Microsoft Corp. says it will publish more information about how its products work, a move that will help competitors do a better job of building Microsoft-compatible software products.
It's a major shift for Microsoft. The company's Windows software holds a global monopoly on desktop computer operating system software and its Office program is just as dominant in the office productivity software market. Microsoft has maintained its hold partly by limiting access to vital technical information on how its software works, thus making it harder for rivals to build competing products.
By easing its grip on this information, Microsoft could help resolve a legal dispute with the European Union. An EU court has already convicted Microsoft of antitrust violations for making it too difficult for competitors to write software that interoperates with Windows. And the EU said last month it may file new charges against Microsoft for closing off access to information about its Office software suite.
"We're committing to ensure open connections for our high- volume products," said Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer. "While we've shared lots of information with our partners over the years . . . today's actions represent a significant expansion toward even greater interoperability."
To achieve this, Microsoft is publishing all of the "application programming interfaces," or APIs, for its most popular products, including the Windows Vista operating system, Microsoft Office 2007, and server programs like Exchange 2007 and SharePoint 2007. APIs are software "hooks" that let programmers write new code that interacts with an existing program.
Microsoft has always made many of its APIs available, so that other software companies can make compatible products. But many other Microsoft APIs have been kept confidential, giving the company's own programmers an advantage in writing code that works better with Microsoft products.
From now on, all this information will be available to anybody - even to programmers who write open source software like the popular Linux operating system. Microsoft has bitterly criticized open source programming, in which the raw computer code is provided free to users and can easily be copied. Indeed, Microsoft claims that Linux and other open source products contain stolen Microsoft intellectual property, and warned that the company might someday take legal action against vendors and users of open source software.
Now Microsoft says that open source programmers are welcome to use Microsoft APIs free of charge - but only if they don't sell their products. If they do, Microsoft will expect them to pay a "reasonable" patent-licensing fee.
The new policy didn't impress Peter Brown, executive director of the Free Software Foundation in Cambridge, which helped launch the open source software movement. "We don't pay royalties for the use of software," said Brown, "because it wouldn't be free software."
He pointed out that companies like Red Hat Inc., a major Linux vendor, charge for service and support, but give away the software. Under the Microsoft plan, a company like Red Hat would have to pay royalties for the use of Microsoft-patented technologies, even though the software itself is given away.
In another change of course, Microsoft said it would modify its Office software to let outside programmers develop new file formats for storing data. Microsoft has come under fire from government agencies worldwide for using its own private formatting system for documents created in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This means agencies will have to use Microsoft products to view the documents and can't read them with other companies' software.
Concern about this issue led the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 2005 to threaten to abandon Microsoft Office and adopt a more open alternative. Microsoft created a new document format, Office Open XML, which it is trying to have certified by the International Standards Organization as an open document format. Microsoft has refused to adopt an existing open standard called OpenDocument Format. But under the plan disclosed yesterday, Microsoft will make it easier for outside developers to add OpenDocument Format compatibility to Office.
European antitrust officials reacted coolly to the Microsoft plan. "The Commission would welcome any move toward genuine interoperability," said a statement issued by the executive branch of the European Union. "Nonetheless, the Commission notes that today's announcement follows at least four similar statements by Microsoft in the past on the importance of interoperability. "
Nicholas Economides, professor of economics at New York University's Stern School of Business, said that Microsoft's moves might help rival companies compete more effectively. "From a theoretical point of view, it should make the situation more competitive," Economides said. But he predicted the changes will have little impact on Microsoft's near-total domination of the markets for desktop operating systems and office software. because users are deeply loyal to Microsoft's products.
"From a practical point of view, I don't think it will make much difference," Economides said.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.
