San Francisco (IDGNS) - Microsoft's defeat in a European appeals court Monday has left open-source developers hopeful about the future although still dissatisfied with the company's compliance with a 3-year-old antitrust ruling. The European Commission ordered Microsoft to license its workgroup server communications protocols to rivals in March 2004, aiming to make it easier for those companies to develop and sell enterprise software interoperating -- and competing -- with Microsoft's own products. So far, though, there have been few takers for the licenses Microsoft now proposes under its WSPP (Workgroup Server Protocol Program) -- and the licenses have proved useless to open-source developers.