Microsoft is being given a hard time in Europe, pursued through the European Commission by companies alleging abuse of its monopoly position in computer operating systems.

There are two complaints: first, that Microsoft illegally tied the availability of Windows to Windows Media Player, making it impossible to obtain the former without the latter, and so distorting the market in media players. The second is that Microsoft has engaged in conduct designed to make it difficult for other companies or organisations to write software which interoperates with Windows in particular important ways.

Windows uses a protocol suite named CIFS (Common Internet File System) for file and printer sharing and authentication within associated groups of Windows computers called "domains". In order to work well in a Windows environment, computers from other vendors need to speak this protocol, which is revised and changed with each new version of Windows. The closed nature of CIFS is the subject of the second complaint.

Last year, Microsoft lost its case and was fined €497 million. The court also imposed two remedies which were supposed to counter the effects of the illegal action.

The first was that Microsoft had to produce versions of Windows without Windows Media Player bundled. The company has complied, but it's clear that they aren't taking it seriously. Their first suggestion was that these versions should be given the unattractive label "Reduced Media Edition". The EU wasn't amused and, after further negotiation and delay, the two sides settled on "Edition N".

Microsoft has ensured the failure of the Editions N by selling them at the same price as the originals, giving manufacturers the attractive option of paying the same for less. Additionally, the front of the Edition N boxes have a large red star highlighting the text "Not with Windows Media Player!" A Microsoft representative confirmed, presumably while trying hard to keep a straight face, that "thus far no PCs are shipping with the software". So much for the power of the sanction.

The remedy for the second complaint, which was to publish the specifications for the CIFS protocol, is proving more troublesome. But in this case, Microsoft has much greater incentive to drag its feet.

By far the most serious competition to Microsoft in the CIFS server space is a free software project called Samba, which is shipped by almost every other OS vendor. Due to the need to reverse-engineer all the behaviour from scratch, Samba is always around a generation behind the latest Windows version.

For example, machines in Windows domains which talk to each other using the latest version of CIFS use a machine acting as an Active Directory Domain Controller to keep order. At the moment, Microsoft has a monopoly on these Domain Controllers – the code is built into the expensive Server versions of Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 – but the Samba team are hard at work implementing their own.

The information Microsoft is being compelled to release may well be of some assistance to the Samba team in this task, although estimates vary as to exactly how much. And once they succeed, expensive Windows Server licences will become less necessary. So it's in Microsoft's interest to delay that day as much as possible – ideally until after they've moved the goalposts again with the release of the "Longhorn" version of Windows Server in 2007.

The judgment was handed down a year ago, but the EU's Monitoring Trustee has recently ruled that using the current documentation to implement anything would be "frustrating, time-consuming and ultimately fruitless." On this basis, the EU has ruled that unless Microsoft complies satisfactorily by the end of January, it will fine it £1.5 million per day, back-dated to December 15, for non-compliance.

Still, Microsoft may consider this a good deal. One foundation of their success is their operating system monopoly, reinforced by the interactions and dependencies between the client and server versions which tie the two together. In 2003, they made £14 million a day from Windows client operating system licences alone. In the context of preserving that revenue, a fine of one-tenth of that figure suddenly doesn't seem so large.

Gervase Markham works for the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting choice and innovation on the internet. His blog is Hacking For Christ

Explore Football

• Euro 2008

• Premier League

• Football League

• Scotland

• European Football

• International Football

• Live Match Tracker

• The Fink Tank

• Fantasy Football