Microsoft on Friday made technical information available to outside software developers about all of its Office binary file formats. The company made a public promise never to sue them over patent violations as well. These specifications will be made available under the Open Specification Promise (OSP) program. Microsoft has used this program in the past to publicly release a variety of its technical specifications.
The specifications being made available at this point include the binary file formats used in the releases of the desktop applications suite from Office 97 through the current version, Office 2007. The current 2007 version of the software has a native file format of Open XML, no longer the binary format, however it can still save files in binary formats that are basically identical to the ones that were used in the previous versions. This allows the newest version to be backwards compatible when necessary.
The Open XML format was previously released through the OSP program in 2006. The company is working with the Ecma international standards body to try to make Open XML an ISO standard. The proposal of making it a standard failed to father enough support in an initial round of voting in September, however a second round of voting is scheduled to take place at the end of this month.
Releasing the binary format will likely make it easier for programmers to write applications that interoperate with Office. Even in the case of the open source rivals to the Microsoft Office Suite it will be easier to create interoperation capabilities with the Microsoft software with the specifications of the software.
Previous to this public release of the Binary format Microsoft had already given away information on it to hundreds of companies for free. Apparently several national standards bodies participating in the ISO process has asked the company to make it easier to get technical information about the older Office file formats. A part of the OPS program states that Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any claims against developers for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing, or distributing any implementation to the extent it conforms to a covered specification. The developers that us the specifications do not have to sign any type of licensing agreement nor do they have to notify or credit Microsoft when using them.
Microsoft has previously made specifications for other in house technologies available through OSP, notably those in the web services arena. These include an e-wallet authentications technology called the Identity Selector Interoperability Profile, as well as the company’s Virtual Hard Disk and its Sender ID technology.
Microsoft also announced on Friday that it will be sponsoring an open source project on the SourceForge Web site to help developers translate documents in binary formats to Open XML format. This translation would allow for more wide spread interoperability between the current Office 2007 and outside programs. This would certainly come with its benefits for Microsoft, yet it remains a step in the right direction to making Office more user friendly.
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February 24th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Good read, seems like it could be helpful in the future to come.
February 26th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Its about time Microsoft starts to embrace the open source community more. Time will tell if they are making a serious commitment or just playing on the fringe as usual.
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:10 am
I’m sure Microsoft has hidden intentions behind this move. Maybe it thinks that by releasing the information about previous formats, they would garner enough support for their OpenXML format. OpenXML is really bad for the industry, and if this becomes the standard, we are in for some trouble.
April 14th, 2008 at 12:39 am
I really like the part where Microsft says not to sue you for paten infringement for using it. The only thing that makes me curious is Microsft and Open Source; doesn’t seem like they’d get together.
April 15th, 2008 at 4:00 am
Microsoft will not do that if they wouldn’t get anything from it, they do have a catch. Almost all Microsoft products are user friendly and sponsoring programs and events like this would help them to make a more user friendly software’s in the future.
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Here comes the people that will take the product and make the super office utility software which will start the down fall of MS. He He! It is about time they allowed someone else to come into the market and it will help them to stay out of the monopoly business.