SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 21: Micro-soft on Thursday announced it is increasing the openness of its software to make it easier for outside developers to customise applications for its products.

The move comes as the US software giant tries to stem the antitrust concerns of the European Commission and businesses, which rely increasingly on diverse arrays of software and hardware.

Microsoft said it is making “broad-reaching changes” to its technology and business practices to enhance the ease with which its software interacts with partners, customers and competitors.

“These steps represent an important step and significant change in how we share information about our products and technologies,” said Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

“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.” EU competition regulators responded with a sceptical statement that “takes note” of Microsoft’s “intention” to improve the compatibility of its software with rival products but still voiced antitrust concerns.

“This announcement does not relate to the question of whether or not Microsoft has been complying with EU antitrust rules in this area in the past,” the European Commission said.

The commission has long accused Microsoft of abusing its dominant market power by making software that is incompatible with products made by its rivals.

In September, Microsoft lost an appeal before Europe’s second-highest court against a fine of nearly $741 million that EU regulators slapped on the company in 2004 for abusing its dominant market power.

Since its court victory, the European Commission has launched a new investigation targeting the interoperability of a broad range of software, including Microsoft’s popular Office package, with rival products.

Microsoft chief executive said in a Thursday conference call that the firm is backing its words with actions, posting more than 30,000 pages of previously safeguarded software protocol information online for anyone to view.

“Today’s step is certainly qualitatively and quantitatively different from any step that we as a company have taken in the past,” Ballmer said.

“We realise it is committing the company not just to mere words, but to actions that will live up to these principles completely.” Microsoft said it would post thousands of additional pages of software protocols on its website in coming weeks.

The protocols, previously only available for fees, show software engineers how to enable applications to communicate and exchange data with popular Microsoft programs such as Outlook.

“These steps are being taken on our own,” Ballmer said, noting that some of the changes are tailored to appease the European Commission and US antitrust regulators.

“We see new opportunities and risks in the more connected world. The world we grew up in was individual machines.” Microsoft’s newly announced principles apply to all its top-selling software and fit a patent framework addressed by European courts, said Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith.

“Microsoft is taking all necessary steps to make sure we are in full compliance with European law,” Smith said in the conference call.

“The interoperability announcement represents the changed legal landscape for Microsoft and the technology industry.” Microsoft said its new principles include ensuring open connections, promoting data portability, increasing support for open connections, and fostering closer ties with the “open-source community”. Open-source applications consist of software considered public property and freely available for people to use and modify.

People will be able to freely customise programs to work with Microsoft software, but if they sell applications for others to use, Microsoft will extract fees, according to Ballmer.

“In some sense we are opening up, and yet we retain valuable intellectual property rights,” Ballmer said. “The clear message is that patents will be readily available for the right fee.”

—AFP