Microsoft: We're open source friendly, as of today

UPDATED: Microsoft today is announcing that it declares itself open. It is promising

1) Open connections
2) Data portability
3) Support for industry standards
4) More open engagement with the industry and open source software community

Perhaps the biggest news is that Microsoft is making its protocols and APIs completely open and available on its Web site for its high volume products, Windows and Office. This is, of course, the source of contention that the European Commission was investigating. So score one for the EC. It has clearly been one of the major driving sources in this Microsoft announcement.

Another interesting bit is what Microsoft is saying on its patent license as it relates to software made from using these protocols. Plus, the company is going to create a new file format type for Office documents that can be used as the default. (More to come in that in a follow-up post.)

Analysts from the 451 Group offer some insight as to the why of this news -- and who the winners will be:

Open house at Redmond? Well, no but the departure of Bill Gates means some of the holy cows are finally being slaughtered. The rationale, as ever, is to dominate.

Microsoft controls the desktop and has no intention of ceding that to anyone, open source or otherwise. By opening up the APIs it is attempting to at least manage (control, preferably) the direction of the open source movement.

For some CIO's, the initial reaction to Microsoft's new found openness will be a cycnical belly laugh.

From one point of view Microsoft might be attempting to put a stake through the heart of open protocols and possibly open software. By making its APIs and protocols open it makes them closer to de facto standards so it will try kill off projects attempting to produce alternatives. The approval of OOXML, for instance, is seen as crucial by Microsoft as a means of maintaining its Office market share.

Microsoft seems to be trying to separate Linux and open source. It is looking to compete with Linux while at the same time accepting and working to support open source projects. While Windows-Linux interoperability comes into play here, the real objective is to make open source applications run as well on Windows as they do on Linux.

And the winners are (according to the analysts at 451 Group) ...

• WINE - if you know all the Windows APIs, you should be able to get any Windows Application running on Linux quite nicely
• Vendors wanting to get their client software interoperable with Exchange
• SAMBA - proper interoperability with Windows File and Print services without having to guess the APIs. (Note: Samba struck a paid interoperability with Microsoft at the start of this year).
• Exchange alternatives - Zimbra etc. Enables them to develop proper interoperability with Exchange servers and the ability to act as a replacement for Exchange
  Calendar and Workflow clients - they will be able to build proper hooks into Exchange.
• Vendors and end-uses looking to implement web services and software-as-a service architectures, who require deeper and more consistent access than has sometimes been available from Microsoft.

The news is promising, but nothing we haven't heard before from Microsoft. The difference is that market factors really are driving the software giant to change its business practices from operating on a proprietary scheme based on vendor lockin to a more cooperative method. IBM underwent exactly this change in the late 1980's when mainframes were overtaken by x86 servers and proprietary routing protocols overtaken by open standards, namely IP (a la Cisco). IBM survived. Microsoft will too. But only if it actually listens to its own PR and implements these promises. Time will tell.