[Am-info] Microsoft screws over the DOJ and the states who sued.

[Gene Gaines]

Heck.  Not a big deal.  Won't affect any of us.
Just the competitors to Microsoft.
And if we are careful to use only Microsoft products,
who cares about their competitors anyway?

See below.

Gene Gaines



From=20/.
Posted by timothy on Tuesday October 12, @09:19AM
from the lock-in-now-to-avoid-lock-in dept.

grcumb writes "As part of the DoJ Anti-trust settlement,
Microsoft was ordered to provide freely available documentation
for its communications protocols. InfoWorld is reporting that
not only are they late in delivering the required APIs, but it's
because they want to convert everything to the read-only Web
Archive (MHT) format, which can only be viewed in MSIE.
InfoWorld reports that, "In July, Microsoft said it would
complete revisions of the documentation required by the court in
the autumn, a season generally reckoned to include the months of
September, October and November in North America, but may now
have to extend work on a beta or test version of the new
documentation into December...." So we have to wait longer for a
format that makes the content harder for developers (developers!
developers!) to use. Maybe they didn't read the documentation
..."

The InfoWorld article is here:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/10/11/HNmshaggle_1.html?source=3Drss&ur=
l=3Dhttp://www.infoworld.com/article/04/10/11/HNmshaggle_1.html

Government, Microsoft haggle over documentation
Microsoft is behind schedule in complying with court order to document its =
proprietary protocols

By Peter Sayer, IDG News Service        October 11, 2004=20

Microsoft (Profile, Products, Articles) Corp. is behind schedule
in complying with a court order to document its proprietary
communications protocols, according to U.S. authorities
monitoring its behavior. It also plans to release the documents
in a file format that cannot be annotated, and can only be used
with Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, they said in a
report published Friday.

Microsoft will review the documentation format and suggest
alternatives within 60 days, it said Friday in a report authored
with the U.S. Department of Justice, 16 states and the District
of Columbia, the plaintiffs in the U.S. government's antitrust
case against the company.

The joint status report is one of a series requested regularly
by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to
monitor Microsoft's compliance with the final judgment in the
antitrust case. The judgment requires Microsoft to document and
license its software communications protocols, and to revise the
terms under which it licenses its Windows operating system to PC
makers, among other things.

In July, Microsoft said it would complete revisions of the
documentation required by the court in the autumn, a season
generally reckoned to include the months of September, October
and November in North America, but may now have to extend work
on a beta or test version of the new documentation into
December, it said in the report Friday.

The plaintiffs have three main areas of concern about the
documentation.

First among these is that Microsoft, asked to open up and
document the interfaces to its communication protocols for
licensees, has chosen to issue the documentation in a
rights-protected file format called MHT, readable only with its
own Web browser, Internet Explorer. This means licensees can
neither annotate nor effectively search the information,
according to the plaintiffs.

Microsoft defended its choice, saying it had put "very
substantial effort" into converting all the documentation into
MHT format because it can handle large documents and can secure
the documentation. Microsoft said that it has published the
specification for MHT and that it offers a free software
development toolkit for the digital rights management system,
enabling anyone to develop a new software application to decode
and read the files using another browser.

The plaintiffs also questioned the completeness and accuracy of
the documentation, saying that it was of the utmost importance
that Microsoft address the issue over the next 60 days.

Finally, the plaintiffs highlighted the complex and error-prone
system for distributing the documentation over the Internet.
Microsoft has agreed to send the documentation to licensees on
CD or DVD, it said.

Microsoft has agreed to continue working on the documentation to
meet the plaintiffs' concerns, even after this round of
improvements is complete, the plaintiffs said in the report.

The Redmond, Washington, company now has 19 licensees for its
communications protocols, it said in the status report. Two have
signed up since the last report was published in July: Realm
Systems Inc. and Blue Coat Systems Inc.

The plaintiffs also raised continuing concerns about other
Microsoft licenses.

When Microsoft licenses PC makers (OEMs, or original equipment
manufacturers in Microsoft terminology) to install Windows on
machines they manufacture, it often grants them a discount in
order to provide them with funds to help with their marketing.
Under its Market Development Agreement (MDA), Microsoft requires
that the advertising take a certain form in order to qualify for
the agreement, including that advertisements include a tagline
such as "(OEM) recommends Windows XP (Overview, Articles,
Company) Professional." At the request of the plaintiffs,
Microsoft has agreed to clarify in the MDA that advertisements
for PCs sold without Windows need not include this tagline, and
that PCs sold with more than one operating system, including a
non-Microsoft operating system, may also include language
recommending other operating systems. Microsoft did not comment
on this provision.

Contracts for Microsoft's .Net Framework require that licensees
ask Microsoft for permission before publishing benchmark testing
results for the framework. Since this information could be key
to effectively comparing Microsoft products with those of its
competition, and the license provision could be used to prevent
such comparison, the plaintiffs asked Microsoft to change it.
Microsoft agreed to modify it to require only prior notice from
licensees of their intent to publish, so that it can attempt to
reproduce the results itself. "Microsoft does not object to
benchmarking of non-Microsoft software against the .Net
Framework," it said in the report.

The plaintiffs also made moves to incorporate the state of
Massachusetts into their information-sharing and monitoring
group. Massachusetts did not settle its case against Microsoft
at the same time as the others, and has only recently decided to
participate in the plaintiffs' joint enforcement activities.