UK government joins Office source-code scheme
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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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The code, which was open-sourced in April, will be used for the administration tool that connects to the MySQL database.
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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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Bristol City Council could begin one of the UK&#39;s biggest roll-outs of open source desktop applications if a proposal to adopt Star Office is adopted at a council meeting next month.
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SEATTLE -- Microsoft Corp. is expanding a program to give government organizations access to some of its tightly guarded software blueprints, amid growing competition from rivals who make such source code freely available.
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Switiching to open source software could save Â£600 million, says the shadow chancellor.
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U.K. users will be able to replace pirated versions of Windows that they have purchased.
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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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The Office of Government Commerce (OGC), UK, has finally given the green signal persuading governments to consider the deployment of open source while implementing new systems.
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Company's third open-source contribution is the first time it has shared code for actual application.
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FROM today, Microsoft is expanding a programme to give government organisations access to some of its tightly guarded software blueprints for the latest version of its Office software.
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The U.K. government is proposing legislation that would create a system of ID cards with embedded biometric identifiers that everyone living in the U.K. would be required to have by 2011 or 2012.
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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., 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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A Microsoft UK replacement scheme for pirate copies of Windows XP suggests the company is testing the waters to see how feasible it is to convert sections of its unlicensed user base to legitimate users.
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US software giant Microsoft Corporation has expanded a program giving government organizations access to some of its tightly guarded software blueprints.