You mentioned those. Just how high are they?
Well, if you're the one applying for a licence, Microsoft has proposed a royalty fee of 5 percent of your company's net revenue obtained from a software product that has used Microsoft's file and print protocols, and 2.5 percent if the protocols are used for an embedded product. The minimum royalty per server product sold or distributed is $80 (£42), with a maximum royalty of $1900. There is no minimum royalty payable for embedded products.
For the user and group administration protocols, Microsoft has split these into two categories: those that provide functionality equivalent to Microsoft's Domain Controller, which includes authentication, authorisation and the management of access to network resources such as applications and printers; and those that provide functionality equivalent to Microsoft's Global Catalog, which provides directory services.
Companies that use Microsoft's Domain Controller protocols for their product must pay a per-user royalty fee of $1.90 for every server sold. Companies that use Global Catalog protocols must pay a per-user royalty fee of $0.15 for every server sold. The minimum per-server royalty fee is $100, while the maximum is $600. If companies implement both Domain Controller and Global Catalog functionality they must pay royalties for both protocols.
That's a lot of money. Is Microsoft strapped for cash?
Well, in the 12 months to July 2004, it was making $100m a day.
And now it's looking to make more money for breaking the law? So surely Microsoft must be flush enough to give the open source guys a break? Do they have to pay royalties too?
No.
Well that's good, right?
Not really. The licence specifically excludes open source. Section 2.4 states: "The licenses granted in Section 2.1(a) do not include any license right, power or other authority to subject Licensed Server Implementations or derivative works thereof in whole or in part to any of the terms of any other license that requires such Licensed Server Implementations or derivative works thereof to be disclosed or distributed in source code form."
And this is the same Microsoft whose chairman Bill Gates recently lectured the industry that boosting interoperability "will be the only way for companies to make customers' lives easier"?
The very same.
OK, so what if I reverse engineer the protocols?
The licence does have a provision for 'independent software' which basically says that software entirely developed without any reference to Microsoft confidential information by those who have not had access to Microsoft confidential information for at least a year prior to development, is not covered by the licence.
That's nice of them.
Yes.
Talkback
As usual, a one sided deal to the extreme.
Excellent article!!
Great digest.
What a stupidly one-sided view of the entire issue. Perhaps you should write comedy instead of business reporting?
Hi my name mitsu_pit, I'm an Alien, I came all this way, but I think I'll go home - your planet sounds horrible.
protocols != applications. Microsoft, in its capacity as an OS house, must freely pass out the protocols which allow applications to run on that OS. If, in its capacity as an apps house, it refuses to do so, it is in the position of being an illegal monopoly. The obvious remedy is to require MS to split into (at least) two separate companies.. One, OS & the other, Apps.
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Charging a company for the privelege of writing apps to run on/with their OS is kind of like Ford charging an after market company for the privelege of making after market parts. Is that next?
Mr Anonymous Salesperson: Microsoft wrote that license, not ZDNet. If you feel that any part of it has been misrepresented in this article then why don't you explain precisely where and how?
Microsoft's behaviour is clearly outrageous. What right do their shareholders have to a return on Microsoft's intellectual property? The EU should force them to hand it over for free to the free software community. We all know that Brussels is always right. The author of this story is a brave warrior on behalf of the EU's campaign for freedom and fairness. Losers of the new Europe unite and rise up! We can succeed where the USSR failed.
Sarcasm or reverse psychology, Boris? I can't tell. But all the EU is asking Microsoft for is the complete API to be freely available. And having the API means that you can (finally) have an intelligent conversation with the piece of Microsoft technology that you have *already bought*. So Microsoft's share-holders *are* getting a return.
The article is too cynical for me to understand it as a non-native english speaker.
So much for objectivity in reporting..
WTF?
Microsoft is required to LICENSE their protocols, not provide charity.
Open source makes MS's protocol visible to non-licensees, which certainly wasn't intended in the original ruling..
So in summary, Adam S, you believe that no-one should be allowed to program on a Microsoft platform without Microsoft's explicitly licensed and fully paid-through-the-nose permission.
Hence all Windows applications must exist at Microsoft's *sufferance*, because Microsoft should be permitted to dictate whatever terms it pleases to its licensees as part of its own punishment.
You *do* realise that the EC was seeking remedies for anti-competitive business practices, right?
Adam S, despite what you may think, a protocol is not the source code of an application. It is a set of specifications which other developers can use to write software that interoperates with the implementing software.
So you think Microsoft should be able to charge huge royalties and dictate the terms to any operating system that wishes to talk to a Windows machine.
You have much to learn.
it would be an interesting exercise to calculate just what Microsoft thinks the value of these interface specifications are. Having done that, compare the figure to the cost of the entire product - methinks that the interface protocols licencing would be more expensive. If so, is Microsoft guilty of "dumping" the complete product into the EC market?
Just as a point of interest; for those that did not follow the appeal to the Court of First Instance (and why Microsoft lost). Microsoft tried to use the "intellectual Property" & "Trade Secrets" argument to protect the interface details of the API's - the judge asked why they had not been raised these arguments in the original case and summised that, as Microsoft had never exercised a licencing strategy, persued prosecution for use of or, for the reverse engineering of API's, that MS had not asigned them any real materilal value before and, as such, could not expect to do so now.
Looks like Bill Gates is still treating the rest of the world like idiots. Unfortunately, there are too many people willing to let him, like anonymous and others above. Talk about anticompetitive behaviour! You know, there is a better way (just look at the glorious new MacOS or even BeOS) , you just have been sucked into the MS vortex and can't operate without them now. And don't talk about the cost of changing...the cost of continuing with the MS ethos is already too high, what with Windows' continued upgrades, security flaws, patching, viruses, and built in obsolesence, it's just that people are always being told how much they need Windows, and how good it is. Good, my arse. What a pile of crap. And to think they are now finding ways to force us to pay for it? Bill Gates said a long long time ago that this was his plan: get people hooked and then figure out how to charge them for it...seems like he is only being true to his word, the devious little hitler.
hey, blue screen, my old friend... how come we keep meeting like this?