Microsoft Settles With Disc Replicator
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Microsoft on Tuesday announced a settlement with one of its disc replication partners, after the company admitted it had breached agreements with Microsoft by unlawfully producing the Redmond company's server software.
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Microsoft is working to make its volume licensing programs simpler for business customers.
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The company that produced software called "Kazaa," which made it simple for millions of computer users to download music and movies over the Internet, has agreed to pay more than $115 million to the entertainment industry to settle global piracy lawsuits, the industry said Thursday.
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Computer giant agrees to comply with anti-trust ruling on Windows operating system after legal battle spanning three years.
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Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Tuesday agreed to require only a single license for server software that runs on computers powered by a new generation of chips
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Microsoft has paid $536 million to rival Novell as part of its ongoing programme to settle legal disputes that have formed the cornerstone of European regulators&#39; action against the software giant.
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Next-generation DVD specification approved, clearing way for manufacturers to produce read-only disks.
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Company agrees to settle charges over copy-protection software it included in music CDs.
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If large businesses use tools such as Microsoft's Solution Accelerator Business Desktop Deployment package (assuming it's easier to use than it is to say), the administrative "best practices" those tools will help them adopt could save them somewhat more per PC than what they spent for the license, according to a Gartner study advanced by a Microsoft product manager who spoke with BetaNews.
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Plus: More DRM standards, and a self-encrypting hard drive.
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A &quot;landmark agreement&quot; between Microsoft and England&#39;s Department of Health to renew the agency&#39;s license for desktop products could save it an estimated $608 million.
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Microsoft announced on Thursday its first software licensing deal under a program mandated by a 2004 European Commission anti-trust ruling.
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Microsoft says it's working to fix a glitch that stopped some customers from taking advantage of offer to get additional licenses for less.
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Microsoft Corp. has acknowledged the existence of a program circulating on the Internet that could circumvent its copy protection for online music, but said it was working on a fix.
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It looks like another case of Microsoft paying off to save legal hassles and possible bigger punishments in the future. Microsoft has reached a settlement worth USD 536 Million with the much in news corporation Novell.
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Microsoft will offer up to $600 per server (up to a maximum of $15,000) to companies who agree to switch from Novell to Windows servers, it has been revealed.
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Developers of open-source Samba software will find their work a little easier thanks to an agreement with Microsoft, signed Thursday, that will give them access to previously secret data on how the Windows operating system works.Microsoft was compelled to make this information available following a March 24, 2004, European Commission antitrust ruling against the company. In July 2006, the EU fined Microsoft &#8364;280.5 million ($338.6 million at that time) for failing to provide documentation on Windows protocols to its rivals.&#160;Microsoft lost an appeal of that decision&#160;in September, setting the stage for the deal.The deal was signed with a nonprofit group called the Protocol Freedom Information Foundation, (PFIF) which negotiated on behalf of the Samba team because Samba is not represented by a corporate entity. PFIF will pay a one-time fee of &#8364;10,000 and, in return, will be able to allow open-source developers, including the Samba team, to access the documents.Developers will have to sign nondisclosure agreements and will not be allowed to redistribute Microsoft&#39;s documentation, but they will be able to write open-source software that implements the Windows protocols. The deal will also clarify which patents Microsoft believes are related to this technology, making it easier for open-source developers to avoid patent violations.Antitrust rulings forced Microsoft to set up protocol-licensing programs in the past, including the MCPP (Microsoft Communications Protocol Program) and the WSPP (Work Group Server Protocol Program), but these efforts were not compatible with open-source software licenses.That is apparently not a problem with the PFIF agreement.&quot;They&#39;re giving us all the documentation to make everything work,&quot; said Jeremy Allison, co-author of Samba. &quot;We will have no more excuses to suck &#8230; if we don&#39;t have something, we won&#39;t be able to say it&#39;s not our fault, we don&#39;t know how to do it.&quot;Samba is an open-source version of the file-and-print software used by Windows. It is a standard component of the Linux and Unix operating systems, allowing these systems to share data and work alongside Windows clients.But development of Samba has traditionally been back-breaking work. Developers would analyze network traffic to try and glean how Windows was working and then build their software based on that knowledge -- a process called reverse-engineering.With the new agreement, developers will have access to Microsoft&#39;s own protocol specifications and will be able to build their software based on those documents, Allison said. That, in turn, will accelerate the team&#39;s development of its next generation of software, which will implement the new Sever Message Block 2.0 protocol used by Windows Vista.Though the deal was reached on Thursday, developers were still waiting for the final technical aspects of the document hand-over to be settled, Allison said. He expects to get his hands on the technical specifications fairly soon. &quot;I&#39;m guessing that for my Christmas vacation I&#39;ll have some enjoyable things to read,&quot; he said.