EU's hands may be tied in Microsoft case
eWeek | at | by Mike
European regulators may be powerless to give open-source competitors effective access to Microsoft's server protocols, despite antitrust rulings against the company and the EU's ability to impose massive new fines.
A core sticking point is the licenses' per-seat fees, which make them useless for open-source projects, according to open-source developers.
But where it comes to these crucial licenses, the Commission's hands may be tied. "If the Commission requires Microsoft to make its protocol licensing GPL [General Public License]-compatible, it could jeopardize their entire case," said Jonathan Zuck, president of ACT (the Association for Competitive Technology), which supports Microsoft's side of the case.