85 lines
3.7 KiB
HTML
85 lines
3.7 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
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<html>
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<head>
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<title>FSFE - Microsoft against free competition</title>
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</head>
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<body>
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<h1>Background: Microsoft against free competition </h1>
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<p> In 2001 the European Union, through the DG Competition of the
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European Commission (lead by prof. Monti), started investigating on
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Microsoft dominant position in the desktop operating systems. The
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Free Software Foundation Europe was invited from the EC to represent
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the stances of Free Software movement. In 2004 FSFE is trying to
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participate to the appeal to defend again free competition and freedom
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of choice against abuses.</p>
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<p>FSFE decided to contribute to the investigations of DG
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Competition due to our long and broad experience in the software
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field. Also Free Software, and in particular the GNU/Linux operating
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system, was cited by Microsoft as its principal competitor, therefore
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FSFE had a direct interest in defending it. In a <a
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href="application-1.0.pdf">letter</a> to the DG Competition dated 16
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November 2001, FSFE asked to be heard.</p>
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<p>The request was accepted and therefore the team members and lawyers
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of FSFE had access to the confidential information and had the
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chance to comment on the advancement of the investigation.</p>
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<p>In August 2003, FSFE asked the Commission to hear the
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suggestions of the Samba Team to bring back competition in the
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file/print server market. The <a
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href="monti-samba-submission.pdf">document</a>, signed by
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Jeremy Allison, project leader of Free Software Project Samba, was
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very well received. In a private hearing in November 2003, Peter
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Gerwinski and Jeremy Allison exposed the positions of <a
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href="hearing-2.0.pdf">FSFE</a> and of the Samba Team officially
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in front of the Commission.</p>
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<p>The <a href="CEC-C-2004-900-final.pdf">Final Decision</a> of the DG
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Competition takes into consideration most of the comments made by FSF
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Europe to defend Free Software (although it is not a perfect
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solution.)</p>
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<p>In June 2004 Microsoft appealed against the sentence. FSFE
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is worried that the loopholes in the Decision can be exploited by
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Microsoft's lawyers and is therefore participating to the appeal.</p>
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<p>The Decision of the DG Competition contains unclear statements,
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most of them caused by the abuse of the unclear word "Intellectual
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Property". The ambiguity of such word makes it difficult to judge if
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the Commission is asking Microsoft to give up copyright on parts of
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their source code or license to everybody its patents on the protocols
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and interfaces they have developed or even give up some valuable
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"trade secrets". An even bigger problem with the
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Decision is that it allows Microsoft to use so-called "RAND"
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(Reasonable And Not Discriminatory) licenses. As repeated often, the
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RAND clauses for using patented interfaces or protocols actually
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discriminate against Free Software implementations since, however cheap those
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licenses can be, they add a limit to the free distribution of software
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(making it non-free).</p>
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<p>In the end, FSFE believes that Microsoft should reveal all
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information necessary to achieve complete inter-operation with its
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systems, be it the Media Player or the Directory Service. To achieve
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this it is not necessary to disclose source code developed by
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Microsoft, it is not necessary to reveal "trade secrets" as protocols
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and interfaces are already 'public' (since they can be reverse
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engineered) but it is inconvenient to use them. It is extremely
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important that the DG Competition guards the market and also avoids
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that software patents are legalised in Europe, so that Free Software
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implementations of those interfaces will always be possible.</p>
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</body>
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<timestamp>$Date$ $Author$</timestamp>
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</html>
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