The Austrian government is the first in Europe to take advantage of
a Microsoft scheme allowing authorities to examine source code for
the company's software products.
The country's Interior Ministry will gain access to Microsoft's XP
operating system under the Shared Source Initiative. The
"unabridged" code will be made available, on Microsoft's own
initiative, said spokesman Thomas Lutz of Microsoft Austria.
"We already have a very good relationship with the Interior
Ministry, because there are always criminal inspectors coming to us
who need to inspect, for example, [the company's Internet service]
MSN while trying to track down child pornography," he said.
Microsoft said the Shared Source Initiative is intended to reassure
citizens about security concerns in using the company's
products.
"It's not so much about NSA backdoors," said Lutz, referring to
widely circulated reports that the US National Security Agency
(NSA) had built secret access into Microsoft software, "but rather
about closely examining critical routines that could be misused by
hackers."
Government agencies also need access to source code to improve the
performance of their own applications and check the security of
sensitive databases, he added.
Microsoft offers source code to large business customers for the
same reason. US financial services company Salomon Smith Barney,
for example, has been granted source code access in order to check
the security of its online stock trading functions.
Microsoft may face a cool reception from other European countries
on the source code offer. The French government has issued an order
encouraging the use of open source software whenever possible for
electronic government applications. And Germany's Bundestag, the
lower house of parliament, is currently considering whether to drop
Windows in favour of Linux for its own machines.
"The whole discussion in Germany is very overheated. Here in
Austria it's much more objective," said Lutz. "[In Germany] it's a
kind of religious war with open source as a confession of faith,
and attitudes like anti-Americanism and against the commercial
software business.
"In my view it's not the job of the government to declare
conditions for commercial software development," he added.
In Germany, concerns over security led the government last year to
question Microsoft about a Windows 2000 disk defragmenting routine
developed by a company with links to the Church of Scientology. The
company eventually bowed to pressure and released instructions for
removing the routine.
Media reports also said the German military was eliminating
Microsoft software from computers in "sensitive" installations,
although a German defence ministry spokesman later denied it.