Microsoft Cuts the Ribbon on Office 2007 UI Licensing
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Intellectual property licensing gives me a real headache. I've got a whopper now. Microsoft is licensing elements of the Office 2007 user interface on a royalty-free basis. |
Microsoft released a bunch documentation on the UI licensing, so it will be heavy reading for the Thanksgiving holiday. Gist of the news: Third parties can use portions of the Office 2007 user interface, the "ribbon," in their own products.
Microsoft has lots to gain from the licensing program. The more software that looks and feels like Office 2007, the better for Microsoft and its customers. The company and its development partners have invested loads of money and resources around the familiarity of the Office interface. Office 2007 sports a new interface, and it's an ugly duckling. The new UI is sure to be a swan some day, when people get used to the changes and see the benefits of the task-oriented approach.
For now, Office 2007 and its ribbon means change, and change isn't often welcomed by risk-adverse IT organizations. Too bad, because I'm a huge fan of the ribbon. Microsoft should incorporate the ribbon in more products, starting with Windows. Office 2007 and Windows Vista UIs are defined by their incongruities, rather than their synergies.
Products that look and feel like Office will help Microsoft spur version 2007 adoption and build out a broader development ecosystem. The latter is important to all kinds of developers, although Microsoft has its favorites (everybody has some)--typically third-parties building applications on top of Office and those working within IT organizations.
For the latter group, in-house developers can build custom applications that look and feel like Office 2007, assuming the IT organization deploys the productivity suite sooner rather than into the next decade. Common look and feel across applications could ease training and support hassles, assuming the Office 2007 UI is worth its weight in boosting productivity.
The former group is the future Microsoft envisions for Office. Microsoft would rather third parties build vertical-market applications on top off Office, than build out totally separate products.
From a first pass over the information, the licensing program looks fairly straightforward. There's a catch, of course. On his Weblog this afternoon, Jensen Harris, group program manager of the Microsoft Office User Experience team (whew, long title), explained,"If you are building a program which directly competes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, or Access (the Microsoft applications with the new UI), you can't obtain the royalty-free license."
OK, so Microsoft doesn't want to give away its valuable investment to direct competitors. Sensible. But the license is available to pretty much everyone else. According to Harris:
"You can use the UI in open-source projects as long as the license terms are consistent with our license. You can use it on any platform: Windows, Mac, Linux, etc. If you're an ISV, you can build and sell a set of controls based on the new Office UI."
The open-source bit might be tricky, given the oil-and-water relationship of Microsoft's typical software license and the GPL. So far, I haven't found the hidden gotcha. If there is one, I'm sure it will be Slashdoted (yes, it's verb like Google) by morning.
Developers probably will want to start by reading the licensing terms and FAQ. Other resources: The Office UI licensing Website and UI licensing Q&A page.
Harris' blog post really gives the most helpful and straightforward information about the licensing program (It's so good, I have linked to it twice, now). Some journalists (me, for one) gripe about how Microsoft uses its blogs to bypass the news media. Sometimes, though, the approach works well. Harris gives great background on the licensing program and a clear explanation of the terms. This announcement is good case for giving more marketing and customer interaction control to people working on a project, rather than ill-informed PR people. I mean no disrespect to the PR folks. Some stuff, like intellectual property licensing, is too complicated for outsiders to simplify into a few sound bites.
The devil in the details will be the 120-plus page "2007 Microsoft Office System User Interface Guidelines," which requires acceptance of a non-disclosure agreement. I suppose that means anyone abiding by the NDA won't be blogging about the devil in the details anytime soon. Microsoft has released a guidelines preview covering the ribbon.
Comments (10)
"On her Weblog this afternoon, Jensen Harris..."
That should be "his" weblog, Joe. Jensen's a guy.
Posted by Ed Bott | November 21, 2006 10:00 PM
I don't know. MS has been pretty fair to developers in the past. I have never heard of a instance where Microsoft went after developers for snatching XP icons for their applications - where Apple would have sent a pack of lawyers after them.
Either way it will be a while before I would ever include the ribbon interface components. They are just too strange to the average user right now. Only time will tell if the new interface is adopted.
Interesting to note that some applications within office don't use the ribbon interface - I believe Power Point is one of them
Steve Wiseman
http://www.windows-admin-tools.com
Posted by Steve Wiseman | November 22, 2006 10:13 AM
Wow Microsoft continues to get dumber every day
Posted by bob | November 23, 2006 2:39 PM
I think our company may have been among the first to get the UI license (though I have to admit that I was not on the team that vetted the license terms). First, we began using the Word 2007 ribbon to deliver a lot of our functionality to Word users who don't have our application. This sort of information exchange and edit-ability goes a long way toward lowering barriers between applications. The Word ribbon was so useful and so easy to program that we faily lept at Microsoft's offer and will be taking a very close look at building our own ribbons in future version of our software. (Steve is right about the strangeness factor--so we are using the Word 2007 ribbon on one of our "Mindjet Labs" solutions (not official products) to see how people like the new UI. We've gotten a few good comments so far.
To your point about using the blogs...we blogged about a month ago a new integration between our app and Word 2007. We will issue the formal release this week. The blogs are a great way to introduce new ideas to people who follow your technology. We get great feedback from our community that we often integrate into the "final" release.
Posted by Hobie Swan | November 27, 2006 11:55 PM
I think our company may have been among the first to get the UI license (though I have to admit that I was not on the team that vetted the license terms). First, we began using the Word 2007 ribbon to deliver a lot of our functionality to Word users who don't have our application. This sort of information exchange and edit-ability goes a long way toward lowering barriers between applications. The Word ribbon was so useful and so easy to program that we faily lept at Microsoft's offer and will be taking a very close look at building our own ribbons in future version of our software. (Steve is right about the strangeness factor--so we are using the Word 2007 ribbon on one of our "Mindjet Labs" solutions (not official products) to see how people like the new UI. We've gotten a few good comments so far.
To your point about using the blogs...we blogged about a month ago a new integration between our app and Word 2007. We will issue the formal release this week. The blogs are a great way to introduce new ideas to people who follow your technology. We get great feedback from our community that we often integrate into the "final" release.
Posted by Hobie Swan | November 27, 2006 11:56 PM
What happens when after you license the Ribbon UI and then Microsoft deem you a competitor for whatever reason (most likely by aquisition of another product)?
What happens after you license the Ribbon UI that your product suddenely provides features competitive with their other products?
Posted by sdfdsd | November 28, 2006 12:10 PM
I personally can't stand the ribbon - I find it actually degrades usability and productivity, and when you have to fight the software to get things done, then there's something seriously wrong.
I will avoid any other product that adopts the ribbon interface, opting for a more usable product.
I definitely won't even bother considering implementing a ribbon in any software I develop. I will not inflict that on my users simply for the "ooh shiny!" novelty factor.
Posted by Mike | August 22, 2007 4:55 PM
As a retired accountant who does volunteer work, 2007 is a disaster. Word and Excel have become hundreds of times more difficult. I have no desire to make colored spreadsheets or rotate them. I want to do my work, and am no longer able to do so. Office has destroyed my ability to prepare anything anymore. My volunteer work will cease. I just want to crawl under a bed and die.
Posted by Barbara | October 6, 2007 7:37 PM
Once again, Microsoft introduces a productivity draining "new" feature. In the past, the would often at least give you the option to revert to an older, more convenient interface even if it was only Word Perfect help mode. Even WinXP allows you to choose between the new view and "classic" view in control panel and other parts of the interface.
It takes me 5 to 20 minutes to commands in some cases. What a waste of time. And if I want to fix it I have to buy a 3rd party app. Change for the sake of change seems to be the new Microsoft Mantra.
Great way to encourage customer good will, satisfaction and loyalty.
Posted by Jon | November 29, 2007 12:04 PM
To-day's ethos at Microsoft seems to be desperation.
It knows it can't be top dog forever and is embarking on more and more extreme, customer unfriendly, gadgetry and gimmickry, solely designed to get Media attention and stay ahead profit-wise.
The field is wide open for another ambitious company to give us what we all want, ie good working systems
that rarely change where we can get on with our work, learn more in depth usage, and dispense with the irritating and totally unnecessary business of constantly having to adapt to new ways of doing exactly the same thing.
Posted by Bob Maddon | May 31, 2008 8:04 PM