Samba creator refutes Microsoft claims in EU case

Andrew Tridgell, creator of the Samba server software used by free and open-source software developers alike, made an important contribution to the European Commission’s defense of its 2004 Microsoft Corp. antitrust ruling at the Court of First Instance this week.

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Speaking slowly and loudly with his soft Australian accent, Tridgell’s testimony was compelling not only because it seemed to so effectively refute Microsoft’s arguments, but also because of the way he characterized the world of software development and Microsoft’s role in it.

Judge John Cooke, by far the most technology literate of the 13 judges hearing Microsoft’s appeal of the antitrust ruling, asked Tridgell if he ever tests his server software, called Samba, to see if it interoperates smoothly with rivals’ systems.

Tridgell’s reply did more to illustrate the problem posed by Microsoft to the rest of the software industry than all the legal and technical explanations offered by the European Commission and its allies during the entire week-long hearing.

Once a year, he said, top software programmers from rival software companies from around the world gather at the DoubleTree Hotel in San Jose, California, for what they term a “plugfest.”

The engineers bring computers and the software programs they are working on and literally plug them together to see how their programs interoperate. “We work around the clock for a week. We torture our machines in the pursuit of interoperability,” he told a rapt courtroom.

“Can you do this test with Microsoft?” Judge Cooke asked.

“Yes, but they don’t turn up,” Tridgell said.

In an interview after the court had adjourned for the day, Tridgell explained that for the past six years Microsoft has boycotted the event.

“They used to come. It used to be held in Seattle, close to Microsoft’s headquarters,” he said.

But the software giant turned its back on the rest of the software community in the late 1990s once it had developed a server operating system it believed it could corner the market with. This marked a turning point for the software industry, Tridgell said. He spoke nostalgically about the days before Microsoft went its separate way. “It’s not like it used to be. I’d like it to get back to that,” he said.

The market for workgroup server operating systems lies at the heart of the European Commission’s antitrust decision against Microsoft. Sun Microsystems Inc., a player in this market, complained to the European competition regulator in 1998 that Microsoft was competing unfairly. That complaint sparked the five year-long antitrust investigation.

To remedy the situation, the Commission ordered Microsoft to divulge interoperability protocols within its own Windows workgroup server operating system. With this information, rival server systems should be able to communicate as fluently with Windows on PCs as Microsoft’s own server system.

Two years on from the historic antitrust ruling, the Commission contends that Microsoft still hasn’t provided the necessary information, and the Commission is poised to issue a new antitrust ruling against the company for failing to comply with its 2004 decision.

Even if Microsoft does comply, it isn’t certain that Tridgell and others from the free and open source sides of the software community will be granted access to the information.

At the time of the antitrust ruling, Microsoft said the remedy proposed by the then competition commissioner, Mario Monti, would result in its valuable intellectual property being given away if it fell into the hands of open source developers.