FSFE, Samba: A triumph for freedom of choice and competition
FSFE’s official response to this morning’s ECJ’s ruling is now online:
“Microsoft can consider itself above the law no longer,” says Georg Greve, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).
“Through tactics that successfully derailed antitrust processes in other parts of the world, including the United States, Microsoft has managed to postpone this day for almost a decade. But thanks to the perseverance and excellent work of the European Commission, these tactics have now failed in Europe,” Greve continues.
Carlo Piana, FSFE’s legal counsel: “FSFE and the Samba Team welcome the decision of the court. This is a milestone for competition. It puts an end to the notion that deliberate obfuscation of standards and designed lock-in is an acceptable business model and forces Microsoft back into competing on the grounds of software technology.”
“The Samba Team would like to thank the European Commission for its outstanding job over the past years. Millions of users around the world will reap the rewards of their work,” comments Jeremy Allison, co-author of the Samba project. “This is a very important day for the Samba Team: we hope to finally compete on a level playing field, without being denied access to interoperability information. Samba would then be able to offer consumers real choice, with the benefits of software freedom.”
Volker Lendecke of the Samba Team: “Now that the court has decided, we will be watching closely what the exact licensing terms for the interoperability information are. It will be very important to make sure that the information is usable in Free Software, otherwise the great success the Commission has achieved here is severely harmed. Samba is one of the most important players in the workgroup server market, the market in which the comission wanted to restore competition.”
“This is a very good day for Europe, but it is only a step along the way. The recurrent theme for Microsoft’s behaviour over the past years is an apparent perception of interoperability as a threat to overcome,” summarises FSFE counsel Carlo Piana. “The most recent example was provided by MS-OOXML, which Doug Mahugh of Microsoft described as a commercially motivated response to the threat provided by the ODF ISO standard and the interoperability and choice it offers. Tactical, not technical considerations were the driving force behind Microsoft’s global efforts to manipulate national standardisation bodies into blind acceptance of MS-OOXML.”
FSFE president Greve concludes: “Today’s decision has set a very important precedent for the future. Secret manipulation of open formats and protocols has clearly been marked as unacceptable conduct. We now encourage the European Commission take up the recent antitrust complaint brought forward by ECIS. In a joint effort with the Samba Team and OpenOffice.org, the FSFE gladly offers its expertise to the European Commission for that investigation.”