"We think this has gone far enough," says Carlo Piana, who represents
the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) in front of European
Court. "Waiting for Microsoft to come up with terms that reinstate
competition seems a complete waste of time. We have therefore begun
working on terms that would implement what the European Commission
sought to achieve with its ruling and what the European Court upheld."
"The Samba team has over 12 years of experience of working to
interoperate with Microsoft software. We have worked for many years in
the area of Workgroup server software," Jeremy Allison of the Samba
Team explains. "We know exactly what information is needed to at least
restore the possibility of competition. So we will put that experience
to good use in helping the European Commission."
"Microsoft has behaved much like unruly children who throw themselves
to the ground and have to be dragged along every step of the way,"
Georg Greve, president of FSFE says. "Since Microsoft seems unwilling
to get up and walk, we will help the Commission to bring Microsoft to
its feet and move towards reestablishing competition. If they keep
dragging their feet, the Commission should end this unworthy spectacle
and ultimately fine Microsoft with 5% of the net turnover per day of
the relvant market for each day they are not in compliance."
The European Union antitrust case has been going on for years now. All
the time, Microsoft has been dragging its feet, seeking to block and
slow down the European Commission investigation and restoration of
competition at each and every turn.
And even after receiving a fine by the Commission that broke all
records, Microsoft spent several times that sum to solicit supporters
away from the European Commission while appealing at the European
Court to avoid giving competitors the information needed to achieve
interoperability.
The European Court was not fooled by these tactics and ordered
Microsoft to comply with the terms of the European Commission
immediately. In response to this, Microsoft offered a licensing
agreement that was designed to create further obstacles for
competition.
The European Commission has now recognized this officially, again
asking Microsoft to please allow competition. Over the past years, the
European Commission has indeed shown an almost unbelievable amount of
patience with Microsoft, a fact the software giant has overabused.
Now it will be time for the Commission to actively ask Microsoft to
implement remedies and terms that will be able to restore competition.
Failure to implement them and further delays should not continue at the
expense of the European economic region.
The European Commission should set a final deadline for Microsoft to
comply with its ruling and the European Court decision. If Microsoft
keeps playing for time, the Commission should impose the maximum
possible fine of 5% of the net turnover per day of delayed compliance
on the relevant market.
"Microsoft has abused the patience of Europe for years now," Georg
Greve concludes. "They should come into compliance or compensate for
the damage they cause. Given their behaviour during the past years and
their extraordinarily deep pockets, to which Europe contributed no
little amount, 5% seems indeed adequate."
About the Free Software Foundation Europe:
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a charitable
non-governmental organisation dedicated to all aspects of Free
Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate
in a digital society. Therefore the Freedoms to use, copy, modify and
redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition-
allow equal participation in the information age. Creating awareness
for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and
giving people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are
central issues of the FSFE. The FSFE was founded in 2001 as the
European sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation in the
United States.
Further information: http://www.fsfeurope.org
If you would like to receive our press releases regularly please
subscribe to our mailinglist at
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/press-release.
Thank you very much for your interest.
--
Joachim Jakobs <jj(a)office.fsfeurope.org>
Press Speaker - FSF Europe (http://fsfeurope.org)
Heinrich-Heine-Str. 3, 67134 Birkenheide (Tel: +49-179-6919565)
Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom! (http://www.fsfe.org)
EUROCITIES is the network of some 100 major cities within the
EU: Norway, Switzerland, Central and Eastern Europe and the New
Independent States (NIS). Eurocities was established in 1986,
there are over 100 million citizens in its member cities.
Catherine Parmentier is Chief Executive Officer of EUROCITIES.
Dear Mrs Parmentier,
The European Council and European Commission are trying to introduce a
legal basis for software patents in Europe. This would expose European
cities to uncalculable and unforseeable risks due to software patent
litigation expenses. That is why we hope you will join us in fighting
these employment and innovation killers.
In addition, city councils throughout Europe do have to overcome the
same difficulties: The number of those who depend on social welfare is
increasing, budgets ar decreasing and citizens expect public services to
provide a better quality than ever before. These apparently
contradictory goals shall be reached by a conversion of the formerly
labour-intensive administration tasks into automated electronic
procedures and structures -- not only within a single administration,
but also between different public services, administration to
citizens and administration to business.
The well known buzzword for this is "eGovernment".
Standardised structures and procedures which are defined and
implemented as the default software to be used across local structures
and administration provide and ideal territory for software patent
litigation claims: Potential claims reach from the grounds of basic
functionality, such as networks, databases and file systems, to the
abstract methods and protocols providing the specific functionality.
As software patents do not require proof of concept or implementation,
the patentee can easily afford to file abstract methods and decide to
give or deny licenses arbitrarily.
This will become a significant cost factor for three main reasons:
Both software developers and users can be asked for almost any amount
of money the software patent holder chooses. Many developers and
companies will not be able to pay such demands and thus go out of
business, turning tax-payers into people in need of social welfare.
Finally, the price of the remaining software companies products will
increase because of the need to refinance their software patent expenses
and also because of reduced competition in the market.
The US Patent and Trademark Office has registered 1185 software
patents [1] dealing with "public service" and 19 explicitly dealing
with "city council" [2]. It is not necessary to mention these keywords
when applying for a software patent, so these are only the tip of the
iceberg and the list is expected to grow rapidly should software patents
become reality.
With the introduction of software patents, European cities would have
to be aware of dramatically increasing costs and an increasingly
difficult legal situation with high risks for the administration.
We would like to recommend that you contact Mr Christian Ude, the mayor
of Munich, who has also become aware of the damaging effects that
software patents have for public services. Should you have further
questions or need additional assistance, please do not hesitate to
contact us.
With kind regards
Georg Greve
President
Free Software Foundation Europe
About the Free Software Foundation Europe:
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a charitable
non-governmental organisation dedicated to all aspects of Free
Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate
in a digital society. Therefore the Freedoms to use, copy, modify and
redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition-
allow equal participation in the information age. Creating awareness
for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and
giving people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are
central issues of the FSFE. The FSFE was founded in 2001 as the
European sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation in the
United States.
Further information: http://www.fsfeurope.org
[1]
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fneta…
[2]
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fneta…
--
Joachim Jakobs <jj(a)pr-profi.com>
PR-Berater, www.pr-profi.com
Heinrich-Heine-Str. 3, Tel.: 0179/6919565
67134 Birkenheide
1. Fellowship of FSFE announced
2. Comments on WSIS/WGIG papers
3. Wilhelm Tux hits the apple
4. Software patents: the battle continues...
5. Microsoft tries to bypass European Court decision
1. Fellowship of FSFE announced
After months of preparation and much hard work, the FSFE presented the
Fellowship program at this year's FOSDEM event in Brussels. For a
yearly fee of 120 Euro (60 Euro for students) you can become a fellow
of FSFE and support its work politically, financially and through your
activities.
The Fellowship is a community with its own web portal where fellows
can post blogs, share experiences in foras, and keep up to date with
the latest news. Every fellow gets an email address in the fsfe.org
domain to publicly display his or her support for Free Software.
As a practical feature to strengthen their privacy and security, all
Fellows also receive a unique, personalised OpenPGP-compliant
SmartCard programmed and handled by Werner Koch, author of GnuPG and
Head of Office of the FSFE. The card contains keys for electronic
signatures, for encryption, and for state of the art secure key-based
authentication.
During the past months, we worked on the planning and designs of the
Fellowship -- all designs were done pro-bono by the companies
futurebrand, who did the imagery and SmartCard, and artundweise.de,
who did the web page design.
Special thanks go to the global Plone community that helped us quickly
and competently with getting the site up within a little more than a
week -- an amazing feat. Special thanks go to Russ Ferriday for help
with the layout, as well as Riccardo Lemmi from reflab.it and Holger
Lehmann from catworkx.de, who helped us with the not-entirely-trivial
registration form.
The Fellowship will be very important to give Free Software and those
who actively work for digital freedom the necessary weight and
resources. So if you have not yet signed up, please do so at
http://www.fsfe.org
2. Comments on WSIS/WGIG papers
On 1st February 2005, the United Nations Working Group on Internet
Governance (WGIG) published a set of 20 issue papers concerning
"Internet Governance." Together with its associate organisation La
Fundación Vía Libre, the Free Software Foundation Europe managed to
comment on the paper on "Cyber security, cybercrime", which, among
other things, asked to outlaw the art of finding elegant solutions to
non-obvious problems ("hacking") and the paper on "Intellectual
Property Rights", which for instance asked to "balance human rights
with the interests of rights-holders."
For more information, see
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/wsis/
3. Wilhelm Tux hits the apple
The Swiss associate organisation of the FSFE, Wilhelm Tux, shows
considerable activity: In Berne, Switzerland, an event called "LOTS"
(Let's Open The Source) was organized and Georg Greve was invited to
hold the keynote about Free Software. Also, several members of Wilhelm
Tux joined the FSFE booth at FOSDEM.
4. Software patents: the battle continues...
Politicians from all countries and of all parties show an ever
increasing awareness of the potential damage an introduction of
software patents in Europe would do to economy. While the Commission
persists in the current directive draft and the Council still hasn't
finally approved its position, the European Parliament officially
demanded a restart of the whole process to get out of the current
deadlock situation.
5. Microsoft tries to bypass European Court decision
As reported in earlier newsletters, Microsoft has been asked to
publish technical information about the interfaces to their Windows
Operating System to enable competitors (most notably the Samba Free
Software project) to reach Windows interoperability. However, the
licensing terms that Microsoft now has published for these documents
exclude Free Software in general and the GNU General Public License in
particular. The FSFE will, together with the Samba team, continue to
fight for just and reasonable conditions.
You can find a list of all FSF Europe newsletters on
http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html