Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) announced today that they're going to put into action four new "interoperability principles and corresponding actions across its high-volume business products."
The purpose will be to "drive greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for developers, partners, customers and competitors," they said on their Web site.
The four areas they specify are:
(1) ensuring open connections;
(2) promoting data portability;
(3) enhancing support for industry standards; and
(4) fostering more open engagement with customers and the industry, including open source communities.
“These steps represent an important step and significant change in how we share information about our products and technologies,” said Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer. “For the past 33 years, we have shared a lot of information with hundreds of thousands of partners around the world and helped build the industry, but today’s announcement represents a significant expansion toward even greater transparency. Our goal is to promote greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for customers and developers throughout the industry by making our products more open and by sharing even more information about our technologies.”
Responses around the Web
At dailybriefing they announce the "glasnost era has arrived at Microsoft ... however belated."
Yahoo News talks about Microsoft pledging not to sue open-source developers if they use the software blueprints they release for non-commercial purposes.
They added that the products affected by the announcement are "Microsoft Vista, Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007, as well as all future versions of the same products."
The BBC was skeptical of the announcement, saying, "... today's announcement follows at least four similar statements by Microsoft in the past on the importance of interoperability."
Marketwatch cites Matt Asay, a general manager at Alfresco, saying it's not "going totally open source, but the company has taken a major step toward greater openness by enabling its customers, partners and even competitors to create products that can interoperate with the software giant's products."
Microsoft will also communicate which protocols are covered by their patents and will issue license in accordance with that.
On a conference call with Brad Smith (general counsel) and Bob Muglia (senior VP of server business), they report Microsoft is still making a strong differention between commercial software and non-commercial software, reaffirming the licensing above.
Smith said this is only the first step in a process they're initiating, although he wasn't specific on where they will be going next.
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