Microsoft Licenses Office UI – Still Not Paying Apple

So Microsoft has decided to specify licensing terms for anyone who wants to develop an Office 2007 style UI. I can’t help but think that this is somewhat hypocritical considering Microsoft was the beneficiary of a rather important case against Apple regarding copying of user interface ideas. I also find it odd that Microsoft is using licensing techniques to enforce the way the ribbon and similar ideas work instead of just making the actual component implementations available to everyone thus guaranteeing that they always work the same way (including in future updates).

I also found the comment below interesting:

You can use the UI in open source projects as long as the license terms are consistent with our license.

Given that you have to ensure that the UI guidelines are met, I’d be surprised if this were compatible with the GPL and it certainly goes very much against open source ideals and discourages innovation and improvements.

Even worse though is the limitation:

There’s only one limitation: if you are building a program which directly competes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, or Access (the Microsoft applications with the new UI), you can’t obtain the royalty-free license.

Given that Word itself copies quite a few ideas from other earlier word processors (including the very idea of a word processor) it bothers me a fair bit that they’d add this limitation, especially considering they have a monopoly on Office anyway – they don’t really need to add more barriers to entry.

Lately it seems like Microsoft is really ramping up its legal team as a new source of competitive advantage and income. I can’t see how that could end well for the IT industry or for technology users.