Microsoft woos Open Saucers
SOFTWARE empire Microsoft has been flirting and fluttering its eyelashes with the open sauce community again by publishing more of its specifications.
The move, which a cynic would say was just to appease the anti-trust regulators, is what Vole calls "broad-reaching changes" to its technology and business practices to enhance the ease with which its software interacts with partners, customers and competitors.
Volish supremo, the shy and retiring, softly spoken Steve 'Stars in your Eyes Marcel Marceau impersonator regional heat winner' Ballmer said that the steps were important.
He whispered that his cunning plan was 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.
It seems that Microsoft is putting the best gloss on the fact that the EU has told it to pull its socks up and is starting to do what it is told.
In line with all this, Vole has posted more than 30,000 pages of software protocol information online for anyone to view.
The protocols show developers how to enable applications to communicate and exchange data with popular Microsoft programs such as Outlook and Office. ยต
L'Inq
More
here
Share this:
ShareBusiness Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
From what I've read they've said "we will not sue" (i.e. for patent infringement of people using these APIs and source code derived from it), but have only said that in relation to "non-commercial" uses. 

So bits of Linux is fine, but commercial companies like RedHat who utilise Linux will not be able to touch any of the developments off of this without MS jumping on them as usual.