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Last week, Microsoft and the EU each announced that they had reached a proposed settlement of the various anticompetition law violation claims that had been brought against Microsoft by the EC. Typically, and as an afterthought, most of the stories written so far focus on browser issues, at most adding a brief mention that a settlement has also been provisionally reached relating to "another" dispute, this one relating to interoperability. That's a shame, because it's an important issue, and the answers are murky.
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While the browser question is certainly important, it is in fact in many ways far less important than the interoperability. After all - the primary benefit for consumers under the browser settlement is that they can choose their favorite browser when they first boot up their new computer, as compared to investing a few extra clicks to download it from the site of its developer - as they can already do now. Interoperability, of course, goes far deeper. There's no way that you can make one program work the way you really want it to with another unless it comes out of the box that way, or unless you have not only the ability, but also the proprietary information, to hack it yourself. And if both programs don't support the same standards, well, good luck with that.
So what exactly did Microsoft promise to the EC, regarding interoperability? Let's use ODF as a reference point and see. Full Story |
