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Microsoft's New Leaf On Interoperability
A large number of readers are submitting the news that Microsoft has made a major announcement about interoperating with others including specifically the FOSS world. The impetus is the ongoing EU antitrust case against Microsoft. The announcement comes in the context of the release of 30,000 pages of API documentation for Microsoft Vista, Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 — and a listing of patents that apply to these technologies, and a pledge not to sue open source developers who use the APIs. InfoWorld summarizes by saying that Microsoft "promised greater transparency in its development and business practices." Fortune is blunter, saying "Microsoft declares truce in open source war." Here's Microsoft's FAQ on the open source interop initiative.
Hopefully we'll see official support of mono in the same manner as moonlight / silverlight.
Rocket science is easy. Neurosurgery, now *that's* difficult.
Says the guy who patents PD controllers for animating human figures.
http://www.animats.com/
Our technology for high-quality ragdolls is patented. This broad patent covers most spring/damper character simulation systems. If it falls, it has joints, it looks right, and it works right, it's probably covered by our patent.
No - because they are retaining the rights to sue entities that use the information for commercial purposes. Here's the text:
This announcement is just marketing spin on what the EU was about to require.
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Basically, Microsoft pledges not to sue if you use the API. Then once people start using it, they say, "Sorry, we didn't mean it. We sue you now." The doctrines of estoppel would prevent them from successfully suing you, as they are estopped by their pledge. You can't be held liable for their change.
Of course, anyone can sue anyone for anything any time in our legal system, so it may be no great comfort to know that they won't succeed if they sue you. They know they can bankrupt you with legal fees, at least for however long they can drag out appeals (which can be longer than you can go without the money).
I understand Estoppel and I think you are dead spot on about that. However, I am concerned over the fine lines of what they really are promising to cover vs this patent pledge. They can make all this jazz about how they cover everything (public statements) and only cover the API's to be used in a locked format and not when things are modified, for example. This would be the same problems that occurred with the Samba protocol information....where "sure, we'll give out the info...for 10 thousand dollars". Aka its technically legal, but its still abuse of the legal system.
Don't think that just because Estoppel is enforceable that there aren't ways to weasel around it with legalease. Keep your skeptic hat on, especially even a year or two from now.
The documentation you're talking about is about how things are designed to work, not how they're implemented. There's a difference between the two, and we had the former documented already, it's part of our development processes. That's not what the EU asked us to produce. We've got design specs and feature specs, etc already. The feature doesn't get built without those.
This documentation that we're being made to write is how the data structures look, *on disk*, etc. I would argue that we don't need that information unless we're writing an importer, particularly since for a lot of things, our constraints have changed completely, so knowing how we did it in the past is of historical value at best. Joel points that out as well.
Since we already have implementations of these importers, and you don't rewrite code unless it's the absolutely last resort (That's how Netscape got to where it is now, by throwing away code, Joel mentions that too in some of his older articles.)
Also, wouldn't they already have documents on file formats and APIs? What kind of operation are they running that they don't even have API docs handy? Sure some work may need to be done to clean them up for external use, but I hardly doubt that they would be working from scratch on most of these documents.
For what it's worth, we have those. The thing is, the EU is asking us to document API's we've previously declared as internal.
There's a vast difference in the commenting you can rely on when you can and can't see the code. Not to mention that lots of these areas are old products, and aren't even necessarily in use anymore, and the developers have moved on to other product groups. It's tricky.
"open source developers will be able to use the documentation to develop implementations of these protocols without paying for a patent license", Brad Smith
.. and we will monetize from .. all users of that patented technology, all commercial developers, and all commercial users of that patented technology", Steve Ballmer
Companies that subsequently engage in commercial distribution of these protocol implementations will be able to obtain a patent license from Microsoft", Brad Smith.
"with respect to companies that are engaged in commercial distribution, or use internally, there is a need to obtain a patent license where there are applicable patent rights", Brad Smith
"We have valuable intellectual property in our patents
davecb5620@gmail.com
http://www.press.redhat.com/2008/02/21/red-hat-statement-on-microsoft-announcement/
I have no doubt that Microsoft staff is quite busy working at all times. The Microsoft press release makes the company leadership's intentions clear:
"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."
And...
"Microsoft will document for the development community how it supports such standards, including those Microsoft extensions that affect interoperability with other implementations of these standards. This documentation will be published on Microsoft's Web site and it will be accessible without a license, royalty or other fee. These actions will allow third-party developers implementing standards to understand how a standard is used in a Microsoft product and foster improved interoperability for customers. Microsoft will make available a list of any of its patents that cover any of these extensions, and will make available patent licenses on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms."
Sounds a lot like the SCO mantra to me. "We own the patents, so pay up on the royalty fees and we won't sue you" (Microsoft, February 21, 2008). Given that all of your work is for the benefit of those who are willing to pay Microsoft for the "patent royalty fees," without a judge's decision on whether the patent is valid, is this not the very definition of minimal? If Microsoft is going to have a covenant to not sue open-source developers, what happens to those who don't pay for the Microsoft patent licenses? Do they still get sued? Are they still under threat to be sued? This looks like an evil Microsoft ploy to make $$$ on the backs of open-source developers and end users.
As for the comparisons of Microsoft to the Open-Source benevolent IBM, I would mention that IBM (Sun Microsystems and others) have donated countless patents to the open-source community. This is NOT what Microsoft is doing and Microsoft should NOT be given the same sweetheart treatment that the IBMs (or Sun Microsystems) of the world have earned through their contributions to the open-source community.
How can you win when you always play a losing hand? They are "bashed if they do" because they're treating intelligent critics as if they're idiots.
Those in-the-know KNOW there is a catch and it's a pretty big catch too: those who use patent-encumbered APIs in FOSS applications will be left alone...until someone uses that FOSS commercially, and then all bets are off and MSFT will be after their protection money again. Those who most want MSFT to provide PROPER interoperability know what a standard is. Barfing out tens of thousands of pages of API specs does not a standard make. A standard is not driven by a single vendor. A standard is vetted by a standards body. A standard is IMPLEMENTABLE (what MSFT has released is a core-dump; nobody's going to be able to provide the kind of interoperability provided by MSFT's native implementations without a monumental investment of time and money to adequately understand what is in the APIs).
This was done because the EU, and even the US DOJ actions of the past, are increasingly forcing their hand, and they've "opened the kimono" under carefully crafted terms that appease regulators (that aren't savvy enough to know what meaningful interoperability entails) yet still ensure MSFT retains the leverage afforded by its market dominance. They're hoping that by sharing in the way they have, and releasing free developer tools and open source (but not Free in the GPL sense) OOXML implementations it will prove enticing enough for FOSS developers to implement something encumbered by MSFT.
Does MSFT really think we are THAT stupid? Do they really think that Free software is still about a bunch of small-time hippies that do it "just for fun"? Sorry, but the likes of IBM and Google are huge corporate backers of Free software projects--it isn't all hippie-geek love or some CS student's hobby anymore. These contributors are not going to want their work encumbered by a MSFT terms and conditions.
There is one interesting double-edged sword in this "MSFT truce": we will have a better idea than ever about what MSFT patents are threatening FOSS. On one hand, having MSFT IP so highly visible is one way they can defend their patents; it is more difficult to plead ignorance. On the other hand, the FOSS community knows which patents to work around in their own applications, and knows which patents to try to have invalidated in court, without pouring over the whole patent database.
Of course, it's always great to see MSFT being more open with information, and some of it might make an interesting read, so it isn't all bad. However this will ultimately do nothing at all to foster real interoperability; whatever benefits realised by the availability of information will be negated by making legal reverse engineering more difficult and by introducing tainted IP into FOSS.
Especially since it's a trap.
(from the doc...)
So basically they'll be sending the hounds over to the Ubuntu camp, Red Hat and anyone else who doesn't want to pay their fees. Any developer of GPL products should steer well clear from any of their bait.
> Keep in mind that what we (and sun, and philips) needed to provide when bidding for contracts would have been compliance documentation, not down to the byte documentation of internal APIs, memory structures and file formats that were never
:-).
> intended to be used by any third party.
If it's accessible from an on the wire protocol, then trust me it's available to be used by a third party. Not in ways you might like, but it's *definitely* available
Jeremy.