Microsoft releases Office source code to governments
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Redmond software company Microsoft Corp. said it will add the source code of its Office 2003 flagship software suite to its program for sharing the details of its products with government entities.
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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 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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Responding to government requests for  interoperability, Microsoft Corp.  said on Thursday it  will offer free software that will allow Word, Excel and  PowerPoint to handle documents in rival technology formats.
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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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The software maker has released a downloadable version of its financial package for consumers.
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Microsoft's beta version of its Windows AntiSpyware application is available for download.
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Microsoft on Sunday expanded its controversial Government Security Program to allow governments that Microsoft trusts to review the source code of Microsoft Office.
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Office, Microsoft Corp.&#39;s collection of programs for business documents and tasks, is fast becoming a software platform unto itself.
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Microsoft Corp has released a patch for its latest âcriticalâ rated security flaw affecting its Windows, Office and developer tools software programmes.
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As part of its Patch Tuesday updates this week, Microsoft corrected 10 vulnerabilities in Windows and Office, 7 of which were deemed "critical." Three critical flaws were fixed in Excel that could allow for remote code execution, while one was fixed in Windows 2000 and Server 2003.
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Revised docs handed in Microsoft has handed in revised interoperability information to the European Commission.â¦
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New PostScript RIP gives designers more options in output formats.
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Ziff Davis - Government officials say Microsoft's move to share the source code for Office 2003 won't change anyone's mind about Microsoft or open source.
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Software giant confirms that a critical vulnerability exists in Microsoft Office 2000.
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Microsoft today released the first major update to Office 2007, focusing on collecting existing fixes.
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Eleven security updates are released today that fix a number of critical flaws in Microsoft products, including Windows, Office, and Internet Explorer.