Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
News
Microsoft Faces Skeptics at Open Source Conference
4/8/2008
"It's just about talking a common language," Thomas said.
The same is true for directory compatibility, with the WS-Federated spec. The companies are still working on the underpinnings of allowing their directories to determine trusted relationships -- that is, the exchange of tokens.
"This piece is still yet to be completed," Thomas said. "It's been defined, but we are actively working on that."
On the document interchangeability side, Microsoft and Novell said files are interchangeable through their support for standards, notably Microsoft's Office Open XML specification, which just this week was approved as a standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). While the office suites will be able to share key formatting attributes, functions such as Visual Basic-based macros won't work across platforms, admitted Thomas.
"I'll be quite honest, I'm not going to sit here and tell you everything is going to carry over," he said.
Open Enough?
Microsoft was addressing an open source conference, with many skeptics in attendance.
"I like the fact that Microsoft is cooperating with the Linux community, but for me, it's about the openness in the standards -- if you are going to collaborate and keep it closed, then it really wouldn't benefit us," one audience member said.
"We're a company that happens to value patents," said Rodriques. "We can have that debate and I absolutely respect that today. But what we're trying to do is figure out, how do we open up our APIs? How do we open up our protocols with the open source community, use it where it makes sense, and that's the next wave as we move this relationship."
Thomas added in an interview that the challenge is in coming up with a happy medium.
"I think we have the right intent, but at the end of the day we still have to make sure that both worlds can meet in the middle," he said. "We're an intellectual property-based software company; we want to work with that open community where it makes sense."
Paul Brown, director of global strategic marketing at Novell, said in an interview after the session that he wasn't surprised by the skepticism but he is encouraged by Microsoft's latest moves.
"You have to give them credit," Brown said, noting Microsoft's recent interoperability pledge and the release of its APIs. "They really have opened it up."
Jeffrey Schwartz is executive editor, features, for Redmond Developer News. You can contact him at jschwartz@reddevnews.com.
Cite this Site
copy text (above) for proper citation
Recommended Reading
- Digital Arts Alliance Adds Fordham U
The Digital Arts Alliance, a consortium led by the Pearson Foundation that promotes digital arts in K-12 education, is expanding its membership with the addition of Fordham University. This follows on the heels of three other organizations joining the group back in July--the National Education Association (NEA) Foundation, the Foundation for Investor Education, and Employers For Education Excellence (E3).
- Payment Card Security Toughens with DSS 1.2 Release
Opinions are mixed on what the new Payment Card Industry (PCI) DSS 1.2 standard will mean for security pros going forward. However, the mandate is clear: protect data.
- 6 Universities Join NASA Astrobiology Institute
Research teams from six universities have been selected by NASA to become members of its Astrobiology Institute with the aim of exploring the "origins, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe." Teams were each awarded five-year grants, averaging $7 million each, according to NASA.
- Amazon To Host Microsoft Solutions in the Cloud
Amazon announced Wednesday that it is conducting a private beta test of Microsoft's server products running on Amazon's hosted computing platform, which is called Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Amazon expects to offer companies the ability to run their applications on EC2 using Microsoft Windows Server or Microsoft SQL Server sometime in the fall, according to an announcement issued by the company.
- CRM Pushing into New Areas of Higher Ed
Implementing a customer relationship management (CRM) solution can require "difficult or even painful behavioral challenges" for administrators in higher education, according to Nicole Engelbert, a lead analyst with research and analysis firm Datamonitor. "It means re-orienting yourself to your students. That can be tough, so you need to be ready for that."
- Integrated Collaborative Environment Leverages Web 2.0
Here's a bit of trivia for your next high-tech happy hour: A "nog" (in addition to being a Christmas favorite) is a wooden block built into a masonry wall so that joinery structure can be nailed to it. For the founders of Piscataway, N.J.-based startup Bluenog this obscure bit of carpentry nomenclature was the perfect metaphor for an integrated software suite that includes a content management system (CMS), rich portal features and business intelligence (BI) capabilities.
