Posted on 01/25/2006 7:10:50 AM PST by ShadowAce
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) said Wednesday it will license its Windows source code to comply with a European Union antitrust ruling.
The source code provides the building blocks of the operating system that competitors need to make products compatible with Windows.
The company's chief counsel Brad Smith said called the move "a bold stroke."
Microsoft has refused to license the source code in the past. Software developers still will have to pay for the code, which open source advocates will not be allowed to "publish for free," Smith cautioned. The company had "just started to provide this information on both sides on the Atlantic" and regulators "want to see all the details," Smith added.
In March 2004, the EU executive levied a record euro497 million ($613 million) fine against Microsoft, ordered it to share code with rivals and offer an unbundled version of Windows without the Media Player software for what the court saw as an abuse of the company's dominant position in the industry.
Last month, the European Commission threatened to fine Microsoft up to euro2 million ($2.36 million) a day backdated to Dec. 15 for failing to obey, saying the software giant was proving intransigent about sharing data with competitors.
Microsoft has launched a legal challenge that will be heard by the European Court of First Instance on April 24-28. The court - the second-highest in the European Union - stressed that the dates for the hearing were provisional and could still be changed.
Smith told a news conference he was "confident" of winning the case.
Earlier, the EU had repeated its complaints that Microsoft was not complying with its demands.
"Microsoft is not disclosing complete and accurate interface information to allow non-Microsoft workgroup servers to receive full interoperability with Windows PCs and servers," said EU spokesman Jonathan Todd.
He said EU regulators took note that the U.S. Department of Justice was also claiming that Microsoft was failing to provide the technical information asked for in a DOJ settlement.
In December, Microsoft said the EU Commission was trying to undermine its Windows operating system with ever-more-drastic demands for technological transparency, and that it would contest the measure under EU law.
Todd said this was untrue. "We are not moving the goalposts as has been suggested," he said. "We are not changing our demands."
"The Commission's position is that Microsoft is obliged to comply with the remedies imposed in the Commission's March 2004 decision - nothing more, nothing less."
Todd stressed that the final word on whether Microsoft is meeting the terms of the EU antitrust order "rests in the first place with the Commission and not Microsoft."
Microsoft claims the EU demands on opening up its software specifications would also open the door to the cloning of the company's core product, the ubiquitous Windows operating system.
The company has until Feb. 15 to formally answer the complaint. It planned to make a statement to reporters later Tuesday.
Welsome to Europe! We punish success!
not only punish success, but probably allow hackers even more info to attack windows.
I look at software the same way cryptologists look at encryption algorythms--they should both be open for inspection, but still be secure.
WTF?
A graduate of the UK school of blather, I suppose.
If you "make products compatible with Windows", that doesn't make you a "competitor".
People have been making "products compatible with Windows" for a long time without access to the source code for Windows.
"...they should both be open for inspection, but still be secure."
... and Beer should taste great and be less filling...
I can't even begin to imagine how difficult it will be to deal with Microsoft's code for Windows. The sheer volume will be almost impossible to deal with. Further, by this time, the code will be so full of kludges and inactive code that it's going to cause enormous confusion in anyone who tries to decipher it.
I went back a while ago and looked at the source code for one of my old Windows apps, thinking I might get back into the business and update the application. I wrote this thing myself, with no other programmers involved. It's been 10 years since I finished the last version.
After several hours of study, I decided that I'm definitely done with coding. At one time, I could go back into the code and work with it, but I knew it then like the back of my hand, and could keep virtually all of the variables and routines in my grasp.
Windows, since the first version, contains so much code, written by so many people and teams, that it's going to be impossible to comprehend. Microsoft isn't all that terrific about transparency in its code, and I've worked with some Microsoft-originated stuff. Further, their need to maintain backwards compatibility (all the Win 3.1 apps I wrote back in the 90s still run perfectly in XP) means that there is lots of old crap in the current versions.
Good luck!
Do you mean win32?
Yes, and no. The argument (for good or ill) is that Microsoft uses its dominant position in the operating systems market to unfairly compete against applications developers. Under most anti-trust laws, leveraging a dominant position in one area to stifle competition in another is illegal. The remedy in this particular case is to allow other applications developers access to the underlying Windows operating system source code so that they can compete on a level basis with applications written for the Windows OS.
Of course, the counter-argument is that it is only because of the applications that Microsoft enjoys a dominant OS position. Unfortunately for the folks in Redmond, that didn't help them in the EU case.
Since when is this about releasing code? I thought MS was only supposed to release full API specs to allow for compatibility. Forcing them to release code sounds quite anti-capitalist.
That's a good point. My guess is it's all about incrementalism. First the APIs, then the code. Pretty soon EU will force them to stop charging for access to the code as it discriminates against the small/individual developers.
In other news, the courts ordered Ford to turn over all schematics and blueprints to GM and Daimler-Chrysler in order to ensure all cars can drive on the same road.
All they have to do is buy one and take it apart.
Yeah, by bundling apps with the OS, such as Media Player and IE and so forth. So how does forcing open the source remedy bundling? Answer: it doesn't, obviously. It doesn't have a thing to do with the alleged crime. The EU is simply doing this because they can, and because there haven't been any operating systems of note to come out of Europe since...well, ever.
"Do you mean win32?"
Nope. All my windows apps were written for the 16-bit version of Windows. That they still run perfectly in XP, but were written for Windows 3.1 is amazing to me. There's no reason that XP should be expected to run 16-bit Windows software, but it does, and perfectly.
My software makes many calls to old .dll libraries. It also does stuff that is completely different in XP, such as font installation and getting font information. Yet, .dlls I wrote to do font stuff still work just fine.
It's amazing. And it's another example of why the XP source code is going to be virtually impossible to decipher for anyone not intimately involved in its creation.
"I suppose the next step would be for the EU courts to decide that Microsoft must also provide access to all the information explaining the code, and provide technical support to all the outside developers who can't figure it out."
It does not make you a competitor with widows but it can make you a competitor against MS. Think about it what if Apple wants to start selling their office suite on windows?
I'm not saying I agree with it, but there are two possible remedies (if you're going that route in the first place): 1) force Microsoft to stop bundling altogether or 2) make it easier for third-party vendors to provide alternatives to the bundled applications so that users may choose to make the switch for whatever reason.
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