EU Antitrust Penalty - $2.5 Mil Per Day

It looks like Microsoft is set to pay the $2.5 million per day penalty.

It won't be a financial burden since the company earns $40 million in profit per day.

The public perception is another matter.

My opinion of the EU is already publicly known so I wont bring it up again. Lets just hope the other EU court overturns this baseless antitrust suit.

>> Lets just hope the other EU court overturns this baseless antitrust suit

I agree that it is baseless but it hurts the company nevertheless.

Do you know when the other EU court may overturn?

PocketXP wrote:

>> Lets just hope the other EU court overturns this baseless antitrust suit

I agree that it is baseless but it hurts the company nevertheless.

Do you know when the other EU court may overturn?

I don't understand how it is baseless. It has been decided by courts in both the US and EU that MS has abused it's monopoly, just that the US courts (Goverment) never had the guts to do anything about it. To me I don't believe it goes far enough.

Custa1200 wrote:



PocketXP wrote: >> Lets just hope the other EU court overturns this baseless antitrust suit I agree that it is baseless but it hurts the company nevertheless. Do you know when the other EU court may overturn?

I don't understand how it is baseless. It has been decided by courts in both the US and EU that MS has abused it's monopoly, just that the US courts (Goverment) never had the guts to do anything about it. To me I don't believe it goes far enough.

I do NOT understand how there's a valid reason in this case.
please explain.

If Microsoft are not giving out information on how MS's systems can run with the competitors. It's an abuse of a monopoly.

Custa1200 wrote:



PocketXP wrote: >> Lets just hope the other EU court overturns this baseless antitrust suit I agree that it is baseless but it hurts the company nevertheless. Do you know when the other EU court may overturn?

I don't understand how it is baseless. It has been decided by courts in both the US and EU that MS has abused it's monopoly, just that the US courts (Goverment) never had the guts to do anything about it. To me I don't believe it goes far enough.

The US government did punish MSFT, but not as much as the EU is.  I'm not a lawyer or familiar with the details, but the EU is kinda being a dick.

BenZilla wrote:

If Microsoft are not giving out information on how MS's systems can run with the competitors. It's an abuse of a monopoly.

How is it an abuse of a monopoly if you arent telling your competitors how your stuff works? You're susposed to protect your trade secrets, not give them away on the street corner (thats honestly not a Linux joke even if it comes off as one)

They are not saying "give us secrets lawl!" the issue is "how do I get my product to work with Windows" MS are 'alledgedly' using its advantage of having access to the OS code to make products that the competition cant.

Shutting people out of competing is an abuse of a monopoly.

BenZilla wrote:

They are not saying "give us secrets lawl!" the issue is "how do I get my product to work with Windows" MS are 'alledgedly' using its advantage of having access to the OS code to make products that the competition cant.

Shutting people out of competing is an abuse of a monopoly.

Well, all the APIs I could ever want or use are pretty well documented far as I can tell (well, generally...).  I think the biggest contentions were some of the protocols involved in the Active Directory kind of stuff.

What protocols? I'm an extremely novice programmer and I got a C# app working with AD in a few hours.

Jason Cox wrote:

What protocols? I'm an extremely novice programmer and I got a C# app working with AD in a few hours.

I'm not entirely familiar with the complaints, but they wanted the actual underlying data structures I think.  Not an API to call, but to clone the API.  I think.

The other issue is that they demanded some ridiculously enormous document about all of this and they then complained when it was actually quite enormous and kinda unorganized.

Which is why you put it in multiple *.docx files and just index and search it with Vista.

I've stopped caring about this case as far as being concerned about whether fines would be levied or not; it's been obvious for a long time that this nothing more than the EC/EU flexing its muscles and a money grab.

The API's in question involve the network protocol used to connect Windows clients to Windows servers.  It's nothing to do with the general Windows API, as that is fully documented (and, speaking as a Mac and Windows dev, makes Apple's documentation look like absolute crap).

The EC demanded that Microsoft provide documentation that would allow other server OSes to communicate with Windows clients as effectively as Windows servers do (I guess Active Directory is part of that, as stated above).

Microsoft provided either 1200 or 12000 (I forget which) pages of documentation.  The EC, by way if it's crony "expert", declared that the documentation was insufficient because the moron was unable to mimic Windows server protocol in two days of programming.  BTW, the idiot also said the documentation was too complicated because it used 'void' C functions, and therefore he couldn't figure out what the functions did.  That's the level that the EU has stooped to in order to proceed with the money grab.  But generally, the EU has *refused* to say exactly where the documentation is lacking so that Micrsosoft could address the alleged problems.  The EU refused to recognize that API documentation is an interactive process, where those receiving the documentation provide feedback as to what is lacking and the issuers of the documentation update the documentation accordingly.  The EU has done this because they don't *want* Microsoft to address the problems, so they can go for the money and/or show how powerful they are.

Microsoft, unable to address the problems because the EU refuses to say what the problems are, offered 500 hours of *free* tech support to any dev that could not figure out how to mimic Windows server from the provided documentation.  The EU didn't like that (of course).  Microsoft then provided the source code regarding the protocols in question.  The EU rejected that as well.

Anyone who says that the EU is going through this process in good faith is either a liar or a fool.

There were articles last week saying that regardless of the merits of the case, the EU *had* go to through with the fines because after making so much noise demonizing Microsoft in the public, to not then levy fines would cause the EU to lose face.

This case has *nothing* to do with technical merits, but has to do the politics and money, pure and simple.

I already knew the fines would be levied years ago, regardless of whatever Microsoft did.  So let the EU levy the fines; it's a necessary step to getting this matter resolved.  Make no mistake - the EU would NOT allow this matter to be resolved without levying the fines as part of the process.

If I didnt know better I'd say this 'expert' had never seen a page of documentation in his life, I mean, who here has ever read documentation that was straight forward and provided you (in baby steps) how to code something? It's suposed to be hard, what fun is it if it isnt?

Thanks for the info.

>> So let the EU levy the fines; it's a necessary step to getting this
>> matter resolved. Make no mistake - the EU would NOT allow this matter
>> to be resolved without levying the fines as part of the process

So it is likely that this case will go on for a few years.

The EU's monitoring trustee is Neil Barrett.
According to WSJ, he was one of Microsoft's nominees.

Barrett's comments are harsh:

"Any programmer or programming team seeking to use the technical documentation for a real development exercise would be wholly and completely unable to proceed on the basis of the documentation,"

"The documentation appears to be fundamentally flawed in its conception, and in its level of explanation and detail,"

"Overall, the process of using the documentation is an absolutely frustrating, time-consuming and ultimately fruitless task."

The trustee advised that the documentation would need a "drastic overhaul," in order for it to be considered useful.

PocketXP wrote:



Thanks for the info.

>> So let the EU levy the fines; it's a necessary step to getting this
>> matter resolved. Make no mistake - the EU would NOT allow this matter
>> to be resolved without levying the fines as part of the process

So it is likely that this case will go on for a few years.

The EU's monitoring trustee is Neil Barrett.
According to WSJ, he was one of Microsoft's nominees.

Barrett's comments are harsh:

"Any programmer or programming team seeking to use the technical documentation for a real development exercise would be wholly and completely unable to proceed on the basis of the documentation,"

"The documentation appears to be fundamentally flawed in its conception, and in its level of explanation and detail,"

"Overall, the process of using the documentation is an absolutely frustrating, time-consuming and ultimately fruitless task."

The trustee advised that the documentation would need a "drastic overhaul," in order for it to be considered useful.

I notice that the moron didn't mention that Microsoft offered 500 hours of free tech support to help anyone who was too incompetent to grock the documentation.  And as I said, his complaints are far too general.  Supposedly his *specific* complaints were made to the EU, and the EU has chosen to keep the specifics secret (remember the row about the EU not disclosing the info to Microsoft, which is something right out of Kafka's The Trial), but his complaints to Microsoft are *general*.  Just saying, "redo the whole thing", isn't specific enough to do anything with.

Let's get to the bottom line.  What is the EU claiming that Microsoft's motivation is to providing poor documentation?  They claim that they're hiding something, but how can that be when Microsoft is offering 500 free hours of tech support and the source code?  That should be evidence enough that Microsoft isn't trying to hide anything, so why doesn't the EU act like adults, and work with Microsoft on this matter?

As I said in the thread about the EU investigating some new bogus charge about computer makers being forced to load Windows on their machines, Microsoft should pull out of the EU, after splitting the European operations in to its own company (let's call it, Microsoft-Europe), and letting that company deal withe EU on its own.  That way, Microsoft would no longer have to deal with the EU blood suckers.