Eweek is running an article on the EU/Microsoft case. The article does a nice job outlining some of the complexities of the case.

A core sticking point is the licenses' per-seat fees, which make them useless for open-source projects, according to open-source developers.

But where it comes to these crucial licenses, the Commission's hands may be tied. "If the Commission requires Microsoft to make its protocol licensing GPL [General Public License]-compatible, it could jeopardize their entire case," said Jonathan Zuck, president of ACT (the Association for Competitive Technology), which supports Microsoft's side of the case.

Samba Team member Volker Lendecke offers his thoughts on the case in an interview within the article. Volker explains the importance of the server protocols to open source projects like Samba.

We want all the protocols, so that Windows clients and other servers fully believe we are a Windows-compatible implementation. It's the network behavior we want to clone, but the implementation behind that is different. That's where we see that we really can compete, by making it more efficient, more secure or whatever.

For more, see the complete article EU's Hands May Be Tied in Microsoft Case.