Source files of fsfe.org, pdfreaders.org, freeyourandroid.org, ilovefs.org, drm.info, and test.fsfe.org. Contribute: https://fsfe.org/contribute/web/
https://fsfe.org
You can not select more than 25 topics
Topics must start with a letter or number, can include dashes ('-') and can be up to 35 characters long.
143 lines
6.6 KiB
143 lines
6.6 KiB
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> |
|
|
|
<html> |
|
<version>1</version> |
|
|
|
<head> |
|
<title>FSF Europe - Microsoft against free competition</title> |
|
</head> |
|
|
|
<body> |
|
|
|
<h1>Intervention to the Court of the European Union</h1> |
|
<h2>on behalf of the Free Software Foundation Europe</h2> |
|
<h3>Thursday Sept 30th. 2004</h3> |
|
|
|
<h2>Introduction by Carlo Piana:</h2> |
|
|
|
<p>Mylord,</p> |
|
|
|
<p>My name is Carlo Piana, I appear on behalf of the Free Software |
|
Foundation Europe. The Free Software Foundations have a 20 year |
|
history of starting, developing and furthering the GNU and after the |
|
GNU/Linux system, often referred to as "Linux". FSFs are in particular |
|
the single largest fiduciary of the interests of the thousands of |
|
authors of that system, especially their legal interests through |
|
defense of their Copyright and Licenses (precisely the GNU GPL and |
|
LGPL, published by the FSF).</p> |
|
|
|
<p>One of these groups of authors is the Samba Team. May I therefore |
|
introduce Mr. Jeremy Allison of the Samba Team whose first hand |
|
experience will represent and show further how the factual assumption |
|
on Microsofts part are flawed and overstating the consequences of the |
|
remedies.</p> |
|
|
|
|
|
<h2>Intervention by Jeremy Allison:</h2> |
|
|
|
<p>Mr. President,</p> |
|
|
|
<p>My name is Jeremy Allison, and I'm speaking on behalf of the FSFE who |
|
is representing the Samba Team, who have a great interest in this |
|
case. Samba is one of the few competing products to Microsoft in the |
|
Workgroup server market. It is commonly shipped with Linux, but is |
|
developed separately. I am one of the original authors of the Samba |
|
code, and with my colleague from Germany Volker Lendecke have been |
|
working on interoperating with Microsoft software for over 12 years. |
|
I speak from many years of experience of implementing Workgroup server |
|
software.</p> |
|
|
|
<p>In the development of Samba Microsoft has already disclosed to us |
|
specifications similar to those that we are now requesting. Microsoft |
|
has given to the Samba Team in the past internal documents describing |
|
exactly the level of protocol information we now need. These documents |
|
are now no longer useful, as Microsoft creates modified versions of |
|
its protocols on a regular basis, as it releases new versions of its |
|
Windows software. The documents given to us were marked internal we |
|
used them to create Samba code, as Microsoft intended when they gave |
|
them to us. They gave us these documents knowing we would create code |
|
with them, and they encouraged this. We were not required to sign |
|
non-disclosure agreements to obtain this information, we were simply |
|
treated as a trusted third party, as I believe we have been. We have |
|
never disclosed their contents publicly, only the code we created.</p> |
|
|
|
<p>What we are requesting via these remedies is that Microsoft return to |
|
the policy of openness and co-operation with others that they followed |
|
in the past. The claims that we have not requested information on the |
|
protocols is not true. We have made repeated requests to Microsoft |
|
that they continue the kind of disclosures they made before they came |
|
to dominate this market.</p> |
|
|
|
<p>A protocol, like a language, is a convention for communication. We |
|
need to know if the noun comes before the verb. We can learn ourselves |
|
by listening to others speak, this is what we do now to teach |
|
ourselves how to talk with Microsoft software. But such a self-taught |
|
student will always be behind someone properly taught by a native |
|
speaker well versed in grammar.</p> |
|
|
|
<p>Microsoft claims that to disclose interoperability information would |
|
cause them irreparable harm. However, we believe the information that |
|
they are being asked to disclose is not of the immense value they |
|
claim.</p> |
|
|
|
<p>The protocols Microsoft uses to prevent interoperability are mostly |
|
based on open and standard protocol specifications. Microsoft have |
|
added undisclosed extensions and additions to standard protocols that |
|
create dependencies between their clients and servers. For a |
|
non-Microsoft server to provide services to Microsoft clients these |
|
interdependencies must be understood by the programmers |
|
involved. Microsoft uses this lack of knowledge in third party servers |
|
for competitive advantage ("tying together" of clients and servers). |
|
Microsoft is building on the standards work of others, and adding |
|
small but critical changes for the pure purpose of making Windows |
|
clients depend on the presence of Microsoft servers, and Microsoft |
|
servers depend upon Microsoft directory servers.</p> |
|
|
|
<p>A good analogy would be with the telephone network. The Microsoft |
|
documentation for the phone network would tell you how voice is |
|
transferred over the lines, but would neglect to tell you how to dial |
|
a number. As you can imagine this would cause difficulty for other |
|
phone manufacturers. Microsoft is trying to claim that the particular |
|
tones that they have chosen to use to dial 1-2-3 are a multi-million |
|
dollar investment.</p> |
|
|
|
<p>The protocols Microsoft wants to keep secret to prevent |
|
interoperability are *not* of high intrinsic value. These protocols |
|
are not kept secret by Microsoft because they are valuable, they are |
|
valuable to Microsoft because they are kept secret, and thus prevent |
|
competition.</p> |
|
|
|
<p>Whilst we are proud of Samba, it is not yet up to the level of |
|
interoperability of a Windows Workgroup server of 1996 (NT4). This is |
|
due to the lack of timely information from Microsoft on how their |
|
products talk to each other. Without this it is impossible to fairly |
|
compete on the merits of our products, as we are always without the |
|
basic levels of interoperability that Windows servers can provide. We |
|
are always scrambling to try and catch up to work out how the latest |
|
version of Windows has modified the protocols we implement.</p> |
|
|
|
<p>We are not able to achieve interoperability by the existing methods we |
|
use, sophisticated though they are and there are no others available |
|
to us. We are 8 years behind and will only fall further behind if |
|
these remedies are delayed. It is trivial for Microsoft to change a |
|
detail in the protocol in a service pack or new release, and we need |
|
to first write our own protocol spec. before we can even begin to |
|
implement that change.</p> |
|
|
|
<p>We do not wish to copy the Windows Operating System or to see any of |
|
the code that implements it. We wish to be able to expose our own |
|
merits, which we believe are considerable, not to reproduce the |
|
features of the Windows Operating Systems. Such a task does not |
|
require Microsoft to provide details of Windows internals, only |
|
network protocols. We wish to have the opportunity to provide file, |
|
print and authentication services with the same amount of network |
|
protocol information that is available to Microsoft engineers.</p> |
|
|
|
</body> |
|
|
|
</html> |
|
<!-- |
|
Local Variables: *** |
|
mode: xml *** |
|
End: *** |
|
-->
|
|
|