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European IP Bulletin, Issue 29, February - Technology

Technology

11. Microsoft Agrees to Licence Windows Source Code

Software giant Microsoft announced, on 25 January 2006, that it is prepared to disclose portions of its Windows source code to allow rival firms to develop compatible programs, though only for an undisclosed licensing fee. Microsoft has proposed this arrangement in order to meet an antitrust ruling given by the European Commission in March 2004. Microsoft has previously opened up source code to a restricted list of customers and governments, but never to direct competitors.

Microsoft already offers 12,000 pages of technical documents and 500 hours of free technical support to anyone applying for a licence. Companies making software which interacts with Microsoft servers may use this information to make their products compatible with Microsoft products. Such licence-holders will now also get to look at the source code, but will not have the right to publish the code or include it in their own products.

The European Commission ruled in March 2004 that Microsoft had abused its dominant market position in PC desktop operating systems to exert its influence in the server software market. Microsoft was fined a record €497 million and was forced to make several key changes to its business practices. Convinced that Microsoft was proving intransigent about sharing data with competitors, the European Commission in December 2005 threatened to fine Microsoft up to €2 million a day for failing to obey.

However, while Microsoft has claimed that their recent move goes beyond the Commission’s requirements, rival companies have said the announcement is nothing but a ploy that will see the arguments stretch on into the future. Further, Microsoft’s rivals believe that large amounts of the source code that Microsoft will disclose will be useless, and that without a roadmap teaching how to use the code, a software engineer will not be able to design interoperable products.

Microsoft's offer has also been criticised as being designed to lock out open-source software. According to opponents, source code is the last thing that an open-source project would want access to. Open-source licences require that the software does not include any material with other legal encumbrances, such as patents or copyrights. If a contributor to an open-source project had viewed proprietary source code, the owner of the code could allege that the contributor had copied that code.

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