After a long process, Microsoft today released the Microsoft Open Specification Promise, which essentially is a "get-out-of-jail-free" card to implement a lot of protocols that Microsoft has patents on.

As many readers of this blog probably know, the OSIS project, that we co-initiated at NetMesh with Verisign and Microsoft, was one of the major drivers for this promise, as this promise is necessary for non-Windows InfoCard / CardSpace implementations. OSIS now has many member companies such as IBM, Red Hat, Novell, Sun, Sxip, Cordance, Ping and Social Physics, and just was chartered as a working group under the new Identity Commons.

This Microsoft promise is really great and urgently expected news. Thanks Mike Jones and in particular Kim Cameron at Microsoft to make this happen; I’m sure this was hard work as Microsoft has never done such an open-source friendly thing, and we — the entire identity community and probably the larger tech industry — very much appreciate it.

Thanks also in particular to Dale Olds and the people at Novell, Pete Rowley and the people at Red Hat, and Michael Graves and Brian Matthews at Verisign, who negotiated with Microsoft on this issue on behalf of the OSIS project. Great stuff!

Other posts on the same subject: by Kim Cameron, (Microsoft, on his blog), Rohan Pinto, (open-source developer, on his blog), Gerald Beuchelt (Sun, on the OSIS mailing list), Pete Rowley (Red Hat, on his blog), Jack Schofield (The Guardian Unlimited)