Supporting the development of open solutions and build connections between them and the ideas used by Microsoft – they look like targets Microsoft Open Technologies, a newly formed subsidiary company. The team will consist of 50-75 people that have worked include with HTML5 and HTTP 2.0, and at its head, Jean Paoli (co-creator of the XML 1.0 standard).
Supporting the development of open solutions and establishing connections between these and Microsoft product ideas appears to be the target goals of Microsoft Open Technologies, a newly-formed subsidiary company to Microsoft. The team will consist of 50-75 people experienced with HTML5 and HTTP 2.0. This group will be led by Jean Paoli, co-creator of the XML 1.0 standard.
Despite the establishment of this new company, the various branches of the group will continue to work with existing partners, such as Outercurve Foundation and Apache Software Foundation. Microsoft Open Technologies is set to establish long-term collaboration with companies representing the open source movement and to foster interaction within the community. All of this has as its goal to make the design and development of open source software faster and easier.
Microsoft Open Technologies is to move forward regardless of the business plan of the mother company. This is important as it is well-known that just a few years ago Microsoft was not very sympathetic to open source communities.
Recently, however, the image of concern has changed dramatically. Microsoft has since been recognized as a company making a large contribution to the development of Linux, and additionally supporting the OpenStreetMap project. Microsoft now supports multiple programming languages, such as Java, PHP and Node.js, in addition to .NET, on its Window Azure cloud computing platform. The company has also taken advantage of open solutions, including Hadoop, MongoDB, Drupal and Joomla. Further, Microsoft has been involved in sponsorship of such meetings as Joomla Day.
It is worth mentioning that a recent Microsoft transaction resulted in Microsoft purchasing 800 patents from AOL for $1 billion, with the right of use of the remaining 300 in a convenient, do not exclude license. Since this transaction, it has been announced that Facebook has struck a deal with Microsoft in which it will acquire 650 of these AOL patents and patent applications from Microsoft for $550 million. Facebook will also gain a license to all of the AOL patents that Microsoft will retain ownership of, the companies have announced.
Outside of this, Microsoft has not yet announced what is intends to do with this collection of patents. Let’s hope there will not be a repeat here of the situation in the mobile market, where through this exercise of its patent portfolio Redmond makes the Android phone manufacturers pay royalties on each unit sold.