Connecting People with Information
Microsoft is sharing information to help spur innovation and make technology even more useful for consumers and businesses.
There was a time not too long ago when information was discrete and disconnected. Notes were scribbled on paper. Documents were isolated on computer hard drives.
Today, consumers want to use e-mail, share documents and view video no matter where they are. Businesses depend on employees being able to do the same.
All this requires interoperability — the ability to move data and information efficiently between different computer systems.
Last month, Microsoft announced sweeping changes to its technology and business practices, changes that will help computer professionals build systems that interoperate more easily. This is great news not only for the professionals but for consumers, businesses and everyone else who depends on access to information anywhere, anytime.
At the heart of these changes are steps we are taking to help software developers understand and use the connection points and communications protocols in our most popular products. We are publishing extensive documentation about these technical specifications and allowing developers to freely access this information to build software that interoperates with ours in the same way that Microsoft products do. We are also making more information available about how we implement industry standards in these products.
Open source developers will not need a license and will not have to pay any fees to develop interoperable products or to distribute them noncommercially. For commercial distributors, we will license related patents at low royalty rates.
We’ve always shared a great deal of information with customers and partners about how our products work. That’s one reason why more than 600,000 technology companies and millions of software developers create software for the Microsoft platform.
Last month’s announcement is an important step toward ensuring that businesses will be able to get the most value from their investments in information systems, no matter what brand of technology they choose. We believe that even greater openness is good for everyone and will act as a catalyst for innovation and opportunity in the information technology industry.
We are committed to interoperability. We are taking concrete steps to strengthen it. We are working with partners and competitors from across the software industry to create a new generation of systems that will provide amazing new benefits to billions more people around the world.
