Microsoft insists it has complied with EU demands
Microsoft stood firm against the European Commission today, insisting the company has fully complied with demands to open up its Windows operating systems to its rivals.
The US software giant responded to a Commission ultimatum with a defiant statement accusing Brussels of ignoring the company’s efforts to relax its software monopoly.
The Commission has threatened daily fines of €2m from February 18 unless Microsoft complies with a landmark Commission decision nearly two years ago citing abuse of a dominant market position.
The Commission ruling in March 2004 fined Microsoft about €500m and ordered it to “unbundle” its Media Player software packages. Microsoft was also ordered “to disclose complete and accurate interface documentation which would allow non-Microsoft work group servers to achieve full interoperability with Windows PCs and servers”.
Two failed appeals and a final Commission deadline later, Microsoft this afternoon issued a statement making clear it believed it had done everything necessary.
In particular Microsoft says its offer of thousands of pages of technical specifications enabling rivals to develop Windows-compatible software complies with the Commission’s demands.
“Microsoft has complied fully with the technical documentation requirements imposed by a 2004 European Commission decision, and the Commission has ignored critical evidence in its haste to attack the company’s compliance,” said Microsoft’s formal 75-page response.
“Hundreds of Microsoft employees and contractors have worked for more than 30,000 hours to create over 12,000 pages of detailed technical documents that are available for license today. In addition Microsoft has offered to provide licensees with 500 hours of technical support and has made its source code, related to all the relevant technologies, available under a reference license,” the company said.
Microsoft said the Commission had “disregarded evidence and denied due process” to the company.
Today’s dossier was accompanied by an independent expert report authored by five computer science professors in the UK and Germany which claims that the “interoperability information” provided by Microsoft to its rivals “meets current industry standards”.
Last December the Commission dismissed the technical documentation on offer as so complex as to be of little practical benefit to Microsoft’s rivals.
Part of today’s final response from the company includes easier indexing and better search methods, improving the “usability” of the technical data.
The Microsoft dossier met today’s February 15 deadline – giving the Commission the rest of the week to study it in detail before deciding whether to trigger the massive daily fines as threatened on February 18.
