| Open source pleased to see Microsoft in European legal hot water |
Sep. 18, 2007
"Schadenfreude" is a German word meaning to take pleasure in the trouble of others. It's perfect for describing how open-source companies and supporters feel about Microsoft's failure to overturn the European Commission's decision that Microsoft has acted as a monopoly.
On Sept. 17, the European Court of First Instance denied Microsoft's appeal of the European Commission's findings that Microsoft had abused its dominant position by refusing to make its products interoperable with those of its rivals and by tying Windows Media Player to the Windows operating system. As a result, unless Microsoft appeals to a higher court, the Windows giant must pay a $613 million fine and make some of its Windows Server APIs open to competitors.
It is not clear, however, if those APIs would be made available to open-source software developers. There's also some question about how much impact, if any, the decision will actually have on Microsoft. Still, for open-source fans, it was a day of rejoicing.
Open-source file and printer server project Samba will be the most affected if Microsoft does open up its server protocols. One of Samba's leading developers, Jeremy Allison, who was present in Luxembourg for the decision, said, "We're all very happy. Of course it all depends on the actual terms and conditions that get applied. The goal is to avoid a disaster like the DOJ MCPP [Microsoft Communications Protocol Program] licensing terms (which explicitly exclude free software). I keep hoping that Microsoft will 'just do the right thing' and release the interop[erability] info under an RFC-like document, but I'm not holding my breath."
Still, "as one of the lawyers here said when he was asked if he thought Microsoft would appeal the ruling, 'They're Microsoft. They alwaysappeal,'" said Allison.
"Microsoft can consider itself above the law no longer," said Free Software Foundation Europe President Georg Greve.
"Through tactics that successfully derailed antitrust processes in other parts of the world, including the United States, Microsoft has managed to postpone this day for almost a decade, Greve said. "But thanks to the perseverance and excellent work of the European Commission, these tactics have now failed in Europe."
"This is a milestone for competition," said Carlo Piana, the FSFE's legal counsel. "It puts an end to the notion that deliberate obfuscation of standards and designed lock-in is an acceptable business model and forces Microsoft back into competing on the grounds of software technology."
"Millions of users around the world will reap the rewards of their work," added Allison. "This is a very important day for the Samba team: We hope to finally compete on a level playing field, without being denied access to interoperability information. Samba would then be able to offer consumers real choice, with the benefits of software freedom."
John Sullivan, the American FSF's campaigns manager, said, "The judgment is excellent news for computer users worldwide, but it's important to remember that Microsoft's monopoly status is not the problem here. The type of dependency and lock-in they cultivate is intrinsic to proprietary software—the only way to escape it once and for all is to move toward 'free as in freedom' software like GNU/Linux, and to eliminate the illegitimate software patents regime they attempted to hide behind during their defense."
Even Novell, while it has a partnership with Microsoft, liked the court's decision. Bruce Lowry, Novell's director of global PR, said the company's focus with Microsoft over the last 10 years has been around interoperability. "This was behind our initial involvement in the EU case, and it was the motivation for our collaboration agreements with Microsoft signed last year," he said. "Linux and Windows compete, but they are the two platforms of the future, and customers want them to work together. The industry needs to deliver this interoperability. To the extent today's decision improves interoperability, it's a step forward for the industry and for customers. We'll continue to closely follow its implementation."
Other companies and organizations, such as Red Hat, the Linux Foundation and RealNetworks, also praised Microsoft's defeat. The analysts, however, weren't as cheery as the open-source supporters about the decision.
"I don't think the case has much impact on open source either way, actually," said Raven Zachary, open-source research director for The 451 Group. "It's a legal issue between a software vendor and a government agency. Open-source adoption is on the rise everywhere. A fine paid to the EU by Microsoft doesn't have a direct impact on the technology decisions of a midlevel IT manager."
"It's not entirely clear what this means," said Dan Kusnetzky, principal analyst of the Kusnetzky Group. "It appears that Microsoft must make the APIs of there server software more easily available to make interoperability possible." But, Kusnetzky said, "this, by the way, doesn't mean that access to this information must be free."
So while the open-source advocates are hoping that this court decision will force Microsoft to be more open, analysts are none too sure that the decision will make any difference.
—Steven J. Vaughan Nichols
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