There is a large group of people on the internet who never let the Microsoft of the 90s go. How does every single one of their business decisions get linked to some nefarious goal? The author doesn't even know what it could be, BUT DON'T FORGET! This company tried to patent everything decades ago! Don't forget they're not bringing bash to Windows out of the goodness in their hearts!
Microsoft was also fined $2 billion dollars by the EU in 2004 for anti-trust violations so it's not just the 1990s. In addition, Microsoft was under US Federal oversight until 2011, but then had it extended another two years for failure to comply with the original court order. So let's not forget that.
It was also characteristic of anti-trust suits in general. They are much less about whether you committed a crime, and more about whether what you did can be redefined as a crime many years later.
The DoJ supervision was extended over the readability of Microsoft's enforced documentation of communications protocols, which it was ordered to rewrite.
In her ruling, Kollar-Kotelly blamed Microsoft. "Although the technical documentation project is complex and novel, it is clear, at least to the Court, that Microsoft is culpable for this inexcusable delay," she wrote.
But she also wrote that the company had been "overwhelmingly cooperative" in the years after the antitrust settlement, and that this latest extension should not be viewed as a sanction. http://www.pcworld.com/article/142004/article.html