By Sylvia Carr, 24 January 2006 12:40
NEWS
Microsoft has received three extra weeks to comply with the European Commission's antitrust penalties against the company. If it fails, it will once again face the threat of a fine accumulating at a rate of €2m per day.
In late December the EC said it may impose the fine by tomorrow (25 January) if Microsoft did not provide complete documentation which would allow competitors' workgroup servers to interoperate with Windows PCs and servers.
But yesterday a Microsoft spokesperson told Reuters it had received an extension to 15 February.
Microsoft has submitted instructions for server interoperability but in December the EC described them as "incomplete and inaccurate" and requested "complete and accurate specifications".
The EC found Microsoft guilty of abusing its dominant market position for PC and server operating systems and media players in its landmark March 2004 ruling, after which the penalties handed down included Microsoft providing the server interoperability documentation.
Comments
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1. Roger Huffadine
Exactly the same type of response in the USA = deferred penalties.
Gutless politicians who having made a judgement bow to the rich.
If I didn't pay a parking fine or my council tax I wouldn't get these deferments so why should we suffer twice, once from being manipulated by Microsoft and then again by gutless politicians?
2. anonymous
Why give them another extension?
Take the money and use it to fund open source projects.
I bet you'd get the info within hours.
3. anonymous
Interesting times! Despite all the hype over Linux the one thing that has held back adoption of Linux and others is the lack of ability to write to NTFS partitions. If this ruling brings that about MS's market position could be under real threat.