Microsoft opted for more transparency towards open source developers and other third parties, and gave everybody something to talk about. The company changed its attitude towards open-sources for a better interoperability and choice for both partners and competitors, as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer pointed out in a press conference.

"These steps represent an important step and significant change in how we share information about our products and technologies," said Ballmer in a statement. "Our goal is to promote greater interoperability, opportunity, and choice for customers and developers throughout the industry by making our products more open and by sharing even more information about our technologies."

In terms of how ‘open” they actually are, Microsoft said that it will not sue open-source programmers as long as they won’t use the applications for commercial purposes. The company’s offer includes Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007, all in current and future versions.

“For the past 33 years, we have shared a lot of information with hundreds of thousands of partners around the world and helped build the industry, but today’s announcement represents a significant expansion toward even greater transparency,” Ballmer added in his statement upon announcing the open policy.

Microsoft is expected to publish over 30,000 documentation pages on their website for Windows client and server protocols that have only been available through a trade-secret license so far. This step means a better co-operation between Microsoft’s products and other outside projects.

Within the next few months, developers will have access to Microsoft’s documentation, but as we said before, they will be free to develop their products as long as they will not try to use them for commercial purposes. According to the company, for a commercial distribution of the applications, the developers will have to obtain a patent license from Microsoft.