EU Rejects Microsoft Royalty Proposal

pallmall1 writes "According to MSNBC, The Financial Times has reported that the EU is going to drastically reduce or even eliminate Microsoft's proposed royalties on interoperability information required to be released by the EU's antitrust ruling issued three years ago. According to a confidential EU document, "Microsoft will be forced to hand over to rivals what the group claims is sensitive and valuable technical information about its Windows operating system for next to no compensation...". Even Neil Barrett, the expert picked by both Microsoft and the EU to oversee Microsoft's compliance with the 2004 ruling, says a zero percent royalty would be 'better.'"

Comments

Re:I want to get paid!!!

[Scarblac]

Remember, this is a court order, it's part of a penalty they get for breaking the law. The court decides the terms. Originally they were allowed to pick a reasonable fee themselves (IIRC) but if the court decides they abused that and set an unreasonable fee, well I would certainly expect them to order the info to be free.

Re:Who would want to?

[Ernesto Alvarez]

Seriously, who in their right mind would want to integrate aspects of Windows?

Think like the SAMBA guys.
They want to interoperate with windows, not integrate aspects of it into other platforms. That capability is always a plus, at least it makes a transition out of windows smooth.

Re:EU = still playing where it doesn't belong

[FlyingGuy]

Can you really be that naive?

I will give you one simple example ( even though I think you are a troll ) and let you take it from there.

MAPI ( the Mail API ) - This was a specified API to allow different programs to interact with e-mail. It was supposed to allow any program to send whatever their work prodcut was, along as an attachement to an e-mail, and to generaly interact with any e-mail system installed on the computer.

When MAPI was 1st published it had a well defined set of interfaces and API calls that were documented and reliable. This was all well and good until well the competition started writing better e-mail systems. These were all fully MAPI complient and worked very well.

As we all know by now, MicroSoft cannot handle competition. So what did Microsoft do? What they always do, they changed the API and then didn't tell anyone. So now all kinds of MAPI complient applications started breaking, well except theirs of course, since they had all the documentation and the rest of the word didn't.

This is the basic Microsoft pattern. If someone comes up with something better then they have and it relies on an API controlled by them, they simply change it and then dont tell anyone they did so, thus stopping the competitions product from looking so good or even working at all

That, by defintion, is anti-competative behaviour.

Re:Uhm, aren't they the criminals here?

[hachete]

MS is guilty as charged by a legally constituted court, the court's penalty is to hand over their IP. WTF has socialism got to do with it?

You missunderstand.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is not being asked to give over anything remotely considered intellectual property by the EU.

They are being asked to document their API's so that they may not use their illegal monopoly to prevent interoperability from competitors and therefore maintain their monopoly.

They can do this without giving anything of value in the legal sense and certainly can achieve this without ever showing a single line of source code, although worked examples certainly would help with understanding.

They are an illegal company performing illegal acts and as such punitive controls must be enforced to ensure a fair playing field, period.

Re:I want to get paid!!!

[clickety6]

So when the EU finally forces Microsoft out completely, that will count as their choice. But when American companies can't sell "Feta" or "Cheddar" cheese, in America, we have a problem.

Well, cheddar isn't a protected name - it's regarded as generic. Although seeing the artificially coloured, yellow slices of chewy pap that passes for "cheddar" in the US, you might wish it was protected so at least you'd know you'd be getting a decent piece of cheese! Similarly, in Europe when you get feta cheese or parma ham you know you're getting a decent product and not a cheap rip-off. In the US, you could get feta cheese sprayed from a can and parma ham that has never seen a pig ;-)