The European Commission has rejected another Microsoft
plan to comply with an anti-trust ruling, this time over shared
server protocols.
Microsoft had planned to charge rival companies and developers a
fixed amount for each server they run its workgroup server
protocols on. But the Free Software Foundation Europe organisation
has won over the commission to its view that the plan would be
unfair to Microsoft’s rivals.
The foundation argued that users of the shared protocols would
not know how many servers would use the code, as the nature of
software development meant that code under development had to be
shared around.
It also claimed that Microsoft’s terms would not allow products
that used the shared code to be released into the open source
community.
The commission had previously fined the company around £360m for
abusing its market position.
It had also ordered the company to share its workgroup server
protocols so competitors could more easily develop software to work
in the Windows environment, and to bring out a version of Windows
XP without Windows Media Player bundled.
The latest veto follows the rejection of Microsoft’s plan to
label the Media Player-less Windows "Reduced Media Edition". The
commission believed the name would put customers off buying it.
Microsoft is still working on a suitable name.
The company said it was studying the commission’s latest
rejection.