The Free Software Foundation Europe expressed outrage on Thursday at Microsoft's criticism of the European Commission, and of the UK expert appointed to ensure that Microsoft complies with the antitrust ruling.
On Wednesday, Microsoft filed a response with the EC explaining why it believes it has complied with the antitrust ruling of 2004. In this filing , Microsoft alleged that evidence had been disregarded by the EC and its experts.
Microsoft also claimed that the Commission had denied it "due process in defending itself". The Commission was quick to deny these claims in their entirety.
In its filing, Microsoft said it had obtained "independent expert reports" which state that the software giant has provided complete and accurate interoperability information to the EU.
The FSFE, the European sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation, criticised Microsoft's attack on Barrett — pointing out that he was selected from a list of possible trustees provided by Microsoft.
"That Microsoft now questions the competency and integrity of a trustee they themselves helped appoint is outrageous. All the parties involved in the case found the trustee showed an intimate competence and understanding," said Carlo Piana, the lawyer representing FSFE on the case. "How do they now dare maintain that he is biased?"
Although Microsoft claims it has not been given enough time to respond to the EC's concerns, FSFE president Georg Greve believes that the opposite is true — that Microsoft has been allowed to drag its feet.
"We were forced to witness years of delays, stalling and playing for more time during which Microsoft has made no attempt to allow interoperability and competition with its competitors," he said. "Microsoft has behaved as if they consider themselves above the law and any decision by the European Commission. The aggressive stance they now take towards a Commission that was unbelievably patient with Microsoft further confirms that view."
Talkback
"Microsoft ... behaving as if it considers itself above the law"? Well, duh. What else is new?
Well, Microsoft positioned itself above the law. They got money, money gives power, and power can change the law, or at least trurn over opinions of lawmakers or law enforcement agencies. That is just being realistic.
Ahh..microsoft thinks it is above everything and everyone. That is what greed can do. If I new how to operate the use of Linux I'd dump microsoft in a heart beat.
Yes the attack on EC is just another day to microsoft,
they don't careand until Linux is easy to use they will never change but get worse.
Concerning Linux, Linux is very easy to use.
Concerning Microsoft, Microsoft will only react when forced to.
I hope the EU has understod that.
According to a US Judge Microsoft is a "war going company".
Microsoft does not care a bit about its reputation as that has never made any difference economically.
The problem with Microsoft is that it is a one man (plus a half) lcompany.
Microsof will change or dissapeare after Bill Gates.
For us, the consumers the only clever solution is to discard anything Microsoft.
For the EU and the US DoJ it is about sticking to the law and enforce it.
Logically the worst problem for Microsof is that the chare price has stalled and is at the same level as six years ago.
Ironically that pain (in the arse) for investors has helped Microsoft in its lobbying the USA..
EU / EC grants require basic standards of ethics and law-abidance. MS is clearly still operating on the wrong side of the law and has not corrected the situation, thus the noise from Redmond against the EU.
Could this ongoing legal activity be used as a means from prohibiting use of Microsoft products in EU-funded projects and initiatives? The guidelines clearly prohibit participation by partners who are inviolation of EU law. Since MS is obviously still in violation of EU law, that precludes their products in the funding.
The question is how to overcome the psychological dependence on MS products, the decisions based on the admiriation of Bill's personal wealth (rather than technical merits), and the grip MS has on EU documents (by holding the keys to the files).
Why wait for MS products to be banned? If you're competent with computers and head up a group (even if a small one) just go ahead and make the change. Demand from your suppliers they provide products that will work under Linux or a variant of BSD (even OSX is acceptable) or even Solaris. When people send you MS.doc files, write back to say please re-send in PDF because you cannot read MS.doc (you will make good friends at Adobe). If you supervise students, make them learn to use TeX/LaTeX (your document and the maths will be beautiful!) and rather than use MSExcel for making plots (I swear it produces the ugliest graphs I have ever seen) let your students learn to pay attention to their plots and use any number of free plotting tools. GNUPlot is one of my favorite (although it takes me ~15min to make a plot!) but recently I have been using 'KST' which works with KDE and it is very good for most types of 2D plots. At the moment I am designing new instruments and if a manufacturer cannot provide a component that runs on Linux, and is not willing to cooperate, I just go on to the next supplier.
Re: 'Anonymous, scientist'.
I've heard of making a rod for your own back, but that's ridiculous. A perfect example of an academic showing no practicability or common sense whatsoever.
I hope your pupils are grateful to you when they start their first day at work and have to learn to use Excel from scratch and endure the sniggers of their colleagues when a shift to Linux is suggested.
Yes previous poster.
And the people who made carts laughed at the new 'motorised cart' or motor car, shortly before going out of business.
Nothing new. After the trial involving Microsoft started, they discovered that they needed to pay the "campaign contribution" tax to avoid further action. So, they did. Thus, in the year 2000 "election", after Dubya essentially got picked by our Supreme Court (he damned sure wasn't elected), Microsoft had learned and had contributed to both major parties, just in case. It worked; Dubya's pick to head the Dept. of "Justice", i. e. John Ashcroft, let Microsoft pretty much totally off the hook. Now, M$ is trying to buy European politicians.
This is, perhaps, one of the good things to come out of what is an unfortunate general anti-Americanism trend in Europe. It seems that Europeans, especially Europeans in government positions, fear Dubya and his willingness to strong-arm other countries. As an American, I naturally don't care for anti-Americanism anywhere, but since my country's government is supporting the likes of Microsoft, Bechtel, Halliburton, etc., I can understand it.
Europeans, write your MP's and lobby like the dickens. Don't let Microsoft, or their software-patent allies, prevail there as they have here.
The position adopted by Microsoft all through is nothing new. The tactics of every PC leaving the shop floor loaded with windows and killing innovation by adopting it into the windows plarform and making it not interoperable are only too well known.
On top of all this, he is awarded the knighthood by the Queen. Time magazine gave a befitting citation. He is "the Philanthropist par Excellence".
What if he is exploiting the corporates? He has thrown back a good chunk of that money to the poor and needy which otherwise would not have been available.
But all the above arguments are true when we talk in terms of the money. All these and many other justifications would go out of the window when we consider the imapct "the Hitler of digitalspace" - an epitah awarded by opensource enthusiasts; have on lost opportunities for corporates and governments alike.
By turning their back on the immense opportunity offered by the Open Source movement, we are losing out on wonderful opportunities
It is high time that we understood the writing on the wall how much knowledge is contributeing to the economy of today as corraborated by recent articles appeared in leading Business Magazines of the world, dissecting the calculation of GDP and how investments in R&D and IT is rarely factored and the resultant skewness of the resullt on the performance of the leading econmy of the World.
The European Commission and its public "servants" appear to forget they are administrators, not judges or juries, and have an obligation or duty to be completely open in all their procedures and actions.
If the Commission required Microsoft to produce documents in this long running saga, then Microsoft and its shareholders worldwide have every right to access all and any documents in the matter.
In our national government the unelected permanent ministers (civil servants) are regulated (in theory at least) by the elected ministers. This level is sadly lacking in the European Community and I firmly believe that if such ministeriial oversight and responsible controlling were introduced then much of this sort of thing would not occur and either amicable agreement would be reached or the Courts would be asked to decide and make a point of law.
If the EC has nothing to hide, and it should not have, it should be perfectly willing to throw open its files. Refusal to do this can be construed as indicative of hidden or biased policy, administration and decisions.
Windows in it's progression of forms has been commercially developed by Microsoft, all financial risk of failure being taken by Microsoft investors. Is is a commercial operation which, because no one else has managed to produce an equivalent to compete, has become dominant in its field.
I personally don't like the way the basic Windows has the many "add ons" integrated into it and feel they should be supplied as requested extras to Windows purchasers to be added or removed at the purchasers will, together with other compatible extras.
What I dislike is the squealing from other companies who find it hard to compete - cut their prices, improve their quality and marketing and they will succeed without the kangaroo court action of the unelected beaurocrats of the EU.