[Fsfe-uk] MS EU anti-trust licences need to be Free, not RAND

[James Heald]

I suggest we urgently need to get a campaign off the ground, asap, right 
across Europe.

It has been all over the press recently
        http://news.google.com/news?q=mario+monti+microsoft
that the EU competition directorate is very keen to settle with 
Microsoft before May, so as not to have to co-ordinate with 10 more 
accession states makes everything much more complicated.

Mostly the case is about what to do with Windows being tied with Windows 
Media Player; but as the Economist reported, there is also the allegation

> that Microsoft was trying to extend its desktop monopoly into the market for 
> workgroup servers (file, print, mail and web servers) by keeping secret the 
> communications protocols that enable its desktop and server products to talk to 
> each other. “Without such information, alternative server software would be 
> denied a level playing field, as it would be artificially deprived of the 
> opportunity to compete with Microsoft's products on technical merits alone,” 
> [as] the commission warned in 2001.

According to the Economist, Microsoft is facing a fine, specific 
remedies over Windows Media Player, and also

> Microsoft would be required to license its server-communications protocols to 
> rivals on a “reasonable and non-discriminatory” basis. This is consistent with 
> the settlement that Microsoft reached in America, which also requires it to 
> license some of its protocols.

This despite the fact that in the States, the licensing program became a 
total non-event because of the conditions Microsoft imposed:

> Critics had complained that its previous licensing terms were so complicated 
> that only 11 companies had signed up for them... Following a review of the 
> progress of the American settlement, on January 23rd Microsoft agreed to 
> simplify and extend its licensing programme to encourage wider use. After the 
> announcement, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who is overseeing the American 
> settlement, declared herself satisfied with the company's efforts to comply 
> with the settlement.

For more detail, see this IDG story at:
http://www.itworld.com/Man/2699/040120mslicensing/


I suggest that there is a need for an urgent all-Europe campaign that 
the protocols should *not* made available RAND, but that the measures 
can only have any chance of being an effective remedy if the protocols 
are released Public Domain, no strings attached.

Cf, for example, the outcome of the US antitrust remedies, where 
developers on WINE to avoid any chance glimpse of the MS documents for 
fear that they might be tainted by the license conditions.

Presumably over here the EU measures are intended to prevent MS bullying 
SAMBA.  The protocol information must be released Free, or it will be 
completely useless.


It would also be very useful in the argument over Article 6a 
(Interoperability) in the Patents Directive, if we could get the 
Competition directorate to understand why Free rather than RAND makes 
all the difference.


The Economist even suggests it might be in MS's own long term best interest:

> In other words, Microsoft may some day conclude that the costs of constant 
> regulatory battles—legal costs, fines, bad publicity, and bad relationships 
> with governments—exceed the benefits of its Windows monopoly... One approach 
> would be to hand some of its Windows protocols over to an independent standards 
> body... This seems unimaginable now. But unless governments find the political 
> will and legal arguments needed to break the firm up, it may be the only way 
> its legal battles will ever end.