Microsoft's Interop Chief: People Should Choose Their Own Standards

SCOTT FULTON, BetaNews: Obviously the Microsoft/Novell collaboration so far has borne good fruit, here. We have SUSE Enterprise Linux 10 being added as one of the guest operating systems that Windows Server Virtualization will support, we have Microsoft reselling SUSE Enterprise Linux coupons, so there is a good business collaboration going forth there. For the collaboration principle that you talked about to be successful, should Microsoft extend a similar invitation to everyone else, equally, in the same general product space?

TOM ROBERTSON, General Manager for Interoperability and Standards, Microsoft: We have made clear that we're interested in working with anyone who wants to work with us in a collaborative and productive way.

SCOTT FULTON: And in making that clear, have you extended a similar covenant promise to the one you made with Novell and with Xandros, that protects their customers from future claims on intellectual property?

TOM ROBERTSON: We've made it clear we want to work with others who have an interest in working with us.

SCOTT FULTON: So you've extended that invitation, and right now, it's up to them to come to you.

TOM ROBERTSON: You can't really say how these things develop. I don't want to generalize it, to how the discussions begin, but we can't be any clearer in terms of our interest in working more broadly with others in the community.

If people have an interest in our intellectual property, we've made clear that we are open for business. They should call us up. If we've got something that's programmatically available, they should take a look at the programmatic offering and, if it meets their needs, great. That's pretty straightforward. If it doesn't, and they want something else, they need to talk to us.

SCOTT FULTON: Can I ask the meaning behind giving these four pillars the term "toolsets?"

TOM ROBERTSON: Because they're used in a sense of tools to address interoperability issues that are identified. This is really a framework for thinking about how we and others address interoperability challenges on a day-to-day basis. You would use one or more tools in a particular situation, and actually, to address a particular situation, you could foresee different vendors using different tools to address the same issue, because they would think that's their separate paths towards a solution that's most appropriate for the marketplace, or that would be more attractive to customers. That kind of competition between approaches is, I think at the end of the day, very healthy and good for customers.

Let me give you an example using the Open XML format, just to see how we've done this. Open XML is, I think, interesting because it reflects the use of each one of the tools. First of all, we have built Open XML support into Office 2007. We also, as a general matter, built XML support into our product line. But by doing that, we've enabled interoperability scenarios to take place. In the collaboration area, we sponsored the development of translators between Open XML and ODF, and Open XML and UOF - the emerging Chinese XML-based format. And those are all open source projects, they're on SourceForge. The Open XML translator has been one of the most popular SourceForge projects since it began, coming up on a year ago. And the text document format translator has been done since January, the betas of the spreadsheet and presentation translators are already out there, and we would expect the final versions to be done by the end of this calendar year. And then the UOF translation work is in the process of spinning out.

That's collaboration. Access to technology? That's done by the Open XML specification being brought under the Open Specification Promise. Now, anyone who wants to use any Microsoft patents needed to implement any aspect of the Open XML specification in any context can do so, without any formalities, without any financial obligations, without any need to sign anything or send anything in or issue a notice in their products.

Then lastly there's the standardization. We worked with many different interests to standardize Open XML in ECMA, and that process - the Technical Committee 45 process - has included big tech companies like Apple, Intel, Toshiba, Novell. It included power users of document formats like Barclay's Bank, BP, Statoil. It included government archival interests like the US Library of Congress and the British Library. At the end of the day, the draft specification moved from 2,000 pages to over 6,000 pages. Why? Because the participants wanted to make sure that it was fully specified, in as robust a way as possible. They voted happily - and we think, appropriately - in December, 20 to 1 in favor of standardizing or adopting this as an ECMA standard. Now, the only "out-lyer" trying to block standardization was IBM. Then they also voted 20 to 1 to pass this on for ratification to ISO, as is what happens with most ECMA standards. Again, the vote was 20 to 1 with one notable exception.

So Open XML is interesting because it's an example of where you really can use, and may want to use, all the four toolsets to promote interoperability in a particular technology space.