Microsoft Archive

"At first glance, the FSF and the Commission attacks on Microsoft appear to be unrelated. But the common thread is this: the attacks are based on a lack of faith that consumer demand will lead a market to where consumers want it to be. It is based on a faulty assumption that a company can use its intellectual property to harm competition rather than fuel it."

In a spat over royalties, the European Commission has declared war on accepted global conventions regarding intellectual property rights.

"The word 'intense' was invented for Ballmer, who met with us in a green room that had a paper sign with his name taped to the door. While he was at first warm and engaging, a question about security features shifted his mood. His eyes, soft when he smiles, grew dark. The usually boisterous Ballmer became unexpectedly quiet and soon exited the room without saying goodbye. Still, he had a lot to say to SmartMoney senior writer Dyan Machan before he did."

Microsoft is making key communications protocols available for license, so that third parties, including competitors, can link into the company's newest enterprise products. Some are available immediately. The list of available protocols, XML schemas and application programming interfaces include transport protocols for communications between Office Outlook 2007 and Exchange Server 2007.

"When Bill Hilf came from IBM to join Microsoft three years ago, the company's stance on open source vacillated wildly. It would swing from outright indifference to overt nastiness. Today, something else is unfolding: Microsoft is striking a surprising balance. It has stopped dismissing open source licensing and community development as dangerous folly or evil foe, and is looking for a way to both compete and co-exist."

While the US courts recently reaffirmed Microsoft's FAT patents, the German Patent Federal Court has just dismissed the patent for use in Germany. According to a report in the German news publication Heise Online, the court has denied the protection that the European Patent Office granted to Microsoft under EP 0618540 for a "common namespace for long and short filenames". This was based on Microsoft's U.S. Patent No. 5,758,352. The German Patent Court stated that the patent claims Microsoft made are "not based on inventive activity".

If the press preview day for Microsoft's annual TechFest research fair is any indication of Redmond's future plans, search will become an increasingly larger part of the company's overall business. Demonstrations of various search technologies dominated opening remarks by Microsoft Research presenters Tuesday.

Microsoft Office program manager Brian Jones, whose work has centered around the Open XML document format, now says the so-called format war with OpenDocument is officially over. The winner, he says, is both. Jones made the statement in a blog post over the weekend following the release by Novell of an Open XML translator for OpenOffice. The plug-in enables the free, open source productivity suite to open documents created in the Microsoft format, as well as saving OpenDocument files into Open XML.

The European Union escalated its trans-Atlantic fight with Microsoft on Thursday, threatening new multimillion fines against the software maker over claims it fails to offer rivals a fair deal on licenses for helping servers work with Windows. In response, Microsoft charged that the treatment it receives from the EU is unmatched around the world and harmed Europe's efforts to become a thriving high-tech economy. The EU said Microsoft could face fines as high as euro3 million (US$4 million) a day, accusing the software company of trying to protect its interests by overcharging rivals for complete and accurate interface documentation - which would allow them to interoperate with Windows PCs and servers - on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.

"Except for a financial analysts event in July, Microsoft's incoming chief software architect has been decidedly quite. His last blog post was April Fool's Day. This morning, Ray Ozzie finally broke his silence. Ozzie answered questions, many of them leading, at the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium. There's a saying about talking much but saying little. While Ozzie shed some light on Microsoft's services - or software-as-a-service - strategy, he offered more vagaries than specifics. Still, by piecing together the little he said with the much we know about Microsoft, the hour-long Q&A illuminates Microsoft's services direction."

The long-awaited update to Microsoft's virtualization software was released Monday. Virtual PC 2007 brings support for Windows Vista - as both a guest and host operating system - and takes advantage of new hardware virtualization technology from both Intel and AMD. Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Virtual PC 2007 are available free of charge; Microsoft made Virtual PC 2004 SP1 freeware last July and promised to release 2007 for no cost. The move to freeware ups the ante with rival virtualization companies such as VMware and new market entrant Parallels.

The same week that Microsoft issued a press release providing further details about some of the technological advances that will result from the November 2006 technology agreement between Novell and Microsoft, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told Wall Street what he really thinks the deal means to Microsoft. During a forecast update meeting for financial analysts and shareholders on February 15, Ballmer reiterated that, to him, the deal is more about Microsoft exerting intellectual property pressure on Novell than anything else.

Another Patch Tuesday and Microsoft comes out with a variety of patches, and this series is more critical than a month ago. The critical vulnerabilities are in Windows, Office, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Antivirus. All of them could allow remote code execution.

Microsoft has sold more certificates for Novell Linux software and support in the three months since the deal was signed than it anticipated, according to a company representative. The software giant initially laid plans for up to 70000 certificates in the first year. In the first three months, it has already sold more than 35000. Microsoft lawyer Brad Smith is also looking for pacts with other companies that distribute Linux or use it in their products.