I think this could well be another first for us.
I’ve talked about the importance of the protocol documentation in past posts, but I think this is the first time we have had things written up and available so far in advance of a product launch.
Tom Robertson announced the availability of the Office 2010 protocol documentation this morning on the Microsoft on the Issues blog:
This kind of open access to information is a central tenet in our Interoperability Principles. The aim of these principles is to give all software developers—including commercial ISVs, open source developers, and developers in customer IT departments—technical information that can be useful in building products that work well with our most popular products. All told, we’ve published more than 33,000 pages of technical documentation relating to interoperability with these Office products, and we’ve seen more than 250,000 downloads of the entire range of our interoperability documentation in just the past year.
This model of transparency through access to developer resources has already enabled real-world interoperability in other areas. In December 2008, for example, Microsoft published detailed protocol documentation for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), as part of the expansion of our EAS IP Licensing Program. EAS is the technology that enables mobile devices to synchronize e-mail, calendar and other information with Microsoft Exchange Server. While EAS had been licensed in the past, the posting of this documentation provided consistent, open access for all developers to the Microsoft protocols built into EAS that enable interoperability. As a result, many leading companies—including Microsoft competitors like Apple, Google, Nokia, and Palm—have licensed the EAS protocol patents, making it possible for their customers to synchronize Exchange data on the most widely used mobile phone platforms in the world.
That second paragraph is a great example of how this documentation is being used.
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