Bits: Microsoft Ruling: Split Decision, Two More Years of Oversight
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It would require a microscope to detect changes in Microsoftâs behavior or in the software market as a result of the consent decree extended Tuesday by a federal court.
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Several U.S. states are requesting a five-year&#160;extension&#160;of the&#160;antitrust judgment against Microsoft&#160;to ensure the company&#39;s continued compliance, according to a Tuesday court filing.Sections of the 2002 antitrust judgment are due to expire next month. A status hearing is scheduled for Nov. 6 with Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.In the filing, the states argue that Microsoft could use the continued dominance of its Internet Explorer browser to choke off other emerging middleware technologies from Google Inc. and Adobe System Inc. that work in close conjunction with Web browsers.The filing mentions Google Gears and Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), technologies that allow for offline use of Internet-centric applications.&quot;Because Web-centric technologies are so dependent on Web browsers and servers for access to consumers, they are particularly susceptible to impediments that Microsoft could interpose were the final judgment were to expire now,&quot; the filing said.The states contend Microsoft could &quot;tilt the playing field&quot; to favor its new&#160;Silverlight multimedia technology, which competes with Adobe&#39;s Flash.The states also argued there have been continued problems with the program under which Microsoft licenses communication protocols to enable other vendors&#39; products to more smoothly work with ones from Microsoft.The technical documentation has been inadequate over the last five years, while Microsoft has continued to gain market share with its servers. Microsoft only recently delivered more rewritten documentation that is being evaluated, the filing said.The document was filed by California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia.&#160;
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A European judge must sort through competing ideas on the balance between intellectual property and fairness to decide whether antitrust penalties against Microsoft (Quote, Chart) should be suspended.
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Microsoft Corp. goes into round two Friday of its battle to get the European Union&#39;s sweeping antitrust ruling lifted having told a judge that it had been prepared during settlement talks to share more software
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In split decision, judges OK extension of taxes to VoIP but agree with some arguments about the rules being unfair.
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I'm back, with a very interesting topic too!  Joel Spolsky, ex-Microsoft Manager and software engineering guru has a new essay, How Microsoft Lost the API War that is creating quite a big storm in the blogging communitiy.  Joel posits that the priests in the holy Temple of Microsoft have lost their way, because it has split into two factions, and the wrong faction is winning. One faction worships on the alter of backward compatibility, while the other is led by fervent priests who are proselytizing to raise up the new gods of .NET and Longhorn. Joel suggests that the new gods will cause the destruction of the holy Temple because Microsoft's great victories were built on the altar of keeping customers happy with backward compatibility. Furthermore the old gods of the Windows API continue to grow more grotesque and cruel with the passing of time, driving former worshipers into the arms of the friendlier gods of World Wide Web.  This story sounds extremely plausible. I must admit that i fit the profile of the developer who used to develop on the Window's API, is familiar with COM and Win32 who now develops mostly using PHP and Python. However I continue to develop and maintain Windows apps that keep our customers happy, and we still plan to develop new Windows apps. Some points:  Temple of the Blind? Firstly, Microsoft is still a compelling place to work for to people who feel that they can make a difference. The Temple continues to attract talented people with a Unix background. For example we have the recent hiring of Ward Cunningham, author of the Wiki.  Microsoft is still able to keep talented people like Raymond Chen, and others like him who continue to look after the Windows API, and Longhorn apparently will still give high priority to backward compatibility. Open sourcerers like Miguel Icaza are sufficiently attracted to the .NET vision to stake their careers on Mono. Longhorn and .NET are compelling technologies, so even if Win32 is not so cute anymore, M'soft is providing something that remains very attractive.  What i do see M'soft doing wrong is that they aren't disseminating the .NET runtime fast enough. It remains an optional install in XP Service Pack 2 for example. Also their IE dev team appears to be hog-tied due to political reasons; nevertheless IE remains good enough, particularly when I can embed IE as an activeX control, something I cannot do with Mozilla (AFAIK) - Update: I'm wrong.  Temple of the Spider?  Secondly, people don't merely use a web browser. They run the web browser in the OS.  So let me ask you, if you are using DreamWeaver or HomeSite or Photoshop or vi or emacs or Gimp, how many of you are willing to give it up for a java applet (or whatever your favorite technology is) running in your web-browser? Precisely.  Temple of the Abandoned?  Third, Joel makes the claim that developers are not developing to the Windows API. Well he could be right. But I bet a lot of them are still calling Win32.  If you are using a framework or IDE like Delphi or wxWindows (or .NET or VB) then you certainly are insulated from the Windows API, but that doesn't mean that you're not calling the Windows API all the time. I don't see Borland dropping their Windows version of Delphi at any point in time.   In fact, the fact that many developers are using some form of framework is a compelling argument for Microsoft to enhance the .NET framework to attract developers who are using other frameworks.  Today, not that many students learn x86 assembler, but that doesn't mean that Intel lost the CPU wars. Just because fewer people are learning Win32 doesn't mean Microsoft has lost the API wars, if the frameworks run predominantly on Win32.  Temple of the Lost  Joel even warns you in the beginning that "because I'm talking about big trends, I need to exaggerate and generalize". But you still get sucked in because Joel Spolsky is a first-class writer, in the same order as Philip Greenspun or Eric Raymond. That makes him so persuasive and plausible. But this is not Indiana Jones and doomed temples, but Steve Jobs and reality distortion fields.  Other opinions:  Harry Fuecks (PHP is ASP's upgrade path),  Dennis Hamilton (M'soft is just covering all bases), Robert McLaws (Joel is wrong in 7 points), Oliver Travers (the web is not good enough), One Run-time to Rule them all....
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He was vilified in U.S. industry and government circles for blocking the merger of General Electric Co. and Honeywell International Inc. in 2001 after the Justice Department had approved it. And when the European Union directorate he heads ordered Microsoft Corp. to remove a key feature from its Windows operating system, the U.S. antitrust community convulsed again.
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Mike Baker examines the implications of splitting the old Department for Education and Skills in two.
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Four states that recently said the U.S. federal judgment in the Microsoft antitrust case has done its job have made an about face, now joining&#160;other states asking for an extension of the judgment.New York, Maryland, Louisiana, and Florida asked the court to extend the term of the judgment for another five years, according to a filing they made with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday. The states join California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia in asking for the extension.As recently as August the states led by New York said the judgment was achieving its goal of fostering competition.Now they&#39;ve changed their tune. &quot;An extension is appropriate to assure that marketplace participants have sufficient opportunity to establish positions to compete against Microsoft, an entrenched monopolist,&quot; they wrote in the filing.Microsoft&#39;s &quot;well-known difficulties&quot; complying with parts of the judgment have hurt the chances for more competition in the market, they wrote. The filing also stated that the pace of technological development of the overall operating system market hasn&#39;t moved as fast as expected when the judgment was written, so that removing oversight of the judgment now would impair the chances of potential competitors.The states suggest that extending the judgment shouldn&#39;t unduly harm Microsoft as the company said in&#160;a case brought by the European Commission&#160;that the settlement in the U.S. hadn&#39;t negatively impacted its incentive to innovate.In response to the filing by the New York group of states, Microsoft reiterated its comments following the filing earlier this week by the California group. &quot;We believe the consent decree has served its purpose,&quot; Jack Evans, a Microsoft spokesman, said in a statement. &quot;Microsoft has worked hard to implement the decree&#39;s requirements and has changed its practices as a result.&quot;
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A European judge today cast a skeptical eye on whether Microsoft Corp. should be forced to create two versions of its Windows operating system, one with its program for
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Changes Microsoft will make to its business practices to comply with the 2004 European Commission antitrust ruling will &quot;profoundly affect the software industry,&quot; European competition commissioner Neelie Kroes said Monday.For three and a half years Microsoft dragged its feet and used every legal avenue available to delay complying with the&#160;2004 antitrust ruling. But after its&#160;appeal of the ruling to Europe&#39;s second highest court failed&#160;last month, the company decided to cooperate.&quot;At the time the Court of First Instance issued its judgment in September, Microsoft committed to taking any further steps necessary to achieve full compliance with the Commission&#39;s decision. We have undertaken a constructive discussion with the Commission and have now&#160;agreed on those additional steps,&quot; Microsoft said in a statement Monday.Open-source software developers will be given access to the interoperability protocols inside Windows that Microsoft was ordered to reveal. Until recently the software giant had steadfastly refused to allow that. The protocols will be available for a fraction of the license fee Microsoft intended to charge and they will be valid worldwide, the Commission said Monday.These concessions were agreed to between Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Kroes in a recent meeting at a restaurant near Kroes&#39; home town of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The final details were agreed to in a transatlantic phone call Monday morning Brussels time, Sunday evening in Redmond, Washington, from where Ballmer made the call.Kroes was visibly delighted at Microsoft&#39;s decision to respect the Commission&#39;s authority. &quot;I hope we can close this dark chapter in our relationship,&quot; she told journalists at a news conference at the Commission&#39;s headquarters in Brussels.However, she also made clear that while Microsoft&#39;s latest efforts substantially respect its obligations under the 2004 ruling, other points of conflict could occur.&quot;New issues may arise,&quot; she warned, pointing to &quot;a couple of other cases on our desks&quot; concerning the company.One of those cases was sparked by a complaint from the trade group ECIS (European Committee for Interoperable Systems), whose members include IBM, Oracle, and Red Hat. The Commission declined to comment on other cases.Besides complying with the 2004 ruling, Microsoft also said Monday that it wouldn&#39;t appeal last month&#39;s defeat at the Court of First Instance, ending the legal uncertainty that continued to face software and hardware developers long after the 2004 ruling.While doubts remained about the validity of the Commission&#39;s 2004 antitrust ruling, the computer industry was unable to plan future product development with full confidence. Now they know, for example, that open-source software developers will be able to compete for a share of the market for workgroup server operating systems -- the computers that run networks of PCs.Microsoft has a 95 percent market share on the desktop operating system market and over 70 percent of the market for workgroup server operating systems. Open-source workgroup server products are virtually the only alternative for users and are thus the main surviving competitive constraint on Microsoft, the Commission said.&quot;More competition on this market should offer consumers more innovative products, with improved functionality at better prices. For that reason, it is vital to the effectiveness of the 2004 decision that Microsoft also complies by giving access to open-source developers access to the interoperability information,&quot; the Commission said.While failing up to now to provide all the information demanded by the Commission, Microsoft has been providing two separate licensing arrangements to companies. The first is a &quot;No Patent Agreement&quot; allowing licensees access to the interoperability information, but without taking a license for patents that Microsoft claims is necessary, a contention disputed by some third parties.Microsoft Monday confirmed it has made three changes to this license. Besides granting access to it to open-source developers, it has reduced royalty fees to a single flat rate payment of &#8364;10,000 ($14,308, based on Monday&#39;s exchange rate). It has also agreed to allow licensees to dispute the accuracy or completeness of the interoperability information and seek damages in private enforcement claims at the High Court in London.Kroes said the London court is the best qualified court in Europe to handle such disputes.The second type of license offered by Microsoft includes rights to use patent-protected interoperability information. Microsoft was demanding payment for the patent-protected information amounting to 5.95 percent of the licensee&#39;s revenues from the product that benefited from the information. Microsoft agreed Monday to slash this to 0.4 percent of revenue, the Commission said.Of the 154 protocols being licensed, only 31 are patent-protected. Licensees are free to choose if they need to take out a patent license or if they can work around the patents, Kroes said.While Monday&#39;s agreement between the Commission and Microsoft draws a line through most of the outstanding legal issues they have fought over for the past nine years, the Commission still hasn&#39;t decided how much to fine the company for failing to comply up to now.Two years ago the regulator fined Microsoft &#8364;280.5 million for failing to provide adequate interoperability information, and imposed further daily fines. The additional fines will add up to tens, possibly hundreds, of millions of euros in additional fines. The Commission will announce the full tally of fines before the end of this year, spokesman Jonathan Todd said.Another outstanding question is whether Microsoft will withdraw an appeal of the ruling that imposed the noncompliance fine. That appeal was lodged with the Court of First Instance in 2005. Microsoft spokesman Tom Brookes said he was unaware of any decision to withdraw the appeal.In 2004 the Commission, Europe&#39;s top antitrust regulator, fined Microsoft &#8364;497 million for abusing the dominant power of its Windows operating system. It ordered the company to reveal secret protocols inside Windows to rival makers of workgroup server operating systems to allow them to build systems that worked properly with PCs running Windows.It also ordered the company to offer consumers a second version of Windows that has the media player stripped out, because the Commission concluded that by bundling Microsoft&#39;s own audio and video playing program into the operating system, it was putting rival media players at an unfair disadvantage.
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LUXEMBOURG - The judge deciding whether Microsoft Corp. must comply with the European Commission's remedies for the company's antitrust violations questioned Friday whether the steps ordered by the Commission will effectively curb Microsoft's power.
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Microsoft Corp., state regulators and the Department of Justice (DOJ) will get more time to argue whether the antitrust settlement against the company should be extended until 2012.
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A European court has upheld the bulk of an antitrust ruling against Microsoft Corp. made by the European Commission in 2004
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After more than three years, European court will give its verdict in the Microsoft antitrust case on September 17.
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BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Microsoft Corp. agreed to obey key parts of a 2004 antitrust ruling upheld by an appeals court last month, EU regulators said Monday, cutting royalties for rivals and handing information over to open source developers.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft suffered a humiliating legal defeat Monday when it lost a court appealÂ to overturn the European Commission's 2004 antitrust ruling against it. The decision took most observers by surprise. The Court of First Instance, Europe's second highest court based in Luxembourg, sided squarely with Europe's top antitrust regulator on the two central issues in the case. Most commentators expected a mixed verdict. While the details of the lengthy court decision are still being examined in their minutiae, some consequences are already clear: The ruling pulls a legal rug from under Microsoft's strategy of bundling software onto its Windows operating system, providing a powerful legal reference point for any future antitrust litigation against the company, and it strengthens the Commission's authority, especially when dealing with antitrust abuse in the fast-moving information technology industry. The Commission was right to rule against Microsoft's strategy of bundling its Media Player application into the Windows operating system, the court concluded, after three years deliberation. Similarly, Microsoft acted illegally by refusing to share the required interoperability information needed by rivals to build server operating systems that work smoothly with Windows, the court said. Microsoft's most senior lawyer, Brad Smith said the court decision was "disappointing." He hasn't decided whether to appeal it to the top court, the Court of Justice. If Microsoft does this, it can only dispute points of law, not facts established in Monday's ruling. Smith said Monday's court ruling has important implications for Microsoft's strategy of bundling together a range of applications with the Windows operating system. This strategy has proved effective in the past. Microsoft eclipsed Netscape in the mid 1990s when it bundled in its Internet Explorer application into the operating system. And RealPlayer dominated the market for streaming media applications until Microsoft started bundling its Media Player into Windows in 1999. The Commission initially hoped to save RealPlayer from Netscape's fate by ordering Microsoft in 2004 to sell a second unbundled version of Windows, but it was too late. The market had tipped irreversibly in favor of Microsoft even before the 2004 ruling. The Commission's remedy to restore competition to the streaming media software market in 2004 was to order Microsoft to sell a second version, later dubbed Windows N, with Media Player stripped out. But the remedy has had no impact on the market. Nevertheless, winning the bundling argument in court was the most important victory of the day for the Commission, and for other companies that believe they suffered from Microsoft's unfair bundling strategy, according to Commission officials and lawyers following the case. "This is an important precedent, not just for this particular product on this particular market," said Competition commissioner Neelie Kroes at a press conference Monday. There isn't a queue of complainants lined up, she said, but she added that "they are welcome." Thomas Vinje, legal counsel for the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, (ECIS) a Commission ally in the case, said the Commission's authority to regulate competition in the IT industry has been strengthened by the court ruling. "It has strengthened their hand," he said, adding that he will encourage the Commission to move swiftly ahead with the antitrust complaint ECIS filed to the European regulator two years ago. However, he dismissed claims made during the day that the ruling would be a threat for all successful companies. "The Microsoft case is very rare in that it concerns a super-dominant company," he said. "The Commission may be emboldened by the endorsement of the court to take action against other companies in the IT industry -- There may be issues to be addressed concerningÂ Google's dominance of search, or with its plans to take over DoubleClick, but they bear little resemblance to the specific issues in the Microsoft case. The only real implications from the Microsoft case are for Microsoft itself," he added.