ECIS

Brussels, 29 March 2006: The European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) will give evidence as an Interested Party in the European Commission Hearing on Microsoft’s compliance with the Commission’s anti-trust Decision of March 2004 that begins tomorrow in Brussels.

In that Decision, the Commission found Microsoft to have abused its dominant position in client PC operating systems over a period of years in order to gain competitive advantage in the work group server operating systems market. This has resulted in reduced innovation and higher prices for consumers.

To end this abuse and restore effective competition in the work group server market, the Commission Decision requires Microsoft to disclose the information necessary for competitors to develop fully interoperable products. In December 2004, the European Court of First Instance ordered Microsoft to comply immediately. In December 2005 the Commission issued Microsoft with a formal Statement of Objections for continuing failure to do so.

“There has never been any doubt about the precise nature and scope of Microsoft’s obligations under the 2004 Decision,” said Simon Awde, Chairman of ECIS.

“Microsoft must make available ‘protocol specifications’ of a quality that enables competitors to develop fully interoperable work group server products. In fact, Microsoft discloses just this kind of information when it suits its strategic interest. Web Services is a good example. The current disclosures simply do not yet approach this standard of quality.”

“Industry wants nothing more than to achieve interoperability as soon as possible to restore consumer choice and competition on the merits in the work group server market. Two years after the Commission Decision, we are still not there,” Awde concluded.

The European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) has joined the Open Document Format Alliance (ODF Alliance). The ODF Alliance works globally to educate policymakers, IT administrators and the public on the benefits and opportunities of the OpenDocument Format, to help ensure that government information, records and documents are accessible across platforms and applications, even as technologies change today and in the future.

The OpenDocument format (ODF) is an open XML-based document file format for saving and exchanging editable office documents (including memos, reports, and books), spreadsheets, charts, and presentations. OpenDocument was developed as an application-independent file format by OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), a vendor-neutral standards organization. OASIS submitted the OpenDocument Format specification to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) on 30 September 2005 for ratification. This process is presently ongoing.

The ODF specification is advanced by OASIS, and is a genuine vendor-neutral, open standard specification. It is available for implementation and use free of any licensing, royalty payments, or other restrictions. ODF has been an approved OASIS standard since May 2005, and has been implemented by multiple vendors in a variety of products. Further, the ODF specification is available for use by any developer, including proprietary software vendors as well as open source developers. See http://www.odfalliance.org/faq.html and more generally, http://www.odfalliance.org/.

Brussels, 22 February : The European Committee for Interoperable Systems, a broadbased information and communications technologies (ICT) industry association founded in 1989, today filed a complaint with the European Commission against a range of Microsoft business practices that threaten to deny enterprises and individual consumers real choice among competing software products.

The ECIS complaint asks Europe’s antitrust authority to put an end to practices that reinforce Microsoft’s existing monopolies and extend its market dominance into a range of existing and pre-announced future product areas, beyond the two that were the focus of the Commission’s 2004 Decision. Products cited in the ECIS complaint include Microsoft’s dominant ‘Office’ productivity applications.

“ECIS deeply regrets that strong antitrust law enforcement appears to be the only way to stop the sustained anti-competitive behavior of Microsoft,” said Simon Awde, Chairman of ECIS.

“Today’s complaint brings to the European Commission’s attention anti-competitive Microsoft practices in a growing number of areas. These include bundling and interface non-disclosure practices similar to those the Commission declared illegal in its 2004 Decision.”

The Commission’s 2004 Decision found that Microsoft had abused its Windows desktop operating system monopoly by bundling its own media player into it, and by withholding the interface information necessary for competing workgroup server operating systems to fully interoperate with Windows.

“The limits on Microsoft practices established in European antitrust law, most notably by the Commission’s 2004 Decision, now need to be rapidly and broadly enforced,” said ECIS Chairman Awde.

“We are at a crossroads. Multi-vendor market access, full industry-wide interoperability, and genuine price competition have become the essential conditions for competitiondriven growth, innovation, and choice in ICT markets. Will one dominant player be permitted to control those conditions, or will the rules that guarantee competition on the merits prevail, to the benefit of all?”

Brussels, 15 February : ECIS today confirmed its full support for the European Commission’s determination to compel Microsoft to comply with its Decision of March 2004.

“The record to date is very clear. So far, Microsoft has left the Commission no choice but to pursue the prescribed process for non-compliance,” said Simon Awde, ECIS Chairman. “We have not yet learned the detail of Microsoft’s final submission today, so at this point its 11th-hour announcement serves only to confirm that two years after the Commission Decision Microsoft still has not satisfied its disclosure requirements.”

“ECIS certainly hopes that Microsoft has used this last chance to make full server interoperability information available on fair terms for both proprietary software developers and the open source community. That is the only way to ensure competition on the merits in the European server software market, which is in everybody’s interest.”

Microsoft compliance : the record to date
Almost two years have now elapsed since the Commission Decision of March 2004, ordering Microsoft to provide the information necessary for the server software of other vendors to interoperate with the dominant Windows PC operating system as well as Microsoft’s own server software does. This information will ensure competition on the merits in the workgroup server software market.

Microsoft spent the remainder of 2004 trying to convince the European Court of First Instance to suspend the Commission’s order. That effort failed in December of that year, when the Court rejected Microsoft’s arguments.

In December 2005 – one full year after the Court’s rejection – Prof. Neil Barrett, the expert Trustee appointed by the Commission from a list proposed by Microsoft to oversee their compliance, still found Microsoft’s technical response to the inter-operability requirement to be “mainly useless”.

Prof. Barrett’s assessment left EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes no choice but to serve Microsoft with a formal Statement of Objections (S.O.) for non-compliance, setting a deadline of today, February 15th for final submission of the required information.

Microsoft’s response so far to that S.O. has been to seek media attention, notably through public criticism of Commission procedures and a media-directed but largely irrelevant offer to provide Windows source code.

Excerpts from Prof. Barrett’s assessment of previous Microsoft submissions
– “Any programmer or programming team seeking to use the Technical
Documentation for a real development exercise would be wholly and completely unable to proceed on the basis of the documentation. The Technical Documentation is therefore totally unfit at this stage for its intended purpose.”

– “The documentation appears to be fundamentally flawed in its conception, and in its level of explanation and detail… Overall, the process of using the documentation is an absolutely frustrating, time-consuming and ultimately fruitless task. The documentation needs quite drastic overhaul before it could be considered workable.”

– “The valuable content appears to be very limited and the information added is mainly useless. (The documentation is) not fit for use by developers, totally insufficient and inaccurate for the purpose it is intended.”

ECIS comments on Microsoft’s media responses to the 22/12/05 S.O.
Procedural issues : Microsoft responded to the S.O. with public accusations of procedural foul – notably lack of access to the Commission file. In fact, Microsoft has obtained full access to the relevant file, and can submit its own expert reports if it believes that the conclusions of the Trustee are wrong.

The Source Code announcements : At press conferences in Brussels on January 25th and yesterday, Microsoft has stressed that it will allow competitors to take a license to its proprietary protocols to consult their underlying source code.

Few details have been released, but it is clear that Microsoft refuses to give open source software developers (e.g., of Linux) any access to its protocols, let alone their source code. The offer is only to proprietary software developers.

It remains the case that no one has asked Microsoft to disclose source code. The Commission’s decision requires Microsoft to provide the specifications that ensure interoperability, not to disclose source code. This is for good reason:

• Access to source code is not necessary to ensure interoperability.
• Making access to source code available instead of providing adequate specifications shifts the cost of compliance from Microsoft to other software developers.
• As a rule, other vendors do not even want to see Microsoft source code for fear that their software engineers will be contaminated and that Microsoft will later launch legal reprisals (e.g., copyright infringement suits).