__/ [ Rick ] on Saturday 29 April 2006 15:35 \__
> On Sat, 29 Apr 2006 07:18:30 -0700, Au79 wrote:
>
>> High Plains Thumper wrote:
>>
>>> Au79 wrote:
>>>
>>>> http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/477634/388984/17412/2/
>>>
>>> Will Microsoft honor the EU judge's decision?
>>>
>>> (Will we see blue helmeted UN troops in Redmond? ;-)
>>>
>> May be they can accomplish what the US government couldn't.
>>
> They won't be able to break up Microsoft, either.
They can weaken them at the least.
__/ [ High Plains Thumper ] on Saturday 29 April 2006 10:59 \__
> [quote] The commission found that Microsoft leveraged the
> power of its 95% share of the PC operating system market to
> capture 60% of the market for work group servers, which let
> desktop users sign on to a network, access files and print
> documents. [/quote]
>
> [quote] "It has used privileged interoperability information,
> and repeated requests for that information are denied," Whelan
> said. He said that gave Microsoft "a double lock on the
> personal computer markets." [/quote]
>
> Thus for true interoperability, one was required to use
> proprietary servers. Hence, this would account for the
> increase in proprietary versus other servers.
Not only that, but users on the desktop are alsourged to take advantage of
servers that are proprietary. Take, for instance, the Exchange
server-Microsoft Outlook combination. In a work environment where people
collaborate through the network layer, such closed-source protocols can
truly make life harder. I say this because I become a sufferer once in the
past. No more however.
> [quote] Microsoft lawyer Ian Forrester said the commission's
> solution raises problems for the legal protection of ideas.
>
> Microsoft "is being told to give a worldwide license in
> perpetuity" that involves its patents, copyright and trade
> secrets, Forrester said. [/quote]
>
> I find it difficult that a protocol for communication between
> server, client, and other similar servers would be considered
> a trade secret. How the coding is done "under the bonnet"
> would be understood as a patent, copyright and trade secret.
> However, information passed between would not.
All that the European Commission demands (at least initially) is
well-structured documentation. The problem arose when a monopoly never
drafted a protocol properly or negotiated it with industrial peers. It can
unilaterally decide to /extend/ code (thus protocols) whenever it desires to
do so. Samba can suffer because it is not a so-called '_industrial_ partner'
and it merely backward-engineers what comes into existence from in the Dark
State, frequently in the form of binary files and miscomprehensible data
packets.
Best wishes,
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Stand for nothing and you will fall for anything"
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
4:15pm up 1 day 23:20, 13 users, load average: 0.60, 0.80, 0.78
http://iuron.com - help build a non-profit search engine
|
|
