EU to force Microsoft to accept royalty payments?!?
Microsoft could be forced to give rivals vital technical information in exchange for little or no royalties, according to a newspaper report.
The software company originally wanted 5.95 percent in royalty payments on software that uses certain Microsoft-patented routines that are sold by the company to its rivals as part of the settlement with the European Commission.
According to the Financial Times, which claims to have seen a confidential internal European Commission document, Microsoft was told it could have zero or 1 percent of the disputed royalty payments.
The document was written by Neil Barrett, the expert agreed on by Microsoft and the Commission. According to Barrett, at a 5.95 percent royalty rate, Microsoft's rivals would recoup their development costs within seven years. Barrett said in the document that this would be unacceptable, and that even a royalty of 1 percent was too much.
Now, I don't know a lot about the percentage amounts, but I think the market should decide this figure. The question becomes what is the current royalty percentages that are currently accepted in the marketplace, not what does someone think they should be or what does some open source screaming nerd think that they should be. For example, what does IBM charge for access to the patents that it charges for? What about Oracle? What about Cisco? These are the values that should be used.According to everything I have read on the subject, Microsoft has violated EU law. That is fairly well accepted fact. I have limited problems with the payment as well as the need for a penalty. However, its when I read that they must accept "giving away" licenses to their patents that I have to stand up and say "Wow." This idea that all software should be free sounds great until the rubber meets the road. How do developers get paid for building software? How do you pay for the buildings, computers, mail servers, admin staff, management, or other things that a business needs to run on?