You must be aware about the fine imposed by european union on microsoft in so called antitrust case, for using its monopolistic position to make an entry in server market. I wished to dig into the details about what this antitrust case is, and was searching google. But all i got were this news headline “EU fines Microsoft” from all blogs, news and other random sources. It seems people do not wish to get into details these days 
. Tweaking the search query, i got some info about an email exchange, which played a significant role in Sun Microsystems banging EU’s doors.
First mail was written by someone known as Mr. Green who was VP at Sun-Microsysems at Palo Atlo, to someone known as Mr. Maritz , a VP at Microsoft on 15 september 1998. It goes like this.
We are writing to you to request that Microsoft provide [Sun] with the complete information required to allow Sun to provide native support for COM objects on Solaris.
We also request that Microsoft provide [Sun] with the complete information required to allow [Sun] to provide native support for the complete set of Active Directory technologies on Solaris.
We believe it is in the industry’s best interest that applications written to execute on Solaris be able to seamlessly communicate via COM and/or Active Directory with the Windows operating systems and/or with Windows-based software.
We believe that Microsoft should include a reference implementation and such other information as is necessary to insure, without reverse engineering, that COM objects and the complete set of Active Directory technologies will run in full compatible fashion on Solaris. We think it necessary that such information be provided for the full range of COM objects as well as for the full set of Active Directory technologies currently on the market. We also think it necessary that such information be provided in a timely manner and on a continuing basis for COM objects and Active Directory technologies which are to be released to the market in the future.
And Mr. Maritz replied something like this, on 6th of october.
Thank you for your interest in working with Windows. We have some mutual customers using our products, and I think it is great you are interested in opening up your system to interoperate with Windows. Microsoft has always believed in helping software developers, including [its] competitors, build the best possible products and interoperability for [its] platform.
You may not realise that the information you requested on how to interoperate with COM and the Active Directory technologies is already published and available to you and every other software developer in the world via the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) Universal product. MSDN contains comprehensive information about the services and interfaces of the Windows platform and is a great source of information for developers interested in writing to or interoperating with Windows. In fact, Sun currently has 32 active licenses for the MSDN Universal subscription. Furthermore, as your company has done in the past, I assume you will be sending a significant number of people to attend our Professional Developers Conference in Denver October 11 – October 15, 1998. This will be another venue to get the technical information you are seeking in order to work with our systems technologies. Some of the 23 Sun employees that attend[ed] last year[’]s conference should be able to provide you with their comments on the quality and depth of information discussed at these Professional Developers Conferences.
You will be pleased to know that there is already a reference implementation of COM on Solaris. This implementation of COM on Solaris is a fully supported binary available from Microsoft. Source code for COM can be licensed from other sources including Software AG. …
Regarding the Active Directory, we have no plans to “port” [it] to Solaris. However, to satisfy our mutual customers there are many methods with varying levels of functionality in order to interoperate with the Active Directory. For example, you can use the standard LDAP to access the Windows NT Server Active Directory from Solaris.
If after attending [the Professional Developers Conference] and reading through all the public MSDN content you should require some additional support, our Developer Relations Group has account managers who strive to help developers who need additional support for Microsoft’s platforms. I have asked Marshall Goldberg, the Lead Program Manager, to make himself available should you need it …
Following this email, Sun went to EU’s gardens on 10th of december 1998. Somehow EU was pissed off with Windows Media Player, as it was helping microsoft building monopoly over media player market, the same way they propagated Internet Explorer to kill Netscape. They sent out a letter to microsoft with their objections, and themselves started a probe in this direction. They tried to reach a settlement, by microsoft proposing shipping 3 other media players along with windows, and was not very keen to remove it from its operating system, stating “the addition of WMP to Windows was based on its business model and removal of WMP would affect the working of the O/S.” EU slapped a fine in 2004, and asked microsoft to ship a non media player version of windows from feb 2005, and not to add any other app to OS . Notably, one of the names microsoft proposed for this stripped OS was “Windows Reduced Media Edition”, which was discarded by EU . Microsoft appealed on higher court in 2006, and lost it as well. Another one of argument from microsoft against removing media player was “that removing the media player led to the loss of several functions in the trimmed O/S and deprived customers of the ability to play music provided by Yahoo! and Napster. He claimed that there were only a few takers for the trimmed version and that no computer manufacturer had shipped a computer pre-installed with this new version”
Sources
ashish
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