Microsoft pledges not to sue over open source
Microsoft's top executives are set to announce a broad interoperability strategy that includes an agreement not to sue open-source developers for products that connect to Microsoft software, a source familiar with the company's plans told CNET News.com.
The software maker had already taken baby steps in this direction, signing individual pacts with companies like Novell and Turbolinux, as well as agreeing not to sue individual developers.
The company has scheduled a conference call at 8:30 a.m. PST on Thursday to discuss the news. Among the executives on the call are CEO Steve Ballmer, Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, server and tools head Bob Muglia, and General Counsel Brad Smith.
Ray Ozzie (left) and Steve Ballmer.
(Credit: Microsoft)Update: Microsoft issued its press release with more details.
Microsoft on Thursday announced changes in its business practices to work better with software from other providers, including open-source communities.
It laid out four principles aimed at making its high-volume enterprise software support standards and better handling data from non-Microsoft software.
Specifically, Microsoft said it will publish the documentation for the application programming interfaces and communications protocols in its "high-volume products." Developers do not need to buy a license or pay a royalty to access the information.
As a first step, Microsoft will publish protocols for communicating with Windows Server, which had previously only been available under a trade secret license. Protocols for interoperability with Office 2007 will be published in the coming months, the company said.
Microsoft said the pledge will ultimately extend to Windows Vista, the .NET Framework, Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007.
Microsoft said that it will not sue open-source developers who create non-commercial software based on Microsoft's protocols.
The company also said that it will provide new application programming interfaces to developers so that Office 2007 can better work with document formats. The company does not natively support the alternative Open Document Format, or ODF, standard in Office 2007.
Although it does not mention ODF specifically in its release, Microsoft also launched a Document Interoperability Initiative to "address data exchange between widely deployed formats."
Microsoft said the Open Source Interoperability Initiative will foster a better working relationship with open-source projects, and will provide technical assistance, such as interoperability testing.
Through a previously created Interoperability Executive Customer (IEC) Council, Microsoft will seek to create a better "(dialogue) and outreach" with partners, customers, and developers on the subject of interoperability.
In a statement, Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said these steps are part of the company's efforts to comply with antitrust obligations laid out by the European Court of First Instance (CFI).
"As we said immediately after the CFI decision last September, Microsoft is committed to taking all necessary steps to ensure we are in full compliance with European law," Smith said.
CNET News.com's Martin LaMonica contributed to this report.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina.
On other news, pigs fly and hell freezes over....
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080214125705140
"Gates and Alwaleed have collaborated for at least two years. After attending a dinner at Gates's home in Bellevue, Washington, in early 2004, Alwaleed agreed to explore ways to assist Microsoft's expansion in Saudi Arabia."
This is only the latest of MSFT's indirect attacks against open source. Anyone remember the patent troll IP Innovation LLC suing Red Hat and Novell? IP Innovation LLC is a subsidiary of Acacia. And 10 days (TEN!) after this: "Acacia Technologies Names Brad Brunell, Former Microsoft General Manager, Intellectual Property Licensing, to Management Team."
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071011205044141
So Microsoft is pledging not to sue over open source? How thoughtful of them.
of Satan and are now threatening everlasting
winter in the 9th Plane of Hell.
More to come as this breaking story develops.
"Specifically, Microsoft said it will publish the documentation for the application programming interfaces and communications protocols in its "high-volume products." Developers do not need to buy a license or pay a royalty to access the information.
As a first step, Microsoft will publish protocols for communicating with Windows Server, which had previously only been available under a trade secret license. Protocols for interoperating with Office 2007 will be published in the coming months, the company said.
Microsoft said the pledge will ultimately extend to Windows Vista, the .NET Framework, Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007.
Microsoft said that it will not sue open-source developers who create non-commercial software based on Microsoft's protocols..."
Go back and read the Commander's Logs where "Fast Fourier Transform (FFT)" was mentioned (do some research) then read the article again to understand who will survive the "Microsoft API Tsunami Wave" and which "shores" it will hit - No more "EU Commission" interruptions you say!
Seriously, an MS pledge has no value.
MS's level of honesty documented in the link below.
http://www.albion.com/microsoft/findings.html
A developer of Free Software has no control over whether her work is used for commercial or non-commercial purposes downstream.
This is -- prima facie -- ridiculous!
Amarok is miles ahead as a player and archiver.
K3B is years ahead as a ripper and encoder.
This latest "generous" offering of cooperation evidences only the final capitulation of a band of thugs who now realize they can no longer bully their way around the sandbox, and are thus facing up to the reality that their fake technology will likely be irrelevant with a decade.
Hopefully nobody eagerly hauls this Trojan horse inside the city gates without carefully inspecting what lies within the belly of the beast.
Wait, I hear their clang now.
Crying to the regulator only works so long - then you gotta' deliver. Maybe this offering will help those poor oligopolies with their dearth of innovative ideas.
Dear Microsoft can I still get a copy of Windows XP after June? yah know to play games... F**K it RTSs are coming to consoles now anyways.
valuable to Microsoft: having its proprietary Open Office XML
declared an international standard by the International
Organization for Standardization (ISO). Some governments have
mandated that documents for government use be written as an
international standard. ODF already is that. You can imagine the
threat to MS if governments start to mandate a different
standard than MS's. So they wrote a proprietary standard they
misleadingly call Open Office XML. Of course, proprietary
software code would not normally be considered as an
international standard. But MS has spent the last six months
literally buying the support of countries delegations to the
standards meeting next week. See Wall Street Journal story:
Microsoft's Office Push Scrutinized by EU
Regulators Are Looking
At How Firm Corralled
Support for the Software
By CHARLES FORELLE
February 8, 2008; Page B4
BRUSSELS -- European regulators are examining whether
Microsoft Corp. violated antitrust laws during a struggle last
year to ratify its Office software file format as an international
standard.
... (I do not want to post the entire story)
In the months and weeks leading up to the vote, Microsoft
resellers and other allies joined standards bodies en masse --
helping swell the Italian group, for instance, from a half-dozen
members to 85. Opponents said Microsoft stacked committees.
People familiar with the matter say EU regulators are now
questioning whether Microsoft's actions were illegal. Microsoft
said at the time that any committee expansion had the effect of
making more voices heard...
---
THIS is the real ball-game. The second vote is next week. Those
of you who think MS's days are numbered, think again. They are
close to having bribed their code into ratification as an
international standard.
Go to the website www.noooxml.org/start for more information.
"Told You So Days Ago...."
http://www.news.com/5208-13860_3-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=35385&messageID=380380&start=-1
They pledge not to sue that which connects to THEIR PRODUCT - what about the other stuff? Well, now thats a horse of a different color. . . actually any "pledge" by ms is something about a horse - but not its color.
- MS vs the World
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by corredorlobo
February 23, 2008 6:01 PM PST
- I think the world led by the EU need to go blow. Their litigations against MSFT is nothing more than bullying and protectionism. To go one step further( and unfortunenly I do not have the facts at hand) How many American companies are being slammed by the EC versus European????? Maybe the US needs to start tariffwars and legal wars with European firms to protect US businesses.MS developed their codes and therefore have an INTELLECTUAL RIGHT to said knowledge. They share but noone else does Adobe gves (livcenses acrobat to Apple for their OS text, MS shares WMP codecs with Real Player, etc and what do they get in return???? What is fair for 1 is fair for all? How does Apple monopolize EVERYTHING about their productss and M$FT cannot? Why can Adobe license (give) acrobat to others and not to MS? Never mind everyone seems to hate the one company that gave us computing for the masses
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Reply to this comment
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- corporations are not human, OK?
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by the_piano_man
February 24, 2008 12:46 PM PST
- Corredorlobo;
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- Typical American Attitude
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by shadycat75
February 25, 2008 11:24 AM PST
- MS rips us all of and has made it hard for anyone to use their code, there is a new wave of Linux and other applications from the Open Source community backed by some big companies, Novell -Suse, IBM mysql and many more, M$ has realised there is a threat to its daft prices, Keep you ms code in the US for all i care, enjoy it, it gets hacked weekly, it doesnt work half the time..... Bring on the new era of Linux on the desktop.
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(29 Comments)I can understand why you might feel defensive about ms, most people know nothing else and don't have time to or don't want to learn anything else. If you are 25 years old or younger you likely have no recognition of life before ms.
It follows that you wrote:
"Their litigations against MSFT is nothing more than bullying and protectionism." - not quite so.
The US department of Justice was first to start legal proceedings against ms. The EU followed up after the US courts dropped the ball and let ms off the hook. Essentially, the EU is doing what the US court system did not have the political will to do. See the info here:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2002/11/35212
and here:
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=18401563
Then you wrote: "MS developed their codes and therefore have an INTELLECTUAL RIGHT to said knowledge." Read your history. The two people who started ms did not write all their own original code, although they did lots of work. They used the open source model - they looked at code already written. Basic, for example (not written or developed by ms) was ported to the 8080 chip, was modified to work in their situation and then sold as "ms basic"(p.22,p.30, p.13, p.15). They (ms) also took credit for "writing" fortran (p35) Pascal, and Cobol - they did not they "ported" them. Another "acquired" work was CP/M, a complete operating system created by Gary Kildall(p.75,93). This was merged into Qdos (yet another "acquired" work which eventually became "ms dos" the foundation of ms dominance in the world and all their profits) created by Tim Patterson (p.75,93). Ms is a corporation "it" developed nothing, has no
intellect, soul, or ethical principles. Programmers who work at ms spend hours modifying code so it will work on their proprietary software. The people running the ms juggernaut have continued to use these tactics ever since, modifying code, then hiding it behind the corporate veil and selling it as their own using the legal system and devious methods to smash all competition. Read all about it here and refer to the page numbers mentioned above:
"The Making of Microsoft, Daniel Ichbiah, Susan Knepper. Prima Publishing. ISBN 1-55958-071-2. first publication 1989. This book was written based on interviews with ms execs.