Microsoft has now given into the European Commission’s demands for a more open competition model for the company’s server communication protocols and the licensing of these. Microsoft will make numerous previously closed protocols available for competing companies, but under a new kind of license. The protocols are for communication with and between Office Outlook 2007, Exchange Server 2007 and Live Communications Server 2005. Several of these have been completely proprietary, but will now become available to competing companies that want to exchange information with Microsoft’s server applications. Exactly what these licenses looks like and how the already existing licenses will be affected remains to be seen as Microsoft isn’t expected to be done with parts of this until June.
