With regard to the European Commission’s latest actions against Microsoft, the Wall Street Journal observes that “

[t]he heart of the matter is revealed in Ms. Kroes’s observation that other software makers provide comparable interoperability technologies at no cost. EU antitrust officials make no secret of their preference for the open-source business model practiced by the companies behind all the complaints against Microsoft, among them such heavyweights as IBM, Sun Microsystems and Oracle. Many of these firms don’t want to pay anything to license Microsoft’s technology.”

The Washington Post reports that “[t]he government is about to start opening up the process of reviewing patents to the modern font of wisdom: the Internet.”

The New York Times writes that “[t]he confusion [over MP3 patents] stems from the number of companies and institutions — including Thomson, Royal Philips Electronics and AT&T (through Bell Labs, now part of Alcatel-Lucent) — that worked to create the MP3 standard almost two decades ago.”

At Networkworld, Roger Green warns that “in the commercial marketplace, where your network is the lifeblood of your enterprise, and predictability and profitability are vital, open source is often unpredictable — and that can keep your IT staff up at night.”

Mercury News has an interesting interview with Rajiv Dutta, EBay’s President of PayPal, about the potential he continues to see for PayPal’s service and the challenge posed by competitors.