Microsoft Community Promise

Published: September 12, 2007 | Revised: January 31, 2023

Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation, to the extent it conforms to one of the Covered Specifications, and is compliant with all of the required parts of the mandatory provisions of that specification ("Covered Implementation"), subject to the following:

This is a personal promise directly from Microsoft to you, and you acknowledge as a condition of benefiting from it that no Microsoft rights are received from suppliers, distributors, or otherwise in connection with this promise. If you file, maintain, or voluntarily participate in a patent infringement lawsuit against a Microsoft implementation of any Covered Specification, then this personal promise does not apply with respect to any Covered Implementation made or used by you. To clarify, "Microsoft Necessary Claims" are those claims of Microsoft-owned or Microsoft-controlled patents that are necessary to implement the required portions (which also include the required elements of optional portions) of the Covered Specification that are described in detail and not those merely referenced in the Covered Specification.

This promise by Microsoft is not an assurance that either (i) any of Microsoft issued patent claims covers a Covered Implementation or are enforceable, or (ii) a Covered Implementation would not infringe patents or other intellectual property rights of any third party. No other rights except those expressly stated in this promise shall be deemed granted, waived or received by implication, exhaustion, estoppel, or otherwise.

Frequently Asked Questions about the Microsoft Community Promise.

Covered Specifications

The Microsoft Community Promise applies individually to each of the following specifications.

The Microsoft Community Promise applies to the identified version of the following specifications. New versions of previously covered specifications will be separately considered for addition to the list and are covered only if specifically listed. In connection with the specifications listed below, this Promise also applies to the required elements of optional portions of such specifications.

ACPI Specifications

ACPI Specifications

Serial Port Console Redirection Table Specification (SPCR)

Debug Port Specification (DBGP)

Debug Port Table 2 Specification (DBG2)

Hardware Watchdog Timers Design (WDAT)

Windows SMM Security Mitigations Table (WSMT)

Covered Specifications

Covered Specifications

ATM User-Network Interface (UNI) Protocol - UNI 3.1

C# Language Specification - Ecma-334, 4th Edition and ISO/IEC 23270:2006

C++ AMP: Language and Programming Model, Version 0.9

C++ AMP: Language and Programming Model, Version 1.0

C++ AMP: Language and Programming Model, Version 1.2

Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) - Ecma-335, 4th, 5th, and 6th Editions and ISO/IEC 23271:2006

Common NNTP Extensions – RFC 2980

Control protocol for multimedia communication – ITU H.245

Digest Access Authentication - RFC 2617, RFC 2831

Domain Name System (DNS) Resource Record (RR) for Encoding Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) Information (DHCID RR) - RFC 4701, RFC 4703

Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) - RFC 2535

(The) Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv6 (DHCPv6) Client Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) Option - RFC 4704

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv6 (DHCPv6) - RFC 3315, RFC 3633, RFC 3646, RFC 3736, RFC 3898, RFC 4075

Email Policy Service ASN.1 Processing

Email Policy Service Trust Processing

Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) Message Digest Algorithm 5 - RFC 3748

Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fourth Edition) (MS-XMLH)

Exchange iCalendar Standards Support (MS-STANXICAL)

Exchange IMAP4 Standards Compliance (MS-STANXIMAP)

Generic Conference Control – ITU T.124

Generic Identity Device Specification

HealthVault Service Specification

HID Over I2C Protocol Specification, Version 1.0

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Version 2 (HTTP/2) Extension (MS-HTTP2E)

iCalendar Transport-Independent Interoperability Protocol (iTIP)  Scheduling Events, BusyTime, To-dos and Journal Entries - RFC 2446 and RFC 5546

iCalendar Message-Based Interoperability Protocol (iMIP) - RFC 2447 and RFC 6047

Information Refresh Time Option for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv6 (DHCPv6) - RFC 4242

Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar) – RFC 2445 and RFC 5545

Internet Control Message Protocol for IPv6 (ICMPv6) - RFC 2463, RFC 2461, RFC 4191

Internet Explorer Accessible Rich Interactive Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.0 Standards Support Document (MS-ARIA)

Internet Explorer Cascading Stylesheets (CSS) 2.1 Standards Support Document (MS-CSS21)

Internet Explorer CSS Color Module Level 3 Standards Support (MS-CSS3COLR)

Internet Explorer CSS Media Queries Module Level 3 Standards Support (MS-CSS3MQ)

Internet Explorer CSS Style Attributes Standards Support Document (MS-CSSATTR)

Internet Explorer CSS3 Namespaces Module Standards Support Document (MS-CSS3NS)

Internet Explorer Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1 Standards Support Document (MS-DOM1)

Internet Explorer Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Core Standards Support Document (MS-DOM2C)

Internet Explorer Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core Standards Support Document (MS-DOM3C)

Internet Explorer Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Events Standards Support Document (MS-DOM2E)

Internet Explorer Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 HTML Standards Support Document (MS-DOM2H)

Internet Explorer Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Style Standards Support Document (MS-DOM2S)

Internet Explorer Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Traversal and Range Standards Support Document (MS-DOM2TR)

Internet Explorer Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Views Standards Support Document (MS-DOM2V)

Internet Explorer Element Traversal Standards Support (MS-ELTRAV)

Internet Explorer Element Traversal Standards Support Document (MS-ELTRAV)

Internet Explorer EMCA-262 ECMAScript Language Specification (5.1 Edition) Standards Support (MS-ES51)

Internet Explorer ECMA-402 ECMAScript Internationalization API Standards Support Document (MS-ECMA402)

Internet Explorer Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) Standards Support Document (MS-XHTML)

Internet Explorer Extensions to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Level 2 and DOM Level 2 Style Specifications  (MS-CSS21E)

Internet Explorer Extensions to HTML 4.01 and DOM Level 2 HTML Specifications (MS-HTML401E)

Internet Explorer Extensions to the HTML5 Specification (MS-HTML5E)

Internet Explorer Geolocation API Standards Support Document (MS-GEOLOC)

Internet Explorer High Resolution Time Standards Support Document (MS-HIREST)

Internet Explorer HTML 4.01 Standards Support Document (MS-HTML401)

Internet Explorer HTML5 Standards Support Document (MS-HTML5)

Internet Explorer ISO 32000-1 Portable Document Format (PDF) Standards Support Document (MS-PDF)

Internet Explorer Media Queries Standards Support Document (MS-CSSMQ)

Internet Explorer Navigation Timing Standards Support Document (MS-NAVTIM)

Internet Explorer Page Visibility Standards Support Document (MS-PAGEVIS)

Internet Explorer Performance Timeline Standards Support Document (MS-PERFTL)

Internet Explorer PICS Label Distribution and Syntax Standards Support Document (MS-PICSL)

Internet Explorer PICS Rating Services and Systems Standards Support Document (MS-PICSRS)

Internet Explorer PICSRules Standards Support Document (MS-PICSRL)

Internet Explorer Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) Standards Support Document (MS-P3P)

Internet Explorer Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Standards Support Document (MS-PNG)

Internet Explorer Ruby Annotation Standards Support Document (MS-RUBY)

Internet Explorer Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Standards Support Document (MS-SVG)

Internet Explorer Selectors API Level 1 Standards Support Document (MS-SELAPI1)

Internet Explorer Selectors Level 3 Standards Support Document (MS-CSS3SEL)

Internet Explorer Standards Support Cross-Origin Resource Sharing Document (MS-CORS)

Internet Explorer Standards Support Cross-Origin Resource Sharing for XDR and Fonts Document (MS-CORSXF)

Internet Explorer Timed Text Markup Language (TTML) Standards Support Document  (MS-TTML)

Internet Explorer User Timing Standards Support Document (MS-USERTIM)

Internet Explorer Web Storage Standards Support Document (MS-WEBSTG)

Internet Explorer WOFF File Format 1.0 Standards Support (MS-WOFF1)

Internet Explorer XML Namespaces 1.0 Standards Support Document (MS-XMLNSH)

Internet Key Exchange Version 2 (IKEv2) Protocol - RFC 4306, RFC4718, RFC4555

Internet Message Access Protocol – Version 4 rev. 1 – RFC 3501

Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) - RFC 2460, RFC 2462, RFC 2463, RFC 2464, RFC 2711

Internet SCSI (ISCSI) Protocol - RFC 3720

Internet Storage Name Service (iSNS) - RFC 4171

IP Version 6 over PPP - RFC 2472

IP-in-IP Tunneling - RFC 1853

IPv6-in-IPv4 Configured Tunnels - RFC 2893

JPEG XR – ISO/IEC 29199-2, 29199-4, 29199-5 and ITU-T T.832, T.834, T.835

Lightweight Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) - RFC 5019

Microsoft Display Ad SmartServe API

Microsoft Edge / Internet Explorer DOM4 Standards Support Document [MS-DOM4]

Microsoft Edge / Internet Explorer ECMA-262 ECMAScript Language Specification (Sixth Edition) Standards Support Document (MS-ES6)

Microsoft Edge / Internet Explorer ECMA-402 ECMAScript Internationalization API (2nd Edition) Specification Standards Support Document (MS-ESI2)

Microsoft Edge / Internet Explorer HTML Canvas 2D Context Standards Support Document [MS-CANVAS2D]

Microsoft Edge / Internet Explorer HTML5 Image Description Extension (longdesc) Standards Support Document (MS-LONGDESC)

Microsoft Edge / Internet Explorer HTML5 Web Messaging Standards Support Document (MS-WEBMSG)

Microsoft Edge / Internet Explorer Pointer Events Standards Support Document (MS-POINTER)

Microsoft Edge / Internet Explorer Touch Events Standards Support Document (MS-TOUCH)

Microsoft Edge / Internet Indexed Database API Standards Support Document (MS-INDEXDB)

Microsoft Edge Web Notifications Standards Support Document (MS-WEBNOT)

Microsoft Edge Web Storage (Second Edition) Standards Support Document (MS-WEBSTG2)

Microsoft Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 Fourth Edition Standards Support Document (MS-XML)

Microsoft PPP CHAP Extensions, Version 2 - RFC 2759

Microsoft XML Associating Style Sheets with XML Standards Support Document (MS-XMLSTYL)

Microsoft XML Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1 Standards Support Document (MS-DOM1X)

Microsoft XML Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Core Standards Support Document (MS-DOM2CX)

Microsoft XML Namespaces Standards Support Document (MS-XMLNS)

Microsoft XML Schema (Part 1: Structures) Standards Support Document (MS-XMLSS)

Microsoft XML Schema (Part 2: Datatypes) Standards Support Document (MS-XMLSD)

Microsoft XML XPath Standards Support Document (MS-XPATH)

Microsoft XSLTransformations (XSLT) Standards Support Document (MS-XSLT)

Multicast Listener Discovery Version 1 (MLDv1) - RFC 2710

Multicast Listener Discovery Version 2 (MLDv2) - RFC 3810

Multipoint application sharing – ITU T.128

Multipoint Binary File Transfer Protocol – ITU T.127

Multipoint Still Image and Annotation Protocol – ITU T.126

Network specific data protocol stacks for multimedia conferencing – ITU T.123

Network specific data protocol stacks for multimedia conferencing – ITU X.224 (implemented in RDP)

Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) - RFC 2560

OSPF Version 2 - RFC 2328

Outlook iCalendar Standards Support (MS-STANOICAL)

Outlook IMAP Standards Compliance (MS-STANOIMAP)

Packet-based multimedia communications systems – ITU H.323

(The) PLAIN Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) Mechanism - RFC 4616

POP3 Extension Mechanism - RFC 2449

Protected Interoperable File Format (PIFF) v1.0

Protected Interoperable File Format (PIFF) v1.1

Public Key Cryptography Based User-to-User Authentication (PKU2U) Protocol - draft-zhu-pku2u-05.txt

Remote Access Dial In User Service (RADIUS) IPv6 - RFC 3162

Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service - RFC 2865, RFC 2867, RFC 2868, RFC 2869, RFC 3580

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol – RFC 2821

Smooth Streaming Protocol Specification (MS-SSTR)

SMTP Service Extension for Authentication - RFC 2554

SMTP Service Extension for Remote Message Queue Starting – RFC 1985

SMTP Service Extension for Secure SMTP over Transport Layer Security – RFC 3207

SQL Server Transact-SQL ISO 9075-2:2008 Standards Support Document (MS-TSQLISO02)

SQL Server Transact-SQL ISO 9075-3:2008 Standards Support Document (MS-TSQLISO03)

SQL Server Transact-SQL ISO 9075-11:2008 Standards Support Document (MS-TSQLISO11)

SQL Server Transact-SQL ISO/IEC 9075-14 Standards Support Document (MS-TSQLISO14)

SQL Xquery Standards Support Document (MS-SQLXQUERY)

UI Automation v1.0

Windows PowerShell 2.0 Language Specification

Windows PowerShell 3.0 Language Specification

Covered Specifications with Special Terms

The special terms as set forth on the individual download page for each listed specification apply.

For the applicable terms, please see the official Microsoft download page for the listed specifications.

Covered Specifications with Special Terms

VBA Language Specification [MS-VBAL]

XPS Specification v1.0