Microsoft conceded to 20 European Union areas of concern, in a letter sent to the EU last week, in regard to the EU executive’s order that the Redmond, Washington, software empire share data with rival server makers.
“We are studying it carefully,” said European Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd to reporters, after confirming they received the Microsoft letter on March 31.
The European Commission, which oversees competition in the EU, held Microsoft guilty of abusing Windows’s near-monopoly on operating systems “to crush competition,” and ordered Microsoft to disclose protocols to makers of work-group servers, or computers used to run printers and access files, according to published reports.
Microsoft proposed to extend evaluation periods for potential licensees, lower evaluation fees, offer custom versions to customers who do not want the all-in-one kind of licensing, and charge lower, more flexible royalties while distributing protocols astride open source programs without giving up its own intellectual property secrets, the reports said.
"Of the 26 areas where the Commission had concerns,” said an unidentified Microsoft spokesman to reporters April 4, “we have accepted and offered proposals to address the concerns on 20 of these issues. Of the six that remain, Microsoft also feels it has made significant progress but on those it will be a matter of working through them with the Commission as soon as possible."
The EC also slapped Microsoft with a $640 million fine in 2004 and ordered it to make a version of Windows that does not include the Windows Media Player audiovisual program.
The Commission, which polices competition in the European Union, also last year levied a record fine of $640 million (500 million euros) on Microsoft, and ordered it to make a version of Windows without its Media Player audiovisual software.
