Microsoft lags in antitrust compliance, U.S. says

Microsoft is falling behind in meeting certain obligations under its antitrust agreement with the U.S. government, the Bush administration said.

The criticism, leveled by federal and state prosecutors in a document filed Monday with U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, largely surrounded the company's progress in developing technical documentation for developers who license the Microsoft Communications Protocol Program.

Microsoft started the program as part of its efforts to comply with a 2002 consent decree reached with the government.

Since its last court appearance in mid-November, Microsoft has "fallen significantly behind" in responding to concerns raised by a technical committee charged with overseeing the program's documentation project, according to the Washington, D.C., court document.

The project, known as Troika, is intended to be an automated system that can validate the accuracy of the technical documentation by comparing it to actual network traffic, Microsoft has said. The software giant originally expected to complete the project by February 2006.

Microsoft must "dramatically increase the resources devoted to responding to technical documentation issues," the number of which continues to grow, the prosecutors said.

Microsoft said in a statement that it is "working hard to resolve the concerns" raised by regulators.

"In our filing Jan. 17, we detailed the efforts we've made to increase the speed of our responses to technical documentation issues found by the Technical Committee," Microsoft said. "We also underscored our commitment to expend whatever resources are necessary to address these issues, including hiring as many qualified people as we can find to accomplish these highly specialized tasks."

The software maker also noted that 26 companies have taken licenses for its communications protocols and a dozen products have been shipped that use Microsoft technology.

The Justice Department and Microsoft are expected to file their quarterly status report on Feb. 8, and both parties are due in court on Valentine's Day for a status conference before Judge Kollar-Kotelly.

CNET News.com's Ina Fried contributed to this report.

[Earl Benser]

Why should they comply???

There's nothing that really forces MS to comply with any of the
***** cat judge's findings. The longer MS waits to do anything,
then more likely there will be reasons not to do it at all. And at
the same time, there is the opportunity for MS to come up with
an altogether different approach which isn't covered by the
Kollar-Kotelly wimpy works.

In a nutshell, MS just continues to do it MS's way. Screw
everyone else, just call it 'our commitment to expend whatever
resources are necessary to address these issues'.

[R. U. Sirius]

Glad to see someone can see through the FUD

Excellent post Earl. It's right on the money.

[aabcdefghij987654321]

Blame the US gov.

Bill Gates should have spent some time in jail for his offenses. Instead he got the proverbial 'slap on the wrist' and is being allowed to continue his unlawful practices. What incentive does he have to change what he's been doing for 20 years? I've watched MS act this way since the 80's. Steal technology, modify it to break compatibility, force it in to the market via anti-competitive practices to gain domination at the cost of reliability and end user security, and then repeat with the next technology. This will only continue until either 1) Bill Gates serves some time in jail as he should, or 2) the US wakes up like the rest of the world has, and stops playing in to his hand by allowing these monopolistic practices to continue.

If it were up to me I would declare Microsoft a public utility, and give them 72 hours to post every line of source code they have to the public domain. Let MS live or die on its merits. If MS products were able to compete on a level field MS would survive on service offerings. But the reality on the ground indicates the world would be much better off very quickly with the ability of superior non-Microsoft products able to gain market share.

[Rolndubbs]

Huh?

What offense has old Bill committed that deserves jail time? And since when was being competitive a bad thing? We(thanksfully) live in a free market, where people have the right to choose. It isn't the governments job to make decisions for us, only to protect our right to make our own decisions. People choose to use microsoft when OS X and Linux are viable alternatives. Free and cheaper office variants are available. Endless regulation in an attempt to level the playing field, which is not the governments purpose, only costs the taxpayers more and more money.

[Cuto]

Ridiculous

This is ridiculous. Now all of a sudden, too much competition is bad? lol. Stop bashing MS. There's linux and apple and other stuffs out there. People have choices in what to buy but most opt for MS. Don't hate them because of that. Sheesh.

Why?

"If it were up to me I would declare Microsoft a public utility, and give them 72 hours to post every line of source code they have to the public domain."

Why should they have to do that?

[Jonathan]

Umm duh...

What happens when a child misbehaves and you ignore the problem? They just do it again when things die down. The US Gov doesn't give rats *** about Microsoft because:

1. Its making the US an *** load of money and is the world wide leader in OS's. Why would you dick with that?
2. This is Shrub's DoJ. I mean seriously. Was anyone really suprised that the DoJ was about to lay the smackdown on MS and they ended up settling for this **** poor excuse of a punishment just after Shrub took office.

[Mister C]

WHAT!

I am shocked! I find it hard to believe the M$ would do such a thing!

[technewsjunkie]

Microsoft THUMBING IT"S NOSE at DOJ Remedy

Whos' the boss here?

[jackma]

...Or....

Y'all way-off-the-track on this one: they can't hire anyone to do the job of protocol documentation: THAT'S why they are *late* in delivering the ancient protocol documentation.

It's nasty thankless work, and 99 out of 100 people who *could* do the work, wouldn't do it.

[Gayle Edwards]

Wait a minute...

Are you seriously saying that Microsoft does not even possess such "documentation", of their own, self-created, proprietary-protocols..?

Although, that would explain just why Microsoft software is so notoriously... "buggy", ...your theory completely ignores how any large-scale commercial-software is written.

So sorry, it may be "...nasty thankless work..." (I know., Ive written my share of documentation), but Microsoft DOES employ people to do, specifically, that one task. They simply could not function, at all, otherwise.

MS not a Monopoly, Proved by Harvard Study

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=3196&t=innovation&noseek=one

http://www.ftponline.com/weblogger/forum.aspx?ID=1&DATE=11/13/2005&blog=#462

[Earl Benser]

Skip the links...

... if you can't summarize the point yourself.

[FutureGuy]

US to sanction MS??

You want the US government to sanction one of the few leading exporters left in the country in favor of companies like IBM and Google that have sold their sole to countries like China. I can see where the problem is.

[Jerry Dawson]

Dover sole?

Which type of sole are we talking about? Shoe soles or the fish?

[UntoldDreams]

Are you insane?

They are the living definition of monopoly.

[FutureGuy]

Great read for Mac fans....

http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70072-0.html?tw=wn_tophead_3

[Jerry Dawson]

They're called Maccolytes...

asdf

[Earl Benser]

Please summarize...

... the you can add the link(s) for substantiation. Links alone are
lazy.