Jitway Posted February 22, 2008 Share Posted February 22, 2008 "We're announcing that developers will not need to take a license, or pay a royalty, or other fee to access any of that information," revealed CEO Steve Ballmer yesterday (according to Microsoft's transcript). "As an immediate first step to apply the principles today we're publishing to the Web over 30,000 pages of documentation for Windows client and server protocols that were previously available only under a 4D trade secret license. In addition, protocol documents for additional products like Office 2007 will be published in the upcoming months." The company's newly published Interoperability Principle spells out the terms to which Ballmer referred: "Microsoft will publish its documentation for these Open Protocols and Open APIs on its website so that all developers will have the benefit of this technical information in a manner that takes advantage of the nature of open discussion on the web. Microsoft will not require developers to obtain a license, or to pay a royalty or other fee, to have access to all this information." But free access, the Principle makes clear, does not mean free use. While Microsoft will no longer charge fees or royalties for parties seeking information on how to make their software interoperable, it may yet charge royalties for the way others use that information. As with most I do find this hard to believe that Microsoft would give away this information for free. So wo here thinks like me that this just a way for Microsoft to shift its business strategy again? In the wake of their Yahoo bomb of trying to take and buy them out I think they are just trying to look good. Read about it HERE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tynvar Posted February 22, 2008 Share Posted February 22, 2008 It's business strategy. Same with the express versions of visual studio. If the IT people have access to the ms tools for free, when they are in a company they will probably push for ms software and development tools since that's what they learned. But then the tools for companies are not free... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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