Software News

BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Union's Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said on Thursday she could see no alternative to fining U.S. software giant Microsoft for breaching the bloc's antitrust rules.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Responding to government requests for interoperability, Microsoft Corp. said on Thursday it will offer free software that will allow Word, Excel and PowerPoint to handle documents in rival technology formats.

San Francisco (InfoWorld) - Microsoft plans to unveil Project Glidepath, a program to help small ISVs get up to speed on the planned Windows Vista operating system and .Net Framework 3.0, according to Microsoft blogs.

Despite attempts to address privacy concerns associated with its Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) antipiracy software, Microsoft has been hit with a second lawsuit. The latest suit was filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Seattle by two local businesses and three individuals claiming that WGA is spyware.

A new off-the-shelf software platform that intends to give companies a way to launch their own social networking community

A new breed of malicious software has replaced viruses and worms as the weapon of choice for Internet criminals looking to steal money from unsuspecting netizens, according to a study published Wednesday by security firm Sophos.

A Mac developer claims Apple Computer Inc.'s Mac OS X has joined Microsoft Windows in "phoning home" to distant servers without users' permission.

A year ago, when the Supreme Court ruled against Grokster and gave the recording and motion picture industries greater power to sue over illegally shared copyrighted music and movies, file-sharing software seemed destined for the recycle bin.

Malware writers have created a new worm virus disguised as Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage, the real version of which has been targeted by a second lawsuit.

Microsoft is readying a new Vista evangelism program and related software components, aimed specifically at small independent software vendors.

SEOUL, South Korea - Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday it will comply with sanctions imposed by South Korea's antitrust regulator after a court rejected the company's request for a stay.

SEOUL (Reuters) - A Seoul court rejected Microsoft Corp.'s request to suspend a South Korean ruling that the company must unbundle its media player and messaging service from Windows software, Seoul's antitrust agency said.

BOSTON (Reuters) - Business software maker Oracle Corp. said it would close its purchase of Portal Software Inc. on Monday after acquiring more than 88 percent of Portal's outstanding stock in a tender offer.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - In a major step toward new penalties against Microsoft Corp., Europe's antitrust regulators voted unanimously Monday in favor of fining the world's largest software company for flouting a 2004 ruling, two people close to the case said.

The holidays came early for devotees of the Linux operating system when a judge last week threw out the majority of claims brought against IBM by the SCO Group in its $5 billion intellectual property rights case.

Businesses waiting to get their hands on Microsoft's flagship Office 2007 software will have to wait a little longer now that the company has postponed delivery while it works out some kinks discovered in beta versions of the product.

San Francisco (InfoWorld) - Hosted software may be making the leap from tech craze to commodity, as CompUSA and hosted application vendor NetSuite announced a deal last week to resell NetSuite's business applications suite in all 240 of CompUSA's U.S. stores. It's the first time a mass-market retailer has offered on-demand software.

San Francisco (InfoWorld) - Is it Microsoft Office in the browser at last? Ever since Microsoft launched Windows Live, Microsoft watchers have been speculating on when browser-based versions of Office applications would arrive, and what they’d look like.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison isn't giving Harvard a promised gift of $115 million because Lawrence Summers stepped down as the university's president after a stormy tenure, an Oracle spokesman said. ... The IRS is demanding $1.06 billion in back taxes and penalties from Veritas Software, but Symantec, which acquired the company last year, says it will fight the agency. ... Google launched an online payment service that's expected to compete with PayPal and similar services. ... ...

LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. financial data firm SunGard Data Systems Inc. has registered its interest in taking over British software group Misys Plc , which is in management buyout talks, the Sunday Times said in an unsourced report.

SAP, Oracle and smaller enterprise resource planning (ERP) software rivals are starting to partner with data visualization software providers, including Cognos and Business Objects.

San Francisco (InfoWorld) - Microsoft is working on a service pack for its recently released Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server software, with improvements planned in areas such as authentication and data warehousing, Microsoft officials write in their blogs.

Microsoft is feeling the heat after an aggrieved computer user in Washington filed a class-action lawsuit over the company's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) software-verification program.

SALT LAKE CITY - A U.S. magistrate has struck down many of the SCO Group Inc.'s claims against IBM Corp., saying the Utah company failed to show its intellectual property was misappropriated when Big Blue donated software code to the freely distributed Linux operating system.

Socialtext announced earlier this month that it was teaming with software pioneer Dan Bricklin to integrate Bricklin's Web-based, collaborative spreadsheet with its enterprise wiki platform, and to encourage additional development efforts within the open-source community.

An analyst thinks the wording of the Microsoft Office 2007 delay announcement gives the company wiggle room if Vista does get pushed back.

LOS ANGELES - File-swapping software seemed in peril a year ago when the U.S. Supreme Court gave the entertainment industry a legal bullet: Its ruling reopened the door for lawsuits over programs used to share music, movies and other copyright files.

New copyright law could affect online music stores, open-source software, and peer-to-peer file sharing networks.

Apple Computer Inc. this week updated its iTunes music store software to fix a critical security flaw that could let attackers grab control of a PC or Mac.