Commission to Microsoft: Preventing interoperability has a price
FSFE welcomes the decision by the European Commission.
"Microsoft is still as far from allowing competition as it was on the day of the original Commission ruling in 2004. All proposals made by Microsoft were deliberately exclusive of Samba, the major remaining competitor. In that light, the fines do not seem to come early, and they do not seem high," comments Carlo Piana, Milano based lawyer of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) regarding the decision of the European Commission to fine Microsoft 1.5 million Euro per day retroactively from 16. December 2005, totalling 280.5 million Euro. Should Microsoft not come into compliance until the end of July 2006, the daily fines could be doubled.
These fines are a reaction to Microsofts continued lack of compliance with the European Commission decision to make interoperability information available to competitors as a necessary precondition to allow fair competition. FSFE has supported the European Commission
From the start of the suit in 2001.
Having made similar statements during the hearing, Microsoft commented to the press last week [1] that 300 engineers are currently working "day and night" to fulfill the request of the public authorities.
"If we are to believe Microsofts numbers, it appears that 120.000 person days are not enough to document its own software. This is a task that good software developers do during the development of software, and a hallmark of bad engineering," comments Georg Greve, president of the FSFE. "For users, this should be a shock: Microsoft apparently does not know the software that controls 95% of all desktop computers on this planet. Imagine General Motors releasing a press statement to the extent that even though they had 300 of their best engineers work on this for two years, they cannot provide specifications for the cars they built."
Many companies run a mixed network of Windows, GNU/Linux, Unix and other operating systems (OS). The Windows products understand each other, and all the other operating systems can talk to each other. It is the connection between the two worlds that was deliberatly obfuscated a few years ago by Microsoft, and that the Samba project is working on.
During the main hearing at the European Court of Justice toward the end of April, the president and founder of Samba Dr. Andrew Tridgell presented the work of the Samba Team work. Among other things, he demonstrated a box for roughly 100 EUR. If Microsoft did not hide its interoperability information, that box would already be capable of administrating hundreds of users. A small 100 EUR box could do the same task that is currently done by an entire PC for 1.000,- EUR.
"Dr. Tridgell demonstrated easily what kind of innovation is locked out of the market by Microsofts refusal to interoperate with other vendors. In this case, the price of that refusal are domain controllers that are ten times more expensive than necessary, and the price is paid by everyone: private businesses, public authorities and society as a whole," Georg Greve summarises.
He concludes: "When will society refuse to legitimise such business practices by buying from companies that exhibit such behaviour?"
[1] http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2006/07/04/216779/Microsoft+working+%...
About the Free Software Foundation Europe:
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a charitable non-governmental organisation dedicated to all aspects of Free Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate in a digital society. Therefore the Freedoms to use, copy, modify and redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition- allow equal participation in the information age. Creating awareness for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are central issues of the FSFE. The FSFE was founded in 2001 as the European sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation in the United States.
Further information: http://fsfeurope.org