Microsoft shares Office source code with governments
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As a result of the ongoing success of the Microsoft Government Security Program (GSP) and positive feedback from governmental entities, Microsoft has announced it will offer access to the source code of its flagship desktop offering, Microsoft Office 2003
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Microsoft Corp. announced this week it is making the programming code for its Office 2003 software suite available to government agencies around the globe, a move partly aimed at allowing them to inspect the product for flaws and security problems.
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Amid intense lobbying, Microsoft is expected to squeak out a victory this week to have its open document format, Office Open XML, recognized as an international standard.
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Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday said that is looking for ways to work more closely with developers of the Open Office open source project, while at the same time, apparently reserving the right to sue them, according to a legal agreement between Microsoft and Open Office's major sponsor, Sun Microsystems Inc., made public this week.
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A translation tool released by Microsoft will make it easier for users to move and share text files in open formats.
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The UK government is at the forefront of a Microsoft scheme allowing access to the Office 2003 source code. Microsoft is to extend a programme offering governments access to its software code, it announced on Sunday.
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Microsoft Corp. has contributed its FlexWiki collaboration tool to SourceForge.Net, the third release from the software giant to the open-source development site, both organizations said Tuesday.
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Microsoft Corp., the world&#39;s biggest software company, said it will make the source code for its Office 2003 software available as part of a government security program.
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Thanks to some new developments in document standards, Office 2007 users will be able to share files with open-source office apps and online productivity suites from the likes of Zoho and Google. In Monkey Bites.
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In Berlin on Tuesday, Microsoft unveiled a product package aimed at local and regional e-government initiatives, in the midst of growing government opposition in Europe to proprietary software.Microsoft&#39;s Citizen Service Platform includes applications and templates designed for local and regional governments primarily in Europe and the United States. It is built on products, including SharePoint, Office Live, and Windows Server.While Microsoft has been selling software to the public sector for years, it has recently begun focusing on local governments after discovering that many people interact with their local governments more often than the federal government, said Ralph Young, vice president of Microsoft&#39;s Worldwide Public Sector group.Europe alone has more than 80,000 local and regional governments, Young said.Governments can use the Citizen Service Platform to create portals, manage documents, deploy alert systems in the case of emergencies, and create and manage citizen information databases that can be shared among different agencies.Microsoft is introducing the product as it faces&#160;mounting opposition Europe. Some governments there are migrating to open source products as a way to avoid being locked into a single vendor of proprietary software.Others, such as the Netherlands, are taking a more extreme route. Late last year, the Dutch parliament mandated that government organizations choose open source over proprietary software if a viable product is available. Agencies must also use open standards. The national government must comply with the new rules by May, with local governments following by the end of this year.Young was unfazed by the mandate. &quot;We have many opportunities in the Netherlands to work with local and regional governments,&quot; he said. &quot;We don&#39;t see any federal mandates having real impact locally because of local jurisdictions&#39; ability to make decisions in their best interest in terms of how to better serve citizens.&quot;Microsoft could be counting on local governments having autonomy from such federal mandates, said Mark Anderson, a consultant and founder of the Strategic News Service. &quot;There are a lot of times when a government will posture, and it doesn&#39;t really intend that posture to be carried through the rest of the country,&quot; he said.Still, some European government agencies may be predisposed to choose software other than Microsoft&#39;s, more so since the software giant began pushing its Open XML document format there, Anderson said. Microsoft is in the process of&#160;attempting to have Open XML be accepted as a standard&#160;by the International Organization for Standardization. Open XML competes with the Open Document Format promoted by IBM. Critics of Open XML accused Microsoft of stacking votes in the standardization process, souring some in Europe on Microsoft even further.Microsoft thinks that cost will determine decisions for many local governments. &quot;It&#39;s much less a religious discussion about open source and commercial software as it is about what are the solutions available that governments can see value from,&quot; said Young. &quot;Local governments are empowered to make decisions and if they say &#39;This is the best value for the dollar I spend over the life of a service capability, that will govern my decision-making process.&#39;&quot;
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Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday said that it is looking for ways to work more closely with developers of the Open Office open source project, while at the same time, apparently reserving the right to sue them, according to a legal agreement between Microsoft and Open Office's major sponsor, Sun Microsystems Inc., made public this week.
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In a policy document specifically timed for release this afternoon, Microsoft's general managers for interoperability, Tom Robertson and Jean Paoli, make a play for ownership of the standards issue facing users of competing document formats, by saying the company would support ratification of its own Open XML format along with OpenDocument Format (ODF) as ISO standards, if and only if doing so would promote choice among the world's consumers.
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Microsoft Corp would share the underlying software code for its Office programme as part of its efforts to make governments more confident in the security and compatibility of the worldâs largest software makerâs products.
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Microsoft planned to announce Monday that it would give dozens of governments and international agencies access to the programming code in its Office desktop software, including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and e-mail programs.
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Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is opening the door to its Office suite, offering governments a closer look inside key applications.
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OPEN SOURCE champion Microsoft is expanding its programme to give government organisations some of its source code. In a communique from the lair of the Vole, in Redmond, spinsters have said that Microsoft
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Proposed technical guidelines include Microsoft's Office Open XML on the list of "open format" standards.