Microsoft's open-source patent threat still intact
Microsoft made major concessions Thursday that should make it easier for open-source software to dovetail with or even replace Microsoft products, but a major caveat means the company's legal threats remain alive and well.
Microsoft announced a number of moves that could significantly improve its relationship with the open-source world. Among other things, the company said it will share communication protocols that govern how Microsoft software products communicate; pledged not to sue open-source programmers for developing software that uses those interfaces; and launched an Open Source Interoperability Initiative to improve how well open-source software works with its own.
Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie (left) and CEO Steve Ballmer.
(Credit: Microsoft)Although programmers now are apparently free to reproduce the software, Microsoft's generosity ends when the software crosses the threshold from project to commercial product.
"Microsoft is providing a covenant not to sue open-source developers for development or noncommercial distribution of implementations of these protocols," the company said. "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."
In other words, Microsoft hasn't backed down from its insistence that its intellectual property isn't free for the taking, an assertion made most clearly in 2007 when Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said Linux and other open-source projects violate 235 Microsoft patents.
"The promise not to sue is only for 'noncommercial' open source, which is a bit meaningless," said Jeremy Allison, a founder of the open-source Samba project that lets Linux servers substitute for Windows file and print servers by emulating the required Microsoft communication protocols.
The Thursday move suggests two forms of patent agreements. First is one in the mold of the controversial Microsoft partnership with Novell from 2006 and various other smaller Linux companies afterward. The second is an agreement directly with customers that use open-source software such as Red Hat's Linux, as Ballmer suggested last October when he said, "People (who) use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to eventually to compensate us."
It's not likely Microsoft opened up its specifications and made its pledges Thursday out of the goodness of its heart. As the open-source movement and its free-software predecessor have matured over more than two decades, Microsoft has found it necessary to make accommodations.
First, the open-source programming philosophy outdid Microsoft in an area where it previously had been a leader, fostering communities of developers. Second, there have been years of antitrust litigation, first by the United States and more recently from the European Union, that called on Microsoft to share. The third, and perhaps strongest reason, is that open-source software has become a powerful force in the software industry and customer sites--and even at Yahoo, the Internet company Microsoft is trying to acquire for $44.6 billion in part because of its engineering expertise.
The Samba case illustrates the pressures on Microsoft. In December, Samba announced a complicated third-party arrangement that in effect gives it access to Microsoft's communication protocols, a move that came shortly after the European Union required Microsoft to share interoperability information with open-source projects.
Sharing protocols, while it makes it easier for others to interoperate or clone Microsoft products, also could serve to entrench Microsoft's products by making its in-house protocols into de facto industry standards.
Take OOXML, the office document format Microsoft is trying to standardize as an alternative to the ODF that was spawned from the OpenOffice.org software, an open-source rival to Microsoft Office. "The approval of OOXML, for instance, is seen as crucial by Microsoft as a means of maintaining its Office market share," The 451 Group, an analyst firm, said in a statement Thursday.
And as ZDnet blogger Mary Jo Foley noted, the ISO standards group is meeting in Geneva next week to vote on whether OOXML should be awarded official standard status.
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
Thus, under the author's analysis, no competitive move could be made by such a company because it must move from pure motivations...and clearly, MS has "scienter" working against.
Baloney.
Does it matter how the company arrived at its new direction? The info will still be gobbled up - even by the FOSS-oriented (their latest guilty pleasure).
Congratulations, MS! This analysis/story reveals those against you feel truly scared. You're on the right trail.
So we'll be left with Microsoft taking a larger and larger cut out of America's productivity in exchange for contributing nothing.
That said, if Microsoft were to go open-source whole-hog (the way for example Sun Microsystems has), it would be fascinating watching the open-source movement's response. I wouldn't expect Microsoft's dominance on the desktop to budge much, for example.
And if you really believe that Microsoft is doing this from pure motivations, I've got some dihydro-peroxide to sell you for $50 US an ounce. MS is a for-profit company, as they so often remind us, and the reason they are releasing their APIs is because they believe they can improve their profits by doing so. If they didn't, they would be subject to lawsuits from their investors.
The complaint that many developers have with this move is that the API specs can change without notice, may be incomplete, and are encumbered by patents. If MS were motivated by "pure" intentions, they would use open standards which would not be weighted down by these problems.
Of course many for profit companies in the IT business use truly open standards because it benefits their customers _and_ is profitable. This is why the internet is so widespread, anyone can write a program using open standards, such as TCP/IP and HTML, and expect it to work with any other system using those standards. If all we had were the APIs from a dozen different companies, it would be difficult to impossible to write client software that worked effectively. And the ones that did exist would be so expensive, most people could not afford them.
With that in mind, you should pause to consider how much further we could have progressed if MS wasn't a monopoly.
Later . . . Jim
Let's see I'll write some software, give it to you for free, and let you make money off of it... That makes perfect sense if you believe in communism.
Open standards are the things that allow you to buy any brand of lightbulb at any store and have it fit in your lamp (assuming the obvious issues are correct).
By releasing their APIs, they are providing the specifications for interacting with their applications. This is not the same as an open standard, because only they can modify the specs, and they can also withhold some information.
The free part is their choice, but considering how long it took them to make this move, it is reasonable to assume that they believe they can make more money by releasing the APIs, than not. Time will tell on that one, but the rest of the IT world seems to be surviving just fine using fully open standards, such as TCP/IP, HTML, SMTP, etc.
Later . . . Jim
Is it that:
1) Microsoft is a commercial company and thus they are trying to make money? Yes, they are, that's the whole point in running a business.
2) Microsoft claims they are the best alternative? Well, it would be stupid to run a business by claiming your competitors are better.
3) Something else I can't imagine.
Let me make a proposal, Stephen. Why don't you go to CNet's CEO, and politely asks him to continue to pay you, but gives out all CNet's content for free for everyone who wants to make money out of its content. If you succeed, please let me know, because my wife's business can use some help from CNet's large library of product reviews!
As an aside, regarding free CNET content, I'd steer your attention toward CNET's Open Content Platform:
http://pressreleases.cnetnetworks.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=67325&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1085613
"Publishers can incorporate CNET Networks content through plug-and-play brand widgets available at www.cnetnetworks.com/partnerships, or work with CNET Networks to develop a customized partnership."
GUI
menus that drop down are not inventions from microsoft.
Maybe the taskbar is microsofts.... not sure though.
Easy app prototyping for basic users (VB)
Taskbar based desktop
File system/desktop analogy integration
Assistant (OK, perhaps you hate this one)
Automatic online OS patching
Object Linking and Embedding (copy and paste of external structured application data)
Cleartype
Self tuning DB
Multimaster Directory
Media Center
Tabs in dialog boxes (I can't think of any precedent, though I might be wrong).
Tablet PC
Online Satellite view Global Mapping Web Service (TerraServer in 1998)
Print Preview (in Project 2.0)
Format Painter
Autocomplete (InteliiSense)
Never saw them suing for any of those. Of course, you'll always be able to find some precedent for any of those, but that can also be said of ANY innovation at all. There's always a precedent for anything.
This annoying tactic of Ballmer's is proof positive that MSFT is not a software company but a barely competent law firm (who can forget the anti-trust follies?) and Junior-Achievement organized crime ring that just incidentally develops unstable operating systems and bloated, nearly useless office 'productivity' software.
What next from Monkeyboy? Walking around department stores, biting the faces of people carrying iPods?
Stephen, please call up 30 patent lawyers and ask them to dissect Ballmer's claims. It's called reporting. Listening to a guy with a bizarre kind of Tourettes that provokes him to spout legal pornography and quoting him verbatim is just your weird way of making fun of the handicapped. Shame on you.
Why should any government agency have the right to tell a company that it must support oss standards or any other software standards. The market should decide. I guarantee ya' that if MSFT doesn't produce software that customers want it won't be in business for long, but judging by it's last fiscal quarter, it's doing something right. Just look at Sun! She might still be around, but she ain't what she used to be!
And, getting standards approvel for office file formats, is just a formality. Regardless, of what the outcome of the vote, OOXML is the STANDARD. 1,000,000,000 + installations says it is.
- by eggaweb October 8, 2008 5:48 PM PDT
- A free lunch for developers? Microsoft gets free labour and then gets to charge if it goes commercial for the developers. It's a good first step though. Now it's time to open up the Windows.
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