Microsoft is Losing the Battle...and Losing It

Microsoft must be either really desperate or desperately out of touch with both reality and the prevailing perceptions of its actions if it can allow one of its apologists to write stuff like this:

With the collapse of the former Soviet Union, I thought the days of property expropriation in Europe were over. Now I wonder, following the European Commission's latest policy twist in its interminable case against Microsoft.

To say nothing of this:

This is not a dispute about the goal of interoperability, as such. At the limit, Microsoft's detractors and many of its competitors would only be satisfied with disclosures that allowed them to clone its software outright, free of charge. Formally, of course, this is not on the table. But the unilateral voiding of standard intellectual property rights, coupled with nominal royalties for a company's innovation and knowhow, are a close approximation.

Well, no, actually: it is all about interoperability. People want access to the APIs - the surface of the black box - so that the innards can be recreated using completely different code, not "cloned".

What's heartening is the generally intelligent level of comments on what is a sadly unsubtle piece of puffery.