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Microsoft continues to earn the ire of the EU. The constant back and forth has seen promises of change from the company, hundreds of millions dollars demanded in fines, threats of more fines and threats of software lockouts. Now, Microsoft has 8 days to come into compliance with the EU's requirements to hand over protocol information to their competitors, in the interest of a stable market.

The biggest contention here is Microsoft's built-in incompatibility with other technologies, which, for better or for worse, influences people's buying decisions. Though they threatened to delay Vista or perhaps even refuse releasing it in some areas of the EU, they quickly backed down from that and supposedly will offer more “region-customized” distributions. That isn't enough to satisfy the EU, who want to see 3rd parties be given the information they need to create competing software using various ubiquitous Microsoft protocols. If the 8 days expires and nothing has been done, more fines will be added to the already 777.5 Million Euro tab.

Chris OFarrell wrote:What specifically are they talking about?

mmar wrote:Apparently, "workgroup servers", whatever that means. Sounds like Exchange, Sharepoint, various multimedia stuff (because the original ruling was mostly about the multimedia market), print and file servers etc. Protocols is also used synonymously with APIs.

There is a number of articles over on Ars on entire fiasco, but I've yet to find one which spells out exactly what is wanted. I'm pretty sure Microsoft has a very good idea at this point however.