EU round two: Commission probing Microsoft conduct on new issues
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| ...I doubt Microsoft's legal team is surprised by this. After the September
| ruling on the first EC case, I asked Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith
| whether any additional features of Windows could fall under the same scrutiny
| that Windows Media Player received. Smith said:
|
| "I think that it's fair to say that features that the commission regards as
| being present in competing applications may be subject to the kind of
| scrutiny the media player was put under. We basically went through that kind
| of process already for Windows Vista. For example, there was a lot of
| scrutiny on the desktop search feature, on the encryption feature, on the
| various security features in general, on the new file format for portable
| documents and that's probably a fairly indicative list of the kinds of
| features that one would predict they'd focus on in the future..."
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http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2008/01/eu_round_two_commission_probing_microsoft_conduct.html
Related:
Interview with ECIS's Thomas Vinje Regarding Opera's Complaint
,----[ Quote ]
| So that is one of the issues Opera is bringing to the EU Commission, that
| consumers are being held back by Microsoft's long history of extending
| standards with proprietary alterations/additions/tweaks and refusing or
| neglecting to support web standards. Mr. Vinje also speaks about Silverlight
| and I really hope the EU Commission looks into what bundling Silverlight
| could do to the Internet.
|
| The other issue Opera is raising, of course, is bundling, which is what makes
| it possible for a monopoly to ignore standards others would like them to use.
| While it's unknown if the EU Commission will care about standards as an
| antitrust issue, the bundling issue is very much more straightforward, as Mr.
| Vinje explains...
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http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071219231703353
Lights out for Silverlight
,----[ Quote ]
| The next point is the availability of the tools. Even though you can
| view Silverlight on OS X, you will have no chance of being able to
| author Silverlight content without a Windows licence. This is a
| conscious decision. On the one hand, Microsoft wants to get
| designers using their Expression toolset yet designers will have
| to come across to the Windows platform in order to do it. It may
| not be such a large hurdle but it is a hurdle nevertheless. Ever
| tried to force an OS X user onto Windows? They cry, they scream
| and they want their (at times) consistent GUI back.
`----
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Lights-out-for-Silverlight/0,130061733,339278334,00.htm
http://tinyurl.com/27jpuv
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