A whopping big fine was expected today. Bloomberg had reported yesterday that the fine was expected to be as high $2.2 billion, so maybe in a weird twist of fate, a fine of ONLY $1.3 billion is a bargain.

It was obvious that Microsoft's news last week, that it was publishing its specifications on its biggest products, was a last ditch effort to try and avoid penalties from the EC. The EC made it clear that Microsoft was not going to be let off the hook when over the past four years Microsoft repeatedly tried to avoid complying with part of the Commission's ruling that ordered the company to detail communications protocols used by Windows so that other software manufacturers could build systems that interoperate smoothly with Windows. Even still, these fines are said to be because Microsoft was not offering its protocol licenses at a reasonable rate. As a public company, Microsoft does owe it to its stockholders to be on the lookout for the bottom line. It seems reasonable for it to charge a REASONABLE fee for commercial software makers (open source or not) to build apps for the Windows environment. Even still, charging such a fee is not great business in the long run, which everyone (but Microsoft, it seems) can see. If Microsoft wants Windows to continue to own the operating server market, it's got to allow applications to be easily created for it.

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