Microsoft News Tracker

Jason Matusow, Director of Microsoft’s Shared Source program, announced it at the Open Source Business Conference on Tuesday and has the details on his blog:

The Microsoft Business Solutions Solomon team is posting the source code to their Business Portal Lite technology which enables multiple browsers to be used as a thin-client interface connecting the Microsoft Business Solutions Business Portal and the Solomon ERP system. The portal provides time, expense approval, alerts and project profitability tracking and reviewing functionality. The advantage to using the Lite solution is that you can access the Microsoft Solomon back-end through Safari, Firefox, Mozilla and other non-Windows browsers.

The Solomon group has a strong community of partners and customers right now, with more than 600 certified partners servicing more than 15,000 customers. This release enables the certified partner community to build a common set of technologies allowing them to service customers’ heterogeneous environments.
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The code is available under the Microsoft Permissive License (Ms-PL) announced last week…
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Because this source release, and community development effort are targeted at a specific set of partners – this will be a “walled garden” project. The project on GotDotNet Workspaces will primarily be for certified partners but if there are customers interested in participating they will do so as an invitee by their integration partner. The source license will provide those partners with the ability to take the code and do what they wish with it – but the core project with the MS lead will remain on the GDN site.

More by following the link and also from Mary Jo Foley and Martin LaMonica.

Mike Ricciuti reports that a beta of Dynamics CRM 3.0 was released on Oct. 25 and that Microsoft claims it is on track for release to manufacturing by year end with actual shipment early in 2006.

Reuters:

“We regret that Microsoft, which serves more than 20 million customers in South Korea, has officially mentioned that it could pull out from the country when regulators are probing the issue on a fair legal basis,” the information ministry said.

“We believe Microsoft, as a global company, should take its responsibility for its customers and companies in relation to its business.”

The KFTC began its probe in 2001 when South Korean Internet portal Daum Communications Corp. alleged Microsoft’s bundling of the operating system with other services broke antitrust rules. It widened the probe following a similar complaint from RealNetworks in 2004.

A ruling by the commission could come at any time.

“Our review on the Microsoft case has been finalised and we are trying to reach an agreement, which may or may not come today,” a KFTC spokesman said by telephone.