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.

Comments

The trouble is this..

[zappepcs]

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?

News.

[Anonymous Coward]

> No other news outlet has picked up this story so far.

Did you check CNN? FOX? The BBC?

Re:I am sure that this term will be in the license

[slashjunkie]

If such a term was in the licence, it would open up a legal can of worms for projects such as Samba, Scalix etc, that are already doing quite a good job of reverse engineering Microsoft's closed protocols.

What if some of these specifications were leaked into the public domain by a company that bought a licence - how could you then prove or disprove whether Samba had reverse engineered protocols under their own steam, or seen some of the leaked specifications, mysteriously fast tracking certain features they'd been slaving over?

It could be SCO vs Linux all over again.

Re:Not Free

[Technician]

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.

Not a problem.. As more places demand Open Document Format and other NON-Microsoft ISO certified formats, MS will have to adopt open standards instead or be left out.

Well it isn't surprising

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Re:Well it isn't surprising

[GreyPoopon]

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.

Costing money is fine as long as the fees are reasonable. But the conditions will be far more important. If there's a condition that reads like "this license is not valid if the protocol is used in conjunction with Open Source Software", then it will be completely unacceptable. It's quite nearly the same as saying "any company can license our software except {list of competitors}". For the pure OSS supporters, I know that having to pay license fees will not be acceptable, but it's not reasonable to expect a company to give everything away. The goal of this is to make sure that a large company does not abuse its dominant market position in such as way as to prevent competitors from obtaining a share of that market. Reasonable license fees with fairness to all potential competitors are an acceptable way of reaching that goal.

Re:Government telling companies how to do business

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! Woo! Right on!

I guess from your use of "Euros" you're American. Shouldn't be chained to your desk right now, toiling?

that's not "opening up"

[nanosquid]

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.

Re:Not Free

[Technician]

embrace, extend, extinguish.

ISO Certification failure = Product rejection. Embrace, extend, extinguish doens't work when certification acceptance is put in contracts by customers, States and Countries.

ODF Certification is done.. http://www.gcn.com/blogs/tech/40647.html
Adoby PDF certification application.. http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/43015-1.html

However, you are correct they are trying to embrace, extend, extinguish.
MS application.. http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3 618176

Re:Not Free

[Technician]

Uhh ISO now fast tracks Microsoft submissions, havnt you heard? One good thing that MSFT is now pushing their standards, that forces Adobe to follow suit with their submissions. The great thing about standards is there is so many to choose from now :)


ISO Certification fast track or not, the Customers will demand formats that exchange nicely. MS is working hard to prevent it as seen in the article..

"Redmonk Analyst Stephen O'Grady said Microsoft could not -- for any number of reasons, most of them political -- support ODF earlier on in the process.

"ODF support would have to be compelled by external parties, and large ones at that," O'Grady said. "I'm sure many within Microsoft hoped that ODF would indeed fade away, but I doubt they expected that, and once it trod down the path towards ISO certification, this move was probably a given." "

It is going to be a fierce battle for a while as MS pushes for their own in house solution and hope the other format will die out because their format is extended.

"The move is a big about-face for Microsoft, which has said it would not natively support ODF, openly dismissing the standard as too "limited" to meet the demands of the market."

MS is trying to define the market again instead of leting the market define the market.
If it is too limited to meet the demands of the market, why is the market demanding it? The market is demanding it because the MS format is too limited. The limitation is in it's inability to be accessed by other systems.

Good luck the the new browser war!

Re:I am sure that this term will be in the license

[Crayon Kid]

Not much, according to the copyright law. As long as a developer gets his hands on the specs and develops software that implements them from scratch, there's nothing they can do. Licensing only covers specific, already-written, code. Reverse engineering is limited in the USA by the DMCA, but there's no such thing in the EU. Providing the same functionality is limited in the USA by software patents, but again, there's no such thing in the EU (even though there's a lot of push for them). So all you can do is tie the people involved with NDA's and liability claims, but once someone gets around that, there's nothing stopping them from implementing the specs. Again, this only works in EU.

Of course, I'd venture that Microsoft already thought as much. If they're opening up their specs it may mean that (a) they're desperate to sell to the EU no matter what the possible consequences; (b) they're going to take whatever measures to stop the specs finding their way to free software. NDA's, liability and exorbitant licensing costs are pretty good methods, albeit not infallible. Another trick would be to offer the specs hopelessly obfuscated, but that won't work if they charge an arm and a leg for it -- those who pay want to know what they payed for.