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Originally Posted by jpb5151
The article is interesting, maybe the EU has a valid point.
From Yahoo's article:
"EU antitrust regulators fined Microsoft a record 497 million euros ($665 million) when they ruled a year ago that Microsoft abusively wielded its Windows software monopoly to lock competitors out of the market.
They ordered, among other things, that Microsoft share Windows server code with rivals so their products can better communicate on networks with machines that run Windows operating systems.
Microsoft decided it would provide the information through licenses, which Todd said the European Commission (news - web sites) felt were too expensive."
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Perhaps the article suffers from being incomplete. Microsoft’s server software (clients too) has what’s called an API or application programming interface. An API is a group of instructions and procedures for communicating with various elements of the server. The TCP/IP protocol is extremely well known at this point and programming for it doesn’t amount to much as programming goes. Microsoft also requires client licenses for clients to access the server, plus if the server is an Exchange (email) server, they also require client licenses to access the server for mail. This list of client licenses may go on depending on what functions the server does. Database programming techniques on Windows servers has been known for years, and there are a number of known flat file and SQL techniques that are well developed for databases running on Windows. So this whole issue doesn’t make sense except perhaps as a deception on the part of the EU....