Earlier this week Microsoft said that it would not appeal a EC court order to immediately implement antitrust sanctions, although it still hopes to overturn last year's antitrust ruling. To comply with the ruling, Microsoft has agreed to grant licences to rival makers of server software to allow them to write applications that can "achieve full interoperability" with Windows client and server operating systems. This licence must be granted on "reasonable and non-discriminatory terms," according to an EU statement.
The proposed licence, called the WSPP Development Agreement, requires the payment of royalties to Microsoft to grant licensees the right to use Microsoft technical documentation to implement Microsoft server protocols, according to licence information on the Microsoft Web site.
But, Carlo Piana, a partner at Milan law firm Tamos Piana & Partners, which represents FSF Europe, said the agreement is not compatible with free software and it is hoping that the EC will ask Microsoft to revise it.
"The conditions are unreasonable and discriminate against free software -- it is impossible for a product under GPL to agree to this licence," said Piano. "We are trying to lobby the commission to change this."
Free software organisations cannot sign the Microsoft licence as it requires royalty payments for every copy sold and stipulates that programs which are built using the licensed information are closed source, according to Piano.
He said this will particularly affect Samba, an open source software package that allows Windows files and printers to be shared by Unix and Linux systems.
"The agreement requires a per-copy licence -- any time you sell a product you must pay a royalty," said Piano. "This prevents Samba from accessing the scheme as they have no way to control the number of copies distributed and don't know how many copies have been distributed."
If Samba is not able to license the agreement, it will be difficult for it to continue to remain interoperable with Microsoft, according to Piano. "Samba is the only alternative now for having different operating systems access Microsoft NT or 2000 servers," said Piano. "This [licence] forecloses the only alternative."
Microsoft has been unable to provide a copy of the full licence agreement but did say that the licence can be used by anyone. "The licence offer the same terms to all -- anybody who wants to take the licence is free to do so," said a Microsoft spokesman.
ZDNet UK's Ingrid Marson reported from London. For more coverage from ZDNet UK, click here.
'All licencees get the same terms", huh?
Gee, I wonder if Microsoft constructed the licence in such a way so that it _couldn't_ be used by GPL-based Samba. Samba is, afterall, the only effective competition for Microsoft in the CIFS/SMB/Active Directory space.