On the Remedy Phase of the Microsoft Antitrust Trial

Enforcement

Continuing Press

Appeals

Two states and two industry groups are appealing U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly's November 1st verdict: Massachusetts, West Virginia, the CCIA (Computer and Communications Industry Association), and the SIIA (Software and Information Industry Association).

The Verdict

The judge has issued her verdict. Links (thanks to slashdot): I reformatted the earlier proposed settlement and the final order into similar formats, then did a line-by-line comparison. My impressions of the changes: Unfortunately, the disclosure requirements were not modified to allow Open Source projects to take adavantage of the information disclosed, so Samba and Wine will have to go on reverse-engineering.

Also, versions of Windows other than plain old Windows XP are not covered, so Microsoft Windows XP Tablet Edition and Microsoft Windows XP Media Edition can have any amount of new APIs in them without having to disclose them to anyone.

Tunney Act Comments

Until January 28th, 2002, the DOJ accepted Tunney Act comments on the proposed settlement; see www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms-settle.htm.

The 47 "major" comments were posted by the DOJ at www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms-major.htm. 42 of them oppose the PFJ; 5 support it.

My Tunney Act comments are online here as 'On the Proposed Final Judgment in United States v. Microsoft' and at the DoJ as mtc-00028571.htm. About 2300 people signed an open letter to the DOJ (mtc-00028573.htm) supporting my comments.

Jeremy White, founder and CEO of Codeweavers, wrote "A confession of shame, and a call to action" about this issue from his vantage point in the business of providing Windows-compatibility for non-microsoft operating systems. It's well worth a read.

Here's the government's full reaction to the comments:

Press

Other Critiques of the Proposed Settlement

Important Trial Documents

Related Sites

Sites covering Be's antitrust suit against Microsoft

Sites covering Netscape's antitrust suit against Microsoft

Sites Covering the Private Class Action Suits against Microsoft

Sites covering Caldera's antitrust suit against Microsoft

Sites covering the 1994 antitrust case of US vs. Microsoft

Other antitrust cases against Microsoft

Standards Bodies and Windows APIs

No neutral standards body has yet officially defined the entire 13000 or so Windows APIs provided by current versions of Windows. There are, however, standards for the Win16 subset (ECMA-234) and part of the Windows APIs related to COM and DCOM (X-Open document AX01), as well as for Javascript and for parts of Microsoft.NET.

Independent Implementations of Windows APIs

Here are the non-Microsoft implementations of the Windows APIs that I'm aware of. None of them implement the entire 13000 or so Windows APIs yet.

Mailing List

I've set up a mailing list for discussion about what changes need to be made in the proposed settlement.

Dan Kegel
dank@kegel.com
24 Oct 2003
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