Microsoft Compliance Report

The Department of Justice today released a "Joint Status Report on Microsoft's Compliance with the Final Judgments" available here. Mostly the report deals with the Microsoft Communications Protocol Program (MCPP) and the government's concern "that the current licensing program has thus far fallen short of satisfying fully the goals." The government still contends that "the development efforts of the current licensees are not likely to spur the emergence in the marketplace of broad competitors to the Windows desktop. To date, the MCPP appears unattractive to potential licensees with well-defined plans to build products that could enable software on servers to fully utilize the connectivity to the Windows desktop..." Apparently the MCPP license is 50 pages long with complex rate structures, discouraging further licensing. Anyway, if you haven't been following the antitrust case against Microsoft this probably isn't very interesting -- except perhaps you get a flavor for how slow-going it is. Remedies are hard to implement is perhaps the lesson of the day. But it's fun to watch the law in action (obviously I use the term action very loosely, as you can tell if you read the report).