Microsoft Announces Availability of Open and Royalty-Free License For Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas

Microsoft Corp. announced the availability of a royalty-free licensing program for its Microsoft Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas and accompanying documentation. The Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas enable organizations of all sizes to utilize industry-standard Extensible Markup Language (XML) technology in managing spreadsheet, word processing and form documents. Microsoft’s Office 2003 versions of Word, Excel and the InfoPath information-gathering program utilize schemas that describe how information is stored when documents are saved as XML.

As information exchange and integration have increased in critical importance, customers, partners, governments and the IT industry have asked Microsoft to deliver solutions that improve data interoperability and exchange. To help address these issues, Microsoft is delivering the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas and enabling software companies to build products that can smoothly interoperate with Microsoft Office 2003. Licensees will also benefit from more readily available data identification within documents, ease of report generation and document assembly from existing content, and extraction of existing data for automated processing.

“The Danish government’s utilization of standards-based technology like XML showcases its commitment to forward-thinking IT infrastructure and management,” said Patrick De Smedt, EMEA chairman at Microsoft. “This decision sets a significant precedent for other European governments, customers and partners.”

The initiative came about after discussions with the Danish Government. One of the most important IT issues for government customers is managing, archiving, accessing and interchanging documents. The Danish government is already taking advantage of the open and royalty-free license for the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas. The government’s ambitious InfoStructure Base project seeks to encourage enhanced exchange of information across the Danish public sector by creating a repository of XML schemas. With an open and royalty-free license of the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas, the Danish government will better realize its objective of promoting data exchange and interoperability.

“As part of our software strategy, we asked Microsoft to provide us with technology that would help exchange our many millions of documents. We wanted something that would make communication easier, create interoperability and stimulate innovation,” said Helge Sander, minister for Science, Technology and Innovation for the Danish government. “Microsoft has responded with a clear step in the right direction by making its XML technology openly available. This enables our E-Government solutions to utilize standards-based technology while further enabling open and effective tools for our citizens and government.”

The Microsoft Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas documentation and license can be obtained by interested parties starting Dec. 5, 2003, through the Microsoft Software Developer Network website (http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/). Microsoft is making available WordprocessingML at http://www.microsoft.com/office/xml/. Implementation of the documentation and license can be viewed in the Danish InfoStructureBase at http://isb.oio.dk/info/.