EU Plans To Make Apple, Adobe and Others Open Up

FlorianMueller writes "After pursuing Microsoft and Intel, European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes is now preparing an initiative that could have an even greater impact on the IT industry: a European interoperability law that will affect not only companies found dominant in a market but all 'significant' players. In a recent interview, Mrs. Kroes mentioned Apple. Nokia, RIM and Adobe would be other examples. All significant market players would have to provide access to interfaces and data formats, with pricing constraints considered 'likely' by the commissioner. Her objective: 'Any kind of IT product should be able to communicate with any type of service in the future.' The process may take a few years, but key decisions on the substance of the bill may already be made later this year."

Comments

EU rules would also affect the US market

[FlorianMueller]

The EU can't formally legislate on what companies are allowed to do in the US market, but in practical terms, we're talking about a global market for IT products and (especially) Internet-based services. If vendors wanted to apply a different set of openness and interoperability standards in the US than in the EU, they would have to make a lot of efforts to keep the markets separated. They can do it, such as by refusing connections from certain sets of IP addresses, but it would be a major hassle. If many vendors did so, lawmakers in the US would also take a closer look and might consider a similar initiative to benefit customers in their own country.

Concerning Microsoft, the new law isn't even needed for them because they were already subjected to two antitrust proceedings in the EU on the grounds of being found dominant. More importantly, I'm not aware of them treating the US market any differently concerning interoperability with Samba than they treat the EU, even though it was only a European ruling.

The biggest benefit of the envisioned new EU law is that similar rules would also have to be respected by companies who may just not be close enough to a monopolist so that antitrust law can deal with them, but who are powerful enough (such as Apple, Adobe etc.) that it's a problem if they get away with too closed an approach. I don't mean to blame those companies for simply trying to maximize shareholder value or for adhering to certain closed philosophies -- but if antitrust law can't change their behavior, a new instrument is needed.

Re:What I'd Like to Know

[jo_ham]

Apple's customers already do.

Apple's formats:

Audio: AAC (open)
Video: H.264 (open)
Mail: .mbox (open)
Address book: vcard (open)
Calendar: ics (open) (and Apple provide open source calendar server and address book servers based on WebDAV)
Office apps: documented XML, similar to Open Office's format (very easy and non-DMCA/non-illegal etc to write a converter, lots of documentation on how the format works, unlike .docx for example)
Screenshot format: png (open)
Networking protocols: NFS, SMB, AFP, Bonjour (Zeroconf), FTP, sFTP
HTML engine: Webkit (open)
Disk drive format: HFS+ (open)
OS core: Darwin, default shell is bash (open).
Printing system: CUPS, postscript, PDF

And while it't not open, Snow Leopard supports Exchange servers out of the box, if you want to play in a Windows environment.

While the Apple experience is very vertically integrated, if you really want to move your data in or out, you can do so very easily. For example, if you decided that you wanted to change all your documents to Open Office formats you could do so. If you no longer wanted to use Mail.app for your email all your messages are in .mbox format and are easily portable to any other system (unlike, for example, Outlook's .pst format).

I know it is heresy to even suggest it on slashdot, but as an Apple user you already enjoy a lot of openness and interoperability on the desktop. All the faff about the iPhone and iPad masks that, it seems.

Re:Great News

[hairyfeet]

Well then the question I would think is "should they be" and considering they own more than 70% of the market and has used that power to stifle competition I would say when it comes to multimedia that would be a big YES!

Just because Apple makes pretty iStuff doesn't mean they should be allowed to lock down the market or threaten competition. And I would say that iPod pretty much owns the PMP market hands down, which gives iTunes considerable leverage. Frankly I'm just waiting for the inevitable antitrust suit.