Microsoft Sings a New Tune—Wants to Play Nice With Open-Source

"The broad set of interoperability principles it is announcing today will apply to the following products (including future versions): Windows Vista (including the .NET Framework), Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007."

In other words (if I'm reading this right), it doesn't apply to at least of 99% of Microsoft's installed base.

How does this work out for open source delevopers: "Microsoft is providing a covenant not to sue open source developers for development or non-commercial distribution of implementations of these protocols."

Open source != non-commercial. RedHat, Novell, etc... can and do sell open source solutions that provide interoperability with Microsoft products. It seems to me that this is a move to make Microsoft protocols the de facto standard while still wielding the power to sue competitors who use them.

It sounds like it's a "from here on out" type thing. Access to API's can only be a good thing. Hopefully Ray Ozzie will keep on hammering the issue home.