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[News] Europe Agreement with Microsoft Good for Microsoft, Bad for America

  • Subject: [News] Europe Agreement with Microsoft Good for Microsoft, Bad for America
  • From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 03:58:30 +0100
  • Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • Organization: Netscape / schestowitz.com
  • User-agent: KNode/0.10.4
Is Microsoft’s Europe agreement a big deal?

,----[ Quote ]
| If open source developers find greater protection for their work and its 
| results in Europe than in America that’s where they will gravitate. That’s 
| the kind of regime the EU is trying to create. We ignore that and dismiss 
| that at our peril.   
`----

http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=1584

Half A Loaf

,----[ Quote ]
| Yes, open source will have access to the interoperability information 
| on "reasonable" terms (ask independent open source developers how many can 
| afford to cough up the $15,000 such access will cost), but nothing in this 
| statement indicates the Commission has overcome Microsoft's "refusa[al] to  
| make the [patent] licence compatible with the open source business model." In 
| fact, we can expect that nothing about that patent license will be compatible 
| with the most widely used open source license, the GNU General Public 
| License.      
`----

http://walkingwithelephants.blogspot.com/2007/10/half-loaf.html


Related:

EU tells open source to start paying MS patent tax

,----[ Quote ]
| EU Commissioner Kroes' deal with Microsoft creates real dangers to Europe's 
| growing open source economy, warns the FFII. Using patent licenses that 
| exclude businesses, the software monopolist has turned the EU competition 
| ruling into a victory, and now gets implicit support from the Commission to 
| proceed aggressively against its competitors.    
`----

http://press.ffii.org/Press_releases/EU_tells_open_source_to_start_paying_MS_patent_tax


Late night baseball games, Microsoft concessions evoke big yawns at open source
water cooler

,----[ Quote ]
| It will benefit purveyors of proprietary software but not open source 
| developers, agreed Michael Goulde, analyst of open source strategy at 
| Forrester Research, Cambridge, Mass. “Some open source developers believe 
| that Microsoft should make its protocols available for use royalty free. In 
| some cases, there are open source license restrictions that make it not 
| possible for the software to include Microsoft licensed code – because you 
| can’t downstream the license. So, unless Microsoft goes way beyond what it 
| has agreed with the EU to do, only a subset of open source developers will 
| have much interest. They’ll continue reverse engineering Microsoft protocols 
| and doing the best they can."         
`----

http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=1582


Let's Make a Deal - The MS-EU Settlement

,----[ Quote ]
| The patent part is terrible. Worse than terrible. They are not blocked from 
| offering patent deals, only constrained as to how much to charge for a 
| license, which is not and never was the issue. So they'll beef up those 
| initiatives, I'm sure. However, the good part is that they were compelled to 
| separate the patent license offer out and make it optional. Thanks, but no 
| thanks.     
| 
| [...]
| 
| I'm guessing Microsoft lawyers are high fiving each other, having snatched an 
| important victory from utter and total defeat. The rest is excellent, of 
| course, and in no way do I mean to detract from the hard work and persistence 
| that the EU Commission has shown. However, I don't think they understand how 
| seriously broken the US patent system is currently, and how easy it is to  
| abuse it, or they don't feel it's their job to fix the US problems, or how 
| central patents are to Microsoft's current strategy against FOSS.     
`----

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071022114731199

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