This morning, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) announced that it is upholding the European Commission's anti-trust case against Microsoft: http://curia.europa.eu/en/actu/communiques/cp07/aff/cp070063en.pdf
FSFE has been working on this case since 2001, so this is great news. Our press release (pasted at the end of this mail) is at: http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2007q3/000186.html
The core of this case is that through anti-competitive behaviour, Microsoft has distorted the file/print server software market. The European Commission decided that the only way to rectify this is to have Microsoft publish the interoperability information needed for others to write alternative file/print server software.
FSFE's role all along has been to ensure that when Microsoft is required to publish interoperability information for other software developers, SAMBA must not be excluded from being able to use it. The European Commission has agreed that this is reasonable because SAMBA is the only remaining competitor to Microsoft's file/print server software.
There are also some fines of a few hundred million euro, but these aren't important.
Today, the ECJ backed the European Commission.
Uncharacteristically, Microsoft seem to have fumbled their press work on this. They haven't come out with any quotable reactions, or even any attempts to paint this as a victory (like they did when they lost the ISO OOXML votes).
Sean Daly is down in Luxembourg right now, where Georg and Carlo are, and there should be an interview done soon which will go on Groklaw later.
==========The press release================= FSFE, Samba: A triumph for freedom of choice and competition
"Microsoft can consider itself above the law no longer," says Georg Greve, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).
"Through tactics that successfully derailed antitrust processes in other parts of the world, including the United States, Microsoft has managed to postpone this day for almost a decade. But thanks to the perseverance and excellent work of the European Commission, these tactics have now failed in Europe," Greve continues.
Carlo Piana, FSFE's legal counsel: "FSFE and the Samba Team welcome the decision of the court. This is a milestone for competition. It puts an end to the notion that deliberate obfuscation of standards and designed lock-in is an acceptable business model and forces Microsoft back into competing on the grounds of software technology."
"The Samba Team would like to thank the European Commission for its outstanding job over the past years. Millions of users around the world will reap the rewards of their work," comments Jeremy Allison, co-author of the Samba project. "This is a very important day for the Samba Team: we hope to finally compete on a level playing field, without being denied access to interoperability information. Samba would then be able to offer consumers real choice, with the benefits of software freedom."
Volker Lendecke of the Samba Team: "Now that the court has decided, we will be watching closely what the exact licensing terms for the interoperability information are. It will be very important to make sure that the information is usable in Free Software, otherwise the great success the Commission has achieved here is severely harmed. Samba is one of the most important players in the workgroup server market, the market in which the comission wanted to restore competition."
"This is a very good day for Europe, but it is only a step along the way. The recurrent theme for Microsoft's behaviour over the past years is an apparent perception of interoperability as a threat to overcome," summarises FSFE counsel Carlo Piana. "The most recent example was provided by MS-OOXML, which Doug Mahugh of Microsoft described as a commercially motivated response to the threat provided by the ODF ISO standard and the interoperability and choice it offers. Tactical, not technical considerations were the driving force behind Microsoft's global efforts to manipulate national standardisation bodies into blind acceptance of MS-OOXML."
FSFE president Greve concludes: "Today's decision has set a very important precedent for the future. Secret manipulation of open formats and protocols has clearly been marked as unacceptable conduct. We now encourage the European Commission take up the recent antitrust complaint brought forward by ECIS. In a joint effort with the Samba Team and OpenOffice.org, the FSFE gladly offers its expertise to the European Commission for that investigation." ============================================