The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Microsoft’s clarification

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Oct 14, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Microsoft’s clarification

Special Correspondent

BANGALORE: In response to the article “Log out of Microsoft tie-up, say open software advocates”, which appeared in these columns on Friday, Meenu Handu, Director Corporate Communication writes: “Microsoft began Project Bhasha five years ago, and has a serious commitment to enable local language computing in India. Among other initiatives under this programme, we collaborate with State Government bodies and nodal IT agencies to create local language interfaces for our flagship software Windows and Office, to enable usage in the popular local language.

Specifically on the Local Language Interface Pack (LIP) for Kannada, when we first worked on the language interface packs, we received feedback as is normal with any initiative such as this and all that has been incorporated.

Whenever Microsoft works with the Government, the source code for any IT application is owned by the Government. It is important to distinguish between the Application and the Platform. The Application source code is owned by the Government. Whether the platform is open source or proprietary is irrelevant for the most part.

Further, Microsoft, as a member of the Unicode consortium, ensures end-end support for Unicode in its operating systems, ensuring seamless transfer of information across multiple platforms.”

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