RSSMicrosoft Ends Fight With EU, Daily Fines Stop
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published October 22, 2007, 11:44 AM
Microsoft has agreed to make certain parts of its Windows source code available for distribution to developers under revised terms that European Commissioner for Competitiveness Neelie Kroes called "compatible with the open source business model."
"I told Microsoft that its royalty rates were too high for the patents they claim are applicable to the interoperability information," Comm. Kroes said in a morning press conference in Brussels. "I told Microsoft that it had to make interoperability information available to open source developers. Microsoft will now do so, with licensing terms that allow every recipient of the resulting software to copy, modify and redistribute it in accordance with the open source business model."
Presumably beginning immediately, Microsoft will begin offering to prospective licensees two options, either of which grants them access to what the EC believes to be all the code they would need to produce competitive software.
In the first option, the licensee is granted access to see potentially patented material and to model their own work around it or to interface with it, but not to duplicate it. This is being called the "No Patent option," for which Microsoft had originally offered to charge royalties of 2.98% of revenues derived from the sale of the licensee's products.
"I told Microsoft that the royalties for access to its secret interoperability information were unreasonable and had to be reduced," Kroes stated this morning. "Microsoft has now abandoned its demand for a royalty of 2.98% of revenues from software developed using licensed information. That percentage royalty has become a nominal, one-off payment of €10,000 [$14,146 USD]. This is all that has to be paid by companies that dispute the validity or relevance of Microsoft's patents."
In other words, should a licensee not believe Microsoft has any right to claim patentability of certain elements of its interoperability information, it could pay Microsoft the one-off fee, and both companies would agree to disagree. Based on our read of other documentation released this morning by the EC, it would appear a licensee may retain the right to legally challenge that validity; BetaNews still awaits comment from Microsoft on this and other issues.
The other option would be for a licensee to accept Microsoft's claim of patentability, and then purchase a patent license. Rather than pay the ten thousand euros up front, a licensee would agree instead to pay Microsoft 0.4% of revenues from products derived from that code. This is a drastic reduction from the 5.95% Microsoft had been seeking.
"The Commission's 2004 decision set a clear precedent against which Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior could be judged," Kroes continued. "Now that Microsoft has agreed to comply with the [EC's] 2004 Decision, the company can no longer use the market power derived from its 95% share of the PC operating system market and 80% profit margin to harm consumers by killing competition on any market it wishes."
While an EC statement this morning went to great lengths to make clear the agreement was not a settlement - to establish that the Commission made no concessions to the company or any agreement to reduce its pre-existing penalties - an interesting new wrinkle has emerged: It will now be incumbent upon licensees of Microsoft's interoperability code to determine for themselves whether the work they produce with knowledge of that code infringes upon Microsoft's patents.
"Open source software developers use various 'open source' licences to distribute their software," reads an FAQ published by the EC this morning. "Some of these licences are incompatible with the patent licence offered by Microsoft. It is up to the commercial open source distributors to ensure that their software products do not infringe upon Microsoft's patents. If they consider that one or more of Microsoft's patents would apply to their software product, they can either design around these patents, challenge their validity or take a patent licence from Microsoft."
While licensees may retain the right to challenge Microsoft in the future, it technically appears that Microsoft could also retain its rights to challenge others who make commercial products that appear to infringe its patents.
But the EC stated this morning that right will not extend to non-commercial developers. "In addition to the two licences," the statement reads, "Microsoft will publish an irrevocable pledge not to assert any patents it may have over the interoperability information against non-commercial open source software development projects."
"I told Microsoft that it should give legal security to programmers who help to develop open source software and confine its patent disputes to commercial software distributors and end users," said Comm. Kroes. "Microsoft will now pledge to do so."
As a result of this pledge, the Commission stated it has discontinued its tally of daily fines against the company, effective today.
2:06 pm ET October 22, 2007 - This afternoon, Microsoft spokesperson Jack Evans issued this response to BetaNews, which confirms that Microsoft will not appeal the European Court of First Instance's decision last month, upholding the EC's findings that Microsoft abused its dominant power in Europe.
"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's decision," Evans said. "We have undertaken a constructive discussion with the Commission and have now agreed on those additional steps. We will not appeal the CFI's decision to the European Court of Justice and will continue to work closely with the Commission and the industry to ensure a flourishing and competitive environment for information technology in Europe and around the world."
Who cares? The Vista MS O/s is utter crap, hence have moved to linux.
MS has screwed themselves, period.
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|This article has ZERO to do with vista, wait to bash vista elsewhere. Read the F'in article next time
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|Like a well played chess game, what Microsoft has decided to sacrifice is not likely to be as valuable as what they have innovated and yet to be announced.
Open source is a worthy ideal, but it is always a number of steps, years behind genuine innovation.
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|Are you kidding? Open source is THE innovative platform for OS development at the moment - many ideas have already been pilfered by MS and Apple. At present you can download any Linux distro and install Comipz Fusion - see the innovation and how far ahead (not behind) open source is.
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|Compiz Fusion is the same "eyecandy" everyone whines abotu having been put in MacOSX and Windows Vista...
How on earth is making more of it innovative?
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|abotu...
...must be some new version of ubuntu, for people who can't type.
I think I need that one. :p
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|Whether it's fair or not to Microsoft, it's definitely gonna encourage innovation. Once you & me get to the size of Microsoft, I'm sure we wouldn't mind giving even 90% of our cash in donation to such "unfair causes". Right? ;) Right.
Microsoft and Google should both be much more heavily taxed, where the tax goes directly to their open source/non-profit competing organizations. Being a monopoly SHOULD be illegal/outlawed as well. I really wouldn't mind having two flavors of Vista Home Premium with slightly varying features.
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|Tax the rich and give to the poor. High ideals, but it doesn't work in the real world.
Government steals form rich (in form of taxation)
Government takes a good chunk for themselves.
Government gives the poor a few crumbs, just enough to get by without having to strive for anything better.
The poor stay poor, the rich get less rich, and the government gets fatter and fatter.
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|> Government steals form rich (in form of taxation)
Funny and seemingly insulting.
Never in the world history of governments have they stolen from their "own" rich and powerful. However, they have "always" taxed the poor into the dirt.
The reason America has not* taxed the poor into the ground is because there would be no monies left for the rich to profit from. Otherwise it would be easy pickins...
*amended-10/23
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|If the Government is taking it for the good of the people that's not so much of a problem. By that I mean you can have a fat government if it is providing free health care, education, roads, welfare, etc, etc. When poor don't need to pay for essential services - being 'poor' is less of a problem as you still have everything you need.
Contrast this with the poor in the US: no health care, limited welfare, limited education opportunities... then the poor really are poor. They choose between eating and learning, or eating and life-saving surgery.
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|Dude piss off. You have had so many accounts banned now. I wish you would freaking take the God dam hint and put a bullet in your head.
Your nothing but a racist, Ranting Bigot. That can not stand to have someone with an opposing view to yours, and in turn instead of engaging them with FACTS or logic or even common sense you resort to calling them names and swearing and pissing in the wind, forcing more and more admin time to deal with all your worthless posts and accounts.
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|ok, so hear me out for a sec, i know im jaded, and i know im better off then some people, but this is how i see it:
im low - poverty based income..i service an ISP for phone support..20 k a year income.
so i require a car, i require a place to stay, and i require food, and maintance on myself and my car.
every two weeks, i get almost 300 off my pay cheque..and im not sure why? why must i pay for somone else to live on welfare? why must i work 40 some hours a week, so that others dont have to?
and i know some are deserving of this..but there are soo many that dont deserve it.
i know this because i know some that are on welfare, and they refuse to get a job, or work less then 15 hours a week, again i know this happens...
yes as canadians, we are lucky with certian things, but i dont think this justifys any of this.
also we have a use it or loose it budget thanks to the damn liberals, wich wont change again for another 4 years or longer...
wich this means, some place is granted 30k a year for maintanince and funding etc... if they only use 20k in the first year, they then only get the same budget next year..
soo this business / organization says hmm, we may need that type of budget next year, so we liquidate it, on useless crap, so that we make sure we get the same 30k next year..
this is tax payers money!
why make a system like this, it costs me money, for places that ill never go to, to waste money..
so why, why does this happen? why is no one facing up to the fact that yes, the goverments are very screwed up, and doing alot of crap with your money, and my money.
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|your the only tool around here
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|If the Government is taking it for the good of the people that's not so much of a problem.
When the government is in the business of redistributing wealth, it is no longer a free government. I can decide for myself to which charities and funds I wish to donate my money. The government has no right to take my money and do it their way. Every example you give (free health care, education, roads, welfare,) aside from roads should be handled in the private sector.
BTW: Under no circumstances is health care *ever* free. Any social health program will cost *more* in total dollars and do *less* that a private sector health care system. Look at the UK, Canada, Cuba... Long lines, appointment dates *months* out, mandatory checkups... Compare that to next day appointments, no lines, and you only go in when *you* feel you need to.
Contrast this with the poor in the US: no health care, limited welfare, limited education opportunities... then the poor really are poor.
No health care? In the US it is illegal for any hospital to turn away critical patients for any reason.
Limited welfare? We spend *billions* a year on welfare. If it is at all limited it is because we are giving it to well, able-bodied, adults with no dependents (estimated at about 30% of welfare costs in the US).
They choose between eating and learning, or eating and life-saving surgery.
...and how does putting them on the government dole help them become independent, exactly?
Again, as for "life-saving surgery", it is illegal in the US to deny health care to critical patients.
Give them an education. Fine. Feed them. Fine. Care for them. Fine. But expect results and drop them like an envelope covered in Anthrax if they do not live up to those expectations. Right now, in the US, it is not only possible, but incredibly easy for an able-=bodied adult to live, and live decently, without ever working. Tell me how that's an incentive to become independent...
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|The top 1 percent of the US income earners pay 30%+ of the National Tax burden to pay for the massive social welfare programs that do *nothing* to help the poor become self-sufficient, only more dependent.
Never in the world history of governments have they stolen from their "own" rich and powerful. However, they have "always" taxed the poor into the dirt.
Come again?
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|lmao... the fake tool gets busted yet again.
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|i agree man, its not fair to those wich infact do work. and make minimum take home pay..
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|heh :)
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|i can see where you are coming from if you never heard of robin hood.
however, i seriously "seriously" doubt that someone earning 50billion is paying 35% of that in taxes. (50 billion is likely to be to low end of what is reportedly earned anyways. the rest is likely going to a swiss bank account)
maybe if the worlds richest mexican paid 35% to mexico, we would not have illegal immigration in the u.s.
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|you realize that some tax, was invented as a temperary mesure to help pay off the war debt.. i guess, here in canada, were still at war? to pay it off?
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|I heard of robin hood.
Please understand that the dude was taking money from the tax collectors, people seem to forget that bit...(or, for a more relevant, and recent example, ever heard of the Boston Tea Party?)
however, i seriously "seriously" doubt that someone earning 50billion is paying 35% of that in taxes. (50 billion is likely to be to low end of what is reportedly earned anyways. the rest is likely going to a swiss bank account)
Never said that. Read it again.
maybe if the worlds richest mexican paid 35% to mexico, we would not have illegal immigration in the u.s.
In fact, he runs most of Mexico's telcom infrastructure. :) Somehow hasn't seemed to affect the immigration issue....
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|funny...!
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|The poor in the US eat better, live in better home (most of which would be mansions to poor people in 95% in the world), the poor in the US are never denied health care from hospitals. The notion the poor in the US have to decide between eating and learning etc is a fallacy perpetuated by those who think government should control our health care system completly. Since Government spent 10 trillion on the poverty in the US via the *War on Poverty* we find we still have the same percentage of *poor people*.
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|we still have the same percentage of *poor people*.
That's easy. We just keep upping the poverty level. It's never matched inflation, amazingly enough, it hasn't even come close to matching basic "cost of living" increases...It's always been *much* higher than them.
American Liberals *need* poor people. When the economy is in full swing, jobs are everywhere and inflation if low, what do they do? Raise the poverty level.
Pure genius.
How can they possibly hope to gain support for their unsustainable social programs unless they make absolutely sure at *least* 30% of the US is under the magic poverty level?
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|Let me rewrite your first sentence.
"If the Government is taking it for the good of the people, that's Communism".
Where exactly do you think all that money that makes the government "fat" comes from? Governments like that eat themselves alive and eventually collapse on top of a apathetic populace.
"If you think health care is expensive now... wait until it's free." -PJ O'Rourke
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|Considering the fact that Microsoft has already made licensing agreements with it's primary competitors in the server market (Re: Novell, et al), it definitely leads one to believe MS got what it wanted and then gave the EU what it wanted when it no longer made any difference.
As commented on by one on the Ars coverage:
The future of interoperability isn't on the server-side (especially with agreements currently in place, it's moot), it's on web services. The server protocols in question here are hardly relevant to this new competing ground.
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|ENOUGH!
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|Ouch, the stupid, it burns! Ignore the ignorant troll, folks. He'll make 54 more posts before this is over. BetaNews needs a plonk feature for these Microsoft trolls.
I'm sure toolie's been crying all day because Microsoft got stomped again by the EU. Poor baby.
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|...
Always the insults and trolls, never anything actually relevant to the topic.
...and he still calls me the troll.
because Microsoft got stomped again by the EU.
Hardly. They let the EU drag it out until they had these agreements in place with Novell and the others. Now that it's meaningless, they gave the EU what they wanted. Big whoop.
(Not that you'll ever read this, the above was, I am sure, nothing more than another Zaine Hit N' Run troll)
Ya know, aside from the fact that you aren't being overtly vulgar, you little different from the idiot "fake" PC_Tool that keeps following me around.
Do you guys seriously have *nothing* better to do?
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|"Fake" PC-Tool, busted again...
Poor guy...
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|you know what would be sick? if you can choose to ignore certian members, with a single click, and any of their posts are hencforth blocked, and not displayed on your screen? only works after you log in of course.
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|the problem are not the comments about the articles or the resulting tangents. the problem are those that have nothing to contribute except name callin and other unwarratned adjectives.
to me as long as you are opened minded and are respectfully providing food for thought, i welcome interesting comments.
btw: you know you are famous when you are raised onto a pedestal by your friends and your enemies and those who don't know you at all.
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|Fewt really needs to get to work on that Firefox extension. :p
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|btw: you know you are famous when you are raised onto a pedestal by your friends and your enemies and those who don't know you at all.
I wouldn't say famous, but I've definitely hit a nerve with a few of them.
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|"I told Microsoft that its royalty rates were too high for the patents they claim are applicable to the interoperability information," Comm. Kroes said in a morning press conference in Brussels. I told Microsoft that it had to make interoperability information available to open source developers. Microsoft will now do so, with licensing terms that allow every recipient of the resulting software to copy, modify and redistribute it in accordance with the open source business model."
Grammer(sic) nahtzee: Missing a quotation mark.
Sorry, Scott. After the last one I couldn't resist. Feel free to have a laugh and ignore. :p
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|I think you know you're doing a relatively okay job when the complaints are about missing quotation marks. Thanks for finding it, though.
-SF"
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|What can I say, I live to serve. :p
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|You're missing a dash and have an extra " mark, clearly done on purpose to test the alertness of our country to this highly important discussion. ;)
It should have been:
--SF
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|Microsoft cowered in the face of Europe. It was the only logical choice, given how much damage the EC could do to their operations and how valuable the EU market is to Microsoft. 500 million potential customers, rising to potentially 750 million if new states join.
To the people talking about OSX, Apple has a desktop market share of what, 3%? Microsoft is the dominant player and it's using its position to behave in a way contrary to European laws. It's using its muscle to kill competitors before they can establish themselves.
I know some Americans will find nothing wrong with that, but we see things differently in Europe. Business is there to serve society and the people. The right to screw customers and steamroll competitors isn't a right over here. Healthy competition leads to innovation; simply having a monopoly isn't good enough.
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|apple has 8% of the PC market on total computers sold. i would imagine it to be higher than 3% but i dont believe apple is as popular in europe just judging by most europeans i've talked to insisting on using MSN chat. i hate that app!
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|Microsoft hasn't done anything to discourage competition in Europe. European laws are screwed up. With the frivolous Europe and South Korea antitrust lawsuits, I'm beginning to think that the USA is the only country that allows innovation. Microsoft has the most market share because they make the best operating systems overall (except for Windows ME of course).
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|So because Microsoft has a major market share, that makes it immediately right to unfairly fine them 600 million for what other companies are doing? If you're european or not, I think you logic is seriouly flawed.
Especially OSX which has its all in one, phone and OS and computers. Computers which are not open to hardware upgrades with other 3rd party hardware providers when it comes to Motherboards, Video cards and other peripherals.
A phone which wouldve been locked from 3rd party software developers.
An operating system that comes with SAFARI, ITUNES and offers the anti competitive ILIFE.
Can you please tell me how OSX is different from Microsoft anywhere?
Or are the Europeans just eager to unlawfully leech money from American companies since most of the major technological advancements known to man has come from America?
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|"Can you please tell me how OSX is different from Microsoft anywhere?"
umm Apple wasn't stupid enough to build a monopoly?
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|"Business is there to serve society and the people."
No disagreement there.
"The right to screw customers and steamroll competitors isn't a right over here."
Over here unfortunately the collection of morons that we call our government apparently think otherwise.
Oh and for the record I find everything to do with Microsoft wrong so I guess Europeans and I don't see things so differently when it comes to Microsoft.
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|stupid enough?
they got cloes with ipods, and they're still trying hard.
it's just that their stuff isn't really good enough for the consumers to actually become a monopoly.
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|I don't think it was that they were "stupid enough to build a monopoly" - it's more like they weren't "bright enough to build a monopoly."
I know Jobs tried - he once tried to give a free computer to every school in the US - just to get children hooked on using Apples so that when they got to the business world, hmm - I wonder what they would ask for.
As for this whole EU thing. I just realized that MS may have won out on this after all.
Let's see what happens now.
You decided to use something that MS claims they have a patent on. You can now a) pay them $10k and sit in your corner and say "they don't have the right to this" or b) you can pay MS 0.4% of your revenue.
I think this just saved MS a ton of legal fees and made every toady in the EU their b**ch. Now all MS has to do is come at you and say "you're using a patented process of ours and you can either pay us $10k or give us a portion of your revenue" because the EU says you HAVE to.
HAH HAH HAH HAH!
And they think our courts are screwed up!
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|I wonder if they'll make Apple do this with Quicktimes, Safari and itunes ... since they come packaged with OSX, i mean its only fair .. right?
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|do you even use os x? all you do is drag an app to the recycle bin and it's gone. you can do that with windows? since friggen when.
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|control panel > add and remove programs or add and remove windows components
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|since windows 95.
and if you're talking about IE, there are components around to disable/uninstall it on msdn
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|You can't uninstall an app by dragging it to the recycle bin on Windows. Certainly not on Windows 95 and not now.
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|you are right, but microsoft realized that they wont allow, they lock important files, that stops most people from removing critical system files, mac, you click on a file, rename it to nothing, and your system crashes.. thats an awsome feature to me.
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|You know what - I bet if you went and deleted Finder or some other system piece on OSX it too would crash or lock up (course - it does that even when you don't [bah dum bump]) and I remember in the DOS days, if a user was foolish enough to remove IO.SYS or MSDOS.SYS - hmm - why won't my computer boot?
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|OMFG its over!
So it was more or less simply the EU wanted more money
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|I think you're reading the article in your head, not the one on the web page...
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|Well lets see licensing was cut from 5.95 to 0.4 - I would call that more money.
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|