MS ANTITRUST - Microsoft restarts tech docs project

Judge approves two-year extension to parts of her judgment.

Microsoft will start over on a much-delayed technical documentation project required in a three-and-a-half-year-old antitrust settlement with the U.S. government, the company told a judge Wednesday.

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, approved a two-year extension to parts of her antitrust judgment against Microsoft because of ongoing problems in the technical documentation for Microsoft's software communication protocols. Kollar-Kotelly, in an antitrust settlement approved in November 2002, ordered Microsoft to create the technical documentation so that competing software companies can buy licenses to Microsoft's communications protocols and make products that work with Microsoft software.

Kollar-Kotelly called the documentation progress so far "disappointing," but she endorsed a new plan proposed by Microsoft, the U.S. Department of Justice and the state plaintiffs in the case.

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Microsoft will start over on a much-delayed technical documentation project required in a three-and-a-half-year-old antitrust settlement with the U.S. government, the company told a judge Wednesday.

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, approved a two-year extension to parts of her antitrust judgment against Microsoft because of ongoing problems in the technical documentation for Microsoft's software communication protocols. Kollar-Kotelly, in an antitrust settlement approved in November 2002, ordered Microsoft to create the technical documentation so that competing software companies can buy licenses to Microsoft's communications protocols and make products that work with Microsoft software.

Kollar-Kotelly called the documentation progress so far "disappointing," but she endorsed a new plan proposed by Microsoft, the U.S. Department of Justice and the state plaintiffs in the case.

Kollar-Kotelly's two-year extension of the judgment allows the Department of Justice and other plaintiffs to get an automatic extension of another three years if they believe the documentation still needs work. As of May 8, there were 501 mistakes identified in the documentation, including 79 high-priority problems, according to court documents.

Under the new plan, Microsoft will reassign senior engineers -- including some from its Vista operating system and Longhorn server projects -- to the technical documentation project, and it will offer companies that have already licensed its communications protocols a 100% rebate of the license fees from April until the project is completed. About 300 senior engineers with first-hand knowledge of the communication protocols will work on the project going forward, Microsoft officials said.

"We've made the decision that this is the highest-priority project in this company," said Bob Muglia, senior vice president of Microsoft's server and tools business unit. Faced with similar complaints about technical documentation in the European Union's antitrust case against Microsoft, the company assigned Muglia to oversee the documentation project earlier this year.

Muglia concluded Microsoft was using a flawed process to fix the documentation, he told the judge.

Microsoft agreed with the Department of Justice request for an extension of the antitrust judgment, but company officials were hesitant to set a deadline for the new documentation project at Wednesday's hearing. "This is a project that should take months, not weeks, and it should take months, not years," said Brad Smith, senior vice president and general counsel at Microsoft.

Microsoft first approached the project as a straightforward documentation project, but it has proved to be more complicated, said Smith and Microsoft lawyer Charles Rule. Microsoft did not document its communications protocols as it developed software, and it decided since March it needed to assign senior engineers with working knowledge of the protocols to the project, they said.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.