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Microsoft Gives In To the EU

Posted by kdawson on from the playing-nice dept.

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.

2 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I am sure that this term will be in the license by slashjunkie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. that's not "opening up" by nanosquid · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.