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I wouldn't be so quick to jump to Microsoft's side on this one. I won't go in to details - there's plenty of places on the net that do - but, frankly, MS and the EU deserve each other.

Ok, one thing. The EU isn't demending code. The EU is demanding documentation and specs for interoperability purposes, which is something completely different. Again. I don't want to seem like I'm defending the EU but MS is only confusing the issue further by conflating code and documentation. You don't need code in order to interoperate, just function names and the documentation of what they do. Most companies release this stuff as a matter of course, because having other people interoperate with their software means it'll be more readilly accepted.

This isn't something that the EU should be dealing with. It should be up to the national governments to decide how they deal with Microsoft, or not, and what demands they make, if any. However, this doesn't put Microsoft in the clear. They are a convicted monopolist in the US, and they are known to be code thieves themselves when it suits them. They are not a good example of capitalism as they're more than willing to run to illegal methods when they can't buy their way. Defending them is... unwise.

Requiring them to remove Media Player is stupid, given the fact that users are free to install any other media players that they want. Why, they can even set those new players to be the default handlers for their media types.

Imagine that, I can tell Winamp to open MP3s instead of Media Player.

At the least, Media Player should be uninstallable from Control Panel, much like Windows Messenger is. The same goes for IE, seeing as how it is just a web browsing application. Aside from being a huge security risk, anyway.

Hm, Microsoft versus the EU, it's like watching Barbra Streisand mud wrestle Rosie O'Donnell. You really can't bring yourself to root for either side.

Oh yeah, that media player decision was idiotic in every way. The very elast they could have done was to simply stop Microsoft from prohibiting the OEMs from bundling other software. Why not copy the linux way and include a bunch of different players, and let the user choose? This is why the EU and MS deserve each other. They're both the same at heart: stupid, greedy, grasping, venal and antiquated.

It's true enough that Microsoft isn't easy to like. But given the chance, the free market will deal with rogue corporations much more effectively than ham-fisted bureaucrats, who are invariably rogues themselves.

I agree entirely. Unfortunately there's a problem with that because, as things stand, Microsoft has enough money to buy entire states. They're campaigning for laws and regulations that would prevent people from competing with them by effectively outlawing non-microsoft data formats, or by requiring people to use Microsoft technology to access government services. The EU is fining them with one hand and paying them off with the other by continually bringing software patents back to the table for another go.

Software patents are bad, see. Software has always been adequately covered by copyright; you can write an OS, and I can write an OS (not likely, but still...) but with a patent on operating systems, only the company with that patent can write one. Instant monopoly. It's a very silly example but I think it serves the point, and the biggest campaigner in the EU for this sort of patent is non other than Microsoft. And the commission keeps bringing the directive back from the dead...

That said, the market dealt with IBM in the 1980s. Hubris brought them down, and I expect MS will go the same way. Their new OS version, Vista, is starting to fall apart by many accounts with just about every useful new feature and useful stripped out in favour of the eye-candy.