Microsoft Archive

Software behemoth Microsoft could be one of the biggest losers from proposed license changes to the Linux operating system unveiled Wednesday. That’s a possible outcome of updates to the license pushed by the FSF. The FSF wants to make mutually exclusive pacts such as the Novell-Microsoft open-source agreement a violation of the next iteration of the GNU GPL, the license that governs Linux use. "It is unfortunate that the FSF is attempting to use the GPLv3 to prevent future collaboration among industry leaders to benefit customers," said Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft’s vice president of intellectual property and licensing.

"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 has announced that it will not be releasing any new versions of its Visual FoxPro development software past Version 9.0, but the company will continue to support the technology through 2015. Instead of releasing new versions of FoxPro, Microsoft will release core portions of the FoxPro software to its CodePlex community development site, said Alan Griver, a group manager within the Microsoft Visual Studio team, which leads the FoxPro team.

"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."

The extension of daylight-saving time by a month in the United States is causing enormous grief for some IT administrators running Microsoft software, as many of the software programs running on their users' systems need to be individually patched to reflect the change. This year, daylight-saving time starts today - three weeks earlier than usual - and ends a week later than usual on Nov. 4.

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.

California has introduced a bill to make open document format a mandatory requirement for agencies when acquiring software, turning up the heat on Microsoft. The bill follows similar legislation in Texas and Minnesota and adds further to the pressure on Microsoft which is pushing its own proprietary Office Open XML document format in the recently released Office 2007.

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.

Microsoft has apologised for serving malware via its websites and Windows Live Messenger software. APC reader Jackie Murphy reported the problem: "With Microsoft launching Vista along with their Defender software to protect users from viruses and spyware, it seems therefore to be an oxymoron that they have started to putting paid changing banner advertisements for malware, on the popular MSN groups servers." A Microsoft Australia spokesperson confirmed the malware vendor had slipped through its ad booking processes.

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.

Microsoft is accusing rival IBM of orchestrating a campaign to block efforts to standardize Office document formats. In an open letter released Wednesday, Microsoft executives contend that IBM is trying to influence the standards process to limit choice. It also said that IBM is encouraging governments to mandate a document format that IBM favors. Pot, kettle, something.

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 long held a skeptical view of open source, but the Redmond-based software company is trying to change some of those attitudes with the establishment of officelabs. officelabs is a new internal start-up that is attempting to use some of the methodologies of open-source software development to invigorate the company and generate excitement about new Microsoft products. Specifically, the people behind officelabs want to adopt the 'release early, release often' approach that has worked well for open-source projects such as Linux and Firefox.

"Microsoft quietly raised last week its per-incident support prices across the board for Windows and Office. Support for Windows XP and Windows Vista now costs USD 59 per incident. Prior to the Vista launch, the per-incident support price for Windows was USD 39. Vista users get their first 90 days of support for no charge. Support for Office XP and Office 2007 now goes for USD 49 per incident, compared to USD 35 per incident prior to the January 30 Windows Vista/Office 2007 retail launch. Office 2007 users also get their first 90 days of support for free."