Microsoft Opens Office Source

Microsoft is broadening the availability of its source code by granting governments that participate in an offshoot of its shared source initiative access to the inner workings of its Microsoft Office 2003 productivity suite.

The source code is being offered up as an expansion to Microsoft's Government Security Program (GSP) to address growing data exchange and integration requirements. GSP is a no-fee program that was established in January 2003 to open the underlying Windows code to governments and international organizations due to concerns over security and licensing.

To date, Microsoft has provided over 30 countries and government agencies that have opted into the program with access to the source code of Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server (TM) 2003, Windows CE as well as a license to Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas.

Some of the participants are Australia, China, NATO, Norway, Russia, Spain and the United Kingdom. Participants are given the opportunity to review the Windows development process, communicate directly with Microsoft staff, to visit Microsoft's facilities, and to collaborate with Microsoft experts on potential projects. Another one of Microsoft's motivations is to improve the trust in the transparency and interoperability of its products.

"The release of this source code will help the U.K. Government understand the security implications of the Office productivity suite and aid secure deployment in a wide range of scenarios," remarked Dr. Steve Marsh, director of the Central Sponsor for Information Assurance in the Cabinet Office.

While the UK was among the first to participate in GSP, Microsoft is standing toe-to-toe with open source alternatives. Microsoft rival Sun Microsystems inked a strategic agreement with the United Kingdom's government purchasing body in November of 2003 -- many months after the advent of GSP -- to standardize the Java Desktop System as the underlying infrastructure for the public sector.

What's more, the UK deal came on the heels of a far reaching agreement with the People's Republic of China that standardized Java Desktop as the nation's primary desktop solution.

More recently, there have been highly publicized conversions -- as well as some near conversions -- of European governments to open source software (OSS) such as Linux and OpenOffice.

OpenOffice is an open source 'cousin' to Sun's Star Office productivity software that contains a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software.

Industry analysts including Jupiter Research's Joe Wilcox have speculated that the European Union's antitrust ruling which against Microsoft could be used by competitors to raise mistrust and increased interest in OSS.

When it came time to decide upon documents standards, the EU's thinking remained consistent with the Commission's ruling (Microsoft lost out), and as a result of its inquiry, the EU has taken the stance that open document formats -- not proprietary formats -- are necessary for cross-platform interoperability. Although it was almost certainly not a referendum on Microsoft, a recent report concluded that OpenOffice would become the Union's format reference of choice.

"For governments, source code access is increasingly important. For Microsoft, government use of Office potentially influences other customers. Conventional industry wisdom is that companies doing business with governments tend to adopt the same technologies. I haven't done hard research that would verify this belief for productivity suites. The reasoning makes sense, but, for a millennium, so did the idea that the sun circled the earth," said Jupiter's Wilcox.