Microsoft has announced that it has decided not to appeal the European Union court’s decision to enforce the Commission’s antitrust measures against Microsoft. Microsoft has been fined nearly €800 million, whereof 280 million was due to a lack of compliance with the first ruling. Microsoft has decided to make more information available at a lower price to third-party developers so that they can build Windows programs much easier. It has also sliced the prices of its interoperability information such as the work group server software.
Microsoft has made several changes to how the interoperability can be accessed and the fees for doing so. Open source developers will get access to the interoperability information and Microsoft will not assert patents against non-commercial projects. The fee has been reduced to a nominal one-time fee of €10,000, and the royalties for a world wide license has been cut to 0.4 %, instead of the 7 % demanded by Microsoft.
Microsoft isn’t entirely safe yet though as it may still be fined for the period between the last refusal to comply up until today. We’re still waiting for comments from the competition, but we can only assume that they are pleased with Microsoft’s move.
