Microsoft is giving in to the unrelenting pressure to be more open, particularly with regard to its Office Open XML file format and interoperability with the Open Document Format alternative. The company will announce July 6 that it has set up an open-source project to create a series of tools that allow translation between the OpenXML format and the ODF format, and which will be developed with partners. The Open XML Translator project, as it is known, will be posted on SourceForge, the open-source software development Web site.
The goal is to allow open participation and the free use of the software, so the source code will be made available under the BSD license, Jean Paoli, the general manager for interoperability and XML architecture at Microsoft, in Redmond, Wash., told eWEEK. Microsoft created the project along with three of its partners: IT solution provider Clever Age, which is writing the code, and two ISVs, Aztecsoft, which is testing the code; and Dialogika, which is testing the code in the context of the specific tablets used by European governments internally.
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News source: eWeek
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