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Microsoft Finally Bows to EU Antitrust Measures
Rogue Pat writes "Microsoft ended three years of resistance on Monday and finally agreed to comply with a landmark 2004 antitrust decision by the European Commission. Competitors will be able to buy interface protocols for 10.000 Euro to make their software work better with Windows. Moreover, Microsoft won't appeal the 500 million Euro fine any further."
If they had started paying it initially, with the decrease of the dollar and increase of the euro, it would have saved them a lot of money.
I think the saddest thing here is that it seems to take us three years to enforce a judgement against a major corporation, and even then the reporting in the media is all written as if Microsoft have kindly agreed to co-operate and not as though they've been forced to accept the judgement of a court that found they had done wrong and ordered them punished for it. If legal systems are this slow, it's no wonder people get concerned about the power of megacorps and that we see everyone from Big Software to Big Media taking some pretty major liberties with things like antitrust law.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
... but I work on the 5th floor....
Kroes personally negotiated with Microsoft President Steve Ballmer in a number of conversations including over a meal at a restaurant near her home town of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, she said.
"I paid for the dinner," she said.
If they had their dinner where I think they had their dinner, that should nearly cover the fine.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Maybe we can finally see some competitive open-source software platforms, like a better Evolution client (full Exchange capability, maybe?) or a better OpenOffice.org?
<NotFlameBait>
The courts have made Microsoft make those protocols available. It will be interesting to see how many people actually pony up to buy those protocol specs - in part, that would be a measure of how valid the EU's judgement was.
</NotFlameBait>
It's simple : we need the complete interface specifications for free, when you buy the operation system to use on your desktop.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Moreover, Microsoft won't appeal the 500 million Euro fine any further.... In today's news, Microsoft has launched an ambitious political campaign in Europe lobbying the EU's top politicians. A Microsoft spokesman speaking on the condition of anonymity stated "Next time around, we'll make sure we buy them too" alluding to the methods in which some speculate MS has "bought" politicians in America. "If Google takes over the world, where would we be. We're saving the world from Google, nothing more nothing less" stated the MS spokesman.
Infiltrated dot Net
1.What exactly does this cover? Which network protocols? Which data formats?
and 2.Does the license exclude OSS/GPL or have Microsoft finally been forced into allowing GPL software to use its "secret sauce"?
Seems only fair, weather she was out of the range of chairs, she didn't say.
A thistle is a fat salad for an ass's mouth...
So yet again they're still refusing to comply, they've just dropped the price and announced they're now complying when they're patently not?
This is no different to when they paid the last fine and announced they'd finally given in to the EU demands and offered the documentation at 50k with restrictive license.
So they drop the price a little, and the restrictions a little, but so what? It's the same game. The EU needs to force compliance here. Or they'll play this game forever.
So Microsoft simply caved, and will now co-operate fully with all comers, and will comply with the letter (if not the spirit) of the ruling?
Balls. They've just taking the fight to the next level, that's all. The expression "cold, dead hands", comes to mind, when contemplating any usable spec belonging to MS.
yes, we have no bananas
So, their spec for OOXML calls for displaying things like office does.
Who's to say that their interface docs don't have a line somewhere that says it "connects with a share like xp does" in order to protect the code within the "blue bubble".
I know interfaces should be relatively free of things like this, but when they take thousands of pages to lay out a document format that still isn't specific enough, I can only wonder how much they will continue to leave out of the info they give to everyone else to protect their intellectual property.
So, how about the EU uses a very small portion of those fines (say, a nominal one-off payment of E 10000) to obtain these documents once and publish them for all us open source developers via a new sourceforge.net project?
I'm all for interoperability, but it's not like I'm going to pay $10000 for half-undocumented Microsoft protocols. At least a small portion of all those millions would be put to good use, instead of it all disappearing into the black hole that is the EU budget.
This sig is intentionally left blank
... 10k Euros just to see the protocol specs... yeah right, for large corps that's chickenfeed, but for your OSS projects, that's a very good chunk o' change.
I'm to lazy to read the exact ruling, but charging 10k for it would seem to at least violate the spirit of the ruling
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
Microsoft makes about 50 billion USD per year.[1] That is only 1% of Microsoft's one year revenue. Anyone who thinks this is going to deter Microsoft from anti-competitive practices is badly mistaken.
[1] http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001926
$10k is peanuts for commercial companies. It even is peanuts for open source companies. But the fact that there is any fee at all means that the information is not public, and this will likely exclude open source competitors, which is what Microsoft wants most of all.
Fortunately, there may be workarounds: people can write small binary-only Microsoft compatibility plug-ins which plug into larger open source applications that eventually can replace Microsoft's applications.
I like the cost. "nominal one-off payment of 10,000 euros."
Nominal for large multinational corporations you means. How many open source projects will stump that?
Sure MS paid the fine, but have they succeeded in making things hard for the little developers?
Besides, fining MS is like siphoning your water from the Niagara falls - sure you get wet but you don't make a dent. I have held the view for a long time that fines for companies should be based on a percentage setting, that way firms of all sizes are hit more equally. Or maybe a formula based on size, income and percentage - there must be an improvement on current methods of setting penalties.
GNU, the organization, would seem to be a perfect fit for this, let them raise the $10K for the license on behalf of all their developers who use the information for GNU projects. This would be like looking them like a huge, widely distributed, company.
What restrictions come with the specification that we pay 10,000 Euros for? If there are restrictions on what we can do with the knowledge gained, then we can't use it. M$ could argue that publishing code written using their spec is the same as publishing their spec and so everyone who reads the code has to pay 10k Euros.
Until this is explained in full: we need to hold back on popping the champagne corks.
How good will the spec be? If it is anything like the OOXML one then there will still be huge holes. M$ is smart enough to only publish in the spec the bits that have been reverse engineered: this allows it to claim that it has revealed a lot without adding anything to what is known by the rest of us.
is futile. (Sorry, had to.)
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
The Samba project will likely buy a copy. Everyone else will simply use Samba then as before. I don't think MS will recover their fine from selling that specification.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Microsoft will trump EU competition ruling with patents Brussels, 17 September 2007 -- The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) says that Microsoft was expecting the 17 September verdict of the EU's anti-trust case, and will exploit software patents to keep its monopoly grip on the global IT market. FFII president Pieter Hintjens explains, "The decision seems positive but it is five years out of date. During that time, Microsoft has lobbied for software patents in Europe and bought patents on many trivial concepts. It has claimed patent violations against Linux, put patent timebombs into its formats and interfaces, and turned fear of patents into a core part of its business strategy. It will now open its formats, because that lets it extend its software patent franchise even further." Microsoft recently published its MCPP (Microsoft Communications Protocol Program) patent licence which requires competitors to pay royalties for each copy of software distributed. For example, a free software project making a print server would have to pay USD$8 to Microsoft for each copy downloaded. "The largest monopolist in history has faced down the largest economy in history," says Benjamin Henrion of the FFII's Brussels Office. "Microsoft will appeal, and the fines if ever paid are just a month or two of profits. Meanwhile Microsoft now has the time to crush its only real competition, the free and open source economy. We regret that the EU Commission and ECJ are blind to the real threat of software patents, while Microsoft cleverly exploits Europe's own patent system against EU businesses. This is a defeat for Europe's anti-trust, a defeat for the global economy, and I'm sure they're popping the champagne in Redmond." Background information In the proceedings of the EU antitrust trial, Microsoft states that its communication protocols are covered by at least 3 European patents or patent applications (namely patents 'EP 0661652', 'EP 0438571' and 'EP 0669020'). In addition, another 20 patent applications are pending in the United States, as are 2 in Europe (in its reply, Microsoft states that one of its two applications has since been granted, namely patent 'EP 1004193'). Moreover, Microsoft is planning to apply for 'some 130 European patents relating to Windows server operating systems'. Jeremy Allison, leader of SAMBA, the open source project file and print services for Linux/Unix servers and Windows-based clients, mentioned recently in LinuxWorld that the MCPP patent licences will make impossible for open source to use them: "We read the license, it's impossible to release open source implementations of the product. You have to keep it secret. This defeats the whole idea of open source."
What about NDA? Could we purchase the specs and share them openly?
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
So after years of illegally leveraging their monopoly to drive others out of business and drive up the price of software and goods, their "punishment" is to charge people even more. This "justice" things sounds great, wish I could get some of that!
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
every patented technology is excluded
i.e. they do pretty much nothing...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
"Microsoft ended three years of resistance on Monday and finally agreed to comply with a landmark 2004 antitrust decision by the European Commission."
Resistance is futile. Sadly, it won't make a difference IMHO.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
"Look Ma! The ferocious mountain lion is really a big kitten!"
Perhaps. What worries me is that Microsoft recently vowed to start buying open source companies. Most of the work on standards based collaboration software and related technology that I'm aware of (e.g. Chandler, Bedework, etc.) (exception: Apple's iCal server) is done by a few small tight groups. Are any of them going to withstand millions of dollars in cash for the sake of principle? I'm a die-hard F/OSS advocate myself, but if someone were to offer me a few million to abdicate my principles; money I could use toward my children's education and otherwise bettering my family's life - well, that would be a hard pill to swallow. I have other principles too, like maintaining my marriage for example.
I really hope a large corporation that buys the F/OSS vision (Are you listening SUN?) steps in to preempt such a hostile maneuver. If they do, everyone wins. I'd take a million dollars from SUN before taking 50 million from Microsoft any day; and I bet most F/OSS developers feel the same way. If the big players sit on their hands, we all lose, as there will never be an answer to Microsoft's dominant collaboration suite.
You can have a better OS, but you really need to hit all of the important application targets in order to present customers with a viable alternative to Microsoft hegemony.
It's not just the collaboration suites we should be worried about, BTW. Microsoft could buy UNIX IP as well (SCO is dead, but Novell is alive and well, and already getting cozy). The big F/OSS players better get their ducks in a row fast, or MS may very well soon act to back up their empty bluster with real products, real patents, and real lawsuits.
Miss Kroes, I salute you.
All of the questions you ask highlight the myriad of limitations buried in this so-called settlement.
Your post should be modded interesting and the summary should be edited to include a healthy dose of scepticism.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
In the past when European courts and regulators have required Microsoft to document their protocols they have done so only with a licence agreement designed to exclude free software such as Samba. After you pay your ten thousand euros, are you then free to implement the specification in free software? This is the crucial point and one that the article didn't mention.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Open Source software generally comes along with the interface document, the code itself.
I'm both surprised and disappointed that within a few minutes of my post, three people have all challenged it on this basis.
Just dumping the whole code base is in no way an acceptable substitute for providing good interface documentation. Sure, code should be self-documenting by using appropriate names in interfaces. Sure, designs should be clean and easy to understand. But the goal of this ruling is to facilitate interoperability in the spirit of the law. It is unreasonable to require people to scan through all the implementation code for something just to find out how the interface works and use it. That's not documenting the interface to aid interoperability, it's obfuscating it to make the effort required for compatibility prohibitive. So if the replies I'm getting are anything to go by, it sounds like a lot of work would be required for your average OSS project to comply with this ruling. If it's unfair to expect it of them, why is it fair to expect it of a business?
I'm no big fan of Microsoft in this case — read my first post to the discussion if you're in any doubt about that — but I do think that any penalty awarded by the courts has to be reasonable. You can't use a requirement that a monopoly allow interoperability as an excuse to get access to all their source code and trade secrets. That isn't fair, even on Microsoft, and it certainly wouldn't be fair on the many smaller companies in niche markets who might be subject to the same ruling once the precedent is set.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The "10.000 euros" is "10,000 euros" for those of us in the U.S. That's right, open source has to pay about $14,263 to Microsoft in order to be able to interoperate with their software. The article doesn't mention if each open source project has to pay that fee or if the entire open source community can pay the fee once and cover all open source projects.
Even more interesting than that, though, is the fact that the article mentions Microsoft can not use its large software patent portfolio against open source projects. I'm not sure that it was ever an issue since most European countries don't recognize software patents, but that strikes down all of the FUD Microsoft have been spreading (at least for the Europeans) regarding their trusted Linux "partners".
Whats this emphasis on Windows "work group" server? I hope not just WfW 3.11 circa 1995 ?
The EU didn't win, Microsoft just did. The whole point of the EU's demands was that YOU owned the computer on your desk and Microsoft should provide you the APIs necessary to connect to YOUR computer from anything else you might want. By attaching ANY LICENSE to that basic right the EU sold out. Microsoft's $600M and 3 years of stalling bought them the right to tax anybody exercising their new "rights" under this judgment. The power to tax is the power to destroy. FLOSS can't use this because Microsoft managed to get the EU to honor it's PATENTS in court which was not previously allowed. Microsoft WON the case because they can still choose who gets to pay money, they can choose terms and they can choose how to calculate percent of sales. Projects like Samba based in the EU where reverse engineering is 100% legal and patents aren't allowed have just been SOLD OUT!!
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I'm not trolling here, I'm genuinly trying to help out to get Kontact usable, but for me it isn't quite there yet.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
the EU is the largest trading area, largest market for goods in $ terms, they are extremely powerful and now dictate the rules for goods worldwide, the EU cannot be ignored by companies.
A few key excerpts of the specifications...
Section 73.12
Network communications will use the LikeDos63 format.
Section 110.42
Shared disk communications will check for the SAMBA tag. If true, return "network device driver" error.
Section 173.01
Packet Aw1: We don't even know what purpose this serves any more. However, one must be with every message or after 10 hours a memory leak starts.
Packet Zzz: This puts the message reader to sleep for a few seconds. One must be sent each hour or weird problems develop. It looks like it gives the message processor time to catch up.
Section 174.13
Check for media windows player version 13 and WGA confirmation before sending messages. If either fails, disable the subsystem.
etc...
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
You do realize that this will only be done for projects that have already been successful, don't you?
I'm sure that MS does. This means that the bar for getting started is just as high as it ever was. That's the purpose of the !0,000 EU price for the specs. I suspect that in order to purchase the specs they'll also require you to sign a NDA. Otherwise someone might publish a paraphrase.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Samba's problems don't seem to stem from lack of available information. Try using a NetApp someday, they have full CIFS support and it works really well. It's extremely fast, compatible with Vista, integrates nicely in to a domain and so on. In fact the only interoperability problems it has seem to be with... Samba. Macs have trouble talking to it via Samba (NFS works fine). NetApp recommends buying ADmitMac which is a 3rd party CIFS client (and AD client) replacement for OS-X.
As far as I can tell from my limited research in to it the Samba crew is not a fan of the CIFS spec and prefer to use their own stuff instead. Fair enough, but it does seem that everything that is needed is out there. Like I said, NetApp units work great with Windows systems (and UNIX systems, they do NFS really well too). So I think it comes down to their mentality and choices, not that they can't already get the specs they need.
What if tomorrow KFC was forced to give up the eleven herbs and spices used in their secret recipe? Don't laugh, it may happen someday. I'm no fan of Microsoft, but can't people just create something better? Sure, there are anti-trust laws, but whatever happened to beating someone in the market by creating a better product? Years back, Netscape tried to sue Microsoft because they felt their browser was unfairly marketed since it came with the system. Today, Mozilla is proving Netscape dead wrong and is almost 20% of all browsers while Microsoft is down to almost 60%. It's a sad day when the lawyers are writing better code than the developers.
What if tomorrow KFC was forced to give up the eleven herbs and spices used in their secret recipe?
Nobody's asking Microsoft to give up their secret recipe. They're asking Microsoft to document how you eat their chicken.
This isn't information you would use to duplicate Microsoft's software, this is information yu need to make your products work WITH Microsoft's software.
Netscape tried to sue Microsoft because they felt their browser was unfairly marketed since it came with the system.
Not only did it come with the system, but Microsoft refused to let computer makers even include Netscape with the system if they wanted to, AFTER they had already agreed not to. On top of that, to try and make an end run around their original deal with the DoJ, they combined the browser and the desktop in an inherently insecure manner that has cost the industry billions of man-hours to the resulting flood of viruses.
Don't try and whitewash Microsoft's actions in the '90s or pretend that this deal (which is still outrageous) is trying to get hold of information that Microsoft needs to keep secret.
The whole software patent issue is akin to the nuclear arms race: everyone has lots of them and they threaten to use them, but they are rarely ever used.
Not only DO they get used, but when they get used consumers lose.
Hayes +++ patent led to most non-Hayes modems disconnecting when displaying a message like this.
The Xerox Unistroke patent means that modern PalmOS handhelds do not support Graffiti.
They work as a great scare tactic, but they are hardly useful for their intended purpose.
They are NEVER useful for their intended purpose, unless you think the intended purpose is to prevent compatibility between systems and prevent innovators from using the tools they developed.
First, open source software developers will be able to access and use the interoperability information. Microsoft will not assert patents against non-commercial open source software development projects.
The opposite of "open source" is not "non-commercial". There are commercial open-source prjects, and non-commercial closed-source projects. It is absolutely vital that these interfaces be as unencumbered as genuinely open-systems protocols are.
Second, the royalties payable for this information will be reduced to a nominal one-off payment of 10,000 euros.
US$14,000 is not "nominal".
Third, the royalties for a worldwide license including patents will be reduced from 5.95 percent to 0.4 percent, far less than the 7 percent originally demanded by Microsoft.
Getting a European court to acknowledge the validity of their software patents at all is a major win for Microsoft.
And the way they did this means that there's not a hope of an avenue to try and appeal this appalling result. Microsoft has completely won this round in their ongoing battle against open systems and open source.
If this is Microsoft "bowing", they're facing away from the bench when they do it, and mooning the EU.
This agreement, if accurately reported, is a total win for Microsoft.
He's not saying that "Microsoft should open the code".
He's saying that "Microsoft should document the interface, since open source provides the code".
He's not saying "Microsoft should go the whole mile".
He's saying "FOSS goes a mile, so Microsoft should at least have to go a yard".
So when you write "You can't use a requirement that a monopoly allow interoperability as an excuse to get access to all their source code and trade secrets." you're completely misinterpreting the message you're replying to.
It depends, I call Basque, Basque; Bretons, Bretons; and Roma, Romas or Romani.
FalconShould there be a Law?
So if the replies I'm getting are anything to go by, it sounds like a lot of work would be required for your average OSS project to comply with this ruling. If it's unfair to expect it of them, why is it fair to expect it of a business?
Any Open Systems project complies with it, whether they're open source or not. That's what Open Systems is all about.
As you say, many Open Source projects are not Open Systems projects... and I'm first in line to admonish an Open Source project when they use proprietary interfaces and extensions to hurt their competitors. GCC in the early '90s was horribly bad about this, and they did manage to effectively kill the other open source C compiler projects by encouraging people to use extensions to C. Microsoft has recently been pulling the same tricks by not accepting legal C header files on the grounds that they're shipping a C++ compiler, not a C compiler. In neither case is it acceptable.
But unless you're in a monopoly position within a field, like Microsoft or GCC, you can't get away with that. Even Open Source projects that use proprietary internal interfaces and protocols have to interoperate with other systems, and use the *same* protocols on the network and in exported files that these other systems do. When they don't, they DO need to be challenged and forced to cooperate. The process is generally not nearly as arduous as it is with Microsoft.
But you're right, everyone should be held accountable for their shortcomings when it comes to deviating from Open Systems standards, or using proprietary protocols instead of public ones.
The thing is, if they are a monopoly, and able to use their proprietary exceptions to create a barrier to entry for competitors (as well as groups who aren't in any sense competing with you) then they get held to a higher standard. You're correct to point that out. But where you're mistaken is your apparent belief that this is a problem. It's not. It's the whole point of antitrust law in the first place. For smaller players the main effect of using proprietary interfaces is to reduce their own competitiveness. It's only when they ARE a monopoly that the lock-in becomes more valuable than the lock-out.
couldn't microsoft essentially say that their software was no longer allowed to be purchased or used by any country in the EU?
Heck, MS can't stop it's software from being sold in Cuba how in the world can they stop it n Europe?
FalconShould there be a Law?
MS may have finally been hit, but it won't hurt them very much, because they already made ridiculous amounts of money from it. Since profit is the only thing corporations care about, the only way to deter bad corporate behavior is to make it unprofitable.
I have felt for some time that if somebody can be shown to have profited from a crime, then that person or company should be required to forfeit triple what they gained as a result, over and above any other fines and penalties. (I came up with this years ago, after a judge in my town was caught illegally cutting trees that blocked his view of the river. He was fined $20,000, but the value of his property went up $120,000. So he still came out ahead.)
For example: let's say a factory gets caught dumping toxic waste rather than processing it like they're supposed to. In addition to the fine for breaking the law, there should be a determination of what the dumping added to their bottom line, and then they should be forced to pay triple that amount.
Do this consistently, and lots of this kind of crap would disappear rather quickly. Application of the idea to MS will be left to the reader's imagination.
When I first RTFA and saw that line I hoped she meant she paid for her own meal and not his.
FalconShould there be a Law?
That means that all authority is under constant threat and any hierarchical chain of command is very uncertain.
As far as I'm concerned all authority should be questioned and afraid. Government becomes dictatorial when it does not fear the population it governs.
Thomas Aquinas
Unfortunately I don't recall much about Thomas Aquinas. I thought he wrote "The Apology" but doing a quick search all I found was the "Apology" Plato wrote in defense of Socrates.
Falcon
Damn my memory!Should there be a Law?
did you even notice that the post you replied to made no mention of anything beyond religious nutters and sanity?
there's a big difference between a religious nutter and a republican. sometimes. same as the difference between an ignorant green and a democrat.
that said, your entire post is a troll. congratulations, you win! hence i respond AC.
Exactly, what we really want to know, and what TFA did specify at all (at least not in the publicly available sections) is :
*WHAT EXACTLY* do the people get for those 10k ?
Specifications ? Are they free to re-publish (probably not due to copyright laws) ? Are they free to by used in writing documentation (depends on the NDAs coming with them) ? Are they usable at all (no stupid licensing scheme basically preventing the developpers to build anything but windows parts) ?
What would be best is that some sponsor could buy a 10k copy of the network specification and donate them to the samba people, which could write detailed documentation of how SMB/CIFS works in windows and how to cross-operate.
Of course that's theory and a bunch of licensing terms and NDA could come into play.
On the other hand FLOSS is growing stronger in EU and probably it will be easier today to accuse Microsoft of not following the antitrust measure because their condition are not "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory" as asked by EU. Samba developers should be able to write documentation base on microsoft's data and/or pay a certain price and be able to freely re-publish microsoft's documentation as-is for opensource developers to use.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
They do mention open source developers explicitly, so yes, I do think the point is to make us happy.
I don't think 10,000 euros is very open source developer friendly, unless you can get 10,000 developers to contribute to a fund then pass around the specs. But there's still the licenses to be paid to MS.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Not only that, but in several EU countries is plain illegal to do so.
Here in the UK parties can't buy air time in TV and radio, neither can they buy space in the press for campaigning purposes.
This means they are limited to very basic advertisement means (i.e. boards, flyers and other means or personal advertisement) which more often than not means that politicians have to hit the road to meet potential voters.
This means that the huge incentives to corrupt politics at its core (as it happens in the US) do not exist in the UK, and as a consequence, quelle surprise, politicians are far more accountable to the people than in the US.
I am not saying lobbying does not exist, but the cynical buying of influence that exists in the US is far less prevalent (and quickly shamed and exposed by the ferocious press when it happens).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
All MS clients would sue them out of existence and I am pretty sure the EU would bring criminal charges against MS apartchick that could think such action is a good idea.
Your nonsense is a good idea for a bad action movie though.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
MS just can't do that. It would be their end as a company. Honestly, don't be stupid.
It would not be the EU, but the corporate clients of MS in Europe who would ensure there was a hole where MS HQ would have used to be.
MS has commercial obligations to fulfill, if they would come with the cavalier idea of withdrawing from the EU market it would take them *years* to do so. But anybody coming with such "solution" should be consigned to a mental institution of some kind.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... nobody would be using MS software.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
And what about all the money they collected for those licenses?
Or do you think companies would say "no worries mate, all the best and good luck!".
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Monopolies can't do as they wish.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
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Third one after decimal point!