Wow, Ray Ozzie is really changing the culture at Microsoft. Or maybe it’s just been beaten down by anti-trust regulators in the EU. After years in denial, Redmond has finally decided to stop trying to fight open-source software. In a series of moves announced today aimed at making its products more interoperable with other software and the Web in general, Microsoft is releasing 30,000 pages of documentation for Windows (both desktop and server products) that were previously available to partners only through a trade secret license. It is making available new licenses to a large number of its software patents “on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, at low royalty rates.” And the company is making the following pledge (which we’ve heard before) to open-source developers:
Microsoft is providing a covenant not to sue open source developers for development or non-commercial distribution of implementations of these protocols. These developers will be able to use the documentation for free to develop products. Companies that engage in commercial distribution of these protocol implementations will be able to obtain a patent license from Microsoft, as will enterprises that obtain these implementations from a distributor that does not have such a patent license.
While Microsoft is not open-sourcing its own software, it is taking dramatic steps to play nice with the open-source community. This is a complete 180-degree turn from its stance of the past. The broad set of interoperability principles it is announcing today will apply to the following products (including future versions): Windows Vista (including the .NET Framework), Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007. The four principles it is declaring are:
(1) ensuring open connections
(2) promoting data portability
(3) enhancing support for industry standards
(4) fostering more open engagement with customers and the industry, including open source communities.
It will release documentation for all APIs of the products above, will lay out how it supports industry standards, will create new APIs for Microsoft Office to make it easier for developers to create plug-ins for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and will launch an Open Source Interoperability Initiative to promote interoperability between open-source and Microsoft products.
Microsoft has a lot of work to do to build trust with the open-source community, which it has alienated over the years. Simply making an announcement is not going to cut it, especially if the reason for this action is primarily to get the European Court off its back. But whatever the motivation, if the announcement is followed up by a sincere change in attitude and serious actions Microsoft has an opportunity here to really build up trust with the open-source community. That is something it will need to do anyway if it succeeds in acquiring Yahoo. What else could Microsoft do to prove that it has changed its stripes? Comments are open.
Microsoft has set up a Website with more information here.
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No, Never Trust the Beast From Redmond
- Maybe, It Still Has A Long Way To Go
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Yes, If It Follows Through On Its New Interoperability Promises
Total Votes: 1612
Started: February 21, 2008
Open–socially.
Great idea.
huh!
Dunno what to say…
Erick: Not really. This policy on open source is the same one that Microsoft has had for several years. Absolutely no change. The real change is on the open APIs and protocols. But for open-source developers, it’s same ol’ same ol’.
It such a coincidence that they make this announcement around the same time they are trying to acquire yahoo. I think this is a microsoft peace offering or icebreaker to a community of startups who feel this merger will destroy the startup scene.
http://www.goog....com/index1.htm
MS now know what should do. and she will be big ,but not great intenet company.
live call coverage if anyone is interested:
http://www.cent...ence-call-notes
For all the hate on MS on open-source, I would posit that they are taking more meaningful steps in enabling open-source development against their product line than most any other company. With their huge deployment base, even nominal support like this can create some real opportunities.
In case anyone has missed the trend, MS is becoming more open than closed. In a few years, I wonder if the MS-bashing from open-source proponents won’t switch to some other company.
Absolutely splendid. Microsoft is always a great company. Yahoo! also.
http://www.advo...rticle/101.html
“Today I received a polite phone call from a fellow at Microsoft who works in the Windows Media group. He informed me that Microsoft has intellectual property rights on the ASF format and told me that, although I had reverse engineered it, the implementation was still illegal since it infringed on Microsoft patents. ”
Too little too late. I would tell developers not to waste time on Microsoft technology. This is a classic bait and switch.
It is arguably more fruitful and meaningful (and helpful and healthy) to have open (and worldclass) documentations, than all those many (still respectable) open source packages with shitty or simply no documentation to [add whatever word you like here]. I just love Microsoft!
http://digg.com...8_Open_Document
This announcement is a continuation of this initiative, which was launched to stop governments from switching to open formats.
On the face of it, this might look like what Trolltech did with Qt and what MySQL did with its DB: if what you’re doing is free, then feel free to play around with our stuff, but if you’re making money then we want to be making money too. But this is far more insidious though because of this part: “Companies that engage in commercial distribution of these protocol implementations will be able to obtain a patent license from Microsoft, …” IOW, if you’re redistributing those “free” implementations for commercial use, then you have to pay. That, specifically, is very different from things like Qt or MySQL.
Having contributed quite some open source code myself, I’d have to say that this isn’t the type of thing I’d consider. It’s a poison pill really.
Let’s not forget that Microsoft has (had?) anti-trust issues in the EU… I really wouldn’t be surprised if this was more of a move to try and stop any further lawsuits.
@12
http://slashdot...50&from=rss
QT is actually released under GPL. Meaning you can make commercial software out of it and make as much money as you want without paying them a dime. Just as with GTK/Gnome.
You can’t compare a widget toolkit with a protocol. One can be linked as a library, and the other can’t.
Microsoft is trying to reverse the trend of losing to open formats with governments and other large institutions. It’s all about control. Once they get them back, they can and will change the parameters of the game. It’s a game to them.
Microsoft is playing nice and opening up APIs and documents…
until it decides to stop. And you have no power there.
Granted, some of this information will be like toothpaste – once out of the tube, it will be hard to put back in. But do not make the mistake that, because MS is opening up their vaults now, that this means that the next version of any of their products will be subject to the same openness.
I agree with the previous poster who warned of “bait and switch”. This is the klaxon sounding in the back of my mind too. I think that MS is being sincere here and now, but because there is no way for us to hold them to this behavior going forward, I would not bet my own money on this behavior continuing.
Still – thanks, Ozzie. Consistency leads to trust. Keep it up.
No. Actually, this is a very timely announcement to get the votes of the NO countries against making OOXML an ISO Standard.
The world and the internet is abound with “NO TO OOXML, YES TO ODF”. We’ve seen news left and right how governments and corporations are switching to ODF and FLOSS applications. With the fast-tracking of M$ losing domination (but still dominating), it is nigh that they start launching programs that will create confusion.
Confusion? Yes. For those who are not really solid to FLOSS and for those who are only opting for the ‘best’, they now have an ‘option’ not to re-consider M$ or not to switch to FLOSS.
It will start an attitude of “Hey, M$ is opening itself up! M$ loves the FLOSS Community AFTERALL! Oh My the world turned upside down!” Then voila, M$ won again.
This announcement is more likely connected to the OOXML voting even if they deny that, it is too timely to be not related to that.
OOXML voting is here. This is their last chance to get it ISO’d and compete with ODF. They are claiming that ODF can’t handle the numerous data of M$ Office especially 2007, then why not just join ODF and help it improve.
They are not really appeasing the FLOSS Community, but they are sowing confusion to the hearts and minds of those who really haven’t fully moved to FLOSS.
“Let’s make a show to pull them back to our favor again.”
@Matt Asay, good point, I added a link to your post.
@Michael (15), for the products this covers, they ar esaying it will also cover future versions (Vista, Windows Server, Sharepoint, etc.).
Projects like MONO and DotNetNuke have helped spur this along. MSFT has been slowly moving to be more open for quite a time now. I am not sure this is new news from a developers’ point of view, but good to get the public word out.
Licensing sounds like a bear though….
I love the smell of desperation at Microsoft !
Too little…too late….few really trust them…after 20 yrs plenty of Microsoft partners screwed and today cannot make any significant $$$ working with the beast….they will become increasingly irrelevant.
It’s a good move, a really good one which will take some of the critics away. But let’s be honest, when Microsoft does something like this most the tech-savvy guys will not trust it. Think it is all about getting friendly with the enemy only for their own richness.
I do not share the opinion but I know a lot of them do. I, personally, am starting to like Microsoft more and more
erik, these are not “dramatic steps”
@JC John SESE Cuneta
FLOSS, while will always be there, won’t kill Microsoft. No serious companies and governments would feel comfortable to use free software in general to do their work. They might not trust Microsoft, but all the more so, they won’t trust FLOSS either. Mightbe MySQL and Apache (and a handful more) are the only few exceptions. Even Google Apps for Enterprise are, essentially, not free.
An interesting approach,,,i knew Ray Ozzie would bring more open-ness to the game….lets see what happens
Laocoön, priest of Troy, who, in Virgil’s Aeneid, tells his countrymen to “Beware Greeks bearing gifts”. Both German and English have expressions related to “Greeks bearing gifts”, but they don’t use the same idioms. While English concentrates on warning against Greeks with gifts, German emphasizes the gift itself. Ein Danaergeschenk is a “fatal gift” that brings misfortune or causes problems.
is this what Scoble was crying about? God I hope not….
“No serious companies and governments would feel comfortable to use free software in general to do their work.”
um….
Nice about the APIs… but that’s pretty much it. The “promise” to Open Source developers is worthless because it’s a promise to the *developers* only. They still want to charge when you distribute it commercially (and be sure they will count charging for support as “commercial distribution”) and, even worse, if you simply use it in a commercial setting. So rather than this being a great gift to the Open Source community, it’s a nice little poison pill – get developers to use their patentented methods (after all, they have been promised not to be sued) and then collect royalties from the companies that use Open Source software – a nice way of making money from OSS developers’ work, exactly what MS always wanted.
@22, and in terms of open source, most Google stuff are not open source — even though they sponsor a open source repository… then, what makes Google a lovable company, and Microsoft a hatable one, with respect to the open source perpesctive?
@Technicle
Yah it won’t of course, but they’re getting hurt. So they need to show something so their current customers won’t see it. Additionally, we have the people who will wait-and-see and use the best option. With this move of M$ they can gain these people.
This is really more about OOXML and the undecided and wait-and-see than being about open-source developers.
Nonetheless, this is good. Any developer, FLOSS or not, should read and use whatever s/he can from the documentations M$ will release.
@JC John SESE Cuneta
I agree, this is half assed attempt. Releasing documents and announcing intentions , is not enough.. adopt open standards , drop your piece of sh*t standards that is not good for the industry, stop complaining open source steals from you, and compete on technical merit. Then you might gain peoples trust again.
@Chris
“um…”
My stance is, open formats, yes; free software, not necessarily — for want of (perceived) “quality and reliability”.. in quotes because, meaning of them are always subjective and questionable (in that everything has bugs anyways).
@JC John SESE Cuneta
>This is really more about OOXML and the undecided and wait-and-see
Agree.
Personally, they should just embrace FLOSS. If they want to protect their ‘current’ APIs, software, etc. and by all means protect it. That is where their business depends on.
There are many other areas where they can enter into and start developing FLOSS applications from there. This action simply confirms that they’ve something and they do not like it.
For starters, if OOXML fails to be an ISO Standard, then start using ODF and help with its further development, now I strongly believe the “Free and Open” Community will accept that very positively. Now if OOXML becomes an ISO Standard, then they can start implementing and officially supporting ODF.
There are many ways where they can truly support and “be friendly” with the Free and Open Communities, not just this, with clause of “covenant not to sure…”
But heck, personally, I am not saying it is bad or it is not worth it. By all means, “thank you”. Though, if they truly want to be friends and support interoperability, then they should do more than that, and I’ve mentioned two ways that they can do.
Still, my stance will not change in regards to OOXML. But seriously, thank you for those documentations and for that covenant.
microsoft is turning over a new leaf. I applaud their recent move to provide software developers from schools / universities with developer software licenses. Always made me mad when I was being taught to program in language and id had to buy the full version of developer packages.
And now I applaud them on welcoming the open source market. Good to see them working with their audience rather than against.
Well done bill and stevie.
Historically Microsoft has been slow to come around on things. They are taking baby steps into the waters of openness, and while the waves may cause them to run back to the beach, the steps are steps in the right direction.
Personally, I’ll watch how this announcement unfolds, and decide from there. Sometimes sincerity is proven with time. Monoliths aren’t known for their agility, but with the proper motivation anyone can change. Redmond certainly has the desktops to make a meaningful, positive impact. If they follow through it’s a win for everyone. If they don’t it’s business as usual.
Doesn’t hurt to be hopeful, does it?
good post, erick… would be nice to see MS providing hosting and distribution platforms for the open source community to deploy apps… this is flirting with open source… with the resources at MS’s disposal it is rather unconscionable that their idea of embracing open source is to highlight that they “will not sue developers” for their efforts to bolster the MS products…. pfffft. Long way to go MS.
@14
This is slightly inaccurate. Here’s an interesting post within that slashdot thread:
http://slashdot...mp;cid=22106080
Specifically, you can’t link proprietary code to Qt. If it were LGPL it would be different.
Now, with regards to comparing a library to a protocol you are partly right. And FWIW, my word (”this might look like”) are meant to be mitigating. But, regardless of what it is that is being licensed (protocol, API, library, kernel, etc.) the point is: what am I permitted to do with my code once I’ve written it to use said licensed platform/api/foo. In that specific regard, I think we are in agreement, this about Microsoft continuing to maintain control. Whether this has particular applicability to ongoing negociations with govts may indeed be true, however I feel this similar to what Trolltech some 10 years ago: they had a desire to tap into open source, and they successively introduced licenses which tried (and sometimes failed — Harmony toolkit anyone?) to please developers. Maybe MS will go through a similar process … ? I won’t hold my breath
i think much of the value of the offer depends on how much royalties would they charge , and if the rates could be easily known before developing products.
hopefully they would do what they write in their site , and offer Reasonable and Non Discriminatory Licensing at reasonable royalty rates , and do it on some long term basis. this would be interesting
Seriously Eric, put in some time to understand the meaning of the term open-source. I understand that Mike gets pissed off when Fred Wilson quotes your article for the lack of journalism standards. But if you are going to make such obvious mistakes, we don’t need Fred Wilson to say that about blogger standards. Don’t abuse the term open-source just because you don’t know what it is. Call me a fundamentalist or any other term. I don’t care but the usage of the term in this context is plain wrong and it lowers the standards of blogging.
Just to clarify, I was talking about the title of the post not your contents.
Sounds like a “mee too” from MS, but it can work if they keep up the open APIs and documentation, and most of all.. support!.
Right now I think they’re more interested in start catching up with open standards and people developing gadgets, widgets or whatever for their own products… instead of losing them while they’re more interested in Thunderbird add-ons, Firefox add-ons, opensocial, and all that “hype” stuff that is driving developers attention away.
Just a quick thought.
As they say, “there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come”.
Those companies that do not bend — even if they’re on their knees and as powerful as Microsoft — will break.
I feel that way very strongly.
@36
“This is slightly inaccurate.”
“Specifically, you can’t link proprietary code to Qt. ”
“Meaning you can make commercial software out of it and make as much money as you want without paying them a dime”
You can sell GPL software. People do it every day. My statement was accurate to 100%. Commercial, means you sell it for money, not that you keep your software closed while using an open library, such as nero for Linux .
As a member of the Free Software Foundation, “badchris” @ fsf, for over 2 years I will chime in on @38.
Open source, simply means that the source code is open in terms of programming. Free Software is not simply open source, it is free in terms of redistribution and the way you use the software.
If you’re talking about the people who use Linux, or LAMP, or even word press that is used by techcrunch which you are using right now. You are in fact talking about Free Software, not open source.
The .NET runtime and other MS software was previously released under the MS public license, but was not redistributable with modifications. Now they are simply releasing the formats under the same type of license, which grants no identifiable time frame to the usage, and they are doing it with an extra provision that lets you redistribute it, but not charge for the incarnation or implementation.
This is not free software.
This is aimed at people that want to extend native support for MS formats in free software. The same way as OO2 exports PDF. This is to keep their formats from dying which is the trend right now amongst modern day developers.
“Erick: Not really. This policy on open source is the same one that Microsoft has had for several years. Absolutely no change. The real change is on the open APIs and protocols. But for open-source developers, it’s same ol’ same ol’.”
Agreed – Erick should be fired for biased stories. “sings a new tune” my ass, did you just miss everything during your time at those other publications? I mean I know TC is only a blog and not a magazine, but try to be a little professional. I wish we could go back to the days of just mike writing.
Oops.. started with the wrong foot.. the links to the file formats specification (doc, xls, ppt) are broken..
http://www.micr...aryformats.mspx
@43 … well that would leave us without duncan… unacceptable. i would be sad without the midnight dosage of duncan across my wire…
There’s also a big camp of developers who just need better API and formats documentation and interoperability — instead of open source codes/libraries, because they don’t want to open source their products, which even GPL won’t help. Another way put, GPL has its (intended and intentional) limitations, and so do Microsoft’s offerings. In any case, it’s a giant step forward in terms of openness. Whether helpful or not, depends what you do and what you want.
Remember “Show us the code” ???
see youtube video at http://www.yout...h?v=b9SlW1dxM70
Funny considering the news…
Interesting. I think Microsoft is finally seeing the light, (OOXML may have had something to do with it, as well as the European & Yahoo issues) although I wait to see whether their words are matched by deeds. I note however that it is easier to give concessions when you are the undisputed market leader.
I wonder when Apple will open some their locked down gardens (iphone sdk excluded)
If all these really meant any change …. Now they need to make their products work