Someday in the distant future, your grandkids will be hugging their Microsoft Robot Friend, browsing the Weboverse on Internet Explorer 29, and going to a rock concert held by Steve Ballmer's head, and they'll have never known the evil, nasty Microsoft we grew up with. Starting today, Microsoft has dropped a bit of a bombshell on the computing community by jumping on the "open" bandwagon and altering the way they do business with third-party developers. According to a wordy press release issued by the company, the Redmond giant will begin embracing an open attitude by publishing documentation for all of its "high-volume product" APIs free of charge, will detail patents it holds and applications that cover its protocols (to avoid nasty, Linux-like
mixups, we assume), and will provide a "covenant not to sue open source developers for development or non-commercial distribution of implementations of these protocols." Sound like big news? They've got a lot more to say on the matter -- hit the read link and learn all about cuddly new Microsoft.
posted Feb 21st 2008 11:46AM
soooo... ReactOS/Wine gets a boost?
"non-commercial distribution"
Wouldn't those be commercial distributions?
Not likely. They probably aren't going to be focusing on OS API's but most likely inter OS communication, something that the open source community has wanted for a long time.
Yeah, right. I'll believe it when I see it.
talk is cheap.
I know you guys maybe skeptical, as I am too a bit, but this is what happens when you get desperate (Yahoo! anyone?).
Micro-pen-soft?
Sounds to me like My Gropen Soft...
Is that what you use to write on a tablet PC?
Woah...its not April fools day is it?
Thats crazy?!?
yeah, and I'll believe it if it's still true when my grandkids are using computers.
(if it's even true at the end of the month)
Oh Shit!
Yeah, what he said!
Laocoön, priest of Troy, who, in Virgil's Aeneid, tells his countrymen to "Beware Greeks bearing gifts". Both German and English have expressions related to “Greeks bearing gifts”, but they don't use the same idioms. While English concentrates on warning against Greeks with gifts, German emphasizes the gift itself. Ein Danaergeschenk is a “fatal gift” that brings misfortune or causes problems.
Or in germany you can just give them a 'gift' ;)
timeo danaos, et dona ferentes
"Quicquid id est timeo Daneo et dona ferentes" -- Whatever it is, I fear Greeks even when they are bearing gifts. (speaking, of course, of the Trojan Horse)
Who knew being forced to memorize parts of "The Aenead" would come in handy 25+ years later? ;-)
Don't do it, guys!
It's a trap!
I just had to laugh out on that one! Isn't it obvious? LOL
"Mom, Dad, don't touch it, it's EVIL!"
*BOOM*
Not Ballmer. He's an ass and always will be. Shake this guys hand and you'll pull back a bloddy stump.
Wow, I really like the positive comments that I see from everyone.
haha. would positive comments really be interesting to read anyway?
Dude MS has a history. You don't ignore this history because they put out some rosy press release. MS wants to earn positive comments? Have them stop being a douche and establish some history of being.....well non-douchebagish.
Steve Jobs is crying
No, he isn't, moron, cause Apple development tools are already free. Welcome to the twenty-first century.
http://macapper.com/2007/04/16/the-gems-of-apples-development-tools/
So are MS's http://www.microsoft.com/express/ Moron. Free but limited. But still free.
Gotta jump on the bandwagon. I'll believe it when I see it. Right now such a change is fundamentally a 180* turn to what MS has been doing and they have a KNOWN history of embrace, extend, extinguish. Don’t get me wrong, I want this more then anyone could imagine. But its so fundamentally different from the MS we knew. . . hell knew yesterday, that I don’t believe it and won’t until it happens.
All I know is if true Hell is about to get a hokey team to go with that ice rink.
If Microsoft is embracing openness, they must be intending to either kill "openness" or make their flavor of it the standard. And while the concept of Microsoft making its "open" model a standard may seem like an oxymoron, it would be in keeping with Microsoft's history.
Just look at the shenanigans perpetrated by Microsoft to get OOXML accepted as an open standard. Today's announcement is a marketing exercise, nothing more. Well, that and a bid to placate Yahoo!, which is a company that's committed to open source/standards.
Microsoft have a habit of trying to embrace things around the neck.
When I read the news that MS where going to make a major statement, I thought oh yeah, spinning off part of the company or no further office releases unless soas.
Opening there patent and products to others never even crossed my mind, maybe GNU/GPL is having the impact in sales that we all hope it would.
They're actually not opening their software at all. The word open source did not appear once in their relase relating to their products. What they're doing is using the word "Openness" to make them self look good.
I didn't say open source, neither did Microsoft, as you so rightly say. What I said, was open there products and patents to others.
This means that 3rd party developers will be able to create products that better work with MS crap.
This is a marketing atempt to lure back customers who are looking for open standards, and not intrested in having to change all there documentation to .docx or sim.
it's going to come down to that...the big winner in the future will be quality AND open (not unnecessarily free). apple and ms have to adopt this to compete with the big oss guys down the road (not too far, 5-7 years i say). kde4 is the beginning of the end of closed source operating system interfaces. i would love to see apple/bsd/kde have a big group hug and knock windows down.
*die-hard KDE fan*
I doubt KDE 4 will make path for any such thing. To me it sounds like they need more developers, last I heard KWord 2 might not even be finished for the initial Koffice 2 (which isn't really part of KDE, but still a very important part of a functional KDesktop imo) due to lack of developers.
@kaminix:
i don't think that as is it will be a killer of either osx or windows. but i think the root tech behind it has the potential. more like kde 6 (and associated apps, like koffice).
Wonder what both this story and it's comments would of been like if it was Apple and not MS doing this.
it would have been a lot of people saying "er, 2001 called, and wants its story back."
Yah because its so nice that I can take a Creative or Zune PMP and connect it up to iTunes and it syncs flawlessly. Ooops. Sorry. My bad. Open sourced my ass. Apple uses open sourced software. But allows? I think not.
Please show me where Apple document how to connect and and talk to an iPod/iPhone ?
(Not saying they don't just saying show me)
iTunes supports plugins. If you want to write a plugin for your Zune to interface with iTunes then go ahead. Openess doesn't mean 'everything' works immediately. Some developer out there has to want a Zune to sync with his iTunes first. People already sync WinMo phones with iTunes and other PMP.
Uhh ... an apple fanboy spoke :D behold - a miracle :P
"The interoperability principles and actions announced today apply to the following high-volume Microsoft products: Windows Vista (including the .NET Framework), Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007, and future versions of all these products." - From the link.
So, this is all just smoke and mirrors in hopes people will actually buy Vista? "Look mom, sure it's riddled with DRM, but it's openly interopoberable DRM." Yeah, Right.
Really? Apple said they would quit suing people in 2001? Someone tell all the bloggers they have destroyed since then.
Non-douchebagish? You mean like giving out free software to students? Or fixing Red Rings of Death for free? Or giving out Zunes for free when they miss a ship date? Or giving away free Xbox Live games for being down for a day? Microsoft has done a hell of a lot more to make good with customers than Google or Apple ever did.
Micropensoft!
(After they get Yahoo)
Well Microsoft sure seems to be trying to pull in the good PR as of late. This after they started giving away a boat load of software to students for free.
http://channel8.msdn.com/Posts/2047/
The software includes the pro version of VS2008, Expression Studio, and Windows 2003 Server Standard R2. Academic pricing was cheap, but you can't beat free and legal.
Ballmer is killing Microsoft.
Say your farewells.
Microsoft, you are the weakest link, goodbye.
Yah because they had record profits last year and has more money in the bank then some small to medium sized countries GDP....yep....MS is dead in the water. Doomed I say doomed. *rolls eyes*
The cake is a lie! The cake is a lie!
Personally, I see this as a legitimate effort by Microsoft. The industry is shifting in a new direction and they were never one to be left behind. Mounting pressure from the EU will also be a key factor in this actually taking place. For the second time in my life (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), I applaud Microsoft for trying to leave their old image behind.
I'll admit to a little skepticism; MS has rarely as a company done anything for purely altruistic reasons.
Interesting, though, that this follows on the heels of the new "DreamSpark" program, which is intended to provide pretty much every student on earth with MS development tools like Visual Studio 2008 Pro and Expression Studio...
I think MS has seen the writing on the wall, and come to understand that remaining proprietary will eventually back them into a corner. They're not idiots.
I'll admit to a little skepticism; MS has rarely as a company done anything for purely altruistic reasons.
Interesting, though, that this follows on the heels of the new "DreamSpark" program, which is intended to provide pretty much every student on earth with MS development tools like Visual Studio 2008 Pro and Expression Studio...
I think MS has seen the writing on the wall, and come to understand that remaining proprietary will eventually back them into a corner. They're not idiots.
hell just froze over
No wonder I am so cold! (and no I don't use Vista)
All that popped into my head was that scene in "Mars Attacks!" where the Martian is carrying the translator which is looping, "Don't run! We are your friends!" as they are killing everyone in sight.
Microsoft is going to have to do more then say they are committed to openness for many people to believe them. Years of proprietary totalitarianism and the recent snafu they are pulling with IE8, because of their disdain for standards, have left people wary.
Trust is not easily earned.
do it vince, do it
non-commercial? that means if I make a program using those so called "free" APIs I can't use it at work? that's crap.
It's a Phantom launch title, I hear
In the interest of disclosure, I am a Microsoft employee, but I am sharing my own views and not speaking on behalf of the company. The thing I see as "new" is the call-to-action for employees and the clarity of the principles. When sets of principles like this are promoted from the top, such as the "Four pillars of Trustworthy Computing" (http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/twc/default.mspx) they get a lot of attention internally, and, as a result, they inform the design of products. But it's not an overnight thing.
"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."
Is this compatible with any open source license? I have to imagine this was done to sound good to EU regulators but be worthless to open source. That's not to say this isn't good news for smaller developers who are interested in developing commercial products, but it's mostly worthless to the rest of us.
Everybody take cover!! It's a sign of the apocalypse!!
*runs and hides*
Quoting only parts of the document changing its meainng for your own pleasure and vilification needs does not make sense..
Here's the part on opennes and sueing -
To enhance connections with third-party products, Microsoft will publish on its Web site documentation for all application programming interfaces (APIs) and communications protocols in its high-volume products that are used by other Microsoft products. Developers do not need to take a license or pay a royalty or other fee to access this information. Open access to this documentation will ensure that third-party developers can connect to Microsoft’s high-volume products just as Microsoft’s other products do.
• As an immediate next step, starting today Microsoft will openly publish on MSDN over 30,000 pages of documentation for Windows client and server protocols that were previously available only under a trade secret license through the Microsoft Work Group Server Protocol Program (WSPP) and the Microsoft Communication Protocol Program (MCPP). Protocol documentation for additional products, such as Office 2007 and all of the other high-volume products covered by these principles, will be published in the upcoming months.
• Microsoft will indicate on its Web site which protocols are covered by Microsoft patents and will license all of these patents on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, at low royalty rates. To assist those interested in considering a patent license, Microsoft will make available a list of specific Microsoft patents and patent applications that cover each protocol.
• 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.
If you havent figured it out already - you dont need to pay anything to use the protocols as long as they are not covered by any patent, for commercial or not. And they will provide which protocols are covered by patents.. what else do you need, someone to come in and type your code for you?
So, FINALLY, Engadget admits, that Microsoft will still be the #1 company in 2029 when my grandkids are hugging Microsoft robot friend huh?
Off Topic:
I'm kinda getting pissed at your people for telling things bad about Microsoft !
They give out free stuff to developing countries as well. It's the same idea, get people to buy in early. Perfectly legit, but really in the spirit of openness (like, say, real free/open source software) if their protocols aren't completely interoperable and open.
"but really in the spirit" should be "but NOT really." Anyone who's actually looked at or used the OPEN source code of another app knows the difference. Night and day.
And I posted this as a reply to another message, why isn't it linked?
All I have to say is that Microsoft has done a whole slew of "bad" things in the past which in turn has contributed to their incredible size of today. That being said I am glad that they are finally starting to move toward doing "good" things for the market and users in general. Some may say "too little too late" but I'm going to stick with "it's never too late" and hope that they actually follow through.