Microsoft's top executives have promised not to sue open source developers who create non-commercial software based on Microsoft's protocols, but skeptics say it's a ploy to soften its image before the upcoming OOXML vote.
Yahoo on Monday responded to Microsoft's merger deadline, reiterating its rejection to the software giant's buyout bid as "substantially" undervaluing the company.
Windows Vista hasn't shipped yet, but Microsoft and the European Union are already caught up in a tussle over the antitrust impact of security technology in the operating system.
Microsoft has ended its long battle with European regulators by agreeing to comply with key elements of the European Commission's 2004 antitrust order, the parties announced on yesterday.
Microsoft is under growing pressure to comply with the European antitrust ruling within a matter of weeks, an EU spokesman said on Wednesday.
Sun Microsystems announced on Friday that it has moved to a new phase of legal and technical cooperation with longtime foe Microsoft that will involve a payment of US$1.95 billion to Sun.
The antitrust investigation into Microsoft's activities lasted nearly half a decade, but by the time regulators finally came to a landmark conclusion, Microsoft had already established its position and the rival product was all but defunct.
The SCO Group's legal actions against Linux have shed light on the inner workings of the open-source programming project and on the operations of a company desperate to survive. They've also created a cottage industry for conspiracy theorists over Microsoft's role in the affair.
Microsoft's proposed settlement for more than 100 outstanding private antitrust cases against it would inflict "great harm" upon the technology markets, said the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) in a letter to the judge overseeing the case.
Unless one side or another decides to appeal, Friday's decision could mark the final chapter in a case once said to be a definitive one for antitrust law in the 21st century.
The new millennium was the year Microsoft was ordered to bifurcate, dot-coms tanked on Wall Street, WorldCom's Bernie Ebbers saw his merger mania capped and Napster scared the recording industry nearly to death. 2000 was a cascading waterfall of events that ended any doubts about the Net's ability to change the way we think, learn, play and do business.
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