The court-mandated committee that is overseeing Microsoft's compliance with its federal antitrust settlement said that Microsoft has deleted some key information from its previously published protocols and is breaking its word in the process. So says a story in InformationWeek. Microsoft apparently deleted some data on its Windows protocols from its published technical documentation that others use to write Windows software, according to a report filed last week by the Technical Committee overseeing antitrust compliance. The story says:
"The committee, which said it was 'concerned' about the situation, did not specify how many protocols Microsoft has removed from its publicly available interoperability documentation. It added that, in removing the information, Microsoft broke a pact with the committee under which it agreed not to remove protocol elements 'without first discussing it with the TC.'"
On the other hand, the report also suggested that the protocols might not be necessary for software makers to write code for Windows. The deleted info may simply contain data on internal operations within Windows server. The bigger issue, the story says, is that Microsoft has not done much of a job of documenting what changes it has made to its published documents, making it difficult for the TC to see what was edited.
Is this more guile on the part of Microsoft? If it promised not to change anything without discussing those changes with the committee, then it would appear that Microsoft is either trying to pull a fast one or, perhaps, is being unintentional negligent. On the other hand, could the Technical Committee be looking at the whopping big fines that the European Union has levied against Microsoft and hoping to find a reason for its own set of fines? It is hard to tell what goes on behind the scenes of governmental oversight committees and big business. But it is also hard to be suspicious of a monopoly while not being suspicious of the biggest "monopoly" of them all -- the government.
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Exaggerated with every repetition
This completely exaggerates the actual situation. There was a breakdown in handling of changes, and it is being addressed. There were no protocols removed, there were some protocol elements removed (whether by mistake or because of changes to the protocols). This is all part of the review and correction of extensive materials. From the actual DOJ document, there is this observation:
"the TC determined that in the process of revising the technical documentation, Microsoft removed a number of protocol elements that were included in previous versions of the documentation. When this same issue arose last year, Microsoft and the TC
discussed that Microsoft would not remove protocol elements from the documentation without first discussing it with the TC in order to ensure that there was no substantive disagreement. Plaintiffs are concerned that the same problem has occurred again. In some cases there may be perfectly valid and sufficient reasons for removing certain protocol elements ... Microsoft was receptive to the TC’s suggestion and will work with the TC to develop an effective mechanism to track changes to the documentation."
Later, in a portion that describes Microsoft's perspective, there is this statement:
"Microsoft has also discussed with the TC the possibility of tracking changes to the documentation in a systematic fashion. These discussions have been productive and Microsoft is now exploring ways to present version-to-version change information in an efficient manner."