Microsoft’s Interoperability Propaganda
Microsoft-Watch columnist Joe Wilcox is at his best when he tells it like it is. He’s a bit like John C. Dvorak but with less crankiness. In his March 6 post entitled “Interoperability by PR Is a Gambit“, Joe pulled no punches when he gave readers the lowdown on Microsoft’s commitment to interoperability:
Microsoft’s idea of a Document Interoperability Initiative is to put together a bunch of businesses that profit from file format incompatibilities. And that is supposed to demonstrate — quoting from the press release — “Microsoft’s commitment to implement a set of strategic changes in its technology and business practices to expand interoperability through the implementation of its interoperability principles.”
The Document Interoperability Initiative is shameless propaganda along the lines of Monday’s Internet Explorer 8 standards announcement. Real initiative (pun intended) would be a group that included Adobe, Apple, Corel, Google, OpenOffice, Sun and other developers of software that produce documents and/or have their own desktop file formats.
Other forms of “openness” and “interoperability” on the part of Microsoft have been found to be far less substantial than the hype contained in the company’s announcements. You have, for example, Microsoft’s promised release of voluminous documents on the APIs of its major applications, apparently to comply with the directives of the EU Commission. In its February 21, 2008, press release, Microsoft announced:
To enhance connections with third-party products, Microsoft will publish on its Web site documentation for all application programming interfaces (APIs) and communications protocols in its high-volume products that are used by other Microsoft products. Developers do not need to take a license or pay a royalty or other fee to access this 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.
A few paragraphs later, Microsoft also made a promise:
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.
How should we take this? Well, Linux-Watch editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, in his post “Does Microsoft really want to be open source’s friend?” says:
Since then, I’ve looked more closely at the details of Microsoft’s “new” position and it looks even more to me like a new coat of paint on the same old Microsoft “We’re so interoperable” BS. I especially like the fact that open-source developers can use Microsoft’s intellectual property just so long as the code that results isn’t used in any money-making operations. That includes, by the way, using it inside your own company and never actually selling, renting or providing service for your program to anyone else.
In other words, Microsoft is opening up its secrets for you to look at, but, woe to you if you try to use any of them in anything that might actually make money. Microsoft isn’t offering open source a new opportunity, it’s offering open source a trap.
The Trojans of legend could have done well to heed Laocoon’s advice in Book II of Vergil’s Aeneid: “equo ne credite, Teucri. quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.” (”Do not trust the horse, Trojans! Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even bringing gifts”).
The FOSS community would do just as well to be wary of the “gifts” from Redmond.
