MS to publish free APIs for Windows, Office
updated 11:30 am EST, Thu February 21, 2008
MS Publishes Free APIs
Microsoft today quickly halted speculation about its significant announcement by revealing that it will freely publish the application programming interfaces (APIs) and communication protocols for many of its key products, allowing any company looking to use some of Microsoft's techniques for their own software. The access extends to both Windows Vista and Server 2008 as well as the .NET framework that underpins some application code. Office 2007 and Microsoft's latest server suites for Exchange, SharePoint, and SQL are also covered, according to the company. More than 30,000 pages are expected to go online and will include documentation of how the company implements cross-platform standards.
The move is designed to help interoperability between software developers, says chief software architect Ray Ozzie, who also notes that many large-scale businesses depend often exist in a heterogeneous environment where the need to support software from more than one company is often essential.
Microsoft's move confirms earlier predictions that it is reacting to recently renewed European antitrust investigations, which have accused Microsoft of failing to provide enough information about its code to third parties. A number of large software houses have prompted the investigation, noting that Microsoft's historically limited documentation of both its APIs and its standards implementations prevent them from developing programs that integrate properly with Microsoft's own or support standards on an equal footing.
Office 2007 has been a particular subject of investigation and has been criticized for its switch to the Microsoft-made Office Open XML (OOXML) standard, which is described as open-source but is often criticized for fostering incompatibility problems between the Office suite and alternatives. Others also note that OOXML is believed to be an attempt to undermine the more universal Open Document Format (ODF) developed by Microsoft's challengers.
MS Pledge is Worthless
02/21, 11:54am reply
And Microsoft "pledges" not to sue anyone using technology in said APIs. They should come up with a slogan for that, like "Pledge For Sure", since it carries about as much weight as "Plays For Sure" did. If I were a developer I wouldn't trust them not to sue me if my product started boring holes in their revenue.
wings_rfs
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Dec 2002
"depend often exist",?
02/21, 11:57am reply
"many large-scale businesses depend often exist in a heterogeneous environment where the need to support software from more than one company is often essential."
Do you guys actually read what you write?
Visnaut
Senior User
Joined: Nov 2000
"Depend"
02/21, 12:04pm reply
Depend is a Kimberly-Clark product that could be found in the grocery store.
Paul Huang
Forum Regular
Joined: Sep 1999
@visnaut
02/21, 12:15pm reply
dude, monkeys cant read... They have a hard enough time slamming the keys on the keyboard. So they spent weeks training the monkeys to copy and paste text from other sites.. you now expect them to proofread it?
Geez... that's asking a whole lot! :P
eldarkus
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Feb 2004
How long?
02/21, 01:38pm reply
How long until someone utterly embarasses Microsoft by making a better Mac Exchange client than Entourage, with full feature parity?
phillymjs
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jun 2000
Hit em where it hurts
02/21, 01:40pm reply
Doesn't matter what they say or spin, Microsoft never cooperates with the industry unless you kick em where it hurt...the old moneybag bollocks!
Having the EU already show they can and would stick it to them, Microsoft is not the least bit interested in going through that again. I only wish our Justice Dept. had the tenacity and conviction the EU shows in actually punishing such monopolistic violations. You getting this, Judge Kollar-Kotelly?!
/
pairof9s
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jan 2008
significant news?
02/21, 02:10pm reply
This is significant - that you are letting other companies access to your c*** protocols?
Hey, I have a significant announcement - anyone else is welcome to wipe my butt. I will even provide the toilet paper.
Doofuses.
robttwo
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Nov 2005
@eldarkus
02/21, 02:40pm reply
Well played, sir. Well played.
Visnaut
Senior User
Joined: Nov 2000
uh huh
02/21, 02:49pm reply
Microsoft is being investigated by the European Commission on the grounds that limiting access to its technology could be stopping competition.
Implementation?
"The Commission would welcome any move towards genuine interoperability," it said.
"Nonetheless, the Commission notes that today's announcement follows at least four similar statements by Microsoft in the past on the importance of interoperability."
nat
Junior Member
Joined: Mar 2002
not so fast
02/21, 03:36pm reply
As they still haven't finished implementing features they announced in 1995, I don't expect them to release their APIs until they are bankrupt and all applications are available for the Mac and Linux.
bhuot
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Nov 2003