Microsoft's efforts to open up on how its products work should keep it out of further legal trouble, despite a record fine levied by the European Commission last week, CEO Steve Ballmer said today.
"Essentially what we are permitting is more innovation around our products, more interoperability, maybe also more potential for third parties to cannibalise what could have been Microsoft business, but it's a path that we commit ourselves to because it's good for customers, and it's consistent with our legal obligation," Ballmer said at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany.
In February, Microsoft published more than 30,000 pages of documentation for its Windows client and server APIs that were previously available only under a trade-secret licence. The company has pledged to publish more documentation for other products this year.
Ballmer said that previously Microsoft had been "less directly and effectively open". But now Microsoft is opening up other crucial code, such as APIs, which will allow other products to interoperate better, he said.
Ballmer also cited the company's Office Open XML (OOXML) file format, now under consideration to become an international standard by the International Organization for Standardization, as another example of how the company has opened up.
OOXML, however, has been criticised for being too complex, and Microsoft has taken heat for not natively implementing OpenDocument Format (ODF) in its Office products.
The European Commission fined Microsoft €899m (£690m) last Wednesday for failing to honour its 2004 antitrust ruling. Microsoft was finally found to be in compliance by October 2007.
That ruling required Microsoft to produce a version of its operating system without its Media Player and to document communications protocols used by Windows workgroup server.
The Commission, while at times praising Microsoft, fined the company for the quality of its documentation and for taking too long to produce it.
Ballmer, however, said the Commission's concerns have since been resolved. "We hope these interoperability principles prove valuable in the future, but that of course is always up to the Commission".
Comments
European Commission does not b said: ECIS Reaction to Microsoft Declaration on Standardization and InteroperabilitywwweciseunewsdocumentsECIMicrosoft faces two new European antitrust cases wwwnetworkworldcomnews2008Interesting timing they got though it is just in the opening of a new EU antitrust investigation for a new case of abuse made by Microsoft However the EU officials announced this new message sent out by Microsoft will not influence investigations of past violations of the anti-trust laws Im lost for words
Sysadm1n said: Ballmer also cited the companys Office Open XML OOXML file format now under consideration to become an international standard by the International Organization for Standardization as another example of how the company has opened upIf only he mentioned that the corruption MS has brought to the ISO process is being investigated by EU anti-trust officials -
suezz said: Essentially what we are permitting is more innovation around our products more interoperability maybe also more potential for third parties to cannibalise what could have been Microsoft business but its a path that we commit ourselves to because its good for customers and its consistent with our legal obligation Ballmer said at the Cebit trade show in Hanover Germanywhat a snob - you arent permitting anything mr ballmer - we dont need your software you are doing this to stay alive so please save us the lecture from all high you know good and well the money is in open source for developers and not your unstable closed operating system