Reuters reported that "Commercial developers such as IBM or Red Hat must pay a license fee of 0.4 percent of revenues to Microsoft when they redistribute that software, to protect against patent challenges."

Commissioner Kroes has said, of the deal, "That percentage royalty has become a nominal, one-off payment of Euro 10,000. This is all that has to be paid by companies that dispute the validity or relevance of Microsoft's patents

My attempts to interview Chris Wilson, Microsoft's platform architect for Internet Explorer, appear threatened by technical difficulties even before the discussion begins. His temporary-conference-visitor speaker phone in Sydney won't work, then my computer crashes just before the interview starts, which in the sub-planet of Vista I'm forced to inhabit means a ten-minute reboot time.