Enterprise open source Toolkit

Why you should care about Microsoft's open-source move

Tags:
Interoperability,
Licence,
Red Hat,
Commission

Peter Judge ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 22 Feb 2008 17:08 GMT

...should be made available. The announcement may be timed to prevent the Commission from upgrading other investigations into a formal complaint.

It also comes two days before a key vote at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), according to Andy Updegrove's Standards Blog, on the status of Microsoft's OOXML document format. "This will effectively give those participating in the discussions of Microsoft's OOXML document format no opportunity to fully understand what Microsoft has actually promised to do, while reaping the maximum public relations benefit," says Updegrove.

What about previous Microsoft open-source efforts?
Microsoft's new open-source site points out in its own FAQ that previous initiatives are continuing. These include CodePlex, the Microsoft open-source project-hosting website, and Port 25, the public portal for the Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft. For several years, Microsoft has offered limited access to Windows source code under its Shared Source Initiative, in particular to the education and government sectors, which will also continue.

Is anyone convinced?
Some in the Microsoft camp see this as a genuine acceptance by Microsoft that openness is eventually inevitable: "Smart executives are very careful about moving the apples around the apple cart," says Microsoft employee and ZDNet blogger John Carroll. "In spite of that, it is my sense that Microsoft's upper management realises now that moving those apples around in a well-documented and standardised fashion is not detrimental to the company as a whole."

Everyone else, from the European Commission down, is sceptical. "The Commission would welcome any move towards genuine interoperability," said the Commission in a statement. "Nonetheless, the Commission notes that today's announcement follows at least four similar statements by Microsoft in the past on the importance of interoperability."

"The world needs a permanent change in Microsoft's behaviour, not just another announcement," said Thomas Vinje, spokesman for the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS), a pressure group whose members include IBM, Sun, Oracle, Red Hat and Nokia. "We have heard high-profile commitments from Microsoft a half-dozen times over the past two years, but have yet to see any lasting change in Microsoft's behaviour in the marketplace."

"Despite all the standards support rhetoric from Redmond, Microsoft has yet to implement ODF natively in its own systems," Vinje concludes. "The best proof of Microsoft's intention to live by the principles it has announced today would be for it to agree now to harmonise its efforts with the ODF standard, rather than trying to position OOXML as a 'better' competing standard."

Linux vendor Red Hat challenged Microsoft to extend its Open Specification Promise, a promise not to sue implementors of Microsoft protocols, which currently applies only to certain web-services technologies. "Instead of offering a patent licence for its protocol information on the basis of licensing arrangements it knows are incompatible with the GPL — the world's most widely used open-source software licence – Microsoft should extend its Open Specification Promise to all of the interoperability information that it is announcing today will be made available," said Michael Cunningham, Red Hat vice president and general counsel.