Techtree News Staff, Feb 22, 2008 1659 hrs IST
Probably in a reaction to pressure by regulators, MS has committed to promote interoperability with its products
Microsoft's control over the APIs (Application Program Interfaces) for its major products has long been a controversial and touchy subject, and neither US nor European regulators have been taking kindly to it. In a major development, the software giant has agreed not only to publish the APIs for its major software products (including Vista and Office 2007), but also to provide free access to them. This loosening of control will help non-Microsoft developers interact more easily with Microsoft's products. Developers will not need to pay for access to the to-be-published 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," the company said.
The APIs to be published are those for Exchange Server 2007, Office 2007, Office SharePoint Server 2007, and SQL Server 2008, as well as Windows Vista (including the .NET Framework) and Server 2008.
The company will also free up the protocols around its client and server software, amounting to 30,000 pages of documentation. This will make it easier for third parties to connect to Microsoft's products. In addition, it has promised not to sue creators of open source, non-commercial versions of those protocols.
As if that weren't enough, the company also plans to publish detailed documentation on how it supports industry standards and extensions. Further, by creating fresh APIs for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, it will allow developers to use their own document formats in Office 2007.
Formally speaking, the opening up of the APIs and the client and server protocols are part of an announcement that the company is implementing four "interoperability principles" and "corresponding actions" across its "high-volume business products": ensuring open connections; promoting data portability; enhancing support for industry standards; and fostering more open engagement with customers and the industry, including open source communities.
CEO Steve Ballmer had this to say about the announcement: "For the past 33 years, we have shared a lot of information with hundreds of thousands of partners around the world and helped build the industry, but today s announcement represents a significant expansion toward even greater transparency. Our goal is to promote greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for customers and developers throughout the industry by making our products more open and by sharing even more information about our technologies."
Then there's the Open Source Interoperability Initiative that Microsoft recently launched: that program will work towards ensuring interoperability between Microsoft's software and open source code, and will involve not just testing but also co-operative development.
Asked in an interview about whether the new interoperability principles were part of an agreement with the European Commission, Bob Muglia, senior vice president (Server and Tools Division) at Microsoft said the announcement "isn t part of an agreement with the Commission. However, it s a reflection of the changed legal landscape for Microsoft and the industry as a whole."
In other Microsoft-related news, starting 25th February, representatives of standards bodies worldwide will be present at a meeting held by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), primarily to revise the specifications for Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML). Microsoft hopes OOXML will attain the status of an ISO standard; opposition comes from those in support of the OpenDocument Format (ODF), approved by the ISO in 2006 as a standard. ODF supporters say that having more than one document standard makes it more diffucult for organizations to make software purchase decisions.
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