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

What?

[jim_v2000]

"Any kind of IT product should be able to communicate with any type of service in the future."

What does that even mean?

Frickin' great

[Sandor at the Zoo]

When the government starts dictating requirements and the price, we're all screwed.

Re:NOT great news

[gumbi west]

When government fucks with free markets, the customer loses, always.

Well, except in the case of energy regulation, every state that has deregulated has instantly had massive price spikes (or are these good for the consumer?)... and insurance where the companies kick you out as soon as you file claims unless regulated.

The US government usually asks the market players to regulate themselves and hopes that works (think of movie ratings). It is only after the players show they have no interest in a fair market that it gets regulated.

Why is the parent a troll?

[jo_ham]

Why is the parent post modded troll? I'm sorry, but "troll" is not a substitute for "holds an opinion opposite to me".

The parent is entirely factually correct, and is talking about the very heart and idea of OSS: if you release something under the BSD licence, anyone can use it. If you release something under the GPL, anyone can use it as long as they follow the licence. So, when Apple uses BSD and GPL code, somehow it is "abuse"? Come on! You are either for the idea of OSS, or you are against it. You *cannot* be "oh, well, I love OSS, but Apple is not allowed to use any BSD code and get rich off it! That's just not allowed, but other companies can use BSD code since it is open source."

This also doesn't address the benefits the OSS community has seen from Apple. Far from being an "abuser" Apple has contributed an enormous amount to OSS - isn't that one of the benefits of a large entity getting involved in the community: provision of resources? Companies like IBM, Apple, Red Hat, Mozilla Foundation are promoting open source. You can't turn around and say "I don't like Apple, so they are abusing OSS!"

If you really hate them that much, write your own OSS code and release it under a modified BSD licence that permits anyone except Apple to use it.

Re:EU and concept of Private Property.

[TheRaven64]

I find it so interesting that Anonymous Coward constantly appears to have no concept of the difference between a government-enforced monopoly and a property right.

Free market

[Luckyo]

It's hilarious how many see this as an "attack on free market".

Let me run a few facts down through your skulls:

1. There is no free market for IT goods referred to in the statement. The market that exists is heavily controlled and regulated, essentially being a monopoly market on per-product basis, or interconnected market where vendor uses monopoly control over one aspect of the market to openly destroy freeness in another market.
2. Neelie Kroes is probably the most pro-free market person you will find in EU. It's more of her life's philosophy then just a law enforcement on some level.
3. Suggestions include OPENING the CLOSED MARKET, to make it... that's right, more OPEN!

So do share, in what way is this "evil EU abusing US companies by closing free market"? I can see this being "good EU abusing evil US companies who like to close market to competition by forcing them to actually compete", but to actually claim the exact opposite, you have to either be ignorant, stupid, or have a deep vested interest in status quo.

Re:Free market

[QX-Mat]

Exactly!

This is good news and it goes to the heart of the treaty of Rome - that competition is a fundamental part of the EU, and the EU will move mountains to promote it. I suspect this will be in the form of a very long winded piece of guidance regulation that sits in parallel with Art 81. As someone who has read, reread and read again EU competition regulations and their directives from an academic point of view and professional one, it is mightily refreshing to finally see the EU do what I was told it did well... fight concerted practice and actively promote competition where the market fails.

Re:What I'd Like to Know

[WARM3CH]

Well, I don't know what you mean by open. Do you mean open as in people can buy the license and even get the source? (e.g. H.264). Then I guess we live in an open world. Just as a comparison, here is the list of open formats on Windows:

Audio: WMA (open)
Video: WMV (open)
Mail: .pst (open)
Address book: .pst (open)
Office apps: .docx, .xlsx, etc. (open)
OS API: .NET (open)
OS API: Win32 (open, shared source)
OS core: NT (open, shared source)

Hell, why stop there? Everything is open if you can buy it! Did you know that Google's search engine is also open? You just need to afford to buy Google Inc.

Re:What I'd Like to Know

[dgatwood]

It's at best disingenuous to call a patent-encumbered file format "open". Yes, it is open insofar as it is documented, and if the designers decided to withhold licenses, could *eventually* be implemented by someone to get your data out of it, but that's not open in the same way as, for example, JPEG baseline is open. The difference is that the JPEG folks started out trying to create an open standard, whereas the H.264 folks started out trying to develop a proprietary codec, then opened up only the minimum amount they could get away with and still get adoption.