Department of Justice lawsuit against Microsoft

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1. What is the current state of the ruling?
The current state of the rulings is that on 8th February 2006 the joint status report on Microsoft's compliance with the final judgments was filed with The United States District Court For The District Of Columbia. You are requested to think in the following terms: The joint status report stated that the government is engaged in discussions with Microsoft concerning its publicly announced proposal to offer a reference license to its Windows server source code to MCPP licensees at no additional cost and that the technical expert is involved in assessing two projects designed to ensure that the technical documentation is complete, accurate, and usable: the prototype implementation project and the validation project.
You may consider the following:The report informs the court of Microsoft's decision to License Source Code as a part of the Microsoft Communications Protocol Program.The report also informs the court the technical committee has contintued to workd on both the prototype implementation and validation, so that projects are streamlined on a going forward basis. The purpose is to identify and resolve issues in the technical documentation that access to source code will not readily resolve. The report informs the court that the government with the assistance of the technical committee continue to monitor developments regarding Windows Vista and Explorer 7 to assure compliance with the final judgments. The report also informs the court tha Microsoft Communications Protocol Program licenses have been executed with two new companies and that the technical committee has worked with Microsoft to improve the technical documentation.
2. What is the next step?
The next step is to fix the bugs that have been identified by the technical committee and Microsoft and fix these bugs. In addition, Microsoft will have to add more employees to the technical documentation teams so that the documentation can be speeded up. You are encouraged to think in these terms:This will included document writers, editors and program managers. For instance the technical committee has identified 158 bugs since 1/1/06 but the number of bugs resolved since 1/1/06 is only 3. An the total active bugs identified by the technical committee, including bug fixes and awaiting technical committee action is 575. In addition, Microsoft will develop and deliver protocol parsers in pre-release form, with the final version of each parser delivered to licensees approximately two months after delivery of the pre-release version. You are encouraged to reflect on these: Microsoft refers to a group of parsers released in a particular month as a "cluster." There are a total of four clusters on the current delivery schedule. So, in April 2006 Microsoft is expected to deliver 22 final parsers, by May 2006 Microsoft is expected to deliver 23 final parser and in Jund and July 2006, it is expected to deliver 19 parsers each month.
Finally, Microsoft is required to comply with the Microsoft Communications Protocol Program that has been set up by the technical committee. You are encouraged to reflect on these: According to the schedule worked out, Microsoft was supposed to deliver 10% of Microsoft Communications Protocol Program by the end of January and this delivery was made on February 1, 2006. 100% of the Microsoft Communications Protocol Program protocols are supposed to be delivered by the end of June 2006. Microsoft is required to meet this deadline.
3. What effect has any part of this suit had on Microsoft products?
Microsoft's future products will be more understandable by the licensee and can be modified by the licensee. Kindly consider this:The most noteworthy recent development is Microsoft's decision to provide MCPP licensees with access to the source code for Microsoft's protocols. Source code is the human-readable form of Microsoft's protocol technology. By reviewing the source code, licensees will be able to see precisely how Microsoft's protocols are built and function. It is important to think of the problem in these ...