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Software giant relaxes intellectual property protection to encourage innovation. EC unimpressed.

Software giant Microsoft is to make some source code of its enterprise products freely available to developers, in a seeming volte-face on the company’s position on open-source software.

Beginning in April, the company will start by publishing the communication protocols for Windows Server, which had previously only been available to developers paying for a specific license. This will encourage development of supplementary products and applications that interact with server data. The company promised not to prosecute any developers that employ this code in non-commercial programs.

The company said that in time it would reveal communication protocols and application programming interfaces (APIs) for Windows Vista, the .NET Framework, Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007.

"These important steps represent a significant change in how we share information about our products and technologies," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

The European Commission, which has ordered the company to make more of its source code available following its lengthy anti-trust investigation into Microsoft’s trading practices and in January opened two fresh investigations, was unimpressed by the announcement.

"The commission would welcome any move towards genuine interoperability," a statement from the EC read. "Nonetheless, the commission notes that today's announcement follows at least four similar statements by Microsoft in the past on the importance of interoperability."

Further reading:

The EC versus Microsoft If the EC’s anti-trust pursuit of Microsoft is intended to benefit users, it has failed to produce results

Microsoft working on new language ‘D’ will be a declarative programming language for the service-oriented age

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