23 November 2005

Microsoft Sharing?!

Microsoft is making a stab at supporting the Creative Commons’ Attribution-ShareAlike license.

Under this Creative Commons License, Microsoft released the specification for Simple Sharing Extensions (SSE) , which turns RSS bi-directional. For example, SSE should make sharing calendars and contact lists easier.

The objective of Simple Sharing Extensions (SSE) is to define the minimum extensions necessary to enable loosely-cooperating apps 1. to use RSS as the basis for item sharing – that is, the bi-directional, asynchronous replication of new and changed item. Basically, it uses the reverse exchange of RSS.

I try as much as possible to not get entrapped by anything produced by MS. Being a committed Apple flag-waver, I believe in OpenSource, fair trade, sharing and collaboration. Because MS is making an attempt to share, I want to support their efforts…so they’ll do it more. Just hope we don’t end up with some strange leak into the etherworld.

Ray Ozzie, Chief Technical Officer of Microsoft, has a blog on MSN Spaces. In his posting on SSE, he talks about why the decided to do this. Wow.

No comments: