Microsoft is making key communications protocols available for license, so that third parties, including competitors, can link into the company's newest enterprise products. Some are available immediately. The list of available protocols, XML schemas and application programming interfaces include transport protocols for communications between Office Outlook 2007 and Exchange Server 2007.
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Member since:2005-07-22
Member since:2007-02-17
{ Why should Microsoft be force to turn over tech that they spent millions to develop to their competitors for free? And their competitors (i.e. OSS) are just going to clone it and give it away for free themselves. What incentive is there for anyone to develop anything, if Big Government can force them to give it away with zero compensation? }
Why should the Bell telephone company be forced to turn over tech that they spent millions to develop to their competitors for free? Why should other companies apart from Bell just be allowed to make phones that work with Bell's telephone wires or exchanges? What incentive is there for anyone to develop anything, if Big Government can force them to allow just anyone to come along and try to make a better phone than Bell's phone, or for that matter a better PABX or a better exchange?
Goodness, it wouldn't be long before a better product than Bell's came along, and then Bell would also have to compete in a free market, for heaven's sake!
</sarcasm>
Hint: Many of Microsoft's "secret" protocols are just obscured versions of earlier protocols invented by parties other than Microsoft. They are not inventive at all, and Microsoft most decidedly did NOT spend vast sums to "develop" those protocols, but rather spent only modest sums to obscure protocols invented by someone else.
Edited 2007-03-22 10:54
Member since:2006-06-09
> if the government forces a private entity to give
> something away, then the government itself must
> provide compensation.
Indeed. EU fill allow MS to access its market. That's the compensation.
And I'll bet MS knows it means money, otherwise they'll have move away from it, right?
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Member since:
2006-07-04
Why should Microsoft be force to turn over tech that they spent millions to develop to their competitors for free? And their competitors (i.e. OSS) are just going to clone it and give it away for free themselves. What incentive is there for anyone to develop anything, if Big Government can force them to give it away with zero compensation?
MSDN is free because Microsoft *chose* to make it free. If they *chose* to make the protocols in question free, than that's their choice. But you want Big Government to force the issue? In the US, that is know as a "taking", whereby if the government forces a private entity to give something away, then the government itself must provide compensation.
I assume the EU has similar provisions, the only governments that haven't had such provisions have been banana republics that "nationalized" the business of foreign companies for themselves.