Microsoft’s latest offer to comply with sanctions imposed by the European Commission is insufficient to meet the concerns of customers and consumers, a European Commission spokesman said Friday.
EU: Microsoft not complying with order
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…or is this just another case of the omnipotent government telling us what’s good for us?
You’d think Microsoft was hiring assassins to come kill me for usin Slackware on all my boxes, by the way they get treated.
And that Microsoft was found guilty by the EU of doing so?
Most law violations involve a penalty of some sort. Microsoft was given one, and they allegedly aren’t living up to their end of the bargain. The additional actions are to make sure they do what they promised to do in the first place.
Why are so many people so adamant about defending a corporation that was caught violating the law??!? These actions are NOT coming out of the blue — they’ve been years in the making, the process has been highly publicized, and the reasons behind them have been very well-documented.
If Microsoft chooses to blow off the EU’s ruling, they deserve every bit of grief the EU throws at them in return.
The EU knows what’s best for people. Microsoft is an american company and linux is what’s best for europeans
The EU is better capable of making your decisions than you are? What a peculiar worldview you have.
I — I can’t believe it! Not MICROSOFT!
“The EU knows what’s best for people”
Ahh. So patents ARE good.
Look at Nextstep, look at BeOS, look at all those operating systems that had some absolutely brilliant features, yet failed anyway. Those operating systems had features that we still don’t have today. Some of them may come out with the release of tiger or longhorn. Some of them might even take longer. The point is that the operating system market is ten years behind if it were a true competitive market.
The reason we are so much behind, is the monopoly of Microsoft. It gave them too much power over pc-vendors, application makers, etc. This effectively stopped competition and innovation. I can only applaud the EU if they take measures so that the media market won’t suffer the same fate, by restricting the monopoly power of Microsoft. It’s about a whole lot more than wether or not you can run slackware on your box.
EU knows monopolies are bad for people. That’s why there are laws restricting monopolistic companies’ behaviour in the markets. Microsoft broke one of those restrictions and is now punished for doing so. This has nothing to do with linux and is actually very simple: Laws have to enforced. Dipt-dialin, what part do you have difficulties to understand?
In its last fiscal year, the twelve months up to 22 July, 2004, Microsoft(TM) achieved revenues of $36.84 billion. The equivalent of nearly 100 million dollars a day.
“The remedy is one of two the Commission imposed on the U.S. software giant a year ago along with a record fine of $660 million (497 million euro).”
From just casual observation, that would only be little less than one-weeks worth of daily revenue for the Redmond-based software company.
It should conform to law and pay its fines just like the common people and small businesses do.
They got slapped on the wrist here in the US… but the current administration is having trouble with the concept of “conflict of interest”…
We can send Martha Stewart away for “telling a lie” over a $200K stock trade but we can’t enforce the terms of Microsoft’s first Anti-Trust Judgement.
My complaint with M$ is their insistance on manipulating hardware manufacturers and vendors.. that has never been addressed.
“Microsoft is an american company and linux is what’s best for europeans”
Oh really? Thats a pretty bold statement. Care to back that up?
If Microsoft was based in Europe instead of Redmond do you think the EU would be coming down on them this hard? I don’t…
“On the basis of market test results, we have serious doubts that Microsoft is complying with the interoperability remedy,” EU competition spokesman Jonathan Todd told Reuters.
Give me a break.
Absolutely. The fact that people like myself can still use nine-year-old 200MHz PPro hardware and a 9-year-old OS like OS/2 Warp 4, lose very little in the process, and still take advantage of a number of OS and UI features that neither Windows nor Linux currently support just blows my mind.
I can understand it from the Linux developer’s perspective — the Unix/POSIX world in general has a history of NiH syndrome anyway (and thus knows very little about features found on platforms like OS/2 or in various mainframe OSes), and yet Linux has frankly come a hell of a long way since the Linux many of us were trying to find uses for in 1995.
Windows, on the other hand, still has most of the same UI issues it had back then, still uses drive letters, still has a pathetically wasteful filesystem (though NTFS is somewhat better than FATxx), and probably wouldn’t have all that much going for it at all were it not for gaming and the legendary Office monopoly (the two main reasons why Windows is still firmly locked into the home and business markets).
What has Microsoft given us for all of its billions of dollars in revenue? Most of the new technology it brings to market these days (like Virtual PC, Visio, and its new anti-spyware tool) are little more than technologies they purchased outright from other companies and slapped their own brand name on. They don’t even need programmers to do that level of “innovation”…
that everyone failed to see dipt-dialin’s sarcasm.
I can’t believe you people don’t see how unrestricted monopolies ruin the purpose of capitalism. One company with this much power and influence is also fairly undemocratic in principle. Imagine how things would be if one company owned all newspapers and tv channels…
By dipt-dialin (IP: —.sd.sd.cox.net) – Posted on 2005-03-18 20:48:46
The EU knows what’s best for people. Microsoft is an american company and linux is what’s best for europeans
Have you noticed that this guy calls himself “tipt-dialin” as if he was using the European ISP T-Online, but in reality he’s connecting from “cox.net”, a US company?
He’s not a stupid European, but he’s probably an American guy who wants to depict Europeans as stupid and anti-american.
Don’t be taken in by him. 🙂
Cause they have one.
I think its this one:
* Getting the fine.
* Not cooperating (as you seen before w/this fine).
* Ignoring.
* Kneeling.
* Getting less punishment, whining at own government for international pressure.
Just a thought tho. I mean, no corp just ignores an important aspect like this. Or is it really worth the 5 million a day? As for the whole justified-or-not discussion, that discussion is getting as old, it should have been patented.
To return this discussion back to the real questions and get away from the comments of the american europhobes. The BBC has a much more onformative article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4360577.stm
To quote from the article:
“On the basis of market test results, we have serious doubts that Microsoft is complying with the interoperability remedy,” EU competition spokesman Jonathan Todd said.
The European Commission said the group had failed on four counts. It was difficult for companies that wanted to licence Microsoft data protocols to get access to its documentation.
Furthermore, companies which wanted to take out a licence would have to pay for an extensive one that also covered items they did not want.
Another limitation was that developers of open source software, which compete with Microsoft in providing software for server computers, could not gain access to the protocols.
But the biggest problem, said Mr Todd, was that: “It would appear that the level of royalties applied would be unjustified.”
It means that the EU is getting to the core of one of the key issues in Microsofts continuing ant-competitive behaviour. That is the conversion of IBM’s open SMB protocol for computer communication into the private and proprietary CIFS protocol – using embrace and extend to try to leverage its effective monopoly on desktop clients into a similar monopoly on file and print servers. The Commission is at least listening to the SAMBA organizations submission to the them.
SAMBA.org has more on this http://us1.samba.org/samba/news/#eu_not_satisfied
and it also refers to the ZDnet UK article which also has more information the the news.com article this thread refers to: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39191837,00.htm
The ZDnet article brings out the following key Commission point where they agree with SAMBA
The commission is also concerned that open source vendors are “excluded” from the licence agreement. The spokesman said it is only asking Microsoft to provide the protocols necessary to build products that are interoperable with its servers and is not asking for it to reveal its source code. “It’s not as if their source code would be handed out to all and sundry in the open source world,” said the spokesman.
The US courts rightly found Microsoft to be an illegal monopoly but failed to implement any policy to deal with this. Let us hope that the European Commission really deals effectively with Microsoft, carrying on where the US legal system left off. I don’t hold my hopes too high, because in Europe just like the US some politicians, bureaucrats and judges can be bought off.
To make this clear: This is NOT Anti-Americanism. Did you forget that Microsoft was very close to being split up into several subparts as a result of the antitrust lawsuit in the USA? In Europe, it is not even possible to split up a company, but in the USA it is.
Companies are punished every day in Europe as well as elsewhere. A few weeks ago, T-Mobile and Vodafone (two very European companies) were punished because they undermined the competition with price-fixing arrangment, which is illegal.
It is a consensus in all the different cultures of the world that illegal behaviour needs to be punished and that repeatedly illegal behaviour needs to be punished hard. Period.
People always seem to choose sides and act like football fans instead of thinking… (yeah, I know, big surprise…)
MS has been found guilty both in the USA and in the EU. In the USA the DOJ finally chose to do nothing to them (big surprise again).
In the EU all the fuss started with AMERICAN companies (Real, SUN and others) asking the EU to investigate on MS anti-competitive behaviours. The EU found them guilty and fined them.
What’s strange?
The EU routinely rules on european companies, and has frequently fined those that did not comply to the rulings.
Imagine the EU was attacking the people who owned the VHS standard because they became popular. That’s a bit like what’s happening to Microsoft.
Software needs standards. Contrary to popular belief, the public sort aren’t enough to ensure interoperability, because there’s too much potential variability in software. Regardless of opinions of technological superiority, there are LOTS of things that make a product compelling, among them availability of choices, etc. You can complain that some interesting features in BeOS beat features in Windows, but it won’t change the value proposition offered by Windows in the holistic sense.
Windows offers compatibility with everything. That’s a huge advantage, and tracks closely to the reason people chose VHS over BETA.
When will some people here see the light. Microsoft has abused over and over again its monopoly, weasled itself out and killed competition.
There is a general law and has been proven to be good, there shall be no monopolies otherwise in the long run you end up with an economy which is more like the one of the sovjet union than a free market.
So what does this have to do with Microsoft simple, they have a monopoly applied unfair semi legal ethically wrong business practices and got caught with the hand in the cookie jar, now they try to weasel themselves out again.
Nothing more nothing less. This has nothing to do with the EU vs. the US those are simple business rules, which also apply to the US, but the USs legal and political system seems to be corrupted to such a degree that Microsoft was able to buy itself out with massive campaign contributions to both parties.
It seems you are a wee bit off with your example.
It is more like this:
The company that makes VHS tapes has a proven monopoly and can dictate which companies can or can not make VHS readers.
“Windows offers compatibility with everything”
What does that mean? Does windows offer compatibility with ReiserFS4?
It’s the hardware makers that produce hardware compatible with the CURRENT version of windows. Windows has practically no merit in this (other than having a HAL layer to write drivers on).
In fact windows is not even compatible with my gf’s old HP Photosmart camera: there were drivers for win98, but no drivers for XP, so no luck.
There are and were numerous interoperability standards. The Microsoft approach is, embrace them, extend them, make them incompatible, close them and do not given them away after the takeover.
Want examples:
SMB an open standard defined by IBM in the eighties
Kerberos
Corba was torpedoed after it was in its infancy defined by a consortium which Microsoft participated.
NTFS is basically a fork of the OS/2 filesystem.
The W3C standards were broken 8 years ago to such a degree that nowadays you either have to go IE or make two versions of a page which does more than simple HTML.
SVG basically was taken and only three functions were altered and it got a new nametag on it and a lots of patents.
The idea of using XML for word processing was taken away straight from the open OpenOffice word document and now Microsoft plasteres it with patents left and right.
We will probably never see a decent CSS 2.1 or 3.0 implementation since Microsoft plans to introduce its own markup language (which was heavily stolen from the open Xul) in Longhorm, called Xaml….
The list is endless here… but you see how they act. But have in mind those are things which were not even remotely on the table in both antitrust cases.
It is just, there are numerous standards, and they work well and everybody implements them, but a few years later Microsoft usually has torpedoed them and tied them to windows one way or the other.
If Microsoft was based in Europe instead of Redmond do you think the EU would be coming down on them this hard? I don’t…
I agree. It’s the reason why Microsoft has been able to get off so cleanly in the US courts after being convicted of monopoly abuse in the US *TWICE*.
If they were based in Europe, the US would have levied serious sanctions, disallowed multiple mergers with US companies, and 1/2 of Europe would be up in arms.
Yes, standars are needed, but they should be industry standards arrived at by discussion with many of the industry experts rather than a convicted monopolist forcing their own standards on people.
Compatibility? Don;t make me laugh! My Windows 98 system cannot read my winXP hard diive. MS Office formats have changed so many times that telling a .doc from a .doc is getting pretty tricky.
As for VHS, many companies produce VHS equipment. How many produce Windows OS? Therein lies the difference.
VHS has never been “compatible with everything”. Windows has never been “compatible with everything”. Never will be.
I don’t want to play their stupid game, I want to beat them. The EU should pay Microsoft 100 billion dollars, and than get out of the fucking way. I want to beat Windows.
The EU government does know what’s best for you…to put more money in their coffers. Hasn’t anyone realized this? Trying to pass the patent legislature through, trying to fine Microsoft, just take a look at most of what they’re trying to push through.
They don’t actually CARE about the people, they’re only interested in the funds it’ll net them, while providing the illusion that they care about you. Just like any other government, really. The whole thing is a farce.
If Microsoft was based in Europe instead of Redmond do you think the EU would be coming down on them this hard? I don’t…
I do. The EU regularly hands out fines of over a hundred million Euro. Most of the “poor victims” are European corporations.
Microsoft is a young child who turns into a pile of dead weight when you grab their arm and try to get them to go somewhere they don’t want to go.
“In Europe, it is not even possible to split up a company”
Er, what do you mean by that? “In Europe”? Well, obviously that part is wrong, as there’s a big discussion going on in the U.K. now as to whether BT (the incumbent telco) should be split into infrastructure and service sides. The government certainly has the power to do that. Do you mean “the EU does not have the power to split up a company”? I think that’s probably the case, but its member governments certainly can. Although obviously not a non-European one.
@AdamW:
To be honest, I don’t exactly know about the UK. At least in Germany, a company cannot be split up by the state, neither by the government nor by a court, unless it is actually owned by the state, no matter how often it breaks the law. I generalised this for Europe as a whole, this might be wrong, sorry.
@John Carroll:
This must be a joke. You are mixing up standards and monopolies. These are not the same. Where I live, we have a single standard for mobile telephony (GSM) and four major companies that use it and it works perfectly, everything is perfectly interoperable.
Nobody needs monopolies because they make interoperability even harder or, in the worst case, completely impossible. If you really think that standards and monopolies are equivalent, this is very, very sad. Monopolies are NOT necessary in order to create standards, it is exactly the other way round.
Quote: “The reason we are so much behind, is the monopoly of Microsoft. It gave them too much power over pc-vendors, application makers, etc. This effectively stopped competition and innovation. I can only applaud the EU if they take measures so that the media market won’t suffer the same fate, by restricting the monopoly power of Microsoft. It’s about a whole lot more than wether or not you can run slackware on your box.”
Absolutely. It’s why monopolies are illegal 🙂 The question is, why wasn’t Microsoft curbed earlier on its career? Stopping a monopoly that’s well set in place is very hard to do, not without drastic steps.
Now – i’m curious. The US DOJ has seen fit to not take any action against Microsoft from purchasing anti spyware and anti virus vendors, for inclusion in its operating system. Hang on here, this is exactly what they were accused of doing with Internet Explorer! What’s going on here? How are they allowed to do this? It’s EXACTLY the same thing. EXACTLY. And remember – Microsoft knows all of its system calls, 3rd party vendors don’t. And deliberately don’t, it’s supposedly to protect “IP” but in reality it’s to strengthen the monopoly.
The first thing to do is to either reduce or remove software patents immediately. It will allow interoperability to an unprecedented level, and bring more players into the operating system field I suspect. The problem is that patents are a nice source of revenue for the US government, at 10 grand per patent application. That’s a LOT of money. Could it be greed from the US government beats the will of the people? Sadly, I suspect that this is indeed the case. The sad thing is, this is also prevailant in most other countries with close ties to the US.
Europe is partly standing up, with a spine. A $600 million dollar fine is a joke though – in reality it should have been in the order of 30 billion dollars.
An example of competition – firefox is kicking the ass of Internet Explorer. So what does Microsoft do? Gets off its ass and starts developing Internet Explorer 7. Now – would that have happened if there wasn’t any competition in the market? Nope. Microsoft would have sat on its laurels and done nothing, leaving customers with Internet Explorer 6. See what competition does?
Monopolisation destroys competition, i’m no economist but it doesn’t take a smart brain to realise that. It just takes some common sense. Good ole fashioned common sense. It’s amazing how little of it current governments employ in their decision making.
Dave
We should think of solutions for the problems that we face.
1 All hardware released should be legally required to release enough technical info for any OS to take full advntage of the hardware. This will eliminate trade-secrets among competitors & pave the way for more competitive hardware competition to catch up.
2 Windows should be required to release source code for all proprietary drivers, & software.
3 Take the 6 percent of the global population that controls 50% of the worlds wealth & resources and legally force them to share, so that the 50% who are malnourished and the 80% who live in substandard housing can have a chance to survive without such unnecissary suffering.
4-infinity… I could go on & on…