Microsoft: "Our software patents preclude interoperability"
Throughout the last two days in European Court, Microsoft tried to
explain to the European Court and Commission its "Blue Bubble Theorem"
about Active Directory Services (ADS) being surrounded by a Blue
Bubble within which interoperability was impossible.
Carlo Piana, Free Software Foundation Europe's lawyer on the case
explains: "The interventions made perfectly clear that the Blue Bubble
only existed in the lawyers' pleadings. Meanwhile, Microsoft left no
doubt as to the legal nature of that Bubble: a conglomerate of 46
patents that it claims it holds on ADS, whose main effect is to
prevent interoperability and, eventually, competition."
So Microsoft maintains that without licenses to these software
patents, which they would strongly object to and essentially referred
to as "expropriation", forcing the interoperability information to be
released might turn out to be irrelevant: Future competitors might
find themselves involved in costly software patent litigation rather
quickly.
"This proves effectively how software patents are fundamentally
opposed to competiton, and thus harm economy and society. In the
European fight about software patents, the proponents tried to make
the claim software patents were about innovation. Today Microsoft once
more demonstrated how they are indeed helping build and maintain
illegal monopolies", Georg Greve, president of Free Software
Foundation Europe (FSFE) said today and continued: "It reminded me of
a 1991 quote of Bill Gates that summarises software patents rather
effectively [1]:
'If people had understood how patents would be granted when
most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents,
the industry would be at a complete stand-still today. The
solution ... is patent exchanges ... and patenting as much as
we can... A future start-up with no patents of its own will be
forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That
price might be high: Established companies have an interest in
excluding future competitors.'"
FSFE referred to that quote in a feature article [2] earlier this
week. Greve concludes: "Software patents are limited mini-monopolies
on ideas that should allow to share ideas for the inspiration and
benefit for society. In software they have the opposite effect and
build mega-monopolies."
[1] http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/001447.shtml
[2] http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/ms-vs-eu/article-20060421.it.html
About the Free Software Foundation Europe:
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a charitable
non-governmental organisation dedicated to all aspects of Free
Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate
in a digital society. Therefore the freedoms to use, copy, modify and
redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition
- allow equal participation in the information age. Creating
awareness of these issues, securing Free Software politically and
legally, and giving people freedom by supporting development of Free
Software are central issues of the FSF Europe, which was founded in
2001 as the European sister organisation of the Free Software
Foundation in the United States.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/
"Businesses and public authorities have to pay prices that are kept high
by Microsoft's refusal to share interoperability information with its
competitors, as is common practice in the industry," explains Andrew
Tridgell, president and founder of the Samba Team in his presentation on
behalf of Free Software Foundation Europe in European Court today.
Yesterday, Microsoft stated that it had spent 35 thousand person-hours
on documenting that kind of information - and essentially failed.
Tridgell continues "Microsoft keeps claiming that it was asked to show
its source code to competitors, which is absurd. We are exclusively
interested in industry-standard interoperability information, such as
Interface Definition Language (IDL) files commonly used for these kind
of protocols. By our reverse-engineering, we were able to conclude that
the total Active Directory description would amount to roughly 30.000
lines, of which the admittedly best experts of the Samba Team were able
to reverse-engineer 13.000 over the course of six years. These IDL files
easily fit on a single floppy disk and would go a long way towards
providing the interoperability information requested."
"If Microsoft had shared that information when the Commission first
requested it, customers could already find small embedded devices in
stores for around 100 EUR that could offer the Active Directory
functionality implemented in Samba - Microsoft's implementation of these
protocols has hardware requirements ten times bigger. Think of a small
box the size of a router, compared to an entire PC," Carlo Piana, FSFE'S
lawyer on the case continues.
"The prevention of competition by Microsoft to leverage their desktop
monopoly into other areas imposes a stark price on all professional
computer users. Are we really to believe that Microsoft has no idea what
is running on 90% of the computers around this planet so they have to
call in their retired engineers to explain to them the working of
Windows XP?" Georg Greve, president of FSFE summarises. "Enough is
enough. Microsoft should stop playing games with the Commission and the
Court and leave the field of innovation of obstacles to competition and
freedom of choice!"
About the Free Software Foundation Europe
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSF Europe) is a charitable
non-governmental organisation dedicated to all aspects of Free
Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate
in a digital society. Therefore the freedoms to use, copy, modify and
redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition -
allow equal participation in the information age. Creating awareness
of these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and
giving people freedom by supporting development of Free Software are
central issues of the FSF Europe, which was founded in 2001 as the
European sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation in the
United States.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/