More Protocol Documentation - Interop Principles Commitment
Just a quick note. MS is continuing to follow-through on the interop principles commitment made earlier this year. MS announced that >14,000 pages of preliminary documentation of client/server protocols has been posted to the web.
The documentation is for:
- Protocols between Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Office client applications
- Protocols between Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and other Microsoft server products
- Protocols between Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Outlook
- Protocols between Microsoft Office 2007 client applications and other Microsoft server products
This brings the total amount of protocol documentation to more than 44,000 pages posted to the web based on the interop principles. The point of the "preliminary" status of the posted documentation is that the community has an opportunity to provide feedback on the documentation.
In the end, these docs make it possible for software engineers doing work for ISVs, in the OSS community, in IT departments, in government agencies, or wherever to have consistent, open access to the information that shows how these Microsoft products communicate with each other.
This table may be helpful for you if you are interested in learning more about the documentation.
Open Protocol Specifications Forum Group |
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Using the Open Protocol specifications |
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| Windows protocols |
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| File services |
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| Using the Office Open Protocol specifications |
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| Using the Exchange Server protocols |
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| Using the SharePoint Products and Technologies protocols |
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Comments
Anonymous
April 08, 2008
Patent Licensing Some of the Microsoft protocols include patented inventions, and others do not. You may benefit from a patent license if you are distributing implementations of these protocols commercially or if you use an implementation of any of the protocols covered by Microsoft patents. For more information, contact the Microsoft Open Protocols Team. Patent licenses will be available for Microsoft Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, Office SharePoint Server 2007, and SQL Server 2008 protocols in the next few months.Anonymous
April 08, 2008
What use are these if they can't be implemented by Free Software? It's a trap - any GPL project that implements any of these and then gets included in a commercial linux distro will probably get sued, so none of the main distro's will use such projects. This is purely and simply an attempt to balkanise Free Software. Until you make it clear that MS EXPLICITLY ALLOW GPL'D PROJECTS TO USE THIS DOCUMENTATION AND IMPLEMENT THE DESCRIBED PROTOCOLS FREELY ON TERMS CONSISTENT WITH THE GPL V2 AND GPL V3 this documentation is useless to your only real competitor. -cybervegan Go on, make that promise, I dare you!Anonymous
April 08, 2008
Încă un milestone din schimbarea anunțată în februarie : 14000 de pagini au fost publicate în MSDN LibraryAnonymous
April 09, 2008
Ironically, the first comment on this post identified the biggest problem with the Interoperability train: Patent incumbent. Hence, one big suggestion here: Identify those patent-incumbent parts and label them clearly. If only the page count (or, if I want to stay uptodate, file size in KB) is a measure of interoperability....Anonymous
April 09, 2008
cybervegan, I think you are missing the concept that patents apply regardless of if you use the documentation or not. RAND licenced patents are not an encumberance to interoperability as demostrated by standards like MP3, MPEG2, MPEG4, etc.Anonymous
April 10, 2008
Okay, Ari, so where's the RAND promise associated with this documentation release? Language like "you may benefit" in the original legal disclosure is uncomfortably vague. Also, you have to disclose who you are, and your interest in the protocols and the licensing model(s) on offer, unilaterally to Microsoft before they tell you anything about any potential deal. This puts them at an automatic advantage in any negotiations. Can you explain to me why I should choose to participate in such a potentially-unfavorable situation? strapAnonymous
April 11, 2008
@ cybervegan I don't know if this documentation is GPL-compatible or not (nor do I care), but that being said: Is anyone else getting sick and tired of the selfish whining by GPL bigots? What I mean by that is, they demand that everything and everyone bend to the dictates of GPL, and anyone that doesn't is condemned as useless. The problem is the GPL itself. It carries a lot of religious baggage that makes it just about the least friendly open source license out there. There are lots of other OSI licenses that get along with each other, but not GPL, because they don't jump through the GPL's religious hoops. Similarly, there are lots of software projects, protocols, etc, that are compatible with lots of OSI licenses but not GPL, again because of the religious baggage of GPL. And yet GPLers demand that everything bend to RMS's world view, but almost NEVER to GPLers even consider the possibility of meeting the non-GPLers half-way. It's always all or nothing with them. Just look at how GPL3 was designed SPECIFICALLY to stick it to Microsoft, Novell, and TIVO, for example. cybervegan, why don't you consider using some other OSI-approved license, one that doesn't put religion ahead of pragmatics, then you wouldn't need to worry so much about documentation being incompatible with your license of choice.