Microsoft Hands Over Docs To EU 265
hankwang writes "Reuters reports that Microsoft has handed over technical documents to the EU in order to enable the competition to make interoperable software. So far, the EU has imposed fines of €497 M and €280 M onto Microsoft for abuse of its monopoly. The deadline for this documentation was today. According to Microsoft, the documentation is over 8500 pages."
Re:Format ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How do you get this documentation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Another Microsoft *evil* tactic? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nobody To Cheer For (Score:1, Insightful)
How is that promoting "fair competition"?
Re:Nobody To Cheer For (Score:2, Insightful)
It would seem that things like this, in a free market, should take care of themselves...
Other companies can't create compatible software, thus Microsoft should somehow feel that burden and suffer somehow. I guess that hasn't happened..
But when the government has to intervene in ways like this, it reminds me a little too much of Reardon being forced to hand over the recipe for his metal alloy (Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand). It seems wrong, somehow, that Microsoft should be forced to give up their secret sauce. Believe me, I am no Microsoft fan, but I would have thought that the market should take care of this kind of problem itself. It should have been, somehow, in MS's interests to allow other companies to interoperate with their own. For example, "the more people we can work with, the more we'll sell our operating system." Why has this not happened?
I guess that's what being a "monopoly" is then -- when it's no longer in your self-interests to "play nice" with others.
Does the analogy with Reardon Metal, or McDonalds Secret Sauce, end when you realize that software is inherently different than a physical substance? If so, why is that? How is it different?
Re:Nobody To Cheer For (Score:1, Insightful)
That doesn't *increase* competition, it encourages people to *keep using* Windows, because more software will be available for it! So in effect this puts others like Apple or Linux, that maybe voluntarily disclosed documentation/information, at a disadvantage, because it forces MS to do the same nice things for its developers.
*Sigh*
(European ex-Windows, ex-Linux, ex-BSD, Mac user here)
Open Standards (Score:3, Insightful)
IMO, it would be better to mandate the use of open standards inside the EU government. This is (1) less heavy-handed than imposing a fine, (2) ensures the details of formats, protocols and APIs used by the EU are publicly available, (3) allows anyone to implement these formats, protocols, and APIs, and (4) requires anyone who wants to sell software to the EU to support them. It also gives parties other than the government the option to use these open standards, or proprietary alternatives, as they see fit.
Re:Open Standards (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nobody To Cheer For (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, there is no difference between software, a secret sauce or a fictional metal alloy so your analogy holds true; none are physical objects, all are IP.
Re:Nobody To Cheer For (Score:1, Insightful)
Additionally, your faith in free markets (and references to fiction - arguably bad and unrealistic fiction) seems a bit too strong.
The problem with free markets and monopolies, or even non-monopolies that are sufficiently successful, is that the more successful a company is, the more money and power they have, and the more they can use their power and established market position to establish a significant barrier of entry for potential competitors, rather than competing on merit, quality, service, aesthetics, price or other factors that should be the deciding factors in an even playinig field.
You can argue that on the very long term, this doesn't pay off, and a company with such an attitude will fail, but I'm pretty sure that in terms of product merit, a barely good enough product + an established position is sufficient to hold power for a very long time. IMHO on a level playing field, Microsoft would've fallen back when it took them until the third generation of PCs capable of such things before giving regular consumers a 32-bit, pre-emptively mulitasking operating system (it could've been done on a 386, but by the time Win95 came out, people were using Pentiums...).
Re:Nobody To Cheer For (Score:3, Insightful)
It could be argued that the US antitrust case was over-ambitious: the EU's proposed remedy attacks the same thing (Microsoft's vertical advantage in owning OS, application and media layers) in a more sensible fashion. By enforcing interoperability they enable exactly the kind of competition the Ayn Rand weenies believe the free market should give them.
Re:Nobody To Cheer For (Score:5, Insightful)
> Microsoft's?
Because Microsoft are leveraging the effective monopoly they have in the OS and office markets to make their protocols and file formats de-facto standards, then withholding documentation in order to stop competitors from being able to use these, now standard, protocols.
> Microsoft's not a monopoly: you're perfectly free to create your own standard (as the OO
> crowd is trying to do). Surely you'll admit that it's not Microsoft's fault that such
> standards aren't catching on?
Yes they are and yes it is. Courts in both the US and the EU have found Microsoft to be a monopoly. Furthermore courts in both the EU and the US have found Microsoft to be illegally using it's monopoly status to lock-out competitors by either polluting existing standards ('embrace and extend' as it's known)(HTML, Java etc) or create proprietary standards and then consistently attempt to make it difficult for other software to be compatible (.doc, SMB, WMV etc).
> Personally I don't use OO because I can't swap files with people with whom I co-author
> scientific articles. MS Office and Open Office equations STILL don't work right (and before
> you LaTeX fanatics step in, neither of us speak that language).
All the more reason to document the file format properly and allow the applications to compete on merit and price then don't you think?
> Since I get my MS Office for free, why should I even consider OO?
I didn't notice anyone say you should. But if I can't use OO because you use Office simply because Microsoft is deliberately obfuscating their file format is that fair either?
Classic monopolistic behaviour (Score:4, Insightful)
Heh, I had a compulsory business economics lecture this morning -- ooh lookey, a chance to show off my mad economikz skillz.
In a normal competitive or semi-competitive market, firms try to maximise their profit by following the supply and demand curve. The cost for a firm to enter or leave a market is negligible, and consumers will always go for the best product at the lowest price (i.e. the optimal price/quality point). This is the optimal sort of market from almost everyones' point of view the best product will always win, and it turns out that this is a really good thing for the economy.
Let's assume that to start off with, the market for audio player software is a perfect competitive market. All media files are stored in an easy to implement format (e.g. MP3 or WAV) and so one audio player can easily be replaced by another.
Now, Microsoft decides to enter the market. They realise that they can get a huge install base by bundling their audio software with their operating system (which is more or less a monopoly product). This is an attempt to gain a monopoly in one market by leveraging a monopoly in another, which is illegal in some places such as the USA and EU. They then decide to reduce the contestability of the market by making their audio software default to creating files which competing firms' software cannot read without a license from Microsoft.
There are many more examles of Microsoft doing (or attempting to do) this.
All involve deliberate breakage of interoperability and backwards compatibility by either undocumented protocols/file formats or perversion of existing standards for them.
Re:Open Standards (Score:4, Insightful)
Who will they be arguing to? The EU government? They have no reason to listen. A judge? They won't care if some organization doesn't want to buy another organization's product, whatever the reason. Other potential customers? That won't do anything to change the situation of the EU gov't. Themselves? They'd just be trying to convince themselves that the loss of sales is a Good Thing.
With the present case, where Microsoft is actually being fined, they have all kinds of legal recourse, and I do believe they've tried those options. They won't necessarily win: the government makes the rules, and everyone has to play by them; but Microsoft could at least try to convince a judge that the fines are unfair, the law is unjust, or that they need more time to comply.
If the EU decides to mandate open standards, Microsoft is not being singled out in any way. That gives them much less reason to complain. They can either cater to the customer's demands or decline to, but they're not being wronged in any way.
There Is No Such Thing As A Free Market (Score:2, Insightful)
- no single producer is powerful enough to have a decisive influence on the market (i.e. no monopoly!)
- no customer likewise
- only one product is traded in unrestricted quantities, and every producer provides the same quality at the same production cost
- every producer can enter and leave the market freely, which means: you can immediately start selling without having to invest into infrastructure etc.
- I think there was a fifth precondition but I forgot what it was, sorry...
It is generally assumed that only one product fits these rules approximately, namely petrol (or gas, if you like), but even this is debatable.If any of these preconditions is missing, you don't have a free market! Most business people forget this fact.
So, don't expect the market to take care of eventually solving all economical problems. Sometimes it does by chance, but actually there is no guarantee.
I'm Very Highly Skeptical In The Ultra Extreme (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nobody To Cheer For (Score:3, Insightful)
Well those few companies only ensure their pre-eminence by changing the rules in their favour - software patents, extending copyrights, the introduction of licences to practice or manufacture etc. that are too high cost for new players to get, etc. Essentially, the free market model can work, if it remains free. One example of how that happens is by laws which prevent monopolies from abusing their power, such as in this case.
Re:What would be interesting... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nobody To Cheer For (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup, pretty much.
If I were running Microsoft, I would stop all shipments of all products to Europe (which is within their rights), and vigorously prosecute all copyright infrigment. That'll teach the government to mess with private property.
Good idea. I'm sure Microsoft is really keen on losing on the biggest single market for its software! And everybody would have to use alternative operating systems and office productivity software, essentially killing the MS lock-in once and for all - why didn't they think of that brilliant plan! You should be running Microsoft.
Monopoly != competition (Score:3, Insightful)
Demanding that a company with a monopoly publish the interfaces so competitors gets equal access means that competition again becomes possible.
Re:Nobody To Cheer For (Score:3, Insightful)
Free = no regulations
Perfect = perfect competition, perfect information, perfect mobility
The "free" market is just a theory, and idea, an abstraction. Governments exist to facilitate trade and if regulations facilitate trade, then regulations you shall have.
All this means is that...... (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you know what a monopoly is? (Score:5, Insightful)
We can't, our external partners send us and expect to receive data in proprietary MS formats.
I understand that you live in your moms basement, and thus have no need to exchange data with other people, but some of us live in the real world and our only choices are 1) to use MS software, or 2) to use 100% compatible software.
Requiring MS to publish specifications is a way to ensure that #2 remain at least theoretically possible.
What EU is doing is what any government should do, to keep the market alive is the finest reason for governments.
And no, because you are unable to imagine any other reason than petty protectionism for an action does not mean it is irrational. There is another option. At least you choosed the proper subject for your message.
Heh. Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, MS was initially _not_ fined a single dime. They were ordered to release the docs for certain protocols needed for interoperability. (I.e., no, not to document all of Windows. Dunno what gave you _that_ idea.) It was even allowed to give a list of which independent experts are qualified to judge whether the docs are enough or not. And the commission picked one of them. Pay attention, because it's important: it was someone suggested by MS judging these docs all the time.
That's it. The original ruling had _no_ punitive aspect as such. It was aimed strictly at correcting the monopoly situation that made it possible to break the trade laws.
MS _only_ got finally fined when months after months went by, and it showed no intention to comply with the ruling. It engaged in anti-EU astroturfing wars, it tried lame threats, it did stuff that was at best mocking the court, etc. You try doing that as a private person and you'd probably get some time in jail for holding the court in contempt.
Even then the fine was (A) per day that they keep ignoring the court ruling (which is how it eventually got to be hundreds of millions), and (B) with various generous deadlines and in between, and the provision that if MS complies until the deadline, it doesn't pay a dime.
So how the heck does that support such assertions as "it's like some stupid kind of import tax"?
And if you want to talk about punishing US companies, have a look at the long list of EU-based companies which have been slapped with hundreds of millions in fines from day 1 for breaking the trade laws. If anything the EU is giving a US-based company an unfair advantage and preferential treatment there. Because, again, any EU-based company in a similar situation was _not_ given the kind of sweet deal that MS was given.
Unfortunately, MS has mis-interpreted this as weakness and tried to pretty much just defy the court. Well, it didn't quite work that way.
Oh yes. By its shareholders (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh yes. By its shareholders. See, the EU is a market twice the size of the USA. Giving up on that market would send MS's shares into quite a bit of a dive.
But here's the funnier part: Not only it would make a lot of investors sell (thus speeding up the dive), but it would put quite a big dent into Bill Gates's personal fortune. See, his being such a rich guy isn't calculated just in money in the bank, but mostly in MS shares.
So between paying a couple hundred million of MS's money and losing a few _billion_ off your own worth, which would _you_ choose?
Plus, it's precisely that kind of thing that MS has worked hard to avoid. See a large part of the "secret sauce" in MS's monopoly of interlocking parts, is its products being ubiquitous. It's not just that you can't replace product X because product Y depends on it, it's also the mentality that product Y is the de-facto standard, everyone else has it, and you can't just give up on it without becoming the odd guy out of the loop.
MS has worked hard to maintain that illusion of ubiquity, world-wide. It has been known to offer massive price cuts and even prefer to overlook piracy than allow whole markets which are proof that you can jolly well live without both X and Y.
So forcing the whole of Europe standardize on something else than Windows and Office? Ooer. That would be the day when IBM', Sun' and the others' managers ejaculate in their pin-striped pants out of joy. It's not just the loss of the European market as such, but that would be the day when almost every single US corporation's executive starts hearing stuff like "sir, we can't send that document in Excel format, because they don't use Excel in Germany. No, sir, neither in France." It's the day when people start hearing that MS file formats aren't, in fact, the ubiquitous de-facto standard and can't be an ubiquitous de-facto standard.
So, heh, yeah, I'd _love_ to see MS do something _that_ stupid. Sadly it won't happen, because they're not stupid. But it would be comedy gold.
And if I know Microsoft... (Score:4, Insightful)
And if I know Microsoft, it's all disorganized, incomplete, unusable crap... Anything to be able to claim that they have fulfilled the EU's request without making any real progress toward interoperability. Please Microsoft, prove me wrong!
Re:Open Standards (Score:5, Insightful)
But you see, our trustees....