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Microsoft EU Decision Protects OSS Projects From Suits

Posted by Zonk on from the at-least-we-hope-it-does dept.

rfc1394 writes "An article in Australia's IT News mentions that under its antitrust agreement with the European Union, 'Microsoft will publish an irrevocable pledge not to assert any patents it may have over the interoperability information against non-commercial open source software development projects.' Essentially, in addition to getting them to comply with the anti-trust decision, the EU has forced Microsoft to back off of its saber-rattling when it comes to EU open source projects. That protection in no way extends to US projects, of course."

1 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. The EU is UsEless by Jherek+Carnelian · · Score: 1, Troll

    'Microsoft will publish an irrevocable pledge not to assert any patents it may have over the interoperability information against non-commercial open source software development projects.' The EU anti-trust people are freaking idiots.

    Remember the last 'punishment' they gave MS for anti-trust violations? They forced MS to unbundle media player from XP. But the idiots didn't require MS to proportionally, or even at all, reduce the price of the stripped down XP. So MS sells two versions of XP in the EU - regular XP and stripped XP for the same price and no one buys the stripped-down XP. Doh! Big freaking homer doh!

    Now they force MS not to sue any non-commercial open source project. Hello? McFly? That promise has got no teeth because most any serious project gets some form of commercial distribution and often commercial funding too. In the meantime they've implicitly endorsed software patents. Gee THANKS!

    Yet again, the EU forces a meaningless concession from MS that actually strengthens the company instead of punishing it.