Open Source Windows
Microsoft said Wednesday that
it
would license the source code for Microsoft Windows servers
to satisfy European Commission demands in the European antitrust
case.
Specifically, Microsoft is responding to an EC statement of objections
from December complaining that Microsoft still hadn’t met
EC requirements for publishing server protocols that would help
competitive workgroup servers interoperate with Windows operating
systems.
Although Microsoft issued its source code licensing statement publicly,
EC officials said they hadn’t received an official reply yet
to the statement of objections. The objections accompany a threat
to fine Microsoft up to 2 million euros per day. Microsoft has until
Feb. 15 to officially reply. The fines could be retroactive to Dec.
15.
It’ll be interesting to see if EC officials buy into Microsoft’s
new plan. One thing is certain: Antitrust compliance demands are
heating up on both sides of the Atlantic. Microsoft is getting some
pressure from U.S. antitrust authorities, as well.
Help for Partners Planning Events
Planning an event is a big pain, but events can yield a
big boost to a business. Since May 2004, Microsoft has offered a
Web site to help Microsoft partners with event planning. At www.microsoftpartnerevents.com,
the site offers tips, a media library and other resources. Some
2,700 partners have used the site to host 6,600 events. That sounds
like heavy usage until you consider that Microsoft claims about
640,000 partners.
Microsoft is promoting the site pretty heavily this week, with
e-mails to partners and a feature on Microsoft PressPass. The company
has fleshed out some aspects of the events site to make it more
useful, as well. A Partner Readiness Center walks partners through
pre-event marketing to event presentation skills to post-event follow-up.
Probably the most useful element is a Web-based event registration
engine that Microsoft makes available for partners to use. In addition,
Microsoft has added workflows to the registration engine that make
it easier for partners to join with other partners in co-hosting
events.
This seems like a useful site, well worth checking out. I’d
be interested to hear from anyone who has experiences with this
partner event site, good or bad. Let me know at [email protected].
Here’s the PressPass
feature.
‘Blackcomb’ Becomes ‘Vienna’
Forget “Blackcomb” -- that is if you’d ever really
thought about “Blackcomb” in the first place. Microsoft
acknowledged
last week that the code name for the post-“Longhorn”/Vista
version of Windows is no longer Blackcomb. Now it’s “Vienna.”
In any case, “Blackcomb/Vienna” is a long, long way
off. First there’s Windows Vista, slated for later this year,
followed by Windows “Longhorn” Server in 2007. Windows
Vienna would presumably arrive years after that.
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More Service Pack Fun
When the deadline hit for this newsletter last week, Microsoft was
being cagey about whether Windows XP Service Pack 3 was really coming
in late 2007 or not. The caginess consisted of yanking the page
containing the service pack roadmap from the Microsoft Product Lifecycle
site. Shortly after the newsletter went out, the page came back
online. The second half of 2007 is indeed the “preliminary”
timeframe for Windows XP SP3.
Windows Server 2003 is on a faster track: Service Pack 2 for the
server OS is slated for the second half of 2006, despite SP1 having
come out after Windows XP SP2.
Click here
to view Microsoft’s official schedule.
Stuart Johnston has more coverage on Windows XP SP3 here.
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 25, 2006