Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Microsoft Your Rights Online

Microsoft's European License Dissected 167

Posted by timothy from the in-the-name-of-science dept.
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet has published a step-by-step explanation of Microsoft's proposed server interoperability license, which was just rejected by the European Commission. The EC said the license excluded open-source vendors and charged unjustifiably high royalty fees -- all bad for business."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Microsoft's European License Dissected More

Microsoft's European License Dissected

Comments Filter:
  • To me this has the strange touch of Cold War.

    If you imagine that SU has been replaced by MS, you know who will win in the end.

    CC.

  • Two lines.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 0x461FAB0BD7D2 ( 812236 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @07:15AM (#11997400) Journal
    Two lines sum up the entire article:

    Can I trust that?
    This is Microsoft.

  • Here is a question (Score:5, Informative)

    by orin ( 113079 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @07:21AM (#11997419)
    Is it reasonable to force Microsoft to produce a license that is royalty free - or are people concerned about the cost here.

    By looking at the article it seems as though Microsoft wants to charge people royalties who create a competing product when those people have looked at Microsoft's secret API. This seems reasonable - why should someone be able to sell a competing product that does the same thing as a domain controller of global catalog server after they've been able to look at Microsoft's secret APIs?

    The reverse engineering clause seems to cover SAMBA and so on - they don't have to pay a license fee because they haven't seen all the secret stuff.

    • Re:Here is a question (Score:2, Interesting)

      by asserted ( 818761 )
      the question is...why does it have to be secret in the first place?

    • Re:Here is a question (Score:5, Informative)

      by FLAGGR ( 800770 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @07:26AM (#11997439)
      Because the royalties are extremly high, didn't you read the article? Plus, it bars you from doing open source stuff with your code.

      • Re:Here is a question (Score:5, Informative)

        by orin ( 113079 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @07:30AM (#11997452)
        Yes, but the restriction against "doing open source stuff" is very specific. You are only restricted IF you look at the secret stuff. If you reverse engineer - no restrictions apply. Why should you be able to look at Microsoft's secrets and then build a competing product that does exactly the same thing for free? Reverse engineering is quite different (no look at the crown jewels) and doesn't apply to this license.

        • Re:Here is a question (Score:4, Insightful)

          by KiloByte ( 825081 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @07:48AM (#11997511)
          If you're a convincted monopolist, many things than otherwise would be legal are considered a breach of the rules.

        • Re:Here is a question (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ciroknight ( 601098 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @08:22AM (#11997625)
          I understand you are a Microsoft apologist, but I'll explain things in simple terms for you.

          Microsoft broke the law. They've repeatedly shut out/down other competing products that do the same thing, either by changing APIs to break compatibility, or releasing their own product that forces the general market to break compatibility (in the case of Open Standards). By forcing Microsoft to release the simple documentation of the APIs, they are asking Microsoft to standarize themselves.

          Look at it this way. With the APIs remaining "secret", and engineers reverse engineering them for compatibility, all Microsoft has to do to change compatibility is to change a bit, or shift a few bits around, or some other nonsensical thing. Open Source projects /may/ be able to keep up, but if a company were developing a closed source solution, this could slow down their release time by months, if not years.

          Forcing Microsoft to release their API information basically puts a standard on the table for other companies/programmers to conform to. They don't lose any market dominance. They don't lose any time. They simply are forced to be compatible. And if that's unreasonable, then Microsoft has won, and Open Source is all for naught.
        • Normally you shouldn't, but this is corrective action given as punishment to Microsoft for illegal monopolistic practices.
        • " If you reverse engineer - no restrictions apply." Reverse engineering is not universally legal, which means the options are either pay the fee, or do something which in some jurisdictions may be illegal.

    • Because (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Catskul ( 323619 ) *
      Because they broke European law and this is supposed to make up for their infraction. (At least thats how I understand it)

      • Re:Because (Score:2, Insightful)

        by orin ( 113079 )
        And it does. They have to allow people that they don't want to allow to look at some of their code. What the license is about is making sure that those people that look at their code don't go off and make a replica operating system without in some way compensating Microsoft. Now the fees are high - but it does seem reasonable that if someone builds a competing product based on the fact that they've actually seen the guts of Microsoft's product (rather than building it independently and separately) that Mi

        • NOPE (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 21, 2005 @07:43AM (#11997491)
          NO code is required to be released by the EU compliance request. None. Nada (Not NDA). Zip.

          MS have broken the law. Either they open up the API to competitors or they go (all of them) to jail. As an individual, I don't get the choice of charging for my time if I am forced to do community service, am I. If I pay a fine, I don't get to deduct costs, do I. If I'm under a restriction order, I don't get to break it because it stops me from going anywhere I want.

          So why does MS get to charge for interoperability?

          Note also that the EUCD means that if interoperability requires breaking DRM, then you CANNOT reverse engineer. If the protocols are patented, then you cannot bypass them.

          See how easy it is.

          • MS have broken the law. Either they open up the API to competitors or they go (all of them) to jail.

            I believe in this case, they either conform to the ruling or they are no longer allowed to sell the products in the EU (nor can someone import it from another country). MS gets roughly one-third of their revenue from EU sales. I would certainly like to see the EU authorities announce such a ban, starting in 90 days or so. MS, watching their stock price tank as the market considers that revenue loss, woul

        • Re:Because (Score:5, Insightful)

          by lachlan76 ( 770870 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @07:46AM (#11997503)
          There's a difference between the implementation and the API.

        • Re:Because (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Catskul ( 323619 ) * on Monday March 21, 2005 @08:01AM (#11997561) Homepage
          The were charged with opening up interoperablity. Publishing the API is probably sufficient to do this. No one needs to look at their code. Its like publishing the pinouts to a chip... no. they do NOT need to be *compensated* for this. No one needs to see the guts.

          • Published API (Score:2, Interesting)

            by dunstan ( 97493 )
            You're assuming that the API/file formats/wire protocols are freestanding items. Two things

            1) They change the APIs within major versions. Anybody remember how everything except MS products broke with NT SP3?

            2) They don't have an unblemished record for publishing *all* the API

        • Re:Because (Score:4, Insightful)

          by AstroDrabb ( 534369 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @03:26PM (#12002665)
          What the license is about is making sure that those people that look at their code don't go off and make a replica operating system without in some way compensating Microsoft.
          Are you serious? Do you _really_ think someone/some company can turn around and build a replica OS from a few "secret" API calls? Get real. Look how many years MS has tried to build an acceptable OS. It wasn't until Win2k that they had anything worth the money. MS spent many years in man hours and billions in development costs. I don't think disclosing some of their server/client communications protocols is going to allow someone to come along and build a Win32 replica.

          All of your agruments you have made so far have been as if MS is just some good-ole-company that has just been trying to compete fairly. That is not the case. MS has leveraged their monopoly illegaly for a long time now and have been convicted of that in two separate nations. Now it is time for MS to pay the penalty. The main point of the punishment, IMO, is not what is best for MS (that wouldn't be much of a punishment), but to ask what is best for the industry/society. IMO, the best thing would be to force MS to disclose their "secret" OS API's so that the whole industry can leverage those on an equal footing instead of having all MS software have the leg-up because MS controls the OS.

          Your arguments sound as if you believe that MS cannot compete on a level playing field. That if their competitors also have access to the same server API's, then MS will no longer be able to deliver a better product. Is MS really that bad at developing programs that if they are not the _only_ ones to have access to "secret" API's than their non-OS products will fail?

    • Re:Here is a question (Score:5, Insightful)

      by lachlan76 ( 770870 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @07:28AM (#11997445)
      Because Microsoft are a monopoly, and as such, forcing secret APIs bars most competition out of the market.

      • Re:Here is a question (Score:4, Informative)

        by sepluv ( 641107 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <yelsekalb>> on Monday March 21, 2005 @09:10AM (#11997868)
        Actually, No. The EC are not doing this because Microsoft are a monopoly or even a near monopoly (which is more accurate), but because they have gained their monopoly by criminal means and are using it to illegally extend their monopoly to other markets.

        There is nothing wrong with monopolies, per se; it just means you have make a product which everyone thinks is better than the competitions (think BIND, Apache) unless you have got the monopoly through clandestine criminality, a la Microsoft, as opposed to free market forces.

    • Re:Here is a question (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jhdevos ( 56359 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @07:29AM (#11997451) Homepage
      The reverse engineering clause seems to cover SAMBA and so on - they don't have to pay a license fee because they haven't seen all the secret stuff.
      The licence effectively says: if you never ever look at anything this licence covers, then this licence does not apply to you. Sort of like some country having a law that anyone who never sets foot in that country or has any sort of dealings with it, does not have to adhere to that countries laws.

      That seems pretty obvious to me. In other words, whatever this licence has to say about SAMBA is moot -- since SAMBA has nothing to do with the licence in the first place.

      Jan

      • Re:Here is a question (Score:3, Insightful)

        by aug24 ( 38229 )
        But this is rather the point of the punishment: People like the Samba team should be able to use the 'secret' APIs, thus preventing MS using them to make their desktop products interoperate better than their competitors!

        Justin.

      • Re:Here is a question (Score:4, Interesting)

        by sepluv ( 641107 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <yelsekalb>> on Monday March 21, 2005 @09:14AM (#11997890)
        Sort of like some country having a law that anyone who never sets foot in that country or has any sort of dealings with it, does not have to adhere to that countries laws
        Unlike US law which states the exact opposite: if you have never set foot in the US and have no dealings with it, you are still accountable to US law (so you can be extradited there for `crimes' that are not actually crimes in the country you committed them in) but (as you are not a US citizen) you do not have the rights of the US constitution to contest those laws which villate your natural rights such as freedom of expression.

        You gotta love the US of A.

    • Re:Here is a question (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Scarblac ( 122480 ) <slashdot@gerlich.nl> on Monday March 21, 2005 @07:33AM (#11997459) Homepage

      Is it reasonable to force Microsoft to produce a license that is royalty free - or are people concerned about the cost here.

      Remember that this is a punishment for a crime. It's supposed to hurt.

      • Remember that this is a punishment for a crime. It's supposed to hurt.

        This is not the punishment, and it isn't meant to hurt. Secret APIs are one of the weapons Microsoft has used to perpetuate its monopoly. Making them publish the APIs is equivalent to instructing them to put down the gun.

        The fines are their punishment for not putting down the weapon when they were ordered to.
    • Is it reasonable to force Microsoft to produce a license that is royalty free - or are people concerned about the cost here.

      The point is that this is ment to be both a punishment for Microsoft breaking the law and an attempt to rectify the damage.

      By looking at the article it seems as though Microsoft wants to charge people royalties who create a competing product when those people have looked at Microsoft's secret API. This seems reasonable - why should someone be able to sell a competing product that d
    • Is it reasonable to force Microsoft to produce a license that is royalty free

      Kinda depends on what sort of society you live in.If you want a free market based democracy then yes, they should be forced to open their protocols as monopolies have no place in such a society.

      Microsft itself is now at the point where punitive fines like the EU's have little or no effect on the company itself. Looking back on Microsoft's previous behaviour you have a desktop that was lifted from Xerox, applications that were r

    • As a punishment, yes. I would not consider it fair towards a company that does its business in a lawful way, but the opening of the APIs is supposed stop Microsoft from further abusing its market position in operating systems.
      To that end, I would recommend forcing Microsoft to produce the documentation
      -without any licence fees
      -without legal limitations on their use
      -and with the understanding that failing to comply leads to further punishment

  • Open source software will never benefit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jhdevos ( 56359 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @07:23AM (#11997427) Homepage
    The European commission has said that the royalties MS asks are 'excessive'. That means that they don't think it is unreasonable to ask for royalties at all. And asking 'per-user' or 'per-server' royalties effectively makes it impossable for free software to get such a licence.

    Obviously, the rest of the licence is ridiculous -- MS getting all your code, you having to implement any DRM they choose to put into it, audit-trails, very excessive royalties -- so MS has a lot of room to get closer to what the EU wants without having to let OS benefit as well.

    Jan

    • Re:Open source software will never benefit (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 21, 2005 @07:51AM (#11997519)
      Probably the european union is going around this in the wrong way. Instead of having Microsoft publish their interfaces to the public, which arguably contain trade secrets important to Microsoft, waranting them to ask for a license fee, they should have imposed on microsoft to comply with a set of open standards (which should be royalty free) that allow for the same kind of interoperability.

      Make them share printers using ipp, files using NFS v4, authenticate users using ldap, without extending those standards in incompatible ways.
      In such a way, interoperability with microsoft servers could be guaranteed. As an added bonus, Microsoft gets the burden of implementing the interoperability, instead of the third party having to comply with every funny requirement Microsoft chooses to add.
      • Make them share printers using ipp, files using NFS v4, authenticate users using ldap, without extending those standards in incompatible ways.

        What if those open standards can't handle the featureset Microsoft, or their customers, want/already have ?

      • While your alternative punishment has merit, I don't think it would work. Forcing a company to build a product doesn't seem to me like it would be a fair punishment, and I believe Microsoft's lawyers could argue that for so long, that the EU would forget what they were punishing them for, sorta how the US Justice system dropped the ball on MS.

        Secondly, Microsoft could say that "theirs came first", publishing their own standards, and effectively bending everyone to them anyways. Of course, someone would c

    • Re:Open source software will never benefit (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Obviously, the rest of the licence is ridiculous -- MS getting all your code, you having to implement any DRM they choose to put into it, audit-trails, very excessive royalties -- so MS has a lot of room to get closer to what the EU wants without having to let OS benefit as well.

      Same old story. Make the first proposal absolutely ridiculous, and subsequent proposals, however harsh, seem reasonable in comparison. It sounds like Microsoft are taking lessons from lawmakers.

  • Article summary (Score:5, Informative)

    by ites ( 600337 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @07:26AM (#11997441) Journal
    1. You will pay royalties
    2. Open source is explicitly disallowed
    3. Microsoft can audit your development
    4. They get to see your code
    5. They get to see your technology
    6. They get to choose the auditor
    7. You may have to pay the audit
    8. Microsoft suggest you "trust them".

    ROTFL. Excellent article.

    If this is the price of interconnection, it makes it all the easier to justify why Microsoft's server technology should be isolated, relegated, and eventually thrown discarded.

    There are, after all, alternatives.

  • No GPL, but what about Public Domain? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PhilHibbs ( 4537 ) <snarks@gmail.com> on Monday March 21, 2005 @07:37AM (#11997471) Journal
    Section 2.4 states: "The licenses granted in Section 2.1(a) do not include any license right, power or other authority to subject Licensed Server Implementations or derivative works thereof in whole or in part to any of the terms of any other license that requires such Licensed Server Implementations or derivative works thereof to be disclosed or distributed in source code form."

    So you can't write LSI applications that are under the GPL, ebcause that licence requires that source be made available, but I can't see anything in that paragraph that prohibits anyone from releasing the source code into the public domain. It's a lot easier to reverse-engineer a protocol when you have a source implementation of it :-)

  • interoperability as in beer (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FidelCatsro ( 861135 ) <fidelcatsro&gmail,com> on Monday March 21, 2005 @07:41AM (#11997481) Journal
    ". The EC said the license excluded open-source vendors and charged unjustifiably high royalty fees -- all bad for business."

    The EU Gouvernance may be highly flawed in several areas ,Though it is not made up of total idiots.
    I do belive MS really needs to fire its consultants and contract lawyers as Really they should have known this one would get them in trouble.

    If you get orderd by a court to comply with an order ,you dont start acting like a 3 year old who has had their crayons taken away for drawing on the walls.
    This is exactly what MS tried to do , basically they are saying "Honestly Mother i wont draw on the walls anymore , i will stick to painting on the floor"

    ""And this is the same Microsoft whose chairman Bill Gates recently lectured the industry that boosting interoperability "will be the only way for companies to make customers' lives easier"?
    The very same."
    He was telling the truth , but i doubt he cares about making our peoples lives easier , only making the proffits and market share larger
    • If you get orderd by a court to comply with an order ,you dont start acting like a 3 year old who has had their crayons taken away for drawing on the walls.

      I dunno -- it paid off for them in their antitrust case with the US Department of Justice, didn't it? Admittedly, the judge got pretty peeved with them, but I think that got the judge into more trouble than it did Microsoft.

  • What I don't get (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 21, 2005 @07:44AM (#11997496)
    One.

    Why fees? Why any? This is not something Microsoft is fucking selling. This is a legal judgement. What, next will Ken Lay be charging hourly consulting wages for the time the government keeps him in jail? By what right can Microsoft even consider this? Is the law that illogical?

    Two.

    They say this is incompatible with open source. How could it not be? The GPL is very plain; no encumbrances, period. If there are any limitations on how this information can be used, it's incompatible with the GPL. If it's incompatible with the GPL it's incompatible with almost all important open source out there. Microsoft can't put licensing restrictions of any kind on this information and still claim compatibility with open source.

    ---

    So what now? If Europe doesn't want this, what would they accept? Would they accept something that something BSD-ish can be used with, but not the GPL? Would they accept licensing fees if they were smaller? Would they move from Microsoft's anticompetitive actions being an unconvicted illegal action to a legal tax Microsoft may put on open source in exchange for compatibility with SMB? Will they settle for forcing all of open source to adopt some new bizarre unique license which offers the rights of the GPL except for the tentacles of Microsoft's NDAs still reaching through? What does Europe want, what will they settle for? And will they accept the next license? Can we expect hundreds of licenses, all just ever so slightly superficially more giving on Microsoft's part but all still specifically engineered to keep SMB out of SUSE, rejected over and over until a year and a half from now the EU gives in and just accepts whatever Microsoft handed them the week before?

    Someone explain to me.
    • They say this is incompatible with open source. How could it not be? The GPL is very plain; no encumbrances, period.

      Say what ? The whole point of the GPL is to trade the "typical" set of "encumbrances" with a single one - doing anything with GPed code and then distributing it means you have to GPL your work.

      GPLed code could hardly be called "unencumbered". "Differently encumbered", perhaps.

      If it's incompatible with the GPL it's incompatible with almost all important open source out there.

      This is cert

      • Say what ? The whole point of the GPL is to trade the "typical" set of "encumbrances" with a single one - doing anything with GPed code and then distributing it means you have to GPL your work.

        The GPL says no such thing. Want to make a picture? Use any GPL'd program to create that picture and the picture is still yours. Want to create music? Use GPL'd software and the music is still yours also. The only time the GPL requires you to GPL your work is when you copy GPL'd into your work. It requires nothing f
      • Please remember the GPL encumbrances only come into play when you redistribute the code. If you use GPL software for in-house work, there are no restrictions as to what can be done with it. This is the most overlooked aspect of the GPL- it doesn't limit your use in any way at all until you redistribute it.
    • On your first point, if the ruling didn't explicitly state that the licence must be granted free of charge, then MS is entirely within their rights to charge a fee. Similarly, the EU is within their rights to tell them to sod off and come back with a more realistic offering, as they have done.

      If it's incompatible with the GPL it's incompatible with almost all important open source out there.

      Forget about the BSD, Apache and Mozila licences or something?

      Arguably, the most important OSS licence is the one

  • Bad for Business (Score:4, Interesting)

    by joshsnow ( 551754 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @07:44AM (#11997498) Journal
    The EC said the license excluded open-source vendors and charged unjustifiably high royalty fees -- all bad for business

    Hmm. If the royalty fees were not "unjustifiably high" would this still be found to be "bad for business"?

  • I like this: (Score:5, Funny)

    by FoboldFKY ( 785255 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @07:46AM (#11997504)
    The licenses granted in Section 2.1(a) do not include any license right, power or other authority to subject Licensed Server Implementations or derivative works thereof in whole or in part to any of the terms of any other license that requires such Licensed Server Implementations or derivative works thereof to be disclosed or distributed in source code form.
    That's all one sentence... I guess MS wanted the OSS guys to suffocate just by reading the license. A truly insidious plan...

  • So what next Windows API's? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NigelJohnstone ( 242811 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @07:52AM (#11997531)
    So if they're doing this for server protocol, what next, future Windows API with a license?

    i.e.:

    1. You build your corporate application on Windows.
    2. Your company becomes dependent on it.
    3. Windows XP is discontinued. The new version has a 'new' 'enhanced' slightly different API.
    4. You want the documentation.
    5. Microsoft says, no problem, but it will cost you.
    6. Your screwed, you take the hit of shifting your people over to a new platform, or you take the hit and give Microsoft what it wants.

    • Re:So what next Windows API's? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by kisak ( 524062 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @09:23AM (#11997934) Homepage Journal
      That is why the EU ruling is so important; it has set a precedence. If MS tries the old tricks again, the EU commision or the EU high court will fast be able to impose new fines if any competitor complains to them. This is the one reason the EU commision took on MS in the first place, they were feed up with MS being able to do the same monopoly tricks for each new software marked or new technology (the case the EU commision looked at was of course Media players, while the US government had previously found MS guilty with web-browsers). When the US government under the corrupt leadership of Bush didn't want to stop the MS monopoly game, the EU had to step up to the plate.
  • What's the betting that microsoft make some carefully placed "donations" to people in charge of overseeing the changes to this and suddenly very minor changes are accepted as sufficient? I really can't see them letting this get changed too much in case it actually helps open source.

  • Found guilty = get more money!!! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Wolface ( 740944 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @07:57AM (#11997551)
    MS lawyers have to be the nectar of law schools dude. Either I'm not understanding this thing or this utter BS. I think this is the first time in my lifetime that I've seen a result like this :

    "And now it's looking to make more money for breaking the law? So surely Microsoft must be flush enough to give the open-source guys a break? Do they have to pay royalties too?
    No."

    Can I get sued like that so I can become rich too?

    "Microsoft has proposed a royalty fee of 5 percent of your company's net revenue obtained from a software product that has used Microsoft's file and print protocols, and 2.5 percent if the protocols are used for an embedded product."

    WOW just wow...
  • Is it simply because the GPL prevents them from doing an "embrace and extend" on the code? (is there any GPL code out there that would even be of much use to microsoft anyway?)
    Or is there some other reason they are so anti-GPL?

    • Re:What does Microsoft have aginst the GPL anyway? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by RotateLeftByte ( 797477 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @08:58AM (#11997798)
      Yes.
      I guess that there could be a lot of GPL code inside Windows and they don't want to get caught. Therefore, if the GPL dies then they can breathe a big sigh of relief.
      Imagine the scale of the damages if they got caught like this. $x for the infringement and $y for each copy of the software sold. If they sufficiently pissed off the Judge (Who Me Surely not says BillG) it could make their stock become Junk. The Judge could even order it all opened up for inspection by interested companies(Now where have I seen that before. Yep SCO) so there is a precident for this type of order. Then watch the numbers of law suits escalate. Naturally, this is just speculation and guesswork and I have no evidence that this is true but...
      This is Microsoft...

  • Royalties for some servers, but not for others... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OwlWhacker ( 758974 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @08:44AM (#11997728) Journal
    Do you have to pay royalties for accessing a Web server?

    Does the Firefox team have to pay royalties to Microsoft because the browser could access an IIS server?

    Do you have to pay royalties for creating an e-mail client that collects via POP3 from Microsoft Exchange?

    No.

    So why should anybody be expected to pay in order to develop an application that accesses a file/print server?

    I believe that it's in the best interest of the end-user that such servers should have open protocols and APIs.

    This would certainly help prevent illegal monopolies from maintaining their anti-competitive actions.
    • Do you have to pay royalties for accessing a Web server?

      As I read the Windows server licence, you may well do. Although Windows 2003 Web Server Edition has no per-user licensing requirements, the standard version of 2003 Server Client Access Licensing Requirements say (my emphasis):

      Windows CALs are not required when access to the server software is

      unauthenticated and conducted through the Internet

      The implication is that if you carry out a browsing session which is authenticated against a Windows user

  • And a part not mentioned much is the probability that Microsoft will sue you if they "feel" that you're not implementing thier functionality well enough... not to mention paying the cost of the audit.

    Good grief! It's no wonder why the EU would reject that. But imagine, if you will, accepting someone to do "community service" as criminal punishment and then they sue you for having to do community service!

    Someone mentioned a cold war? I doubt it. This will come to a head quickly and likely, Microsoft's

  • Agreed... But (Score:2, Insightful)

    by maximjd ( 699546 )
    While I agree that Microsoft has broken the law, they don't play fair, and that they should either publish a set of API's or conform to some standards - I have to admit that they're doing this the smart way. They throw out a piece of trash like the one discussed and let the EU get up in arms about it - they don't care, what's $5 Million a day to them? But, then they later come to the table - most likely before any deadline with injunctions - and submit an amended agreement. Because Microsoft has made the

  • A good case for requiring open standards... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by yeremein ( 678037 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @01:32PM (#12001007)
    The EU should just mandate that government-owned systems must use protocols and file formats whose specifications are publicly available royalty-free. Any other arrangement allows a vendor (be it Microsoft or anybody) to hold your data hostage.
  • that was a completely objective article, with no hint of bias anywhere. ..
    can my slashdot mod powers mod that story as a troll?

Slashdot Top Deals

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion

Close