As part of its interoperability announcement
Microsoft has said it would work with open standards bodies to
help developers support Microsoft extensions that affect
interoperability with other implementations of these
standards.
Microsoft said these actions would allow third-party developers
implementing standards to understand how a standard is used in a
Microsoft product and foster improved interoperability for
customers. Microsoft said it would also make available a list of
any of its patents that cover any of these extensions, and will
make available patent licences on reasonable and non-discriminatory
terms.
In response to user-concerns over document format
incompatibility, the software giant said it would extend
Office 2007 to provide greater flexibility of document formats.
It plans to introduce new APIs for the Word, Excel and PowerPoint
applications in Office 2007 to enable developers to plug in
additional document formats and to enable users to set these
formats as their default for saving documents.
