Microsoft Open Specification Promise: True conversion?

It was not the first time that Microsoft published such a document: last year Microsoft issued an "irrevocable covenant not to assert patents," concerning XML extensions of its Office suite. However, this year's promise is more general, extending to anybody involved in the distribution of the applications and covering partial as well as full implementation of specifications.

While Microsoft did not seek to give its promise wide media coverage, it took special care to ensure that various Open Source networks and communities were informed in advance about its initiative. Not surprisingly, reactions were uniformly positive. For instance, Andrew Updegrove, a Boston-based technology lawyer and, so he says, "an internationally recognized expert on standard setting and open source organizations and how to form them", writes in his blog on standard setting: I "am pleased to see that Microsoft is expanding its use of what I consider to be a highly desirable tool for facilitating the implementation of open standards, in particular where those standards are of interest to the open source community."

Nevertheless, some cynics noted that Microsoft's promise comes well after similar promises made by IBM and Sun. Those with long memories remembered that some very senior people at Microsoft, including CEO Steve Ballmer, made derogatory remarks about the quality of Open Source software. So Microsoft's gesture appears to be a case of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." Economic considerations may not have been absent from the company decision: according to Yochai Benkler, Yale Law Professor, in 2003 IBM generated twice as much revenues from providing open-source services as it did from licensing its intellectual property.