and admitted that at the US anti-trust trial. I remember him talking about how it was funny to talk about the vast power the company had when in reality it was a whole lot of people not willing to call Microsoft's bluffs.
I read the whole article and fail to see how this is bowing to the EU. Could some slashdoter enlighten me please?
MeTheGeek
MS Exchange Server has supported IMAP for years.
If an organization really, honestly, truly wants to not use Outlook... NOBODY is forcing them to. But it's so much easier to whine and moan.
Exchange is the best product of it's kind out there. Ever try using Notes? Yech... what a train wreck. How about Openview? Disaster. Oh wait!! Let's use Fetchmail!
Let's see what sort of exclusionary license Microsoft will impose before crowing that they have capitulated.
But it will be THEIR hill, and it will be THEIR beans!
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
From TFA: Microsoft is making key communications protocols available for license , so that third parties, including competitors, can link into the company's newest enterprise products...
The key communications protocols are the ones where Microsoft has a monopoly position... namely,
The protocols by which a Windows 95 / 98 / NT / 2000 PC joins and authenticates with the Domain Controller.
NTFS, Active Drirectory, SMB etc. would be some other protocls of interest.
To my knowledge, Exchange Server, Share Point etc. are not areas of monopoly for Microsoft.
The article is plain WRONG. It might be some more PR spin by MS as usual, though. You want us to open up our protocols? Okay... here's how Dynamics CRM talks to SharePoint Portal! One thinks the EU inspectors will not be susceptible to such tricks.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
"No other news outlet has picked up this story so far"
Wow. I feel honored. I can now tell my grandkids when I'm old and crusty that I actually saw a peice of news that was posted first on Slashdot - as opposed to the usual way of things being recycled from Fark, Digg or CNET. Or worse, a Roland Pickadoor submission.
Is that a tear forming in the corner of my eye? Sniff.
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
The multinational corporation Microsoft has complied with the law, and this is reported as "Microsoft Gives In To the EU". I wonder whether the headline would have read "Microsoft Gives In To the US" if the laws in question has been American.
This is the lie they tell when they are about to release another big wadge of bollocks paper.
In Soviet Russia-- no wait! In former Eastern Bloc nations:
Microsoft gives in to EU!
[running from Slashdot crowd with torches and pitchforks]
buying votes in Europe. I'm not saying they haven't, but they don't have the system locked up like they do have here.
And America is losing power to influence the world. Most of this is because on the horizon is the vision that they won't be THE dominant player anymore that can strongarm anybody they please, like they were for most of the 20th Century, because of a variety of factors (EU gaining power, China, US own economy and debt).
Microsoft's paid-for Congressman will be doing less good (for them) in the rest of the world as time moves on.
If the EU demanded a total, open, no cost solution, MS probably wouldn't give in. Heck they might even rather pull out of the European market entirely than do that.
Remember: Anti-monopoly rulings don't necessarily mean that competitors get everything they want for free, it just means that you have to make it reasonable for your competitors to work with what you have. For example when phone companies had to let CLECs in, they don't have to give them the space for free. They can, and do, charge them for all the rack space they use. However it has to be a reasonable and non-discriminatory fee meaning they can't say "Uhh ok it's $100,000 per 1RU and you can only buy one."
I'm sure the MS deal will be similar. You'll be able to license their specs for whatever is covered under the agreement, and the fees will be fixed and reasonable, but it will cost money and there may be conditions on it. That's probably fine for the EU. Their concern isn't making OSS fans happy, their concern is that companies be able to produce products that compete with Microsoft's stuff.
Stop the press - software engineer, sorry, programmer
Sir, madame, whatever
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
Licensing protocols to other companies is not "opening up". And given that open source is becoming more and more important inside the EU, this may not satisfy the EU.
Why exactly?
A moribund bureaucracy that's taken down by a moribund bureaucracy.....what the hell does that do for anyone other than the lawyers?
I expect though that the EU are wiser than MS is hoping for.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Mr Ballmer,
You are welcome to an account on Slashdot and don't have to be an AC.
For the record anyone can make their own protocols but unless we have some agreement then inter communication between different platforms would be impossible.
You see you'd end up with a monopoly otherwise if others weren't able to talk to your software.
I bet you didn't know THAT.
Regards
Including Microsoft...
This is the same spin we've seen before. I've got a news item from last August on paper that says *exactly* the same thing ("Microsoft buigt voor Brussel" - meaning MS gives in). The one-but-latest news came from the EU a couple of weeks ago, saying "You know, these protocols aren't innovative at all, your fee is too high", so now it's MS's turn again: "Hey, we finally open up, here are all our protocols, for a most reasonable fee that we don't exactly know yet".
The lawsuit *is* about the licensing. It is not about the protocols. Saying "you'll get the protocols but we'll define the licensing and the fees next time" is like saying "I will make you rich, and I'll define rich for you".
my other sig is a 500 page novel
First I was about to joke and write something like 'MS gives in to representative body of 400 Million people' but then I noticed that even this can't be taken for granted. I'm glad the EU has enough self-respect to tell MS who's boss when it comes to anti-competitive behaviour.
Then again MS was delaying the game to draw attention off the fact that they're defending their monopoly much more effectively in another place: Standards, closed, non-compatible Data Formats and Software Patents. The former two are great devices of market control. The EU ought to do something about that. Probalby MS wasn't really interested in lobbying in this as, as giving in here isn't so much a loss for them as it would be if they where required to comply to an amount of standard IT standards. Now *that* would be the appropriate punishment for MS.
I'll rest when MS has 50% market share or less.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Those yanks. They roll over and surrender at the first whiff of fine cheese :-)
Shame your prediction is already wrong as PostPath is already a drop in on the wire binary compatible Exchange server replacement.
Who got the ball rollling on what eventually became the WTO? Wasn't it the USA with the original ITO proposal? Now the USA is finding out that it's not just others who have to play by WTO rules they also have to do so. In a sense the US Govt. shot it self in the foot when it comes to it's freedom to establish mechanisms for strong arming others over trade issues. Not that the EU is any better in this regard, it isn't. The USA likes to keep it's options open on doing things like the Byrd Amendment so one gets the feeling the whole WTO thing wasn't properly thought through in the USA because WTO has significant power to enforce its decisions through the authorization of trade sanctions. It's almost like somebody forgot to turn the WTO into a toothless tiger like the UN. The US Govt. probably can't help MS by trying to strong-arm the EU, at least not under WTO rules, and even if the US tries to strong-arm the EU over MS anyway it wouldn't be worth it since the result could easily be a nasty trade war which would hurt a whole lot more US companies that just MS.
</rant>
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Someone can buy the MS documentation and re-document the protocols, releasing this work into the public domain. Wouldn't it be funny if the EU did fine Microsoft and used the money to do exactly that?
Also note how the term "intellectual property" facilitates this deliberate obfuscation; SCO used it and now Microsoft are using it. There's no such thing as "intellectual property", the EU need to push for specific disclosures of which specific copyright, patents and trade secrets Microsoft claims would be infringed if it documented it's APIs.
I'd celebrate if Microsoft were reporthed obeying the law of gravity .
(Ballmer and his frickin' chairs... THEY NEVER COME DOWN!)
Don't be fooled by Microsoft. Ever. Microsoft allready has all the marketing material, press releases, and spokesdrones ready and primed for this move. Now it is going to sound/look/feel that Microsoft has really given in and has serious plans to start behaving from now on. Does anyone here really believe that? No, i don't think so. But we can expect a media push to pressure the EU to back off now we finally have some good results in this protocol war. But this new stance is just Microsofts next line of defence and I would really suggest having a look at those licenses.
The expenditure in most countries for campaign contributions is capped and normaly corporations can't contribute to political parties.
In the UK for example, all the major parties are normally working in red numbers and the political campaigns cost a fraction of the equivalent in the US.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If this is true "The Outlook-Exchange Transport Protocol supports personal information management features such as e-mail, calendar, contacts and task functionality in Office Outlook 2007, including shared calendars and scheduling capabilities. The protocol is available for licensing now, although Microsoft will continue to tinker with the specifications until June or so."
Microsoft will cease to have relevance one year from Now!!!
Maybe not exactly a year, but if there could be quality OSS products integrated with outlook/exchange then the windows stranglehold would be mortally weakened.
I wonder what these licensing conditions are, are the GPL compatible... hmmmmm
Given you can't even spell protocols, it's not really surprising that Exchange is such a pile of **** to work with.
Spare a thought for all those poor hackers out there with an addiction to packet sniffing.
What will they find to feed their addiction?
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
Welcome to the game.
Perhaps they would trade their packet sniffers for some "MMIO snoopers" and dig into Nouveau?
Seriously, there is plenty of stuff out there that needs improvement. And if Microsoft eventually is out of the picture, imagine all those poor people who reverse-engineer Microsoft products, focusing on really interesting things in the next 10 years. It could be a new golden age...
MS has tried all of those options (low-quality specs, outrageous licensing terms) and the EU repeatedly said no to those attempts. And while I am pretty sure that MS would happily risk another hefty fine for its delays on delivering the specs as requested by the EU if it could buy them time to come up with some smart solution for this "problem" (i.e. satisfying the EU and keeping the specs secret) there does not seem to be many avenues left to try.
So - being the optimistic I am - I definitely look forward to eventually getting the specs.
Real life is overrated.
It's not a MAPI server. It's only just another IMAP server but just only has authentication to AD. That's it's only twist.
Does this strike anyone else as a bluff? "Here's the protocol. But there is a license before you can read it. And the license is unknown."
Technically, it's available. But it's also not at the same time.
Meow.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Does this mean they don't have to pay all those fines the EU imposed on them, AND they get money for the licenses? That seems like a win/win situation for MS doesn't it?
-- Cheers!
Exchange today, is an awesome piece of software, and wont be matched anytime soon. But even with the old shit, nobody has improved or even come close to what the schedule/calendar was way back when.
There's plenty of stuff that have various levels of non-disclosure as a condition of the license. You have to remember that not everyone cares about the openness of source or not. Requiring a closed module doesn't stop competition in any way, it just means that competition can't open up that particular code. I know everyone here is concerned about OSS competition but that really isn't what the EU is worried about. Commercial, closed, competition would be just fine.
Also remember that the reasonable fees could very well prevent a real open distribution because they could be per copy. There's nothing illegal or unreasonable about that. If the agreement said something like "In addition to the upfront fee, you agree to pay $0.10 per copy of the software distributed," that'd be ok. Some of the better known RAND licenses (like the MPEG formats) are like that. Well, that pretty much screws over any GPL distribution. You can't open the code and say "You are free to make your own version," as you are responsible for paying licensing fees per copy.
As I said, this isn't a case of the EU worrying about helping Linux out, it is a case of worrying about making it so that people have the ability to develop alternatives. They don't have a problem if those alternatives cost a reasonable amount of money and are closed source since, after all, so are the MS products.
By selling access to their protocoles, they allow other companies to enter the market, which is the point in these suits.
They only allow closed-source companies to enter the market. No open source company can compete with Microsoft under these terms.
Since open source companies are actually the biggest competition for Microsoft at this point, that basically means that a closed-source only licensing policy is not a sufficient remedy for Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior. And there's a good chance that this won't be lost on the EU commission and that they will demand more.
This is about Microsoft's anti-competitive behaviors, not about Microsoft not being what we want.
Quite right. And that's why Microsoft needs to be forced to open up to the only real competition they have--open source companies.
Unless the protocol definitions are redistributable without fees or royalties this means absolutely nothing.
"Microsoft gives IT to the EU"