I’ve had a number of calls from journalists asking how OpenOffice.org will be affected by the news that Microsoft and the EU have finally settled their differences. New readers start here: in March 2004 the EU had found Microsoft guilty of abusing its its dominant market position. Microsoft was fined 497m euros (small change), and was told to make some other changes to make it easier for competitors in a few specific areas. Microsoft fought this decision tooth and nail through the courts, lost, and finally admitted defeat. Now read on…

The court had ruled that Microsoft had to make it easier for third parties to compete in the file and print server business. As part of the final settlement, Microsoft had to agree with the EU what it needed to do in practice to comply. This is of no direct interest to OpenOffice.org – file and print servers are not our business. It is of interest to other open-source projects such as Samba, who produce a plug and play open-source file and print server as an alternative to Microsoft. However, the principle is of interest to many open-source projects.

So, what did Microsoft agreed with the EU?

1. Microsoft would publish technical information about how their file and print servers ‘talk’, and anyone could buy it for (only) 10,000 Euro
2. Anyone then developing software using this information has two choices:

• buy a further ‘per user’ licence from Microsoft in case the software violates any Microsoft patents
• don’t buy a licence and accept the risk that Microsoft might sue some day for patent infringement

So, is this a good deal for open-source?

1. the 10,000 Euro for the specifications is a nonsense – if this information is required for free competition, it should be freely available for download from Microsoft. If it is essential for the software industry, it is arguable that it should be surrendered to a vendor-neutral standards body
2. Open-source projects provide free downloads of their software – so how are they supposed to collect licence fees?

Microsoft has paid a token fine, hasn’t revealed anything that hasn’t already been ‘reverse-engineered’, and has gained further publicity for its campaign to scare off competitors by threats of patent lawsuits. It has maintained its monopoly position, and consumers will pay the price.

EU – please try harder next time.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 7:53 pm and is filed under Open-source. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.