Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards

[Martin Keegan]

If there's a solid case, I'm well up for doing the paperwork to submit a
formal complaint about this issue to the UK Office of Fair Trading, with
whom I was in contact by phone yesterday. What needs to be demonstrated is
evidence of abuse of a dominant position. 

This document linked from Advogato purports to be a combination of a
copyright licence (as far as I can see -- and on closer inspection, 3.1
says so) governing copying the Technical Reference document and a patent
licence governing implementation of any system which comes under the
claims of the patents mentioned. 

In practical terms, what this is is the US government forcing Microsoft to
disclose technical information relating to one of the essential facilities
it controls, and Microsoft doing so in such a way as to discriminate
against one of its principal competitors.

Mk