Microsoft releases technical information on major products free of charge in principle, development of compatible software is free

According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun news report, it seems that Microsoft decided to open technical information on major products such as Windows and Office in principle free of charge.

This will allow other companies to freely develop compatible software.

Details are as below.
Microsoft releases major software technical information in principle free of charge

According to this article, Microsoft is announcing that technical information of major products such as Windows is released as a rule in principle. This is a change of management strategy that keeps its own software that has been continuing since its foundation in 1975 as intellectual property and then becomes a source of competitiveness, whereby other companies can freely develop compatible software It will be able to do.

As a background of this, in October 2007, Microsoft agreed in full compliance with the corrective order received from the European Commission over the violation of the EU Anti-Monopoly Law, at that time providing technical information to competing software companies , It seems that they have laid out a policy to drastically lower the patent fee.

And this time we will promote information disclosure according to that policy, subject to disclosure of technical information include PC OS "Windows Vista", server OS "Windows Server", business application software such as word processor and spreadsheet " Office "and all other major products are included.

So far there has been no software that has achieved full compatibility with Office etc, but this seems to make the software options wider for users.