Microsoft issued a press release stating that they would start a new program releasing documentation and API information for current and upcoming Microsoft products including the .NET Framework, Windows Vista, SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008, Exchange 2007, SharePoint 2007 and Office 2007.

Here's a Quote from their original Press Release:

"These steps represent an important step and significant change in how we share information about our products and technologies,” said Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer. “For the past 33 years, we have shared a lot of information with hundreds of thousands of partners around the world and helped build the industry, but today’s announcement represents a significant expansion toward even greater transparency. Our goal is to promote greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for customers and developers throughout the industry by making our products more open and by sharing even more information about our technologies."

They have already started to add over thirty thousand (30,000) documents to MSDN. The new documentation can be found here.

As you might have been able to tell from the link above, it is publicly available to just about anyone, allowing you to use it in non-commercial products with a guarantee you won’t be sued for using it. For commercial products they promise low licensing fees to the relevant patents. All in all a good day for programmers and I am looking forward to digging thru the new MSDN documents.

You'd also might like to check out their Interoperability site.

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