Microsoft Dismisses British Objections to Anti-Linux Ad
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Microsoft sources said Wednesday that a British regulatory agency&#39;s objections to an anti-Linux advertisement published as part of its controversial &quot;Get the Facts&quot; campaign are moot because the ad is no longer running.
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An ad running in the UK that implied running a Linux operating system is ten times more expensive than running a Windows operating system has been oficially condemned as misleading by the UK&#39;s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), after public complaints
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(InfoWorld) - No one used the 'L' word, but both sides in the Microsoft Corp. antitrust battle in Europe accused each other of lying about basic facts surrounding the latest twist in the long-running saga that emerged Thursday. The European Commission sent Microsoft a so-called statement of objections Thursday accusing the software vendor of failing to provide interoperability information on "reasonable and non-discriminatory terms." This was a requirement laid out in the landmark 2004 antitrust ruling against the company. In its statement the Commission said the software giant proposes overcharging for vital interoperability information needed by software makers to allow their products to work properly with the Windows operating system. It dismissed almost all of the information Microsoft proposed revealing as not innovative and therefore not worth the price the company wants to charge to license it. Competition commissioner Neelie Kroes said Microsoft had agreed that the innovativeness of the information should be the main criterion when setting the price, but in a conference call with journalists later Thursday, Microsoft top lawyer Brad Smith denied his company had agreed innovativeness should be the main criterion. "We told the Commission we believe innovation is one of three main elements. We don't have the same interpretation of what had been established [between Microsoft and the Commission]," he said. Then ECIS, the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, accused Microsoft of misleading journalists by citing a study by accountants Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), which, according to the software company, shows that the prices Microsoft wants to charge for licenses to the interoperability information are 30 percent below normal market rates. "It is an outrageous comparison," said Thomas Vinje, ECIS's legal advisor and a partner in the Brussels office of law firm Clifford Chance. "The PWC study compares the prices Microsoft wants to charge with the market price for much more valuable information such as software code, documentation, and full redistribution rights," he said. "What people will get with Microsoft's interoperability information is a lot less valuable. To compare it with the sort of information in the PWC study is like comparing apples with... some withered fruit," he added. The actual prices Microsoft wants to charge for licensing out the interoperability information are too complicated to share with journalists, Microsoft spokesman Tom Brookes said. He warned inquisitive journalists that there is no simple price list. The Commission believes that if all software vendors bought licenses it would amount to around 35 percent of the net profit of the industry. Microsoft's Smith dismissed this, saying: "I don't think you can conclude that." He said that if all vendors bought the licenses the total revenue Microsoft would earn would total around US$30 million -- a tiny fraction of annual software industry profits. "That $30 million figure bears no resemblance to reality, and if Microsoft can't explain how they reached this figure it has absolutely no value," Vinje said. Microsoft has four weeks to respond toÂ the latest statement of objections, after which it faces daily fines of up to â¬3 million (US$3.9 million). In the meantime, the Commission is expected to conclude its assessment of the substance of the interoperability information Microsoft submitted. It doesn't have to be innovative. In fact Microsoft's rivals, including ECIS, argue that much of the information competitors need in order to build their software so that it interoperates with the ubiquitous Windows OS on PCs is quite straightforward. Nevertheless, if it isn't revealed then rivals are stuck, Vinje said. Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd told journalists Thursday that Microsoft's continued failure to comply with the antitrust ruling is unprecedented. "In the 50 years of European antitrust policy, it's the first time we've been confronted with a company that has failed to comply with an antitrust decision," he said. "You have to look at their attitude faced with other antitrust authorities in other jurisdictions. This is a company that apparently does not like to have to conform with antitrust decisions," Todd added.
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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took the company&#39;s anti-Linux campaign to its IT executive e-mail list on Wednesday afternoon, with a 2,600-word message that restated Microsoft&#39;s well-worn case against open source software.
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The US Patent Trademark Office has rejected all claims to patents for a Windows file format held by Microsoft. Under a reexamination process initiated earlier this year by the recently formed Public Patent
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Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates, during an appearance on Friday at the US Computer History Museum, expressed no fear of Linux usurping Windows in the software industry.
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Microsoft Corp. is flatly denying what it calls &quot;misguided reports&quot; of a flaw in its new Windows XP Service Pack 2 upgrade that exposes security information to hackers.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft said it moved quickly to remove a banner advertisement that appeared on its instant-messaging program for a software application that falsely hypes security threats on a user&#39;s computer.
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The United Kingdom's advertising watchdog group, the Advertising Standards Association, has found that complaints lodged against a Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) magazine ad that stated that Linux was more expensive than Windows were valid.
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Microsoft Corp. is denying that its CEO Steve Ballmer told Asian government leaders on Thursday that Microsoft believes that Linux violates more than 200 software patents.
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PC Magazine - The clarification closely follows the release of a position paper signed by top Linux developers, in which they announce their objections to the proposed GPLv3.
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US software giant Microsoft said it will abide by whatever ruling is handed down by a European appeal court hearing due to start this week against an EU condemnation for abusing its market dominance.
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NEW YORK - Engineers in charge of setting technical standards for the Internet have rejected a preliminary spam-fighting proposal from Microsoft Corp.
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BRUSSELS -- The European Commission has issued a formal set of objections to Microsoft Corp. and Time Warner Inc. taking control of ContentGuard Holdings Inc., a digital rights management (DRM) company, according to sources familiar with the case.
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Local government in UK says it didn't use the open-source OS as a bargaining chip; Microsoft was simply best option.
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The Debian Linux group will not deploy the Sender ID anti-spam standard, because Microsoft&#39;s license terms do not fit within its free-software guidelines.
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RWerp writes &quot;LWN.net reports that Debian, a Linux distribution known for its commitment to Free Software ideas, rejected Microsoft-patented SenderID technology, intended to combat spam.