Microsoft To Share Its Products And Technology Information To Make Work Better
Software giant Microsoft Corporation has revealed its plan for sharing more information regarding the products and technology of the company to even Non-Microsoft developers. The company looking to make it work better with rival’s software and meet the demands of antitrust regulation in the Europe.
The company has posted 30,000 pages of information documents online to help the non-Microsoft developers, and planning to add more facility to help them in the future.
On the other side according to the EU (European Union) regulators the software maker had not shown any of its monopoly in the past or allegations and it seeks to undercut rivals by bundling Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system.
Microsoft said it is expanding access outside software developers have to information about the way its programs work. Microsoft will give away documentation and computer code needed to make outside applications work together with Office, Windows and others.
In the past, Microsoft charged for this information. The companies that sell software developed by that information are also still being charged the fee by the Microsoft, but company described the fee as “low royalty rate.”
The company said that it will have a relatively minimal impact on revenue of the company.
This modification will make the Microsoft customers to incorporate programs from other software makers to their systems more easily. And companies who develop Windows software won't have to rely on partial information and detective work to make their products work.
Microsoft has spent years putting together such documentation in response to a decade of pressure from antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe. Analysts see the voluntary move as a way to placate the EU, which upheld a $613 million fine against the company last year and has since opened two new investigations into Microsoft's business practices.
Microsoft also said it will launch an online forum to engage with open source developers, and said it would not sue them for "noncommercial distribution" of products built on its protocols.
The company is also eyeing to open up Office programs to new file formats in order to let the PC users change preferences for how documents are saved.