European Union to Microsoft: Drop dead

Microsoft has been increasingly playing nice with the Open Source community, but the European Union is not impressed. Recently, the European Union’s competition commissioner made it abundantly clear that she believes that European businesses and governments should abandon Microsoft en masse and head to Open Source instead.

The European Union’s competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, pulled no punches in a recent speech. According to the New York Times, she said:

"I know a smart business decision when I see one -- choosing open standards is a very smart business decision indeed. No citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to choose a closed technology over an open one."

She didn't stop there, though, according to the Times. She said that if government use a single software supplier --- obviously referring to Microsoft --- they face serious security concerns. And she heaped praise on the City of Munich, the German Foreign Ministry and the Gendarmerie Nationale department of the French police for using open standards.

Kroes has tangled with Microsoft before, and come out the winner. She fined it almost $1.7 billion euros --- $2.7 billion --- for what she termed as violations of European rules of business competition.

No matter what Microsoft does, it's most likely not going to get a fair shake from Kroes. Microsoft, in fact, has been increasingly cooperating with the Open Source community, most recently co-sponsoring a census of Open Source use in the corporate world.

Expect to see more of that cooperation. If Microsoft is going to thrive, it needs to embrace Open Source. It just shouldn't expect that the European Union will believe it any time soon.

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