Critics started attacking the settlement as soon as the Justice Department and Microsoft announced the deal. They warned of potential loopholes in the deal, particularly concerning provisions protecting security. As part of the settlement, Microsoft is required to increase the amount of information it discloses about APIs and communications protocols vital for third-party software working well with Windows. During the antitrust case, government prosecutors argued that Microsoft withheld such information so its middleware programs would work better with Windows than those from other companies. Smith reported Monday that of the 272 APIs and 113 protocols disclosed as part of the proposed settlement, the company withheld only one for security reasons. "There has been a great deal of speculation by our competitors last November that we would withhold internal interfaces and protocols on the basis of" security, Smith said. The single API withheld has to do with Windows file protection. "Today's announcement makes clear that the (security) exceptions are not swallowing any of the rules," Smith said. With regard to APIs, Microsoft plans to release that information soon. "We are obligated to this by the time Service Pack 1 ships," Smith said. "What we are announcing today is that we will make this disclosure on 28 August." Microsoft will post information about the APIs on the Microsoft Developer Network Web site. While API information will be publicly available, the communications protocols must be licensed from Microsoft. Smith spent the longest portion of the conference call explaining the reasons why Microsoft chose to license the communications protocols rather than just making the information widely available. "There is very substantial intellectual property and valuable technology in these protocols," Smith said. These "represent a substantial part of the value of the Windows server technology". Microsoft will license the protocols on a nondiscriminatory fashion, but also charge a royalty for them. Smith described the prices as "very reasonable", but said Microsoft would not publicly reveal them. "Some of these have never been made available even in our Shared Source programs," Smith said. "Certainly we have never licensed these 113 (protocols) to our competitors in the past." Microsoft also has produced more than 5,000 pages of information for enabling third-party developers to take advantage using the protocols, Smith said. Microsoft's licensing program for the communications protocols will be task-based. The software giant has created 12 tasks, which include file sharing or streaming media. So developers would largely license just the protocols they need, although there are "50 base protocols people will need regardless of which task they want", Smith said. "There is no other company in the industry... that licenses its proprietary communications protocols to its competitors," Smith said. "So we will be standing in a different position from our competitors as these things launch." Still, Smith acknowledged that Microsoft had not precleared the licences with the Justice Department. Following Microsoft's Monday morning conference call the Justice Department issued an advisory indicating it was undertaking a thorough review to ensure the licences complied with the proposed settlement. "The Department is strongly committed to ensuring that the licences provide a mechanism for reasonable and nondiscriminatory access to the relevant technology in a manner consistent with the terms of the proposed final judgment," the advisory states. "The Department would benefit from industry input." "There really isn't a vehicle for them to preclear it yet", as the settlement has yet to be approved, Gray said. Modifying Windows
Much of Microsoft's other progress to date has been on technology. Last week, the company issued the third collection of bug fixes, or service pack, for Windows 2000. Service Pack 3 introduced new modifications that give computer makers and users more control over what middleware programs are the default ones. Later this month or in September, Microsoft is expected to release an even more sophisticated control as part of Windows XP Service Pack 1. "We are obligated to make that (service pack) available within a year of the agreement itself, so by November," Smith said. "We remain on track to release that this summer." The new control would allow PC makers or consumers to set default middleware programs competing with Internet Explorer, Windows Messenger, Windows Media Player, Outlook Express and Microsoft's version of the Java Virtual Machine. PC makers and users would also be able to hide access to Microsoft middleware, but not remove it from their computers. But beta testers and sources close to some PC makers reported problems with the new middleware control. For one, Microsoft has put the onus on software developers to modify their programs to work with the control. Without the updates, the new control cannot recognise the third-party middleware for the purpose of setting defaults. The control's location also is a problem. In late beta versions of the Windows XP Service Pack 1 the new feature is buried in the Add/Remove control within the operating system's Control Panel. Microsoft earlier had said that the middleware feature would appear more prominently, as the fourth option in the Windows XP Control Panel. While he wouldn't go into details, Smith said that Microsoft would make some changes to the middleware control in response to feedback from beta testers and the Justice Department. "We are making some additional adjustments to the product before it releases that we believe will make the user interface even more clear to computer users," Smith said. Microsoft's general counsel made it clear that Microsoft is making all these changes because it has to. Nothing is voluntary. "The changes we are making today are changes that we are obligated to make under the decree," Smith said. "I think it's fair to say we would not be licensing our communications protocols and disclosing all these internal interfaces in the absence of this proposed decree."
Think it's all over? The antitrust case against Microsoft can still go back the to Court of Appeals, and then there's the European Commission's investigation... See ZDNet UK's DoJ/Microsoft News Section for the latest headlines.
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