Microsoft pledges to be more open

In a move to greater interoperability, Microsoft has pledged to change the way it shares information about its products.

In a clear acknowledgment of the growing importance of open-source software Microsoft has promised to introduce a number of measures including:

- the publication of APIs for "all high-volume" products;

- sharing 30,000 pages of documentation for Windows client and server protocols that were previously available only under a trade secret license;

- indicating which of its protocols are covered by patents, and promising not to sue open-source developers for development or non-commercial distribution of implementations of these protocols;

- to create new APIs for Word, Excel and PowerPoint to enable developers to plug-in additional document formats, and set these as their default format in Office 2007.

"These steps represent an important step and significant change in how we share information about our products and technologies," said Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer in a pre-prepared statement.

"For the past 33 years, we have shared a lot of information with hundreds of thousands of partners around the world and helped build the industry, but today's announcement represents a significant expansion toward even greater transparency.

"Our goal is to promote greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for customers and developers throughout the industry by making our products more open and by sharing even more information about our technologies."

Microsoft is holding a press conference with more details on the announcement later this evening.

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