Open source work is producing many good programmes for use by the Internet community.

However such creations are held back when owners of commercial software refuse to make theirs interoperable, so files can be exchanged between formats. It was a victory of sorts for open source this month when Microsoft backed down on its proprietary stance over its Office suite of programmes. Microsoft announced it would offer new free open source tools that will allow Office to handle the OpenDocument format.

OpenDocument format (ODF) is a file format for saving and exchanging office documents such as memos, reports, books, spreadsheets, databases, charts, and presentations. The standard was developed by an industry consortium and based upon a format originally created by OpenOffice.org. It can be used as an open source creation or a closed proprietary product without royalties.

Microsoft has posted a prototype version of the first translator for OpenDocument formats to be added to Word 2007. It is posted for open source software development. Anyone can submit bugs and feedback or contribute to the project.

The complete version of the Word translation tool is expected to be available free from the download site by the end of 2006, with add-ins for Excel and PowerPoint expected in 2007. ?This work is in response to government requests for interoperability with ODF because they work with constituent groups that use that format,? Microsoft said in bowing to the trend.

Of course Microsoft knows all about government pressure. The European Union this month found Microsoft guilty of abusing a ?near-monopoly? of its Windows operating system and fined it a record 497 million euros (US$613 million).

Microsoft has 120 days to give programming codes to rivals in the server market, so their products can have ?full interoperability? with desktop computers running Windows.

In related moves German software vendor SoftMaker has issued its latest version of TextMaker with a free-for-download file viewer that can also open documents created by Microsoft Word, StarOffice, OpenOffice.org, OpenDocument and several other popular word processors. Go to www.officeviewers.com for the download.

For those who like to do some testing on their networks before a major buy, Microsoft has released a beta version of its Exchange Server 2007 and Forefront Security for Exchange. Exchange is an email server programme. Forefront Security is a security package specific for the programme.

Exchange 2007 supports 11 languages and features continuous database backup, better web access and voice access.

The new continuous backup feature copies the database and log files to another hard drive on the same computer.

Microsoft?s attempt to help network administrators plug security holes has led to hackers adopting what analysts are now calling ?zero-day Wednesdays?.

Hackers who like to break in or cause havoc on business networks wait until the day after Microsoft publishes its latest patches on the second Tuesday of the month. Microsoft switched to a regular date to release updates and patches for its software in a bid to give IT system administrators time to test and implement the changes.

Previously, some patches were released late in the week, or worse, on a Friday afternoon. This would either mean the IT person spent the weekend making the changes, or let the hackers have the two days to exploit the published vulnerabilities.

Now when hackers spot a hole in security they wait until after the regular Microsoft patch releases to use it on companies. This gives them a whole month in which to take advantage of the vulnerabilities, until Microsoft patches it in the next round.

Security researchers have detected exploit code for three vulnerabilities that As a further note, SANS has warned that patches issued this month have been bypassed by the hackers.

Microsoft had a severity rating of ?critical? for two of the exploited vulnerabilities.

The first flaw in the Server component of Windows that could allow an attacker to take control of a system.

Contact Ahmed at elamin.ahmedgmail.com.