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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."
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?
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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.
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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"?
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.
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It's not that simple at all. Providing the complete interface spec completely free of charge imposes a huge (some might say unrealistic, even) burden on businesses. How would you feel if distribution were prohibited for every open source application that didn't provide and maintain comprehensive, correct documentation on all their interfaces and protocols? (If anyone is about to argue that open source is a moving target and such a prohibition could never work in practice, they're ducking the legal/ethical issue. If this is the case, then it's hardly fair to impose legal restrictions on businesses that not everyone is obliged to follow, since this artificially harms the ability of the businesses to do their work.)
Requiring a businesses with a monopoly advantage to provide access to such interface documentation as they have themselves internally, at no more than a reasonable charge to cover the legitimate costs of supplying that information, for the purposes of allowing interoperability, is one thing. Requiring them to provide complete specs, at no charge at all, to anyone who asks for any reason, is something else entirely.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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.
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!
"Men, we have not yet begun to stall!"
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
"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.
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
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!!
Uh. The USA is a LOT closer to folding than the EU. The EU, not the USA, is the largest economy in the world, and while people in europe might disagree with the european union as it stands, they tend to be pro-european-unity (just not governed by the current idiots. Sound familiar?)
Actually, it might be best for the world if the USA defederated and the relatively sane states joined the EU or Canada, leaving the inbred christrian fundamentalist nutter states to die.
But can Samba (Microsoft's only competitor here) use the information?
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071022114731199
Not if you don't want to be paying Microsoft for each copy