EU Gives Microsoft 8 Days Until Fines 537
kaysan writes "European Commissioner Neelie Kroes has presented Microsoft with an ultimatum: Before Thursday next week, Microsoft must hand over all secret information on Windows protocols to its competition. Should the company choose to ignore this demand, it will be severely fined. Microsoft's history with EU fines so far amounts to approximately Euro777.5 million. Both linked websites are Dutch, but then again, so is EU commissioner Neelie Kroes."
I don't get it, who does this help? (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, the State creates laws which give some companies preferential treatment over ideas or the way a person can use their hands and mind to create something. We call these useless laws "copyright," "patent" or "trademark." The State is the only way to enforce these laws which govern how you think and use your body, it is impossible to cover these restrictions without force or the threat of force.
So companies go out of their way to try to protect their easily-distributed-and-duplicated resources. In a free market, if a widget was hard to make and reproduce, but everyone wanted one, it would be very expensive. If someone else discovered a way to mass produce widgets to outstrip demand, the price would plummet down to near $0. This is why software and music and content has a very small value compared to future work -- once the product is produced, it falls to worthless except for the law.
These companies that create content also know that even with the law, it makes sense to try to keep competitors from discovering how their products work. If I invent a new engine, I'd want to obfuscate the operation enought to keep my competitors from duplicating it, at least until I've made it more efficient. This is how manufacturing works -- you want to be the most efficient, but you also want to fight off competition who wants to be more efficient than you. This is why the market is great -- people work hard to make more efficient products.
Now, we have various competitors that are locked out of a market because the State decided to give preferential treatment to certain companies (in this case, Microsoft). Copyright, patents, trademarks can all be used to keep other people out of a given market long enough for a company to grow to a size that makes it hard to defeat. This is not what happens in a relatively free market (I'll say most deregulated). If Microsoft didn't have the backing of idiotic laws like the DCMA (in the US), overextended copyright, overencompassing patents, and overbearing trademark laws, other companies would have had access to compete many, many years ago. Microsoft itself was able to get into the information market from the start by developing products and acquiring products before the laws became unbearable in terms of the barrier to entry.
Microsoft is not a monopoly, it is just able to use the preferential treatment of the law better than their competitors. If you voted for the State, you are part of the reason that Microsoft has grown. Sure, some will say that they violated anti-trust laws, but those laws have enough loopholes to let any big company get around them.
Let's look at reality here. The State wants these fines to pad their own accounts -- they same laws will exist, and the same problem will repeat itself. This is basically a legal form of asking for bribes, and Microsoft will be happy to comply. Any changes Microsoft makes will only be enough to make the State happy, and the next run against them will be strictly for income for those making new laws. That income helps provide for more loopholes and better preferential treatment for the companies that can afford it. Microsoft is being forced to hand over "secrets" but those are past secrets -- not future ones, right? They'll just make new secrets, or obfuscate the old ones in new ways so that anything they share isn't useful in the long run (everything changes every 18months right?).
The problem isn't in the bribe money, the problem is that you all are voting for the State to be more and more powerful, which means that it can do more and more damage to your freedoms.
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Scary thought
The value isn't the bits, it's the process.
In the ideal world, people would invest in a software product, then the product would be free to download and use. The release would be dependent on achieving some level of investment. Then each revision follows it, e.g. Product version 2 will wait until another $X dollars are invested.
That's the REAL way to do it. Not by selling copies of bits that are of NO VALUE.
As for the anti-trust
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How so? The customers have about 20 different developers for spreadsheets, word processors, databas
Re:I don't get it, who does this help? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why must the tools avoid standards in their respective fields? (typesetting, ISO C99, proper W3C XHTML...)
Why must the tools only work in Windows?
etc, etc, etc....
The problem with Microsoft is that it creates these tools which only serve to further insider goals (e.g. Visual Studio only exists to sell Windows) then pumps it with shady deals and the like. Why must I get Windows with my Dell Laptop? Why can't I get a discount to go with a blank HD? (note: I think Dell is a lousy anti-trust violator too)
In a truly free market, you'd see Visual Studio (which is an awesome kit) that runs under Linux/BSD and can be bound to other compilers (e.g. Intel CC, GCC, etc). In a truly free market, you'd see Office work in Linux/BSD and use well documented file formats so people could create 3rd party tools for working with the data... In a truly free market, Windows would strive for UNIX/POSIX compliance underneath so that programs written for it (under the GUI level) would be more portable,
In short, Microsoft writes software that looks shiny, attracts users (usually by first taking away choice, then motivation), then locks them in with tools that are not interchangeable or portable.
I'm sure if the PC revolution occurred WITHOUT Windows being forcefully bundled with EVERY SINGLE PC we'd see a different history here.
And for those who say people can buy their own parts and build a PC, imagine if every car was bundled with an engine that only ran with Shell fuel. Sure you could build your own car, but is that really realistic?
Tom
Re:I don't get it, who does this help? (Score:5, Insightful)
No you wouldn't. You'd see software written for the platform that had the best chance of a high return on investment.
You'd see people wanting to protect their work so that outsiders couldn't take it and undersell them by not needing to recover devlopment costs.
What you're talking about is the oposite of a free market, where people are forced to support everyone and everything despite what the market demands.
Microsoft is a buisness, it exists to make money. If there was a market demand for Microsoft products on Linux/BSD they would exist.
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No, in a truly free market MS is free to do their own market research and determine what platforms to support. In an idealists market a company would be forced to create products or alter products in ways which do not benefit the company.
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Re:I don't get it, who does this help? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if it had happened by accident, which it didn't, the monopoly would be harmful. Microsoft could have attempted to be a benign monopoly, and set things up so that other people could at least compete with them on NEW APPLICATIONS, but they don't even do that. They set things up so whatever becomes the next big thing, they are in a position to dominate it, because it's so damn hard to get interoperability information from them. And it's getting worse with Vista. It's not enough that they have the incredibly huge advantage of their monstrous cash flow and brand recognition, not to mention the expertise of the programmers who developed their software in the first place. No, they have to result to tactics which are plainly and openly illegal, preferring instead to subvert democratic processes. It blows my mind that people defend them.
I want to propose a new figure of speech, and I want credit for it: The "Microsoft Syndrome". Like the Stockholm syndrome, where victims of a kidnapping begin to sympathize with their kidnappers, the Microsoft Syndrome describes that process where victims of a corporate monopoly are so brainwased by that monopoly's marketing they sympathise with and defend them.
Re:I don't get it, who does this help? (Score:5, Informative)
Reverse engineering of file formats is legal. It is a very difficult process, particularly for highly complex binary file formats like Word and so forth. The reason why
Re:I don't get it, who does this help? (Score:4, Insightful)
Total BS. The state creates laws like the prohibition of reverse engineering because the state serves business far more than it does the people. And THAT'S because companies have been allowed to grow unchecked in terms of money and political clout. In an ideal situation, business should have NO political power at all. Governments should have no incentive to create laws in exchange for various favors from wealthy companies. And, realisticaly, there should be limits automatically imposed on the size and wealth of a company to prevent them from becoming more powerful than government. Either concentration of power in is a problem, but I'd still trust government to do the right thing before I'd EVER trust a private business. Currently the only reason for being in business is top make money. It's not to improve the quality of life for customers no matter what a company claims. They could start out that way with well intentioned people, but once they grow to a size where they are publicaly traded, the good of the customer is replaced by the good of the investor. The customers then become the product that the company is selling to the investors in the form of ever increasing profit. Even if there is a realistict limit to how profitable a company can be, the investors will always demand more or else they'll drop the investment. And THAT is the true problem. What it forces many business to do is find ways to make more money with no regard for how they operate in terms of ethics. Don't blame the government for the problem. It's a complex mix of interrelationships between business (the more powerful entity) and government (the more desperate entity) being driven in the end by the investors (the ignorant entity in terms of what's happening unethically behind the scenes to benefit them). Oh, and Ayn Rand was a knob.
Re:I don't get it, who does this help? (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from that, Microsoft has gotten in trouble in the past for using SHADOW API's. They tell competing vendors one way to interface with the machine and then use a better way themselves so all Microsoft's products run super fast and vendors products run slower and not as well.
These are all things that the EU is talking about and has been talking about. Getting our machines to play well together shouldn't be something that should have to be enforced. As engineers, it should be the obvious choice. So when you say you dont get it, maybe you don't understand why machines should talk to each other or share data with each other or work together. However working in a mixed environment, I'd rather not have to force our designers off MAC and our servers off LINUX merely because Microsoft can't play well with the other kids on the playground.
It's sad to think that a multi-billion dollar company like Microsoft still needs to be babysat.
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This is false. It is legal to reverse engineer software and network protocols. It is also legal to duplicate them in your own software. This is what the samba project, the wine project, amongst many others, are based on.
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They are in the United States. They were legally convicted of being such in a court of law.
All else stems from that -- the rules are different for a monopoly.
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Re:I don't get it, who does this help? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, beg to differ. Microsoft is a convicted monopoly abuser [bbc.co.uk]. And down comes your pretty house of cards.
Re:I don't get it, who does this help? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Okay, but you could say the same thing about physical property rights that you just said about "copyrigh
Re:I don't get it, who does this help? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are right about that in some ways, but the way I see it, there are vast differences between physical property and intellectual property -- in fact, I'd say they're not even on the same level.
My belief in physical property rights comes from the thought of being able to better that property and maintain it. I find land that is unused, I develop it in some way (farm, natural resource, home, office, whatever) and I maintain it. That is my land from a physical property stance. I have my body, I have my tools, and I have my land. If I use my mind to channel those 3 physical properties to make something that duplicates what you've done, the new physical product is something I can sell. Also, if I have techniques to make your physical property better, you can hire me to maintain it.
But intellectual property means mind control, plain and simple. If I have a certain way to mow a lawn, or a certain way to design a toilet, or a certain way to put musical notes together in a certain order, all those are covered by thinking and action. If you can't mimic my actions more efficiently than I can, you can hire me to do it for you (mow your lawn, create your toilet, produce music). If you CAN mimic my actions more efficiently than I can, why should you hire me? Just do it yourself -- unless the State says you're not able to think or act that way because I have a right to those thoughts or actions, dig?
If I create a series of musical notes and put it on a disc, you can buy that disc if it is more efficient than you making those notes yourself, or discovering another copy of my disc and using your mind, hands and tools to duplicate the disc. The cost is the labor, not the initial creation. The guy who mows the lawn had to learn how to mow the lawn, but you don't license that lawn mowning -- you pay me for future labor or current labor, not past labor. Mowing a law, installing a toilet, and writing music or software are the same actions in terms of labor. No one cares what you know or what you did in the past as long as you can do something more efficiently than they can TODAY.
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I discuss this distinction frequently on the mises blog where I post as "Person". Here [mises.org] is the most recent thread.
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I disagree. People generally have respect for personal property -- you can't take something that doesn't belong to you. You wouldn't want somebody taking something that belonged to you.
However, digital copies, in the popular mind, work pretty much like knowledge, information, or word of mouth. You are pr
Nonfree markets (Score:2)
Re:I don't get it, who does this help? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, who does it help? Me, the EU citizen. I may not be the greatest EU fan but they've got this one right.
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This example is problema
Re:I don't get it, who does this help? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would be fine with it. The problem comes when they do that and are super-dominant (aka "are a monopoly").
In the presence of real competition, there are many other cars that run just fine and do the exact same thing or (more likely, since it'd decrease overall costs for everybody concerned and only takes one producer to do it to get the ball rolling), the competitors would be more interoperable, and so Ford would be committing corporate suicide. Heck, there'd be a whole add-on market to convert Fords to Chevys and back and forth (provided they each tied you to their own platform), since there would be a large market for each car and hence a large demand for interoperability.
But when a single player is super-dominant, they are practically immune to market pressures. If they make their car uninteroperable, the add-on market would be tiny, since there would be little demand from the drivers to switch car vendors. Sure, there'd be some, but not very much at all, and they'd be struggling to make a living. The other cars could interoperate as much as possible, but nobody would switch to them, because they'd be more expensive (economies of scale), and not able to interoperate 100% with the superdominant competitor (e.g. Excel macros in OpenOffice). Sure, they could maybe get up to 99% compatibility, but reverse-engineering the proprietary interfaces would require a huge effort, while (again due to their small market size) they're still strugging to survive. And since they're superdominant, almost all gas stations, roads, and service stations would only work with the superdominant competitor (the "ecosystem" built around the superdominant competitor), further excluding cars which don't comply with their proprietary interface 100%.
The real kicker, though, is this: to the driver, who Just Wants to Go Somewhere, is familiar only with Fords, and has learned all of the quirks of his/her current Ford, will find any competitor annoying due to its differences and (however minor!) incompatibilities, and will blame the competitor for the market situation!
Re:I don't get it, who does this help? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I guess i could just say your analogy sucks... a better and more appropriate analogy would be ... What if Ford created a car and you had to use a Ford starter in it, or if you had to use Ford door pannels.
I agree his analogy sucks and so does yours. You both miss the same thing everyone misses when they make analogies in these monopolist threads. They always make an analogy, except they don't include a monopoly in said analogy. Neither you nor the parent included one. The reason for this is simple, mono
Fines != bribes. (Score:2)
I don't really see this as a problem. Microsoft is as everyone has pointed out a convicted monopoly.
I don't get it, did you forget to take your meds? (Score:2)
Or did somebody not take their meds this morning? Let's review:
Idealism (Score:2)
Just as true communism is a wonderful idea that will never work on a large scale, so is a truly unfettered market such as you describe. Now, we certainly could come closer to the ideal than we currently are, but in truth, copyright isn't su
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I write for two reasons: to gain insight from people's replies (which would be VERY costly to do if I hired them to reply, even the emotional ones), and to promote some free mar
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It's called extortion.
Crazy Talk (Score:2)
Your anarchocapitalist (most decidedly NOT free market) dreamland would create more, not less, big monopolists. Especially if you combined the situation where the state didnt have enough power to break up abusive monopolies with very loose "defend yourself" crime/firearm laws, we start to run into problems simmilar to the street wars
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In the United States, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act exempts from the circumvention ban some acts of reverse engineering aimed at interoperability of file formats and protocols, but judges in key cases have ignored this law, since it is acceptable to circumvent restrictions for use, but not for access.[4] Aside from restrictions on circumvent
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If anything, the Microsoft corporate officers should be jailed for misapprpriateing the private data of it's end users. That is effectively what it does when it choses to encode that data without being willing to document the manner of that decoding. They're holding everyone hostage. It's just that people have finally wised up after being duped for years on end.
So the task of telling Microsoft what to go do with itself is not as simple as it should be.
English article (Score:5, Informative)
MS gives EU 8 days until no Windows (Score:4, Funny)
-Eric
Re:MS gives EU 8 days until no Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
It would also demonstrate to the EU the urgency of which Microsoft's monopoly would need to be broken - so even the rumour of such a threat would be severely damaging to the value of Microsoft as a company.
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There is no such thing as Intellectual Property. Europe does not recognize software patents, and as for copyright: it has a very narrowly defined (and abused) goal in law: to provide incentive. MS blocks that effort by monopolizing.
A few things would and wouldn't happen: first of all, existing installed Microsoft products wouldn't s
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Never happen. (Score:2)
All that would happen if Microsoft did something (clearly insane) like that, would be that the European governments would have to invalidate Microsoft's copyrights over Windows, effectively legitimizing pirate copies. People would continue to use Windows, they would simply no longer pay for it.
It would actually be terrible for everyone con
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Splendid! We can add that to our collection of "words to regret for every occasion":
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Website TRanslations (Score:2)
http://www1.worldlingo.com/SH0gfCf2o9dP9D6Mf0Gb
If anyone can help these poor folks out with a mirror so we don't melt their servers, I'm sure they'd appreciate it.
Slashdot: Now in Dutch! (Score:4, Interesting)
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I can't read Dutch, but I can read Japanese*, and can tell you that Slashdot Japan not only rotate their polls [slashdot.jp] more reguarly, but they're also more interesting.
*This is a complete lie. I have no idea what's going on, something about spam and something that's probably funny on some level...
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Why the Dutch? (Score:5, Informative)
What-EVER! (Score:5, Interesting)
Face it -- the fines aren't even petty cash. MS expects the Court of First Instance to rule in a few months, and it would be stupid to turn over information that can't be recalled before then.
At absolute worst, the fines are worth less than the ability to hold off competition for the same period; it's just part of the cost of doing business.
potentiial conflict of interest... (Score:5, Funny)
But what about his cousin Mie Kroes Offt?
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I know how Microsoft can score BIG here . . . (Score:2, Interesting)
Think about it - if Microsoft doesn't market Windows et. al. in the EU, the EU has no standing to impose fines on Microsoft. European customers will be obliged to purchase Microsoft products in the USA and to find a way to get their shiny new copies of Vista home (as I've never heard of a way to force a company to do business in a given geographic region). The EU will be forced be economic pressure to either 1)
Re:I know how Microsoft can score BIG here . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Before assuming that the EU is a relatively insignificant part of Microsoft's market which they could easily do without, you may want to work out the total population of the EU. Then calculate what percentage of the developed World's population (i.e. the people who actually pay for expensive operating systems and office software) it makes up.
Of course, being American you will probably first want to find an atlas and work out what country the EU is in.
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Windows ? Nah, the E.U. isn't buying Windows according to your plot.
Linux ? But Linux isn't "Made in U.S. of A.".. They'd just buy SuSE Linux, or go ftp://ftp.funet.fi [funet.fi]
Methinks the EU wouldn't actually be in such a bad shape, even if Microsoft really would stop shipping Windows to the EU. The already sold licenses are still valid ( although they'd be a virus trap on the scale of O(n$) once the patches stop appearing in the EU :) )
There would b
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I posit that word documents are less addictive than midddle eastern petroleum and that, should Microsoft force the EU's hand, Microsoft software shipments to Europe would be as common as crude shipments to s
Time to apply for patents. (Score:2, Interesting)
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Time for Microsoft to apply for patents on anything and everything described by these protocols...Otherwise, they're up a creek.
Well, since for the most part these protocols are intentionally broken copies of preexisting open standards, I don't think it likely they will be patentable. Also, since this is an antitrust abuse case, they would be forbidden by law from exercising any such patents or possibly even using patented protocols at all between their desktop and server since that would be a violation
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Wonder what they'll tell us this time (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder what story they'll try to feed us this time around.
Newflash! MS to pay up! (Score:3, Insightful)
Then they will say they will pay with vouchers for MS software.
Same shit, different day..
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Awesome! (Score:3, Insightful)
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Linux is already just as good, and we can get work done just as well. All that really matters is that some people use MS apps that arent compatible with much, BUT many of those apps also have export to standard data types.
What I worry about is the customer backlash when they fuck over their media collections with default-DRM on Windows. That will pissoff more people than ANY EU or US judgement.
Having ravaging hordes of pissed off cusomers is bad for any business, let alone when there's a viable a
Reality? (Score:4, Insightful)
Some nice offices in the UK for a start (Score:2, Insightful)
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Never mess with a government. Whoops, Windows and Windows PC's have a new, special "tax" of $150 until the fine is paid. Computers from OEM's that have Windows now have a new "tax" as well. Oh dear, all of Microsoft's assets in Europe have been seized REGARDLESS of whether the fine gets paid, etc... They've gone right up to the very limit with this one. Microsoft is a big big corporation,
Re:Reality? (Score:4, Interesting)
Most governments give some agency the power to enforce judgements by ordering the seizure of property that is within their jurisdiction in order to satisfy the judgement: while that obviously applies to things like bank accounts held in banks subject to the government in question, and real estate, it also can extend to tangible personal property and to intangible personal property like, say, intellectual property.
If for purposes of EU law, the the EU itself was the copyright owner of all previously-published Microsoft software, or that Microsoft software was in the public domain, that would be a pretty serious penalty for Microsoft.
Re:Reality? (Score:5, Insightful)
What power does the EU ultimately have to enforce the fines at this point if MS simply doesnt pay the fines...
They can confiscate MS property and assets in the EU, and they can throw corporate executives that fail to comply in prison.
Are they prepared to ban the importation of MS products and quit the MS Windows habit cold turkey?
There is no need to do this. They could simply confiscate MS's copyrights if so inclined.
can't see many businesses appreciating being deprived of a standard business environment/tool such as Windows or Office.
That's not going to happen. MS broke the law to hold businesses hostage, the EU is not going to let them suffer for MS's crimes and there is no reason to do so.
I'm fairly ignorant of EU politics but is there enough strength in the political system to push an embargo though and make it stick?
Again, there will be no embargo. The commission does have the clout to throw people in jail, and eventually they'll get far enough down the line so that someone will comply. In a worst case scenario they will order MS Europe to be formed from the assets, personnel, and funds MS has in the EU and grant that company the copyrights within the EU. The EU cannot afford to let a big company flaunt breaking the law or they will lose credibility and power and they know it. They have the authority and the guns and they will use them if they have to, but they won't.
MS will comply with the EU, even if they are slow about it. They would be idiots to walk away from the huge revenue stream that is the EU, in order to save a tiny portion of that in fines. It would also necessitate a huge new competitor to fill the space, destroying their stranglehold elsewhere. Do you want to buy Windows Vista from MS USA or Windows EU (with the same features) from MS-EU? Which will lower their price the most?
Speculation is fun and all, but really, this isn't going to happen.
What exactly is microsoft being asked to give up? (Score:4, Insightful)
A.Would be covered under what the EU is asking MS to release
and B.Would actually be benificial to competitors of Microsoft (including open source)
Re:What exactly is microsoft being asked to give u (Score:3, Informative)
Don't get me wrong, the Samba project's done a fantastic job of reverse engineering SMB, but they're miles behind domain management - you can't run an Active Directory domain with a Samba backend, the best it supports is an NT 4 domain.
Work is afoot to support AD domain management, but realistically the release of something like that would probably give it a huge boost.
That may be why MS aren't too keen to release anything...
Re:What exactly is microsoft being asked to give u (Score:5, Informative)
Fine European Wine (Score:2, Interesting)
CAP (Score:2)
That's quite a sum. To put it into perspective, the CAP budget for 2005 (CAP=Common Agricultural Policy, think of it as a big black hole that eats money) was €43 billion.
The reply from Microsoft... (Score:5, Funny)
But, but, your honour - we don't HAVE any competition...!
Translation and Original Story (Score:4, Informative)
New Ultimatum for Microsoft bu the EU
LONDON - The Eurpean Union has issues a new ultimatum against the American software giant Microsoft: before next Thursday the company has to turn over all (bdb: information about the) secret protocols in its Windows-OS to its competitors.
If Microsoft does not comply with the demands, the company risks more fines, threatened EC Neelie Kroes in Wednesday's edition of the British newspaper the Guardian. "I do not live forever" Kroes said about the tightened pressure.
Accoriding to her Microsoft has not given all relevant information yet. She compared it to a puzzle from which certain pieces are missing.
In March 2004 the European Commission already fined Microsoft by an amount of 497 million euros in alledged abuse of market power. In July an additional fine was set which can go up to 280,5 million euros.
original story in the guardian: http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1947759,0
Let's apply some real MS tax (Score:3, Insightful)
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Not Ridiculous at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft refused to comply with the remedy as decided by the court. The court then decided to fine Microsoft. Microsoft refused to comply with the remedy and refused to pay the fines. That's where we are at the moment.
So the EU isn't against Microsoft because it's American, it's against corporations that break the law, get convicted then ignore the punishment that has been decided by the court.
Now do you see?
Re:Ridiculous. (Score:5, Informative)
So they didn't exactly bash down the consumers' doors and force them to buy their software. They forced the PC OEMs to force it on them.
And you are correct with some of the xenophobia. Basically, the EU nations do not want to be purely beholden for this type of thing to a US-based company.
Not really xenophobia (Score:3, Interesting)
Huh? There are plenty of EU-based companies which got harsher sentences than MS right from the start. MS initially got no fine, and was just ordered to document the protocol. MS got fined only after it ignored the ruling and the deadline. MS's fine only got so big by ignoring the daily fine for 2.5 years. (It's basically like ignoring a parking fine for 2.
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Its nothing to do with that. Some companies went to the EU complaining that under EU law, Microsoft was a monopoly that was abusing its monopoly positition. The EU courts ruled in their favour and imposed conditions on Microsoft, which they have not complied with.
Re:Ridiculous. (Score:4, Insightful)
While I am like most of Slashdot in that I think that Microsoft has a very tight grip on the computer market, I still will never understand why the EU is so against Microsoft. Is it because it is produced in a foreign market? I know many European countries have unhealthy feelings of xenophobia...
While I, like most people on Slashdot understand that Lee Boyd Malvo is a good shot, I still will never understand why Virginia is so against him. Is it because he is black and Virginians hate blacks? I know a lot of Virginians are Clansmen...
Microsoft broke the law. The EU has enforced this same law against numerous companies that are both European and based in other countries. What's so hard to understand?
Remember: they bought the software...
Do you even know what this case is about? The whole point is that because everyone pretty much has to use Windows on the desktop to get software they need to do business means it is illegal for MS to force them to buy their server OS as well by tying the two together with secret protocols that make it hard to use a different server with Windows desktops. Since doing so is clearly against the law both in the US and the EU and MS was convicted of it both in the US and EU, I don't really see where refusing to fix the problem by providing a level playing ground for Linux and Solaris and everyone else as far as their interactions with the Windows desktop is concerned is in any way confusing.
Listen, I know MS publishes a lot of FUD about this and tries to confuse the issue, but it just isn't that hard. MS built their business model around breaking the law. They knew from the outset what they are doing is illegal and why and they just figured they'd make more money by breaking the law then paying any fines than by obeying the law. So far they've been very right. Even assuming they pay the fines they've acquired they're still right. They're not going to stop unless someone makes them with a bigger stick than this. Stop buying their marketing FUD.
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If you previously would never understand, doesn't that already say that, forever, you would not understand?
Yesterday I installed Ubuntu for a roommate. I left her Windows partition just so she can video-chat with her MSN buddies.
So she actually needs a Windows license ($$$) only because MS did not open it's protocols.
I don't believe the EU has something agains Microsoft; I think that now, for example, linux is by far enough developed that closed standards become a real i
Re:Ridiculous. (Score:4, Informative)
The EU is so against Microsoft because Microsoft is so against obeying the law in the EU.
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T
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I suppose at some point you'd get to a shutdown condition where they would be better off liquidating their assets and invest the capital elsewhere, rather than continue to do business under heavy fines, but they would have to be a lot heavier than anything that's considered right now.
In short, I think the Europeans can squeeze Microsoft a lot harder, before they'll decide to take th
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MSFT pretends to be open and standards following, and caring company, who you then partner with(playsforsure) and then stabs you in the back(Zune).
A simple fact, Outside of MSFT's monopoly their products are at best average and rarely long term profitable. Walmart while Evil, doe
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We see this time and again, whether it's steel imports, GM crops or democracy. "We can impose tariffs, but you can't". It's the US way,
who is corrupt .. (Score:4, Insightful)
Acutally you have it the wrong way round, it's MS and its lobbiests who are doing the corrupting [theregister.co.uk]. Batting on their side is also Charlie McGreevey a member of one of the most corrupt goverments in Europe. he's also behind the repeated attempts to get a US style patent system [com.com] introduced into Europe.
was EU corruption (Score:5, lies)
Re:Simple as this (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft can threaten all it wants but no corporation currently is more powerful then a state.
They'll simply be slaughtered both by the EU, and by their shareholders if they continue to refuse to comply with the court order.
step 2 above seems to assume that everyone would return their copy to microsoft, just because they asked.
Chances are they wouldnt, and all the EU needs to do is revoke all copyrights, patents , etc granted to microsoft and all businesses can continue to use it, legally while they migrate people over to other operating systems at their own pace.
you may say that microsoft wouldnt let them access the updates, and you're probably right - however there are sites which package windows updates into one big installer. Those could be used and indeed patched should there be anything to ensure that only those outside the eu can install them.
Furthermore, Microsoft needs the EU more then the EU needs Microsoft.
the EU is a huge market for microsoft, larger then the US is and their shareholders would certainly take action if the executives cut off such a large market through their arrogance and stubbornness.
Re:8 days isn't a lot of time to document... (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I can recall, MS did endeavor to document a bunch of their interfaces. The response was that it was insufficient. MS tried to find out how it was insufficient, and was told that it was MS's responsibility to figure that out.
Bullshit. MS was given clear instructions. They need sufficient documentation so that competitors can re-implement these protocols in their own servers. It is simple and clearly defined and instead of complying MS published a bunch of lies and tried to both sway public opinion and provide the least possible info to satisfy the EU in the hopes that they could get away with something that was insufficient for their competitors in the server space.
MS does produce technical documentation for a whole slew of its products. Look at the API-level documentation that is on http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/ [microsoft.com]. It's just not the most obvious documentation. Is it usable? For the most part. Does it cover every single idiosyncracy? No.
They do not publish reasonable documentation on the protocols as they themselves have admitted and the US courts have also judged them in noncompliance (although due to their lobbying we don't punish them). If they're going to use secret broken versions of existing standards, they can't use them in both their client and server. This is simple and obvious if you read the law. MS knew it. They still know it. They're just delaying the fines as long as possible.
Providing MS with an EIGHT DAY deadline is just absurd.
Again I call bullshit. This is how long they have to stop breaking the law in this one way. They knew the law in the first place. Zero days before a fine is levied is sufficient in my opinion. Listen Mr. Murderer, I know 8 days isn't a lot of time, but we need you to stop killing people within that time frame. I know it's hard to change, but that's just the way it is. Besides, they have 8 days till the fines kick in. They've had two years since they were officially convicted of the crime already. That is way, way, way too long. Every day weakens competition and hurts both consumers and the industry.
Anyone who has ever written technical API documentation will probably be inclined to agree that trying to compress even a three month timeline into 8 days will be well nigh impossible.
APIs? They have had 2 years to document communication protocols, not APIs. The protocols were mostly copied from existing open standards in the first place. Either you've bought into their propaganda beyond all reason or you're being paid to spread this FUD.
The commissioner's demand is effectively a demand for money, not for documentation; I can't see any way ANY company, no matter their motives, would be able to meet the deadline.
Good. Hopefully it will go beyond that. MS has built their business plan around breaking the law and paying off politicians and lawsuits. This is unacceptable. They should be progressively fined higher and higher amounts until breaking the law is no longer profitable for them and then they should be fined even more so that other companies understand such practices are not acceptable. If the US was not run by corrupt scumbags MS would have been broken up long ago and this would not be a problem. For political reasons the EU cannot order MS to break up, but they sure as hell should be fining them into oblivion until they obey they law.
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Sort of like how dictatorships create an environment of stability in countries, right?
Sure, they might abuse their power and kill some people, and the laws they dictate might be unjust, but at least you know what you have to comply with.
Most crashes, problems, and issues I have to d
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The lawyers and judges (who don't generally understand software development or architecture at all) keep making numerous faulty assumptions.
You're the one making faulty assumptions. Many of the people working on this case know all of the things you cite, but they don't matter. This is a punishment for MS breaking the law that MS bargained for after they were found guilty. They claimed they would do it.
Just because Microsoft doesn't publish documentation for every conceivable thing they do, it doesn't