Microsoft has offered to extend the duration of its protocol licenses for an extra two years. The licensing program, MCPP, was set up two years ago as a requirement of the Antitrust settlement, and a license lasts for five years. Redmond lawyers made what is being described as a "concession" at a remedy hearing in a DC court today. MCPP licenses expire in 2007, but the offer takes that through to November 2009, by which time some version of Longhorn may or may not have appeared.
But this might not be what Judge Konsonant Kollision (don"t you mean Colleen Kollar-Kotelly - ed.) has been looking for. CKK has expressed some dissatisfaction at the slow progress of the MCPP procedure, and rather than offering to speed things up, Microsoft has given itself more time to address complaints.
The MCPP program covers over twenty protocols, or families of protocols. The computer industry hasn"t exactly been beating a path to the door, however. Sun Microsystems and Time Warner (AOL) are the largest of just fourteen licensees, and of those, Network Appliance was already a licensee when the MCPP program was introduced.