“Hooray,” says Microsoft Makes Strategic Changes in Technology and Business Practices to Expand Interoperability. I care most about:
Microsoft is providing a covenant not to sue open source developers for development or non-commercial distribution of implementations of these protocols.
That’s sort of nice, but it’s either a complete misunderstanding of the open source definition, or a very calculated strategy. To wit, criterion six of the OSD:
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor.
I’m sure it’s a very nice gesture that Microsoft will promise not to sue you for developing free software that you can’t distribute under a free license. At least, it’s some kind of gesture.
If you read that closely, they're agreeing not to sue developers for developing against their "open protocols"--and don't kid yourself, Microsoft does not know what Open means. This is just another infuriating marketing gimmick. If they can muddy and bend the definitions of existing terms to their own devices, they can claim to be everything Open Source is and has to offer...
And for this behaviour, I coin, in the spirit of the term FUD:
ROW
...or "Recondite Obfuscation and Watering-down." Let's advertise it for what it is folks.