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If you browse the Codejock forums you will see a sticky near the top in every forum about getting a license to use the Microsoft Office Fluent UI.



Yes it's true. It's not optional if you intend to release any products with the controls. I think we are at least hopfull. There is good news and sort of good news about all this. For the first part, to use anything that looks like Office you need a license even including Codejock tools. Codejock has a license and if you put the controls in your software you need one too. Codejock did a great job making the tools to make these interfaces they way they really are. The built in behaviors are already there and you have to follow the rules or the OCX's don't work right. It is still possible to do things with the controls you shouldn't do.

Microsoft has done the unexpected. They will give you a license for free. You must get one or else and you need to explicitly list (just a name) all the products you distribute under the license and you must include verbiage about that you are doing so in your own product license docs. It's all free and no charges for anything ever. They want you to admit it is their proprietary technology and you won't do things with it they don't like. It's a pretty short explicit list like No making a Word application or any of the other Office applications. The agreemnt is about two pages so not bad for a legal agreement and you will probably be able to read it too.

You can go here and find out about it and get the license and the document. There is a video and an an FAQ and you can get a peak at the design standards document if you agree to an NDA without getting the actual license. It's almost the exact same document. From there there are more links to tech stuff as well.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa973809.aspx

The sort of good news is you need to use the controls in the ways Microsoft designed them to be implemented. Using them in certain ways or not using them in certain ways is a violation of the license. The deal is you get a free license but they don't want you to use their stuff in ways they didn't intend them to be used - even if you you think you can. If you do, they can come after you in violation of the agreement or not having an agreement could be worse.

There really is another part that is good news. They publish a standards guideline that says what elements you must do, should do, shouldn't do, and are not allowed to do. The must and don't rules can be enforced if they find you did or didn't follow them. It's a free document you can print from a PDF file but you can't download the PDF (I tried). It actually is a very nice doc and shows examples and clearly says what it is you need to do. The better news is if you are using the controls then you probably want them to really be like Office and this doc helps you do that within the lattitude you'll need to have. It's about 120 pages but has lots of pictures and white space and well organized. It's actually quite simple to read too. Microsoft spent the millions to find out what works and how best to do it. They don't want you to make them look bad with their GUI tools.