Archive for Microsoft tag

Microsoft opens Office binary file format specifications

February 2008 • Microsoft () • 920 views • 7 responses

Microsoft have released the binary file format specifications to their Office suite (the XML ones are already published) under their Open Specification Promise.

I am not a lawyer but as far as I understand this means you are free to implement the standards with a promise that Microsoft will not use any patents under its control that are required to implement the specification against you.

Hopefully Apple will now address Keynote’s PowerPoint support bug so exported PPT’s works with Office 2007.

Now that the .NET Framework 3.5 source is available (for reference) and Scott Guthrie (now VP) announcing the MVC framework will be user-buildable and patchable (not redistributable) and include project templates for a number of open-source testing frameworks the future is looking very rosy.

[)amien

What being open means to Apple & Microsoft

January 2008 • Apple, Microsoft (, , , ) • 968 views • 2 responses

Apple

Former Apple engineer Jens Alfke believes Apple’s external image has been polished until featureless. The restrictive staff blogging policies, the veil of secrecy around future plans and a carefully orchestrated three-person spokes-team of Jobs, Schiller and Ive lead to a very impersonal closed business.

It certainly wasn’t always this way. The original Mac team appeared in Rolling Stone magazine with credit in about boxes, a practice that was continued at NeXT but abolished by Mac OS X Beta. Jobs makes regular comparisons between engineers and artists and touted individual thinking in the Think Different campaign and artists like recognition with signatures on art and credits on film.

Conversely Apple’s Mac OS X operating system is built on open software and standards. The kernel is derived from open elements bundled up as Darwin which Apple provides back along with compilers, debug tools, programming language, command line tools, Bonjour, device driver kit and a bunch of drivers. All are open.

The web rendering technology in Safari (WebKit based on KHTML) is also open and changes rolled back to the communities often reveal unannounced insights into Apple’s plans (e.g. Safari for Windows).

And yet how many engineers write or talk about Apple? Do you know the names of any product managers? Could you find any out with Google? (LinkedIn doesn’t count ;-)

These aren’t academic questions, what if you have a great idea for a feature you’d like to see added? How can you discuss how a product could evolve to fit your needs? What about a simple bug report or advanced access to technology? (The answers are “send it to feedback@apple.com and don’t hold your breath”, “you can’t” and “join the developer program”)

Heaven forbid you do actually find out what their plans might be – you could find yourself talking to their lawyers like the ill-fated ThinkSecret site that featured rumors, speculation and the occasional insider info.

Microsoft

Jens makes a passing mention to Microsoft’s relaxed blogging policies.

Microsoft is a company that rarely provides the source, never ships or builds upon existing free software and yet not only discusses plans and roadmaps but actively solicits feedback in the design process through conferences, user groups, forums, mailing lists and even on-site review teams. Employees such as Scott Guthrie and Brad Abrams have become quite well known within .NET communities often being the first to break announcements and provide quick feedback through their blogs.

The centre of this effort is engineering thanks to sites like Channel 9 providing regular interviews, Microsoft Research providing experiments to play with and CodePlex hosting open projects.

But they aren’t the only ones reaching out.

Microsoft’s HR & recruiting team and individuals are also putting up interesting insights and thoughts on how the company operates and head of the Xbox Live! is so active in this area that the name Major Nelson is known to any serious 360 owner.

Being open

How strange that Apple embraces open technologies yet keeps communication closed and Microsoft’s technologies are still quite closed yet communication is very much open.

What does it mean to be open and where will each company’s approach lead them?

[)amien

Returned from Redmond

October 2007 – April 2011 • Microsoft (, ) • 1,015 views • 2 responses

It’s been an overwhelming few days listening and interacting with bright people from the .NET community and within Microsoft itself (wish I could say more but I can’t). Here are just a few of those names, I wish I knew them all but I was so busy listening to what they had to say I often forgot to ask for a card:

And from the Microsoft side of the fence

Congratulations go out to Rob Conery who is now getting paid by Microsoft to work on SubSonic!

How cool is that!

[)amien

Heading to Redmond

October 2007 – March 2008 • Microsoft, Personal, Travel (, ) • 1,149 views • one response

I’ve been invited out to Microsoft HQ for a couple of days (October 22-23) which should be very interesting – more details on the what, why and how at a later date.

I will also be spending an extra day and a half in Seattle, perhaps taking in some of the sights of and maybe meeting up with a couple of on-line contacts for the first time.

Flights & hotel booked, now where I did put my passport…

The event was a Software Design Review for Microsoft’s ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions including MVC. Twenty-four of us gave our thoughts, feelings and opinions to the teams on how we believe we would or could utilise various aspects.

[)amien