I heard the breaking news on RTE this morning that the EU upheld the decision that Microsoft abused its dominant position to “freeze out rivals in server and software products”.
At the end of the audio report, RTE’s Europe correspondant Sean Whelan added that Microsoft may appeal this decision.
What is amazing to me about this is that the original finding against Microsoft came in 2004. After a five year investigation. So, we have Microsoft abusing its position to crush rivals, a five year investigation resulting in a decision against Microsoft, an appeal, three years later the decision against Microsoft re-affirmed and now the chance of another appeal?
I’m far from familiar with all the ins and outs of this process but eight years after the investigation started, with two decisions against them, they may appeal again? How much longer is this process going to take to reach a conclusion?
I wouldn’t like to be one of the affected companies looking for justice.
Update I see Dennis Howlett has written this up too and the BBC are now covering it as well.
Tom, from what I’ve heard, MS has already paid the fine in full, and already complied with the ruling. They ship versions of XP and Vista without Media Player and they licence all their protocols.
Asking them to give their protocols away for free is plain wrong in my opinion and I’ve personally never had any issues with server interoperability between Windows and *nix.