Microsoft Corp. said Wednesday it will license its Windows source code to comply with a European Union antitrust ruling.
The source code provides the building blocks of the operating system that competitors need to make products compatible with Windows.
The company's chief counsel Brad Smith said called the move "a bold stroke."
Microsoft has refused to license the source code in the past. Software developers still will have to pay for the code, which open source advocates will not be allowed to "publish for free," Smith cautioned. The company had "just started to provide this information on both sides on the Atlantic" and regulators "want to see all the details," Smith added.
In March 2004, the EU executive levied a record euro497 million ($613 million) fine against Microsoft, ordered it to share code with rivals and offer an unbundled version of Windows without the Media Player software for what the court saw as an abuse of the company's dominant position in the industry.
Last month, the European Commission threatened to fine Microsoft up to euro2 million ($2.36 million) a day backdated to Dec. 15 for failing to obey, saying the software giant was proving intransigent about sharing data with competitors.
Microsoft has launched a legal challenge that will be heard by the European Court of First Instance on April 24-28. The court — the second-highest in the European Union — stressed that the dates for the hearing were provisional and could still be changed.
Smith told a news conference he was "confident" of winning the case.
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