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Did hell just freeze over?

yeah, and so ......?????

YAWN on steroids...c'mon...I was hoping for something interesting.
"enhancing support for open standards"...yeah, as long as M$ IS the one to set the standards.
"Transparency", boy the media is gonna jump all over this new phenomenom. sp
Ballmer could publicly pick his nose and it would be more interesting. Again...YAWN

If they are speaking truthfully, good on them. Otherwise, if only hollow words as always, who cares.

Feb 21, 08 - 12:51 pm Comment from: Gandalf

Microsoft always speak with forked tongue, no doubt they will spreading freedom and democracy next. They must have managed to load the Interoperability Executive Customer (IEC) Council with their shills as they have been doing with other standards bodies recently (and messing them up, like the IEEE).

The best thread on this story will probably be on Groklaw.

The only good Microsoft is a dead Microsoft.

Feb 21, 08 - 12:51 pm Comment from: Ampar

"Brrrrrrr."
- Satan

When Apple has a 'big announcement' it's for a product that could turn computer technology upside down (Mac in '84, iPod in 2001, multi-touch handheld in 2007).

Someone tell me what the hell Microsoft is even announcing here. Is that it that they're more willing than ever to share their often crappy and bloated technology? Should I be happy or scared?

Could use some perspective on this . . .

I am just dying to look over 30,000 pages of new documentation.
As a consumer, I will now run and buy all M$ products, due to their now transparent policy.

Feb 21, 08 - 12:53 pm Comment from: pastrychef

I don't get it... Why would they do this?

Micro$oft's version of "CHANGE"
Even more boring than Hitlery and Osama's

So Redmond uses the veil of "We see how we need to embrace open standards to ensure our customers get the best experience."

Translation: "We understand that if we embrace open standards just enough to get people buying more of our software, we can eventually kill off those standards and keep "everyone on the plantation" with our proprietary codecs and source code."

Feb 21, 08 - 12:58 pm Comment from: Wingsy

And MS "pledges" not to sue anyone using technology from said APIs. If you got sued and took that pledge into court the judge would probably slap you around for a while before throwing it out the window. Just wait until some competitor starts eating into MS's income and see what happens.

Feb 21, 08 - 12:59 pm Comment from: Buster

I call bullshi* on this one. This would mean they admit they lied and manipulated before and that they have had a change of heart?

A leopard can't change its spot.

Feb 21, 08 - 12:59 pm Comment from: Jubei

If you embraced it, then your still locked in and supporting their monopoly.

Feb 21, 08 - 01:00 pm Comment from: Tiger Leopard

Great, now they arent just stealing from Apple, they are stealing from innocent developers! Good one Microsoft.

Feb 21, 08 - 01:00 pm Comment from: Mac-nugget

The hardest part of web development is Microsoft Internet Explorer. It is one of the "extra" things you have to conform to get things to work right. This is utter nonsense. The web was developed for INTEROPERABILITY and platform independence. Microsoft has single handedly distorted both of these issues. I hope but would not hold my breath to how these new implementations will reflect in my particular field. One can only hope.

Feb 21, 08 - 01:00 pm Comment from: Ampar

Since Windows Server 2008 is built on the same structure as Vista, they are probably trying to save another cash cow by preventing uncertainty with corporate IT customers. Or at least pretend to with rhetoric of openness and interoperability.

Does this mean that Apple could use the "new" public MS API's to run Windows natively under OSX without Bootcamp or virtualization?

ODF and W3C also?

Feb 21, 08 - 01:04 pm Comment from: SirROM

I don't know... This sounds like Microsoft might actually be getting it through their thick heads that if they wish to maintain goodwill and have others use their products because they WANT to, they need to be more open and have better interoperability.

This could be a positive turning point for them and the rest of the computing world over the next few years. Nice to see they are going to compete on the merits of their products, not the dominance.

They can start by DUMPING Internet Explorer and just bundling Firefox with their OS.

That would be an immediate change that would be much appreciated by MILLIONS.

Feb 21, 08 - 01:05 pm Comment from: TheConfuzed1

So, if I understand this correctly, and please tell me if I am wrong, this is a public acknowledgment that Microsoft's use of bully tactics is no longer working, and they recognize that they have been getting their collective asses kicked lately by both competitors, and regulatory agencies, and this is an attempt to thwart off their growing insignificance, and the disdain by others of their company?

Great, now they can place the blame for the crap they make at the feet of the "Open Source Community"?

Feb 21, 08 - 01:08 pm Comment from: Lurker_PC

This is nothing more than a self-serving "event" to save themselves from any more lawsuits brought by the European Union.

Dude look! Isn't that a cool giant sized Microsoft horse? Let's roll it in and show it our proprietary code.

Just my $0.02

Feb 21, 08 - 01:12 pm Comment from: Mac-nugget

I think this is a big PR spin of the evil empire attempting to vail its true colors before snatching Yahoo through a hostile takeover. I think perception is even more important that reality, at least as far as commerce goes.

MS is perceived in a very negative light, assimilating Yahoo will only further galvanize this perception. So they come out and with this announcement to help mitigate the negative fallout that the Yahoo acquisition is sure to bestow on to them.

Sorry, I don't buy it.

HGRKKK! GAH! *cough* *cough*

sorry. there isn't enough water on the planet to wash down the enormous grain of salt i was trying to take with that announcement...

Good for the EU, they are achieving what the U.S. government never had the guts to do. And it's not all against MS. They were also successful at having Apple reduce the UK iTunes store prices to be in line with the rest of the continent. Thanks to the EU we are seeing lot of progress against existing monopolies and this is good for competition, innovation and consumers.

P.S. I hope Microsoft also opens up their IM platform.

Feb 21, 08 - 01:14 pm Comment from: Swordmaker

I stand in awe...

...of the winner if this year's Turgid Prose Award for Obtuseness and Density in Business Announcements with Coconut Clusters for Disappointment and Irrelevance.

Feb 21, 08 - 01:14 pm Comment from: Tommy Boy

I bet all the producers of Malware will just love all of those new guidebooks.

Feb 21, 08 - 01:15 pm Comment from: Zune Tang®

This is a step in the wrong direction. Using open standards and focusing on interoperability is nonsense. Microsoft makes the whole widget and that's all you need. Why do they have to play nice with the also-rans?

Vista + Windows Mobile + xBox + Zune. All you need.

Microsoft used to be about choice. Now they say want to lock you into 'standards', 'portability' and 'interoperability'. As long as there will remain .DOC, .WMA, & .WMV I'm happy.

Your potential. Our passion.™

Feb 21, 08 - 01:16 pm Comment from: HolyMackerel

"Microsoft will design new APIs for the Word, Excel and PowerPoint applications in Office 2007 to enable developers to plug in additional document formats and to enable users to set these formats as their default for saving documents."

So developers can write plugins for Office to allow it to save in other formats, but there is no openness to use other Office-competitors to read/write in Office formats. i.e. their Office formats are still closed.

Feb 21, 08 - 01:16 pm Comment from: F1Mikal

what was all that about?

Why can't people speak clearly anymore?

Until they stop pushing for their superfluous OOXML formats to gain ISO certification (that's what ODF was already ISO certified for back in 2006), and until they show REAL commitment towards making IE 8 100% W3C internet-standards compilant… I'm not buying this.

MW: evidence, as in show me some!

Open connections - it's what started the malware industry!

Do they really mean IE will start doing good internet from the next version on?

Is that Basic Interoperability, Premium Interoperability, Business Interoperability or Ultimate Interoperability?



MW: types

Okay, so the courts are pounding on them because they are closed. Big deal. The decision of courts never bothered them before, and won't bother them going forward.

Roll the monkey boy dance video.

The real story here is this implicit concession that developers are more interested in adding value to frameworks where MS would be denied licensing revenue for their bread and butter commercial products. MS can lose their backsides on the consumer side just to be disruptive, but this is a clear statement they have long term concerns about the migration of their developer base.

I call BS on this. It's a lot of corporate-speak, nay, Microsoft-speak with lots of "good" buzzwords peppered thoughout. When you get rid of the mumbo jumbo, the interoperability and openness of the key products will still be dependent on Microsoft. Good PR, though.

The world is moving away from Microsoft. The company is so scared at the moment that it decided to hop on the runaway train...at least until the opportunity to hit the emergency stop button arises.

if this transparency does not include proprietary technology like ActiveX, the announcement means nothing!
Monoposoft is feeling the winds of change, from within and China.
Europe has given them the finger, and most governments are using linux due to the cost of maintaining windoze, virus, malware, etc...
Google is the new micro$oft, there stuff works, is free or cheap. Apple is the standard the rest try really hard to emulate, but in the end the only emulation is windoze on my MacBook Pro, and im still not sure why i installed it... Oh yeah, the IT idiots at work only support Dell's and XP.
Im the only one that gets work done around here!

Feb 21, 08 - 01:25 pm Comment from: gheem macdaddy

hmmmm....sounds like they are taking a chrome plated turd and trying to spray paint it gold....

Feb 21, 08 - 01:27 pm Comment from: James

Who cares? How is this supposed to change the fact that everything they make is crap? Vista doesn't suck for any of these reasons-it's just a sucky product! They still don't get it. They just don't get it. Seems to me they're really just covering their asses here. I don't see this changing anything-people have begun migrating away from Windows because it's Windows.

I spoke with a Microsoft representative once about their verbose documentation and said, "I think the rule is 'never use one word when forty will do.'" She laughed and said it was probably true.

30,000 pages of Microsoft documentation comes down to 1,000 pages of information. They truly think they are responsive. The problem with being verbose is that you eventually cannot understand your own documents.

So this is the beginning of the end.

IBM responded verbosely to the government when it was in trouble for monopolistic practices. The IBM of today is the Microsoft of tomorrow.

Feb 21, 08 - 01:28 pm Comment from: amyhre

Call me a skeptic but there's gotta be something in this for Microsoft too or they wouldn't be doing it. After all, if this gets more people thinking "Hey, maybe Microsoft's not so much Big Brother-ish after all" then less people will change their minds and decide to switch to FOSS or OS X. However, if this ends up making it so that IE conforms better to W3C code and doesn't require so much extraneous coding, web developers will certainly rejoice. If this make it so that DirectX is more easily made cross-platform or Microsoft starts supporting OpenGL, which many consider to be a better technology, then hopefully gaming on the Mac will benefit. Not that any of us have time to play games, right? If this isn't more of the same bullshit on a different day, it's a good announcement. Otherwise I've got some to say to mister Ballmer, "Go experiment with the interoperability of two thumbs and my boot up the openness of your ass."

That's a really long press release for a whole lot of nothing.

This just means, with the proposed purchase of Yahoo, Microsoft will no longer have money to throw away in fines at European regulatory agencies. It will also by them some time and goodwill to address government agencies and businesses defecting to Linux.

The real question is how long before this is implemented and whether they will update their APIs on a regularly.

Feb 21, 08 - 01:33 pm Comment from: Eric

I call shenanigans...

Yeah but where are they going to find the talent to pull this off??

Feb 21, 08 - 01:34 pm Comment from: Not Bill

I wonder which we will see first, true interoperability or the big ass table?

That Ozzie guy is behind this. There is actually a strategy here. I hope they don't start listening to him very often.

Has MS truly decided to play with everyone else? Are they no longer intent on crushing the competition? We will see.