Steve Ballmer may not have anything better to say than "blah" and "Google" in his analyst meetings, but his open-source group came up with a doozy today.
The flawed Open Specification Promise (OSP) just became whole. Or close to it. Microsoft has opened up its Open Specification Promise to make it meaningful and usable to a wider group of people. Even Groklaw, which sets a high (and generally fair) bar for Microsoft is impressed.
Microsoft's OSP has been controversial in part because it's basic covenant not to sue developers was crippled by its application only to noncommercial developers, as well as other ambiguities that have been resolved. With this update to the OSP, this restriction is gone, as Sam Ramji, Director of Microsoft's Open Source Software Lab, confirmed:
Microsoft is putting a wide range of protocols that were formerly in the Communications Protocol Program under the Open Specification Promise (OSP). This guarantees their freedom from any patent claims from Microsoft now or in the future, and includes both Microsoft-developed and industry-developed protocols.
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Michael Cunningham, general counsel for Red Hat, has posted a response to Microsoft's pledge to greater transparency. Let's just say that Michael isn't overly impressed. Not until he sees more of a tangible commitment to transparency:
Eight years ago the U.S. regulatory authorities, and four years ago the European regulators made clear to Microsoft that its refusal to disclose interface information for its monopoly software products violates the law. So, it is hardly surprising to see even Microsoft state today that "interoperability across systems is an important requirement" and announce a "change in [its] approach to interoperability."
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Microsoft has given the open-source community a belated Valentine's Day present by adding its Office file formats (.xls, .doc, and .ppt) to the Open Specification Promise. It also added information on patent/copyright coverage and information on how OSP interacts with GPL-based software development. (You can see what the site looked like before the changes using the Wayback Machine.)
Good for you, Microsoft.
No, Microsoft wasn't motivated by peace, love, and Linux. Rather, the contribution of the binaries is focused on getting OOXML approved:
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