I thought you would be
interested in this RSS article:
Microsoft
makes Web services spec vow
Anybody
who wants to use the WS-* specifications for Web services standardization won't
get sued by Microsoft.
The
company this week posted a bulletin
stating it would not assert claims for usage of 35 specifications listed in the
document. Microsoft has been a co-developer of these technologies and seeks to
spread their usage by making what it calls its "Microsoft Open
Specification Promise," which now takes the acronym, OSP.
"It
was a simple, clear way, after looking at many different licensing approaches,
to reassure a broad audience of developers and customers that the
specification(s) could be used for free, easily, now and forever," the
company said.
"Because
Web services are a being widely adopted across the industry and with our
customers, we decided to remove any potential questions about the widespread
use of our IP in the implementation of these specifications," Tom
Robertson, general manager for interoperability and standards at Microsoft,
said in a statement released by the company.
"This
is a personal promise directly from Microsoft to you, and you acknowledge as a
condition of benefiting from it that no Microsoft rights are received from
suppliers, distributors, or otherwise in connection with this promise,"
the bulletin states. All bets are off, however, for anyone who participate in a
patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft over any of the specifications.
Among the
specifications covered include WSDL, SOAP, WS-Enumeration, WS-Federation and
several specifications related to WS-Security. Reaction to Microsoft's move,
posted with the bulletin, was favorable from open source advocates.
"I
see Microsoft's introduction of the OSP as a good step by Microsoft to further
enable collaboration between software vendors and the open source community.
This OSP enables the open source community to implement these standard
specifications without having to pay any royalties to Microsoft or sign a
license agreement. I'm pleased that this OSP is compatible with free and open
source licenses," said Lawrence Rosen, of the technology law firm of
Rosenlaw & Einschlag.
Red Hat
also endorsed the move.
"Red
Hat believes that the text of the OSP gives sufficient flexibility to implement
the listed specifications in software licensed under free and open source
licenses. We commend Microsoft's efforts to reach out to representatives from
the open source community and solicit their feedback on this text, and
Microsoft's willingness to make modifications in response to our
comments," said Mark Webbink, deputy general counsel at Red Hat.
News Feed Source
Home Page:
Feed Title: InfoWorld: TechWatch
Feed URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/techwatch/rss.xml
Article
Title: Microsoft makes Web services spec vow
Link: http://weblog.infoworld.com/techwatch/archives/007884.html
Author: ~Paul Krill
Publication Date: 9/13/2006 1:52:26 PM
Brought to you by Attensa for Outlook
(download it here)