The spat between the European Union and Microsoft has become tedious and legalistic in the extreme. Yet actors on both sides of the argument are making the ‘disagreement’  look less and less relevant. And that way lies the new and far more pertinent battleground. 

Let’s set the scene. The European Union and its competition lawyers (it’s stretching a definition to call them ‘authorities’) do not like Microsoft. Why? First because Microsoft is dominant and, like most well-run companies, it would like to become more dominant still. Secondly, and far more importantly, because Microsoft is American.

In its turn, Microsoft does not much care for the EU. Why? First because it is intrusive and invasive in the same way that elective surgery tends to be. Secondly because it is (to coin a phrase) ‘un-American’. Or anti-American.

Many European players line up behind the EU argument. Nice to think that at least some of them would choke on their consommé.

The fact that Bill Gates has probably done far more to help the planet’s disadvantaged persons than the 25 countries of the EU combined is neither here nor there. This is trade politics and the only adequate training for that is the kindergarten at break time: you spill my milk and I’ll spit in yours. Oh, and it helps if you have a law degree. In the United States and some parts of Europe, these can indeed be bought by six-year olds in the school playground.

Fight back
Microsoft, having first tried to shrug off accusations of institutional arrogance, and then having belatedly taken the EU’s threats seriously with a policy that might be dubbed ‘too much information’, this week unveiled a new strategy that consists by and large of whining to anybody and everybody. Bill is not happy and God is thus absent from his heaven.

So here’s a sample of the language deployed this week by the Beast from Redmond in support of its claim to be in “full compliance” with EU demands: “hundreds of Microsoft employees and contractors have worked for more than 30,000 hours to create over 12,000 pages of detailed technical documents that are available for license today. In addition Microsoft has offered to provide licensees with 500 hours of technical support and has made its source code related to all the relevant technologies available under a reference license.”

I am no mathematician, but that suggests that it took two and a half hours per page to produce each sheet of technical ‘evidence’ and the Beast is offering, in its benign state, support at a ratio of 1:60 in order to progress to the next phase. Such generosity of spirit!

“When the Commission issued its Statement of Objections on December 21, 2005, the Commission and its experts had not even bothered to read the most recent version of those documents which Microsoft had made available on December 15, 2005,” Microsoft’s said in its filing on 15 February.

Obviously at TelecomRedux we have run the successive iterations of this saga with tedious regularity. You can click here, or here, or here or here to follow it. Then just follow the links. It’s not life enhancing: Microsoft is playing the diffident ingenue to the EU’s craven curmudgeon. But is the whole shebang pointless?

Artless nouveau
Two tides are now turning that may transform the shores on which this dispute is being fought out. Chez Microsoft, there are new initiatives in the mobile 'space' (how I hate that phrase: it’s what you usually find between the ears of industry executives) and a new software dominatrix dubbed ‘Microsoft 2007’. Careful management of the latter will erase many of the EU’s current concerns because existing versions of Windows will be rendered all but irrelevant; success in the former will compromise Europe’s hopes for cellular primogeniture.

So. “The 2007 release is the productivity breakthrough that customers have been asking for,” says Chris Capossela, corporate vice president of the Information Worker Product Management Group at Microsoft.

That’s too good to be true and must be re-digested syllable by syllable from statement to job function. “The 2007 release is the productivity breakthrough that customers have been asking for,” said Chris Capossela, corporate vice president of the Information Worker Product Management Group at Microsoft.

I pity her. Or him.

The Redmond Beast’s position is weakened when one learns that “Suzan DelBene, corporate vice president of marketing for the Mobile and Embedded Devices Division at Microsoft, [can instruct us] to learn how Microsoft is helping to shape the future of the wireless industry by providing flexible offerings that encourage partner innovation and drive development of profitable solutions.”

DelBene is at least cogent: “there are three big themes that we are communicating to those attending this year’s conference [that’s 3GSM in Barcelona in case you drifted off]. First is about innovation and how we are working with our partners to enable innovation that can equate to more choices and greater opportunity for mobile operators and their customers.Second is that those opportunities are everywhere. We’re really encouraging mobile operators to bring new opportunities to market. They can work with us to provide more customers choice and increase revenue for their companies. Third is about partnership. Especially in the mobile space, our first goal is always to work with partners. We are, of course, involved in our own research and product development, but ultimately it’s our partnerships that drive innovation, opportunity and choice. It all ties together.”

LiPS service
Relatively inbound was today’s announcement by France Telecom, a carrier in a quite wretched state, that it is to spearhead an attempt to kick Microsoft and its OS offerings into touch. FT is about as diametrically opposed from the ethos of Microsoft as it possible to be.

So this week, FT launched “a new operator-driven initiative called Linux Phone Standards Forum [LiPS].” This operator-driven initiative comprises Cellon, Esmertec, FSM Labs, Huawei, Jaluna, MIZI Research, Open Plug and PalmSource (you’ll have heard of all of them) plus, of course, France Telecom. Hence ‘operator-driven’.

FT’s lingo gets better: “Linux and other open source technologies impact on the telecoms industry. In order to accelerate mass-market adoptions and avoid fragmentation of Linux-based mobile, fixed and convergent terminals, France Telecom is inviting open source and terminal industry players to work together to ensure compatibility and enhance interoperability of Linux-based telephony terminals. The objective of LiPS is to enable better communication and cooperation between the open source and proprietary worlds to face common challenges in telephony terminals. LiPS also provides a great opportunity for the industry to make innovative telephony terminal devices with lower costs and fewer constraints. For France Telecom, LiPS represented an opportunity to build an ecosystem around Linux telephony terminals.

France Telecom welcomes other operators and industry players such as manufacturers and software vendors and silicon makers seeking to join and share leadership of LiPS.

In Microsoft-land, Linux is apostatic. France Telecom’s response is apophatic. And us, the rest of the world, have to live with these jousting, jaundiced or jouisant institutional idiots.
Jim Chalmers