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."
shocking (Score:5, Funny)
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Probably xtra presents, maybe it is cheap for the effect: (from TFA) " At this point, some of the major commercial businesses which needed the documents have exited the market."
CC.
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Tough times alright. They not only had to get the change from the chairs in Bill's office, but they had to pull it out the couch in the front office as well.
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Error in TFB (Score:5, Informative)
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Never ever saw a price written with € as a prefix.
The United Kingdom doesn't use Euro and English speakers are more familiar with the prefix usage ($ and £), that would be my guess why this English document is written that way..
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In languages other than English there are different conventions. But you wouldn't argue that an amount of one and a half euros should be written 1,50 instead of 1.50 just because lots of Euroland countries use a comma instead of a decimal point.
where? (Score:5, Interesting)
Format ? (Score:4, Funny)
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Except the UK (and, I understand, a number of other countries) are awarding patents on software regardless.
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Which required opening and resaving in Open Office before they'd work in Office 2003...
Re:Format ? (Score:5, Funny)
How do you get this documentation (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How do you get this documentation (Score:5, Insightful)
8500 pages (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft were then fined another 5 Million Euros for photocopying and stapling charges because the EU needed more copies...
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Re:8500 pages (Score:5, Informative)
That EU Press Release (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Another Microsoft *evil* tactic? (Score:4, Insightful)
The question still remains... (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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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.
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What standards would you suggest Microsoft implement? Their entire business is based around taking existing standards, bastardising them so their software interacts very nicely but nobody else's does then sell the result. Even when they don't do this, standards are al
Re:Open Standards (Score:5, Insightful)
But you see, our trustees....
Microsoft Hands Over Docs to EU (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, that'd be so funny.
Prediction... (Score:3, Funny)
"These are not the docs we are looking for"
</stormtrooper_voice>
The 2nd page of the document says... (Score:5, Funny)
Zeroes (Score:4, Funny)
Look, I don't know what they teach kids in schools these days, but just because a lone 0 is nothing doesn't mean you can just go and leave out zeroes whenever you like.
What the documents contain: a sneak preview (Score:4, Funny)
torrent? (Score:5, Funny)
Anyone have a link to the torrent?
How to get them (Score:5, Informative)
For those of you asking how to get the documents: they're not available free of charge. Microsoft has handed over documents for checking, and has explained how it wants to license them.
The EU is going to decide three things: whether the documents satisfy their requirements, whether the price is reasonable (based on Microsoft's original contribution instead of their monopoly position), and whether the proposed license is reasonable.
If they decide this will do, then Microsoft has to make the documentation available for people wanting to buy it under those license terms for that price; if they decide against, then Microsoft still hasn't complied and will get more fines.
It never was about documentation available without strings attached, that would be too unreasonable.
See the Washington Post [washingtonpost.com]: The Commission's decision, it recalled, required Microsoft to "disclose and license complete and accurate interface documentation [...] and Microsoft could face further fines if the Commission finds that the price was based on Microsoft's exercise of monopoly power, rather than on the originality of its product.
Re:How to get them (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How to get them (Score:5, Interesting)
Previous slashdot article [slashdot.org]
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Why? On what grounds is the EU requiring Microsoft to produce these documents? Wouldn't those grounds make it reasonable that the documents be made available to anyone who is confronted with proprietary Microsoft protocols or file formats?
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I understand this position, but I am struggling to think of someone - anyone - who:
1. Competes with Microsoft
2. Does not use open source software in order to handle things like interacting with SMB or Active Directory
3. Hasnt't already licensed enough information to write their own implementation.
So the upshot will be.... 8,500 pages that nobody wants to license - no
Go to Jail, go *directly* to jail, do not pass go (Score:4, Funny)
My sentence was to be sent to jail, sent directly to jail, not to pass go, not to collect 200Million...
8500 pages (Score:3, Interesting)
Depends (Score:2)
Of course, this is Microsoft, so it's probably 8500 pages of diarrhea.
I'm Very Highly Skeptical In The Ultra Extreme (Score:5, Insightful)
All this means is that...... (Score:3, Insightful)
8500 pages.. (Score:3, Funny)
Cockup or conspirecy? (Score:2)
I think microsoft is prevaricating because they dont actualy have the specs!
Hard to believe, well not if youve ever debugged a program with a ActiveX/COM/OLE
component inside.
For years the MS development methodoligy of choice seems to have been wrap a new C++
class around the old C++ class and hope it works. Which is sort of OK as it gives
you the reuse promised by OO. The downside is that you end up with something like
one of those old cannons dug
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:umm, that would be... (Score:4, Funny)
That would be "so far, the EU has imposed fines of 497 MILLION and 280 MILLION onto Microsoft". Of course, it's still spare change for Microsoft.
Well, the value of the dollar has been slipping recently compared to the euro...
Recently? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Nobody To Cheer For (Score:5, Informative)
You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. The EU has judged Microsoft to be abusing a monopoly position in the global european market. That's a big no-no for the EU Commission, since the whole "European" idea is based on free circulation of goods, people and financial instruments. In other words, the EU is against monopolies and large companies locking customers in their line of products and services. Is that so hard to understand?
To counter-balance this monopoly position, the EU has asked Microsoft to supply its competitors -- including many European companies -- with the necessary documentation. That documentation was required to open Microsoft files (.WMV, for instance) and communicate with machines running Windows system (SMB protocol). Microsoft refused and was fined a lot of money. Microsoft said it was going to comply, then delivered the required documentation. End of story.
As far as I know, havin inter-operability between Microsoft products and competitors is a Good Thing(tm). You can thank the EU for that.
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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
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If were going for food, this would be a more correct analogy: Say I bought some Maccaroni from Kraft, and in order to cook Maccaroni and Cheese I also had to by my milk, cheese, salt, and water from Kraft. Using ingredients from another company would cause the macaroni to shrivel up and turn hard.
It's the interoptabili
Re:Nobody To Cheer For (Score:5, Interesting)
Morale: The free market is at best an unstable and short-lived artifact. Besides, I don't think anybody actually want a *free* market - what most want is a *fair* marketplace; one where everybody has equal opportunities, so that if you are clever and hardworking, you can achieve financial success. But this requires some sort of regulation - ie. government intervention in most cases. Legislation is, after all, a form of government intervention.
Apart from that, the EU Commission is not a government of a country - the EU is not a state or nation in any sense. It is 'a supranational and intergovernmental union of 25 independent, democratic member states' - to quote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU [wikipedia.org]
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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.
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A "free" market and a "perfect" market are two different things.
Free = no regulations
Perfect = perfect competition, perfect information, perfect mobility
The "free" market is just a theory, and idea, an abstraction. Gove
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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.
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.
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There Is No Such Thing As A Free Market (Score:2, Insightful)
It would seem that things like this, in a free market, should take care of themselves...
The free market is a theoretical concept which requires a few preconditions that are not likely to be found in real life, which are (IIRC):
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And even if every market where a theoretical free market, don't expect that free markets will solve all the worlds problems.
Re:Nobody To Cheer For (Score:4, Informative)
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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?
Software needs interoperability, food and metals generally don't. This is like if McDonalds Secret ingredient in their sauce reacted with any non-McDonalds burger consumed in the following week to make you violently ill. That would effectively shut out their smaller competitors, just having a secret ingredient that
Let me try to explain (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing sorta goes like this:
1. It must be proven that you've actually abused your might in a non-lawful way, and there was an actual harm to the consumers. (Harm to competing companies actually doesn't matter.)
If you will, it's like taking the school bully to court. He's not tried or punished for being big, he's tried for punching people in the face. There's a not-so-subtle difference there.
2. It must be proven that you were in a monopoly position, in which it was artifficially unfeasible for someone else to undo the harm you did. I.e., that in that situation, the free market just didn't work.
Basically that's the reality check to your Ayn Rand-inspired musings. If it can be proven that the free market can neutralize the harm on its own, then the company _doesn't_ get the legal equivalent of a kick in the nuts.
E.g., if two pharmacies aggree to fix prices on vitamins, it's _not_ an anti-trust case. The market can work around such minor speedbumps. People will just go buy their vitamins at the super-market, or go to the other pharmacy down the road. Or maybe someone will open their own pharmacy across the road. But when (as has at least once happened) the major pharma companies fix prices, that may well be an anti-trust case.
Look... noone is against the notion of a free market. We quite like it in Europe too. We don't go asking companies for their secrets just for the heck of it, but only when there's no other recourse left to force an aberrant situation back to being a free market.
The free market is actually a lot less robust on its own than some libertarians seem to assume. The whole notion and theory is centred around some assumptions: there are many identical/interchangeable products, the buyers are perfectly informed, it's trivial for a new competitor to enter that market, etc. _That_ situation can balance itself all right. But the whole mechanism falls apart when those pre-conditions aren't true any more. There are some actions and some kinds of damage that it can't work around, and there are people who have the financial interest to try to do just that: destroy that ideal free market.
And that's the other thing: the assumption that it's in everyone's interest to play nice, is false. It's in society's interest that they play nice, but for the individual competitors it's most often the exact opposite: you make more money if you can get in a situation where you don't have to play nice.
E.g., as a simple example, if there are two smiths in the same medieval town, sure, it's in everyone else's interest that they start acting like in a free market and undercut each other's prices. But those two smiths can make more money if, say, they make a secret aggreement to fix prices. Then they're the only supplier in town and can fleece everyone else with impunity. Or maybe one of them will decide that instead of even that, he'll hire a couple of mercenaries to beat the other up. Or whatever.
So to make a long story short: expecting the free market to always just work on its own, is a bit like expecting a city to work without a police station. Sooner or later someone will have the means and the incentive to ruin all that for everyone else.
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Because a dominant market player aka monopolist (no, it doesn't mean 100% share) can impose conditions on all its business partners. It can make OEMs that support a competing product pay more, they can give advantages to Microsoft-exclusive stores, it can make it difficult for any alternative to work with their products (installing over the
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In other words, the EU is against monopolies and large companies locking customers in their line of products and services. Is that so hard to understand?
Great. When are they going to do something about DeBeers, then?
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The problem is, anti-trust commission is part of legislative branch. It cannot start case from ground zero - it needs a complain from customers or competitors.
I'm sure if somebody would complain, EC would investigate. But again, monopoly of DeBeers prevents others from even thinking
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I believe that before this story ends we will have to judge the quality and accuracy of the documentation as well as Microsoft's willingness to keep it up to date.
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IIRC, the EC (European Commission) judged such. And the EC is not a court of law. They provide no due process, no burdens of proof, no nothing. Microsoft appealed their proclamations to the European Courts (a real court, with due process (supposedly), were evidence must actually be presented and the accused given a chance to refute), which will decide the issue. Don't be surprised to see the EC's proclamations
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This is a bit of an innaccurate story. The EU info
Re:Nobody To Cheer For (Score:5, Informative)
Everyone seems to forget that they were found to be a Monopoly in both EU and US.
On the European side, they were found to be illegally abusing their monopolistic powers.
On the US side, basically a few people sued them and nothing really big came from it. (Of course this is the summary and you can go read all the archives regarding this long ordeal.)
So yes, when some raging abuse of a corporation has grown out of control... the government steps in and evens things out a little bit.
Well, there is the unenlightened summary of why monopolies can be beaten with a stick and it's alright.
(It's turkey day, I'll leave it to someone else to go into a discussion about the benefits of interoperability and monopolistic standards.)
Timing? (Score:2)
Hmmm, perhaps a large anti-competitive turkey didn't want their head cut off today.
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.
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That is the purpose of of government (Score:2)
Libertarians tend to be very confused about this fact, as their central dogmas of their religion is that government is bad and free market is good.
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.
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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?
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
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And while you
Enjoy Thanksgiving, kids!
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?
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The way I see it is that various companies in the past made a deal with the devil in order to get better pricing. And whenever you make a deal with the devil, there's always a higher payment in the end.
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And why should nation states and courts get involved in making other products work with Microsoft's?
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?
_I_ won't admit that!!
That is the whole issue.
Microsoft uses their OS dominance to sell OO.
They persuade computer makers to distribute _only_ their products through volume deals.
Even if you somehow think they are not a monopoly in lots of areas, you can't fail to accept that they use their marketshare to force others out of their turf.
That, combined witht he fact that they don't help with interoperability, is the main cause that other products don't use their standards, and free standards aren't "catching o
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This has been discussed before. Microsoft is a monopoly, under the legal definitions of several jurisdictions. And it makes sense. From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
Primary characteristics of a monopoly
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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.
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I presume the EU will just fine Microsoft more for stifling competition if they tried to pull a stunt like that.
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You may have problems with patents, but trade secrets are worthless if you tell it to several million people.
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Re:Bullshit - right back at you (Score:2)
The US most definitely does regulate the means by which foreign trade happens. You'll just have to get used to the EU doing likewise. The European Commission is merely doing what the DoJ didn't have the balls to do.
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At the time I wrote this y
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.
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