Defining Microsoft's Interoperability 'Principals'

[Editor's Note: There is no misspelling in this post's headline.]

Quick recap: This morning, Microsoft announced four "interoperability principles," the benefits of which I contend are overstated. The real question: Are these four principles governing Microsoft's behavior, or are they four principals—meaning directives that come first in priority before all else—overseeing the company's behavior toward competitors, customers and partners?

Simply stated, quoting from Microsoft's press release, the principles are:

• "Ensuring open connections"
• "Promoting data portability"
• "Enhancing support for industry standards"
• "Fostering more open engagement with customers and the industry, including open-source communities"

At first glance, the principles appear to be quite benign, promising that Microsoft will take interoperability even more seriously. During a conference call this morning, Feb. 21, Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect, and Bob Muglia, senior vice president of Microsoft's Server and Tools Business, defined the principles. I'll set their definitions against my interpretation of the Microsoft-speak.

Principle 1, what Ozzie said: "We're further opening the connections to our high-volume products so that software developers, business partners and competitors can more robustly interact with those products and extend them or invent new solutions for customers. We'll do this by publishing detailed specifications of these products' protocols and external APIs, including all such interfaces used by Microsoft's other products."

My translation: Microsoft is publishing more APIs and other information to ensure that its stuff doesn't get left behind. Ozzie later defines the stuff—"high-volume products"—as Office and Windows. The main interoperability benefit is to Microsoft. Remember, Microsoft's platform services chief is the man explaining the first principle. What he's tacitly—maybe even subconsciously—saying is that Microsoft no longer controls the primary development platform. Improved interoperability, particularly with Web 2.0 platform products and services, will help keep Office and Windows relevant for a longer time.

Principle 2, what Ozzie said: "We're taking specific actions to enhance our products to promote the greater and more effective portability of data ... We'll also be designing and implementing new add-in APIs for Microsoft Office that will enable other developers to develop support for their own additional document formats, and customers will now have the ability to select any of those formats as their default document format if that's something that they choose to do."

My translation: Microsoft executives are worried that OOXML (Open Office XML) won't be ratified as an ISO standard. Another vote is about a week away. Ozzie promises interoperability and openness, but how far will Microsoft go? I ask because the interoperability position is contrary to previous Microsoft statements about the importance of OOXML, particularly its so-called security benefits.

Principle 3, what Ozzie said: "Our commitment [is] to support standards across all our high-volume products in a way that enables real-world interoperability across implementations ... When innovating beyond a standard, we will document our extensions so as to enable true interoperability with other vendors of popular products that also implement or extend that same standard."

My translation: The two words "same standard" reveal Microsoft's real agenda. The company wants to control standards for the Web 2.0 platform the way it did for the Windows PC. Microsoft may publish APIs and communications protocols, but the interoperability will occur based around standards that Microsoft supports. Principles 1 and 3 take somewhat opposing approaches. The first concedes that Microsoft must rely more on other products or services to stay relevant. The third seeks to set the rules of the game for standards, and so for interoperability.

Principle 4, what Ozzie said: "We'll foster more open engagement with the IT community around the topics of interoperability and standards."

Principle 4, what Muglia said: "We've had a number of important interoperability agreements between Microsoft and open-source distributors, Novell, Xandros, Linspire and Turbolinux, and we've worked very, very closely with the industry both in the form of an interoperability executive council and an interoperability vendor alliance ... I want to emphasize that as we move forward with these principles, we are going to be very proactive in making the information available."

My translation: Microsoft will refocus on controlling standards the way it used to. For years, Microsoft used Office and Windows as means of controlling file formats and key communications and user interfaces. The two antitrust cases put Microsoft on the standards defensive. With the antitrust cases over and the Web 2.0 platform threat looming, Microsoft is taking the offensive position. As stated about No. 3, Microsoft will seek to set the standards for interoperability.

Given this context, I really do see the principles as principals. They aren't so much guidelines that Microsoft will follow as rules the company will impose on third parties, whether they be competitors, customers or partners. The greatest imposition will be on open-source developers, for now. During today's call, Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, made the company's open-source principle absolutely clear: Microsoft will use patents to give its four principals enforcement authority.

Smith laid out a patent framework, the second part of which puts open-source developers on notice. While they may use Microsoft information for noncommercial purposes, they will pay for use in commercial products—and so may their customers.

Smith said, "Companies that subsequently engage in commercial distribution of these protocol implementations will be able to obtain a patent license from Microsoft, as will enterprises that obtain these implementations from a distributor that does not have such a patent license."

Microsoft has made a major distinction between open-source commercial and noncommercial usage rights, which I predict will cause even greater problems with European trustbusters. Smith said the patents would be "readily available." CEO Steve Ballmer interrupted: "Readily available for the right fee." Microsoft won't give open source a free ride.

That's not surprising; what company wouldn't want to protect its intellectual property? However, Microsoft's approach isn't closed-door, either. "With respect to companies that are engaged in commercial distribution, or use internally, there is a need to obtain a patent license where there are applicable patent rights, and we're committing to make these patent licenses readily available," Smith said. "Novell already has an agreement with us that covers all of these patent rights."

Who sets the terms for those patent rights and so the extent of interoperability? Microsoft does, by way of its interoperability principals.

Related Posts:

• Microsoft's Interop Forecast Is Partly Cloudy, Free Enterprise, Feb. 21, 2008
• Whose Principles Are They?, Microsoft Watch, Feb. 21, 2008
• Software Patents and The Threat They Pose, Platform Dive, Feb. 12, 2008
• The New European Drama Unfolds, Microsoft Watch, Jan. 14, 2008