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