EU's Hands May Be Tied in Microsoft Case

European regulators may be powerless to give open-source competitors effective access to Microsoft's server protocols, despite antitrust rulings against the company and the EU's ability to impose massive new fines.
The European Commission has said a proposal submitted by Microsoft Corp. this week on implementing EU antitrust sanctions is the company's last chance to avoid new fines, which could amount to 5 percent of Microsoft's daily global sales.

The Commission ruled a year ago that Microsoft must offer a version of Windows without a bundled media player, and must allow competitors to license server communications protocols.

While the issues around unbundled Windows are understood to have been resolved, Microsoft's plan for licensing the server protocols has been repeatedly found wanting, and negotiations have dragged on for months.

A core sticking point is the licenses' per-seat fees, which make them useless for open-source projects, according to open-source developers.

But where it comes to these crucial licenses, the Commission's hands may be tied. "If the Commission requires Microsoft to make its protocol licensing GPL [General Public License]-compatible, it could jeopardize their entire case," said Jonathan Zuck, president of ACT (the Association for Competitive Technology), which supports Microsoft's side of the case.