Microsoft is moving slowly to correct problems in technical documentation for communication protocols that the company is required to release under an ongoing antitrust decree in the U.S., the lawyers for two groups of plaintiffs in the case complained Tuesday.
There are now 1,276 identified problems with the technical documentation, compared to fewer than 900 at the beginning of the year, said Stephen Houck, a lawyer representing the so-called California group of states that are plaintiffs in the case.
Technical documentation issues, or TDIs, are opening faster than Microsoft can close them, added Jay Himes, chief of New York's antitrust bureau. "If you believe Microsoft's resource numbers, they're closing less than one TDI per person per month," Himes said during an antitrust settlement compliance hearing. "The fact of the matter is they're identifying more problems than they're closing."
Himes and Houck also raised concerns that Microsoft had made changes in some documentation without telling the plaintiff's technical committee that is overseeing antitrust compliance, and they called for Microsoft to begin for the first time to include change logs with the technical documents.
Providing change logs "is not rocket science," Himes said. "Engineers do that as a matter of practice."
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asked Himes if the plaintiffs needed more resources to help identify problems in the technical docs. "This is a Microsoft job and a Microsoft problem," Himes answered.
Microsoft lawyer Charles Rule and Robert Muglia, senior vice president of the company's server and tools business, defended Microsoft's technical documentation efforts. Microsoft has more than 300 people looking for flaws in the technical docs; with that "extreme amount" of testing, the judge should expect reported problems to continue to rise throughout the year, Muglia said.
Rule noted that there continues to be significant interest from other companies in licensing the Microsoft communication protocols. Even with the identified problems, the technical documentation "now meets the highest standards," he added.
Microsoft is working with the plaintiffs to develop change logs for the documentation, Rule added.
The state of the technical documentation for the communication protocols Microsoft was required to share under the 2002 antitrust settlement has been a major complaint from the plaintiffs for more than three years. In late 2006, Kollar-Kotelly approved a two-year extension to parts of her antitrust judgment against Microsoft because of ongoing problems in that area.
Himes and Houck also complained about Microsoft's schedule for delivering another set of documents, called system documents, that could help licensees of Microsoft's communication protocols implement the technology. Microsoft has promised to deliver finished system documents by June 2009, just five months before the antitrust decree is set to expire.
Muglia told Kollar-Kotelly that the system docs were design documents for Microsoft systems and weren't required in the judge's decree. The system docs would be helpful to many of the 49 companies that have licensed Microsoft communication protocols, however, he said.
Kollar-Kotelly disagreed with Muglia's assertion that the system docs were optional. "System documents seem to be integral to interoperability ... and are therefore required," she said.
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