The battle between the European Commission and Microsoft entered a new phase on Wednesday with the appointment of professor Neil Barrett as a Commission "trustee" charged with ensuring that Microsoft complies with the remedies imposed after it lost its antitrust case with the EU last year.
Barrett, a UK computer scientist and expert in computer security, has been appointed by the Commission as a "Monitoring Trustee" for the commission with responsibility for "ensuring that Microsoft complies in full" with the 2004 antitrust ruling. He is also expected to provide "impartial expert advice to the Commission on compliance issues".
Barrett's appointment was announced on the same day that Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive office, entered talks with the Competition Commissioner, Neelie Kroes.
The Commission took the unusual step of releasing a statement that it would not be releasing a statement about the meeting between Kroes and Ballmer, saying only that it was taking place under the "normal course of relationships" between Microsoft and the Commission.
The Commission ruled in March 2004 that Microsoft had abused its near monopoly in PC operating systems by leveraging it onto the markets for work group server operating systems and for media playing software. The Commission imposed a fine of 497m (£337m) on Microsoft and required the company to implement a series of remedies. This includes the opening up of the communication protocols for Windows so non-Microsoft work group servers can achieve full interoperability with Windows PCs and servers.
The Commission admits that Barrett has a complex job ahead of him, particularly with regard to the interoperability licence — where Microsoft was recently accused of offering "pointless" concessions.
According to the Commission, Barrett's expertise "might be used in assessing whether Microsoft's protocol disclosures are complete and accurate, and whether the terms under which Microsoft makes the protocol specifications available are reasonable and non-discriminatory".
In June the European branch of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) accused Microsoft of freezing out Samba, the open source networking tool. Microsoft had agreed to make some server interoperability information available royalty-free, but declined the Commission's request to allow free software developers to publish the source code of products that have been written using this information. The EU has not yet accepted Microsoft's offer.
Barrett, who could not immediately be contacted for comment, is a columnist writing on security matters for ZDNet UK sister site silicon.com.
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