While Microsoft’s aggressive profit motive, capitalist incentive based decision making and ability to quickly launch new products/ services endear it with business investors and customers, these qualities give the Redmond giant a devious reputation among competitors, and some developers (especially in the FOSS movements) who often villify the company. Now CNET reports on Microsoft’s Open Specification Promise (OSP):

Microsoft is pledging not to assert its patents pertaining to nearly three dozen Web services specifications--a move designed to ease concerns among developers by creating a legal environment more friendly to open-source software…

The specifications, some of which are still going through the standardization process, cover 35 interoperability protocols, including advanced standards, such as WS-Management, which are not yet widely implemented in commercial products.

There are already open-source implementations of some of these Web services specifications under development, such as Apache Axis and Apache Synapse at the Apache Foundation.

This move has little to do with whether the specifications are used specifically by FOSS entities, although Microsoft obviously ackknolwedges the important role of FOSS in the technology environment. The company is merely ensuring wide adoption of specifications important to the new Vista OS by reaching out to the whole technology community, including those most likely to question the legitimacy of any non-IP assertion promise. Hence, the Microsoft website displays comments from prominent FOSS legal figures who advised the OSP effort:

Red Hat believes ...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… Red Hat General Counsel Mark Webbink

I see... 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… OSI General Counsel Lawrence Rosen

The technology community should learn something from this. Microsoft is too big to ignore. It has too many good technologies, business capabilities and smart people working for it. Can Redmond, then, be beneficial, not just to consumers and investors, but to its competitors and the overall technology industry. Yes, and this is prime example. So then do you get Microsoft to play nicely more often? Give it incentive to…