MS Offers to License Some Code for a Fee in Lieu of Documentation (Groklaw)
It will be interesting to see if the EU Commission accepts the offer. All I can think of is whether there will be SCO-like infringement lawsuits down the road against folks who looked at the code and then write code Microsoft might claim they copied from their licensed code. Please, someone else cover those lawsuits, if they happen."
Posted Jan 26, 2006 20:27 UTC (Thu)
by NightMonkey (subscriber, #23051)
[Link] (2 responses)
Makes one wonder why a person qualified to look and assess the code provided would ever want to do this, putting a big limit on their future life choices?
Posted Jan 27, 2006 14:55 UTC (Fri)
by GreyWizard (guest, #1026)
[Link]
Posted Jan 27, 2006 15:48 UTC (Fri)
by mikec (guest, #30884)
[Link]
Without access to the code, the only claim MS has is reverse engineering of unpatenable patented protocols and data structures...
If you think MS is unpleasant now while they are still generating mountains of cash, might I direct your attention to SCO to illustrate the behavior of companies with access to capital as they slide down into obscurity...
One issue with any huge steaming pile of undocumented code coming from someone else is that it amounts to obfuscation when it is released in bulk. This is the classic legal approach to an onerous request - an onerous response in the form of truckloads of paper with no indication of what is what...
I always assumed that the lack of NT source issues stemmed from:
Posted Jan 27, 2006 1:39 UTC (Fri)
by leonbrooks (guest, #1494)
[Link]
Posted Jan 29, 2006 22:44 UTC (Sun)
by jd (guest, #26381)
[Link] (2 responses)
Second, "code...for a fee" isn't opening up the protocols to competitors in order to resolve monopolistic conduct. Rather, it is maintaining a monopoly by depriving the competitors of resources (time, manpower, money) in order to get to where Microsoft was whenever the snapshot was made, but which Microsoft may have broken compatibility with at this time.
Then there's the matter of which code base is being released. An early beta of Windows 2000? A fully patched Windows 2003? Windows 2003 with clustering extensions? It's important, because different editions have different protocols, and those they do share will be in different stages of development.
It is quite clear that Microsoft has no intentions whatsoever of honoring the legal ruling, except in ways that don't involve it actually doing anything, and making a profit on the side. In that light, I would consider this to be an action that is wilfully in violation of the spirit of the ruling and right on the border of violating the letter of the ruling (though in a way that thay can reject the ruling outright at a later date, should they so choose, skewering all who took advantage of their "offer").
Nobody, when standing trial for a crime, has any business using the courts to not only evade punishment, but also PROFIT from the conviction AND use the conviction to commit further crimes.
In light of that, I would certainly urge the European courts to consider further fines for willful contempt and the abuse of the court ruling to carry out further anti-competitive actions.
Posted Jan 30, 2006 9:01 UTC (Mon)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (1 responses)
What I'd like to see :-) is the SAMBA folk asked to provide a test harness, and MS told that if their code doesn't pass testing, they can't ship it :-)
Cheers,
Posted Jan 31, 2006 23:59 UTC (Tue)
by xoddam (subscriber, #2322)
[Link]
And you should hope that none of these people who are granted access to this code come anywhere near to contributing code (or even ideas) to Your Favorite F/OSS Project, whatever that may be. This code will be incredibly potent poison to all who see it, in just th same way as the leaked Windows NT source code was.MS Offers to License Some Code for a Fee in Lieu of Documentation (Groklaw)
Can you cite a single example where any person or group was prosecuted or even sent a threatening letter from Microsoft for contributing to a free software project while having access to leaked NT source code? That would be news to me.Leaked NT source actually had impact?
The phrase "beyond reproach" comes to mind... MS Offers to License Some Code for a Fee in Lieu of Documentation (Groklaw)
a. obfuscation effect - see above
b. lack of interest in looking at the "wrong way to do it"
c. self control on the part of those of us who wish to "leave our options open"
Or perhaps more appropriately given the venue, "esca per il pollone" or "Köder für den Sauger".Sucker bait?
I hope the EU rejects this on common sense grounds. But, even if they lack common sense at times, it should be obvious that this does not meet the requirements. First, the code is being licensed for "read only", so it is unclear if they are even being authorized to make anything interoperable, which was the primary requirement.
The EU should double the fine for contempt
And I've seen somewhere, that apparently the EU said that "source code is not acceptable", so not only are MS not providing what was asked for, they're offering what was specifically pre-rejected.The EU should double the fine for contempt
Wol
Not only does Microsoft already use the smbtorture suite from samba.org, MS already *does* use Samba Project test harnesses!
they submit bug reports:
http://websvn.samba.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/branches/SAMB...