Microsoft announces new strategy of interoperability, jumps on the "open" bandwagon
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.
