Microsoft's New Leaf On Interoperability 371
A large number of readers are submitting the news that Microsoft has made a major announcement about interoperating with others including specifically the FOSS world. The impetus is the ongoing EU antitrust case against Microsoft. The announcement comes in the context of the release of 30,000 pages of API documentation for Microsoft Vista, Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 — and a listing of patents that apply to these technologies, and a pledge not to sue open source developers who use the APIs. InfoWorld summarizes by saying that Microsoft "promised greater transparency in its development and business practices." Fortune is blunter, saying "Microsoft declares truce in open source war." Here's Microsoft's FAQ on the open source interop initiative.
Never trust a Klingon. (Score:5, Funny)
Captain Torvalds: Richard, there is an historic opportunity here.
Captain Richard M. Stallman: Don't believe them. Don't trust them.
Captain Torvalds: They're dying.
Captain Richard M. Stallman: Let them die!
Re:Never trust a Klingon. (Score:5, Funny)
Captain Torvalds: Richard, there is an historic opportunity here.
Captain Richard M. Stallman: Don't believe them. Don't trust them.
Captain Torvalds: They're dying.
Captain Richard M. Stallman: Let them die!
Captain Richard M. Stallman: GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATES!!!!
More like... (Score:2, Funny)
Torvalds: Bill, lets get some interoperability between various products, particularly linux and microsoft, it will be beneficial to the industry.
Gates: Sure that sounds great Linus.
Later that day..
Engineer at MS: Bill, how did your interoperability meeting go?
Gates: Great, Torvalds agrees that MS office should be able to handle all the document formats with MS Office Suite.
Re:Never trust a Klingon. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait a year (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait a year. If, a year from now, it turns out this is real, then pay attention. More likely, there will be minimal compliance with EU competition regulations, just as there was in the last two Microsoft antitrust cases.
Re:Wait a year (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wait a year (Score:4, Interesting)
While I can't really opine on the EU's regulations themselves for various reasons, I've been talking with people who are directly affected by them, and the amount of work we're doing to accommodate the EU is astronomical. About a third of our developer workforce has basically lost 6 months or more of time to write documentation on things that range from current file formats, to things that aren't even current technologies anymore.
That's an astronomical amount of man hours for it to be 'minimal compliance'. We're producing the documentation we're required to produce, at great expense to us. I can't comment on other areas we're being regulated in, however, but it's probably going to take us years to make up the amount of time we've lost in revenue from Europe.
I'd say (in my own opinion) that the EU regulations have basically turned Europe into a loss leader for us for the next several years. I'm not even convinced that the documentation is going to actually be useful to anyone (See Joel Spolsky's commentary [slashdot.org] on the matter, for instance, and he helped write that code!)
Re:Wait a year (Score:4, Insightful)
The interesting thing is that -- based on my own experiences -- writing that documentation will help internally at least as much as externally.
Need to rewrite something from scratch? Now you have a specification instead of having to scour the old code. Changed the code, and the behaviour has changed? Now you have a specification you can use as a reference, or -- if you put version numbers into the protocol or file format -- modify and go forward.
Undocumented code happens most places. Being forced to document it (either by internal policy or external court order :)) is painful, but still good.
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This documentation that we're being made to write is how the data structures look, *on disk*, etc. I would argue that we don't need that in
Re:Wait a year (Score:4, Insightful)
We have a failure to communicate here. There is no reasonable sense in which disk formats are not part of "how things are designed to work". If you didn't have that documented already, you didn't even have adequate internal documentation! If Microsoft's design methodology thinks otherwise, that's one source of this huge problem.
The classic buzzphrase for interface specifications is Formats and Protocols, since those are the root of all interoperability. Good design practices may well start from formats and protocols; at least, those are always managed carefully as versioned external interfaces to the next product version, to other vendors' products, and so on.
Re:Wait a year (Score:5, Insightful)
You guys could have written good specs and straightforward formats and saved yourselves endless grief. But no, you fucked yourself up the ass, created the excel 100k bug, invested god only knows how many man-centuries of work tending to BS obfuscated formats that you now must finally document. Tough cookie.
Re:Wait a year (Score:4, Insightful)
You guys could have written good specs and straightforward formats and saved yourselves endless grief.
They did. Let me hash out a few websites from the aforementioned blog
Excel had to run on a 20MHz computer with 1MB of memory. Files are binary; just write the data structures out to disk, and read from disk straight into memory. No computer would have had the power to open a large (or small!) XML-esque spreadsheet, for example, within the same business day.
They used existing Windows libraries (OLE, etc.) to make the resulting program smaller and faster. Complete documentation requires detailed explanation of database structures included with Windows 3.11, for example.
They're OLE compound documents. They're file systems within a file. You can't write a full-featured Word processor without being able to parse the Excel document that powers the chart it contains. Implementing this I'm sure was a few lines of code - I remember OLE being a part of Windows 3.11, just link with it and bam! magic happens - but try implementing this on your own.
Because writing an entire file could take upwards of a minute on old computers, even for relatively small files, only the changed data was appended to the end. This cut save times to ~1 second, but makes the file harder to parse.
They were small files. They took up little space on disk and in memory. They saved quickly. They loaded quickly. They were fuckin' magic on computers that had less memory and processing power than my TI-89 graphing calculator.
But, what were good design decisions for a Windows program are problematic for other people to implement. Boo hoo. And what assholes everyone was to the Microsoft poster, btw.
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Re:Wait a year (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft should have provided the documentation years ago, when it was first ordered to by the DoJ and the EU. Now that they're finally getting their ass kicked by regulators that can't be bribed or bought out they are finally creating documentation, but only after kicking and screaming like a 2 year old throwing a temper tantrum.
You don't like it? Tough, find a job as a developer at any number of other companies that don't have unethical business practices. I hear Google is hiring.
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For what it's worth, we have those. The thing is, the EU is asking us to document API's we've previously declared as internal.
There's a vast difference in the commenting you can rely on when you can and ca
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This speaks more to the corner Microsoft has painted itself into, rather than to the amount of openness or compliance achieved. A drowning person has to work in order to be able to breathe air, but this doesn't mean that they've left the water. By all accounts Linux (as well as other forms of Unix) is sitting on the beach in the open air, waiting for any and all comers to speak to it. That Microsoft is so far away from this is an apt metap
Re:Wait a year (Score:4, Insightful)
What are you talking about? Providing decent documentation that should have been provided in the first place is now called a loss? A win for your customers should also be a win for your company, but apparently you don't see it that way.
It's still raining absurd amounts money for Microsoft. It's only a good thing to make a bit less and provide some proper documentation and interoperability that should have been provided in the first place!
And it's a damn shame Microsoft had to be forced by law and fines in order to do business in an ethical way.
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What are you talking about? Providing decent documentation that should have been provided in the first place is now called a loss? A win for your customers should also be a win for your company, but apparently you don't see it that way.
If it costs a bunch of money to produce and you don't get any money back for having produced, yeah, that's what they call a loss in the business world. You lose money. Loss vs. gain, not loss vs. win.
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Microsoft is only going halfway when previously they
hyperopia (Score:2)
No, I can assure you, it IS minimal.
Being part of an organisation doesn't always give you insight into it. Sometimes it makes you blind to it.
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Well, it is possible that Microsoft is becoming a better company. After all, if IBM, of all corporations, could do so (and those old enough, or interested enough in the history of technology, know what I'm talking about), Microsoft most certainly can do so too. But most people will keep their skepticism up for as long as it takes for concrete demonstrations of good behavior to become the norm, rather than the exception
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Microsoft learned NOTHING from SCO Re:Wait a year (Score:4, Informative)
"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."
And...
"Microsoft will document for the development community how it supports such standards, including those Microsoft extensions that affect interoperability with other implementations of these standards. This documentation will be published on Microsoft's Web site and it will be accessible without a license, royalty or other fee. These actions will allow third-party developers implementing standards to understand how a standard is used in a Microsoft product and foster improved interoperability for customers. Microsoft will make available a list of any of its patents that cover any of these extensions, and will make available patent licenses on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms."
Sounds a lot like the SCO mantra to me. "We own the patents, so pay up on the royalty fees and we won't sue you" (Microsoft, February 21, 2008). Given that all of your work is for the benefit of those who are willing to pay Microsoft for the "patent royalty fees," without a judge's decision on whether the patent is valid, is this not the very definition of minimal? If Microsoft is going to have a covenant to not sue open-source developers, what happens to those who don't pay for the Microsoft patent licenses? Do they still get sued? Are they still under threat to be sued? This looks like an evil Microsoft ploy to make $$$ on the backs of open-source developers and end users.
As for the comparisons of Microsoft to the Open-Source benevolent IBM, I would mention that IBM (Sun Microsystems and others) have donated countless patents to the open-source community. This is NOT what Microsoft is doing and Microsoft should NOT be given the same sweetheart treatment that the IBMs (or Sun Microsystems) of the world have earned through their contributions to the open-source community.
Re:Wait a year (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean in lieu of having a monopoly should not be absence of business sense. I mean if Microsoft made good products, innovated, lead the market, didn't abuse market power and still had a monopoly, nobody would be complaining. There are tons of businesses like that worldwide.
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I'm still pissed that no modern SATA hard drive will work with my SATA RAID controller built into my motherboard,
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I do understand the cost saving aspects, but if the bar is so low for compliance you raise it. Of course the vendors groan at that too. I agree usually the
Reading Slashdot from Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
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Of course, that there are real, non-evil people down in the trenches making and supporting products at Microsoft is inconvenient to those slashdotters who prefer to hate the company as an evil monolith whose only faces are those of Ballmer and Gates.
Re:Wait a year (Score:4, Insightful)
Hardly. I can't speak for anyone else, but I have no problem at all hating Microsoft as an "evil monolith," despite the fact that I'm sure there are many intelligent, hard-working "non-evil" people working there. One does not negate the other.
Re:Wait a year (Score:5, Insightful)
I seriously doubt it. Microsoft is demonstrably a corrupt, evil company (see the irregularities wrt. the ISO OOXML debacle), and Microsoft couldn't do it without people who are willing to work there and support the company's actions. To still be a Microsoft employee today, you basically have to live under a rock, be totally gullible, be a sociopath, or be so incompetent that you can't get hired elsewhere (and thus don't have the luxury of ethics).
Every employee of Microsoft is responsible for supporting the company's actions. The only non-evil Microsoft employees today are former Microsoft employees.
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I have never worked for MS, but I have many friends who do, or have, and they are neither living under a rock, gullible, sociopathic, nor incompetent. They are ordinary, decent nerds who are not very concerned about Microsoft's business practices, and want a challenging job in software engineering working with other talented people.
I would classify "harming others because you don't care not to" as sociopathic. At minimum, it's quite selfish.
"All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing," as they say, and that more or less characterizes my friends.
Working for Microsoft, at minimum, constitutes doing nothing. I'm not sure what your point is.
Not to flame, but do you buy gasoline or eat meat?
I buy gasoline, and I don't like it, and I avoid it where I can. Your friends, if they're so smart, could easily get "a challenging job in software engineering working with other talented people" without supporting Microsoft's practices.
As for "bloodshed and death" being associated with eating
The only decissions that matter... (Score:3, Interesting)
All the nice chaps at MS are not providing direction to the company in the ways we know (which include breaking the law btw).
Most people would have problems making business with somebody they know is dishonest, but in Slashdot there is always a MS apologist willing to overlook a company with a record littered with illegal, immoral and abusive business practices.
You should keep in mind that people relate to MS as a monolith, all those nice chaps in MS just follow orders fr
Re:Wait a year (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wait a year (Score:4, Insightful)
One has to remember that MS's philosophy for years was "we BUILT the friggin market, they should conform to US". They still seek to define a lot of the formats, protocols, etc for the innovation they see as their own. Did you see
MS is fiercely competitive, and all decisions are coordinated to only give a nod to fostering a non-MS sale when forced. Otherwise, you better believe they act in concert to suggest that each MS piece is best served by another MS piece - and they make sure there is a solid piece in every slot that tech is needed. They want to continue to *define* the standards, not *conform* to them. This is the doorway towards innovation and thus competitive-advantage they repeat again and again in memos. You have to realize this first.
Even with this in mind, one can appreciate their tech and admire their smarts at times. But playing well with others has never been in their interest. This is not the fault of the good poster above and his tech team. It is a corporate top-down strategy that's worked for them, and will continue to be used.
No matter what they state is going to be "opened" or "published" they move onwards quickly.
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Just remember M$ lackey, what goes around comes around..
Also, the part where he doubted Microsoft employees were "allowed" to view slashdot was both astoundingly tinfoil hattish (Microsoft is, in fact, not North Korea), and an assault on his parent poster's integrity.
Of course he's entitled to provide his or her opinion, but the result is that the next person is entitled to respond to that opinion. It is, as you snark, called a dialog. And then we are in turn entitled to point out that the previous posters were entitled to their opinions. And an
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Here's a hint, you don't code and release a product, then turn around and write the spec for it.
Re:Wait a year (Score:5, Insightful)
We know they were never intended to be used by any third party. That's the fucking point. It would give a third party the ability to compete fairly with you.
You could argue that a company ought to be able to retain competitive advantage through trade secrets (such as internal APIs, etc). Had Microsoft not undertaken so many anti-competitive and illegal practices to prevent even disadvantaged (in API terms) competitors from participating in related markets the EU may even have allowed that argument.
Using an OS monopoly to help enforce a desktop software monopoly and using that to enforce vendor lock-in through file format obsfuscation is however what got you where you are. You built the monopoly using illegal means and seek to retain it through information hiding. Removing the competitive advantage derived from enhanced internal API knowledge is a valid and appropriate response by the EU.
Hell, your customers may benefit too. Now you're being forced to actually document your software perhaps you'll also engineer it to retain backwards compatibility with previous versions of your own software. It's well into the 21st century, this really shouldn't be so alien a concept.
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> intended to be used by any third party.
If it's accessible from an on the wire protocol, then trust me it's available to be used by a third party. Not in ways you might like, but it's *definitely* available
Jeremy.
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Pledge (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Pledge (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Pledge (Score:5, Interesting)
A "pledge" is a promise one makes under threat or other coercion that one has no want or need to actually follow. They've outlawed corporal punishment here since I went to school with Fred and Barney, but you were forced to recite the pledge or go to the principal's office and be caned.
Today if you don't recite the pledge they expel you, unless you go to school in the inner city in which case they don't even give a shit if you bring a gun, unless you shoot it at one of the staff.
Schoolchildren use the pledge to learn parody, as inWhen the President of the US is sworn in to office, the Constitution says he must pledge to uphold the Constitution. Although every President has taken this pledge, none have as yet actually done anything whatever to uphold said Constitution.
Pledge is also the brand name of some stuff your mom sprays on the end tables before she wipes your nasty fingerprints off.
I personally pledge to not hit "submit" with this comment. Oops...
Estoppel (Score:5, Informative)
Basically, Microsoft pledges not to sue if you use the API. Then once people start using it, they say, "Sorry, we didn't mean it. We sue you now." The doctrines of estoppel would prevent them from successfully suing you, as they are estopped by their pledge. You can't be held liable for their change.
Of course, anyone can sue anyone for anything any time in our legal system, so it may be no great comfort to know that they won't succeed if they sue you. They know they can bankrupt you with legal fees, at least for however long they can drag out appeals (which can be longer than you can go without the money).
Re:Estoppel - definition correct, situation IDK. (Score:3, Informative)
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Open Standards is the goal (Score:5, Insightful)
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I give it 2-3 years max before this happens. The reason is that Microsoft is losing th
If they were serious about the patent issue.... (Score:5, Insightful)
That would indeed show their good faith in allowing TRUE interoperability. As opposed to this, "really we promise we won't beat you THIS time...."
Just my $0.02.
Patent clause is for non-commercial only (Score:5, Informative)
No - because they are retaining the rights to sue entities that use the information for commercial purposes. Here's the text:
This announcement is just marketing spin on what the EU was about to require.
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That doesn't mean I'm not very suspicious, rather non-commercial is the basis of GPL licensing, generally speaking.
Re:Patent clause is for non-commercial only (Score:4, Insightful)
Smells like an attempt at fragmenting FOSS space.
yeah, sure, I'll buy THAT for a dollar (Score:2, Interesting)
I'll even link it for you : Google rope a dope" [google.com]
"Rope-a-dope is also commonly used to describe strategies in areas other than boxing, where one party purposely puts itself in what appears to be a losing position, and then becomes the eventual victor. Lying on the ropes had been, and still is, considered a "sin" in boxing, exposing a fighter to punishment because he cannot move away from his opponent."
Which APIs? (Score:2)
Just saying "will publish APIs" is rather useless - MSDN already has thousands of pages of fantastic documentation for APIs. Which new ones will they be publishing? Exports that are considered volatile across versions? Better ways to make shell extensions? Newer custom controls? Ways to plug your own storage engine into SQL Server? Need some specifics, please!
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Mono support (Score:2, Informative)
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Which 30,000? (Score:5, Funny)
"This page left intentionally blank"
Treat this like some version 0.01 software (Score:2)
As the saying goes (Score:3, Insightful)
Fool me twice, shame on me.
ITake anything Microsoft does with an extremely large grain of salt.
Seems like only yesterday... (Score:2)
No wonder it's been such a cold winter... (Score:2)
"Pledge" (Score:2)
Promise not to sue (which may be broken any day) => not GPL compatibility.
So, nothing important, this is the same old Microsoft, they probably mean "pseudo open source" developers, those who are silly enough to use Microsoft's "Open source" licenses. No gift for those evil guys who use the GPL...
The crucial condition (Score:5, Insightful)
If they want to use it commercially then they get sued. This type of news, coupled with yesterdays student IDE give-away is cast iron indication MS is worried by the FOSS world - of course they are attempting to defeat them with these measures while still securing their commercial revenue streams - having their cake and eating it.
I am sceptical if it will work though - the commercial business end of the spectrum have previously shown themselves more likely to make the shift away from MS products - it is the home market that is much more entrenched.
Open standards are needed, not this (Score:5, Insightful)
a pledge not to sue open source developers .. ? (Score:2)
"Microsoft is providing a covenant not to sue open source developers for development or non-commercial distribution [microsoft.com] of implementations of these protocols."
Let's be blunt (Score:5, Insightful)
Outside of mind bogglingly huge government fines, which MS seems willing to endure, there's no business reason for MS to actually want interoperability with anything or anyone. If they publish their API's, they open the door for competitors to make inroads, and possibly expose themselves to legal risk based on their past behavior. Once win32 software can run at least as well outside of Windows as it does on Windows, then Windows becomes irrelevant: that's their biggest fear. Their second fear is FOSS developers competing and winning against their products and their partners'.
Any API or documentation that MS publishes has been internally determined to have low or no risk to them. If they published everything, there would be a completely FOSS Windows clone started within months, and the outcome would be similar to how Linux overcame the commercial Unix flavors.
This action, like so many before, is a meaningless charade to make them appear cooperative.
implimentation of the Microsoft tax .. (Score:5, Informative)
Companies that subsequently engage in commercial distribution of these protocol implementations will be able to obtain a patent license from Microsoft", Brad Smith.
"with respect to companies that are engaged in commercial distribution, or use internally, there is a need to obtain a patent license where there are applicable patent rights", Brad Smith
"We have valuable intellectual property in our patents
Being really open: support ODF (Score:3, Interesting)
Red Hat's Response (Score:3, Informative)
Non Serviam (Score:3, Insightful)
Translation: open source programs that interoperate with Microsoft products will serve as a free software development arm for Microsoft. No matter what open source license they use, Microsoft's submarine patents will make them equivalent to shareware.
Non Serviam. I'll use open APIs, not "shareware" ones from Microsoft.
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Funny)
you've just described 95% of management. +/-10% margin of error.
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Informative)
Especially since it's a trap.
(from the doc...)
So basically they'll be sending the hounds over to the Ubuntu camp, Red Hat and anyone else who doesn't want to pay their fees. Any developer of GPL products should steer well clear from any of their bait.
Re:Don't worry (Score:4, Funny)
Fool me twice...Won't get fooled again (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Don't worry (Score:4, Insightful)
M$ is of course a company, could I trust them in the future, sure, as soon as the current executive team is gone and along with them their malign, vile influence.
It is impossible to trust them, imagine, they launched a marketing exercise to target individual's who recommended Linux and attempted to smear them as religious zealots, terrorists, members of organised crime and that they were a cancer upon society. Seriously this is truly disgusting stuff, they set out to destroy the careers and reputations of IT professionals, because those professionals would dare to recommend an alternate product that was vastly superior and was a far better solution for the future.
Of course they did stop, but not because what they were doing was vile, offensive and basically criminal, they stopped, because it wasn't fucking working, really unbelievably sickening stuff. Now there was a class action law suit that went begging, slander on a mass scale via cooperative mass media venues. The reason it failed, it just infuriated those same IT Professionals, so rather than just recommended and use the alternate product, Linux, they became active supporters, promoters, coders, installers and distributors.
Whilst that same disgusting executive team remains, fuck em, they are a cancer upon the technological evolution of society and do genuinely, consistently, behave like the most corrupt of criminals.
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft are going to have to change an awful lot before people are willing to trust them.
While they haven't made too many statements on the topic lately, it wasn't too long ago they were whining about a bunch of unspecified patents which Linux supposedly infringes on. They haven't suddenly become friendly to FOSS.
Opening some documents to try to stave off further legal woes in Europe does not a 'nice' Microsoft make. If they change their ways, and if they do it convincingly for a period of time, then people might start to think of them as less evil. But, I'm gonna need a little more time before I start thinking they have any of our interests at heart.
Cheers
Heresy (Score:2)
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
If Microsoft truly interoperates, they will be commoditized out of existence.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
But it took a while... (Score:3, Interesting)
As I understand it they went through the same thing back in the day. People HATED IBM venomously but in time as IBM changed their ways people stopped caring about what they did in the past.
It took IBM DECADES to get over their bad rep. Literally two generations of new programmers had to grow up while they were being good guys before they were trusted. It started with opening the hardware of the PC (and took a massive financial hit over a number of years rather than trying to suppress the clones), built as they reorganized themselves into a software-services company that supported and contributed to FOSS, and was finally complete when they took on SCO.
Sun is partway down a similar path and
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
yes they can. Instead of announcing yet again (and how many times have we heard it already?) that they were going to interoperate, they could shut the hell up and just DO IT. If they did that they'd get kudos from me.
But for a couple of trite but true old sayings -- once bitten, twice shy. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
Until I see some real actual interoperability I'm forced to believe that it's the same lie we've heard over and over again. I'll no more believe Microsoft's lies than I'll let Bighead in my house again.
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Hmm I thought it was more like this: "Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me...you can't get fooled again."
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Nobody said it was easy. Instead of saying "we're going to interoperate" they could do something; Documenting APIs are work, but you know, they're not in business for their health. The goddamned APIs should have been documented as the APIs themselves were written. You sound like the kid who won't clean his room for three months and then compla
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Let the bashing commence (Score:4, Informative)
Those in-the-know KNOW there is a catch and it's a pretty big catch too: those who use patent-encumbered APIs in FOSS applications will be left alone...until someone uses that FOSS commercially, and then all bets are off and MSFT will be after their protection money again. Those who most want MSFT to provide PROPER interoperability know what a standard is. Barfing out tens of thousands of pages of API specs does not a standard make. A standard is not driven by a single vendor. A standard is vetted by a standards body. A standard is IMPLEMENTABLE (what MSFT has released is a core-dump; nobody's going to be able to provide the kind of interoperability provided by MSFT's native implementations without a monumental investment of time and money to adequately understand what is in the APIs).
This was done because the EU, and even the US DOJ actions of the past, are increasingly forcing their hand, and they've "opened the kimono" under carefully crafted terms that appease regulators (that aren't savvy enough to know what meaningful interoperability entails) yet still ensure MSFT retains the leverage afforded by its market dominance. They're hoping that by sharing in the way they have, and releasing free developer tools and open source (but not Free in the GPL sense) OOXML implementations it will prove enticing enough for FOSS developers to implement something encumbered by MSFT.
Does MSFT really think we are THAT stupid? Do they really think that Free software is still about a bunch of small-time hippies that do it "just for fun"? Sorry, but the likes of IBM and Google are huge corporate backers of Free software projects--it isn't all hippie-geek love or some CS student's hobby anymore. These contributors are not going to want their work encumbered by a MSFT terms and conditions.
There is one interesting double-edged sword in this "MSFT truce": we will have a better idea than ever about what MSFT patents are threatening FOSS. On one hand, having MSFT IP so highly visible is one way they can defend their patents; it is more difficult to plead ignorance. On the other hand, the FOSS community knows which patents to work around in their own applications, and knows which patents to try to have invalidated in court, without pouring over the whole patent database.
Of course, it's always great to see MSFT being more open with information, and some of it might make an interesting read, so it isn't all bad. However this will ultimately do nothing at all to foster real interoperability; whatever benefits realised by the availability of information will be negated by making legal reverse engineering more difficult and by introducing tainted IP into FOSS.
Re:Major shift "Fundamenta Shift?" (Score:2)
Extinguishing, however, could merely be creating boards or bodies and sitting on them and dictating HOW and WHERE Open Source can "enjoy" freedom.
However, they could be writing co-existence code *for now*, with the intent to create a WHOLE NEW ms platform which will be so far ahead of current products as to keep Linux relegated to pre-20
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BZZZZZZZT!
No.
It's so open source software can be better aligned with them. They'd never allow themselves to be seen as Number Two. They want to still be the coach, and everyone else to play the game their way. If saying that isn't true, why would they need to release their APIs? We'd already know that info since they'd already be using the open standards, not their versions of them.
If they w
Re:Major shift (Score:4, Funny)
And thank god for that. Now it's so easy for people to understand what is really going on inside their computers, easy to establish straightforward relationships of trust with applications (as well as other computers, and other users), and easy for developers to write applications within those frameworks of trust so that they aren't tempted to demand access to everything.
It's great that Microsoft alone understood that "trustworthy computing" was a UI problem more than a computer science problem. Their innovative security UI is a beacon for the industry.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Horse shit! "fundamental shift" would be more along the lines of GPLing Windows + Office. That is a fundamental shift. This is them trying to appear compliant with EU wishes. The "patent pledge" is incompatibl