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What is Microsoft’s Perspective on Openness?
Microsoft has changed as a company and we’re becoming much more open. We are “playing well with others”
through stepped up investments in standards and interoperability; we listen to and help customers deploy and
manage IT solutions that combine Microsoft products and technologies from other companies; and as we
increasingly offer cloud-based computing services, we are doing so in an open manner.
In 2006, Microsoft became a founding member of the
Interop Vendor Alliance (IVA), an organization whose
purpose is to work together to enhance the way that
diverse products interoperate. Since that time,
Microsoft has engaged with numerous vendors from
the Industry - including competitors, to achieve
interoperability with Microsoft’s operating systems
and applications for the benefit of our shared
customers. Microsoft has made freely available full
technical information for protocols, file formats,
standards and other technical specifications relating to
Microsoft high-volume products. Microsoft also has
formal membership in 150 standards organizations
around the world and is actively participating in 350
standards working groups.
“It’s a pragmatism that has led us to work with many
companies, communities, standards groups,
governments and customers to address industry and
customer interoperability and openness goals. We
understand deeply that playing well with others,
listening to our customers and ensuring openness in
the cloud are critical to our future success, and to the
success of our customers and partners. We know we
don’t do all of these things perfectly yet, but we are
actively working toward them, and we are listening
hard to our customers and partners to ensure we’re
doing the right things to help them succeed”
Microsoft International President, Jean-Philippe Courtois,
remarks from his Uni of du SI presentation in Paris 2010
In recent years, Microsoft has significantly enhanced its efforts to achieve openness and interoperability between its
products and Open Source Software (OSS) technologies through a number of approaches, including:
 Designing our products to support OSS technologies “out-of-the-box”
 Collaboration with OSS vendors to ensure interoperability between our products
 Contributing to OSS projects
 Releasing some technologies under approved Open Source licenses
What is Microsoft’s involvement with Open Source?
Microsoft is best known for its traditional software products, however, Microsoft’s open source strategy is focused
on helping customers and partners succeed in today's heterogeneous technology landscape both on-premise and in
the cloud. Over the past few years, Microsoft has steadily increased its participation in open source communities and
projects to help enable their success on the Windows platforms. Microsoft engineers have contributed to various
open source projects hosted on http://codeplex.com and other popular OSS repositories.
Some notable highlights of the many outcomes from Microsoft’s Open Source strategy include:
 More than 700 technologies and applications have been made available by Microsoft product teams as Open
Source or Shared Source.
 In 2007, two Microsoft Licenses – the Microsoft Public License (MS-PL) and the Microsoft Reciprocal License
(MS-RL) – were approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI).
 In 2008, Microsoft worked with members from the Samba project team to ensure interoperable
implementations of CIFS, SMB, SMB2 protocols.
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In 2009, Microsoft submitted 20,000
“…Before I say anything else, I do want to say this: We at
GPL v2 lines of code to the Linux Kernel
Microsoft respect and appreciate the important role that
to enhance the performance of the
open source software plays in our industry. We respect and
Linux operating system when
we appreciate the passion and the great contribution that
virtualized on Windows Server 2008
open source developers make in our industry. We respect and
Hyper-V and Windows Server 2008 R2
we appreciate the important role that open source software
Hyper-V.
plays for our customers, customers who almost always have
Providing open source enhancements
heterogeneous computer networks with software and
for Microsoft Office such as an add-in
hardware and services that, as you all well know, come from
to enables users to embed a Creative
multiple vendors. That is not what you have always heard
Commons license directly into their
from us, and I recognize that. But I did want to start by
Microsoft Office documents, an add-in
saying that…”
to save documents and content that
Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith, remarks from his keynote
will be accessible for blind and printat the 2008 Open Source Business Conference.
disabled individuals, and an add-in to
save content directly to MediaWikibased repositories such as WikiEducator.
Creating plug-ins for popular OSS CMS applications including Drupal, Wordpress, Moodle and the Microsoft
initiated project – Orchard.
Releasing a series of SDK’s and plug-ins to enable the development and deployment of non-Microsoft
technologies (including: PHP, Java, Ruby on Rails, Eclipse) on Microsoft’s cloud platform – Windows Azure.
Releasing a web development tool – WebMatrix – that makes it easy to download and install OSS Web Apps
such as Joomla, Wordpress, Umbraco, DotNetNuke, etc
For more details on some of the open source projects that Microsoft has been involved in, go to:
http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/directory.aspx.
Microsoft has also engaged in numerous technical and business collaborations with many OSS vendors including:
SugarCRM, MySQL, Novell, JBoss, Zend, XenSource, Mozilla, SpikeSource, Xandros, Red Hat, Silverstripe and
Cloud.com to deliver value to our shared customers and users of our software.
What are the benefits of fostering Open Source collaboration?
Microsoft is a platform company committed to building technologies that empower developers and partners to
deliver compelling software solutions to customers. This approach is reflected in the size and health of the
technology ecosystem in which Microsoft participates:
 750,000 partner businesses around the world that, according to the
“There’s little doubt in my
findings of a global study of 22,000 technology companies, earn an
mind that SilverStripe’s
average of $8 in revenue for every $1 earned by Microsoft.
product adoption,
 5,000,000 developers around the world who have created a vast
credibility and growth have
array of applications using platform technologies such as Microsoft
all been enhanced through
Windows, Windows Live, Microsoft Office, .NET platform, Microsoft
our involvement with
Windows Server, and Microsoft’s Cloud offerings such as Windows
Microsoft. We are
Azure.
confident that greater
Leveraging Microsoft’s programs, technologies and ecosystem provides OSS
vendors and projects an avenue to become even more successful. This
includes enhancing opportunities for business partners regardless of the
underlying development model, and increasing opportunities for developers
to learn and create by combining community-oriented open source with
traditional commercial approaches to software development.
interoperability with the
Windows platform will
contribute to further
success in the years ahead”
Silverstripe Co-founder,
Sigurd Magnusson
Does this mean Microsoft Won’t Compete with Open Source Products?
Microsoft both competes and partners with traditional vendors, and will do so with open source-based companies;
with a pragmatic focus on providing value for shared customers. For example, Microsoft competes with Linux
server offerings from Novell and Red Hat. At the same time, Microsoft and Novell are working together in a joint
interoperability lab in areas of system management, virtualization, identity management and document translation.
Likewise, Microsoft and Red Hat agreed to joint technical support for our mutual customers using Server
Virtualization technologies. As server virtualization becomes increasingly important in the datacenter, these
collaborations will offer flexibility to customers with heterogeneous IT environments to virtualize Windows on top of
Linux and Linux on top of Windows on the same hardware.
This dual approach of both competing and collaborating is true for other vendors that Microsoft has partnered with,
to provide value to our shared customers.
Where Can I Learn More about Microsoft’s support for Open Source and Standards?
There are a number of resources available to learn more about how Microsoft is working with open source
software, standards and technical communities:
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http://www.microsoft.com/openness: Microsoft’s corporate open source website. Provides information
about Microsoft and open source in one place and provides a gateway for deeper exploration of open source
engagements and activities across Microsoft.
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http://Port25.technet.com: Provides blogs from the platform community and the OSS Lab teams as
well as technical insights and how-to information about the use of Microsoft and open source
technologies together.
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http://www.codeplex.com: Microsoft’s project hosting site, which provides resources for developers and
consumers of open source projects.
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http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com: This portal highlights technical collaborative works from Microsoft
to improve interoperability between Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies.
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http://www.microsoft.com/interop/openup: A central portal to access information regarding Microsoft’s
cross-Industry Interoperability and Standards activities.
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http://www.microsoft.com/sharedsource: Microsoft’s external portal for programmatically sharing code.
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http://ogdisdk.cloudapp.net - An open source starter kit for Internet publishing of Government datasets
using the Open Data (OData) protocol.
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http://www.microsoft.com/openspecifications: This website provides information and support for protocols,
file formats, standards and other technical specifications relating to Microsoft high-volume products.
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http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark: Program for Start-Up companies from both commercial and open
source backgrounds to attract investors and seed their market growth.
How can I receive up-to-date Openness announcements from Microsoft?
In addition to the websites above, you can receive regular updates to Microsoft’s openness, interoperability
and standards efforts via the following channels:
 http://blogs.technet.com/b/openness/
 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/interoperability/
 http://twitter.com/OpenAtMicrosoft
 http://port25.technet.com
 http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Interoperability
Further Questions or Feedback?
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Contact Microsoft’s Platform Strategy Manager: Pasi Mäkinen ([email protected])
microsoft.com/openness