Microsoft bows to EU antitrust ruling

Microsoft has agreed to comply with a 2004 EU court ruling on anticompetition, bringing changes that will "profoundly affect the software industry" according to European commissioner for competition policy Neelie Kroes.

Kroes said in a speech in Brussels on Monday that she had been in almost daily contact with Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer over the past two or three weeks, and that Microsoft has now agreed to make workgroup server interoperability information available to open source developers.

"I told Microsoft that it had to make interoperability information available to open source developers," said Kroes. "Microsoft will now do so, with licensing terms that allow every recipient of the resulting software to copy, modify and redistribute it in accordance with the open source business model."

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