Microsoft Surrenders!

Is this the same company founded by a guy whose mother had to take him to a child psychlogist because litte Gates wouldn't do anything anybody said? Well, much water has flowed under the bridge since then, but it seems that history has been made. Microsoft has handed in revised interoperability information to the European Commission (EC). However, knowing M'Soft the way we do, there's gotta be a catch somewhere. There's just gotta be.

Under the 2004 anti-trust ruling Microsoft was required to hand in documents detailing the technical information required to create products which interoperate with Microsoft work group servers. Microsoft appealed the decision but lost in December 2004.

Microsoft has missed several deadlines to submit the information since then, and in July 2006 was fined €280m for doing so. In July it submitted some documents and it is these which have now been improved. Some 8,500 pages of documents have been lodged with the EC.

The documents will be reviewed by monitoring trustee Neil Barrett. They can also be inspected by potential licensees.

The EC said: "The commission will decide in due course whether or not Microsoft is in compliance with the obligation to provide complete and accurate technical documentation taking into account comments from the potential licensees and advice from the trustee."

For its part, Microsoft said in a statement: "This is an important milestone. The trustee and Microsoft have now completed the technical review and edits to the more than 100 documents, totalling 8,500 pages, that we submitted in July of this year, in accordance with the deadline established by the commission."

The software giant said it will continue to work closely with the Commission to ensure full compliance. It said the submission and revision of documents involved over 300 engineers and technical writers.

The statement ends: "the documentation is now available for review by any potential licensee, and we look forward to receiving feedback from the industry."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/23/ms_revises_interop/