The often-hostile relations between Microsoft and the open-source community are thawing, and new dialogues appear to be opening between senior officials in both camps. In continuing its outreach to the most prominent members of the open-source community, Microsoft has invited Michael Tiemann, president of the Open Source Initiative and vice president of open-source affairs at Linux vendor Red Hat, to meet and start a constructive dialogue.

Computer Associates added a consumer antispam product to its eTrust family of security products. The eTrust Anti-Spam software blocks unwanted email and is available online and at retailers for about $30, the company said. eTrust Anti-Spam includes common features, such as white lists for approved senders and support for digital signatures to verify authenticity of messages.

Developers of the Mozilla Foundation’s open-source email client have added a podcasting feature to its arsenal and improved its defense against phishing attacks. The changes were highlighted in a Mozilla blog that discussed modifications to the software before its upcoming 1.1 release.

Microsoft has drawn some criticism after confirming that it will not make the next version of Internet Explorer available to users of its Windows 2000 operating system. In a blog posting, a Microsoft employee confirmed that the company would not be releasing IE 7 for Windows 2000, as this would involve a lot of work for an operating system that is in the later stages of its lifecycle.

Microsoft plans to announce as early as next week that it is ready to ship a Windows 2000 Update Rollup, the final security patch for the 5-year-old operating system. The Update Rollup, which replaces Windows 2000 SP5 (Service Pack 5), is a cumulative set of hot fixes, security patches and critical updates packaged together for easy deployment. The Update Rollup comes just one month before mainstream support for Windows 2000 client and server releases expires on June 30. Microsoft divides its support lifecycle into two phases: mainstream and extended. Once a product enters the extended support period, Microsoft charges for support. Windows 2000 remains the most dominant operating system used in the enterprise, but once mainstream support ends later this month, analysts expect corporate migration to Windows XP to speed up.

A new version of the Netscape Web browser is being criticized by spyware experts for failing to notify Web surfers when they’re visiting Web sites that distribute the noxious monitoring programs. Netscape 8’s Trust Rating System, which warns users about insecure Web sites, gives a "green light" to Web sites that download spyware onto users’ machines, according to Ben Edelman, a student at Harvard University Law School and an expert on spyware software.

Microsoft continues to slowly trickle out bits of information about its Office 12 suite. On Thursday the company announced that it plans to make XML-based file formats the default in the version of Office due to ship in the latter half of 2006. Microsoft is introducing the new formats as part of Office 12, officials said, and will share more details about them at next week’s Tech Ed conference in Orlando.

Red Earth Software, developer of content security software, today announced the release of Policy Patrol Web 1.0 for Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server. By allowing companies to create flexible, user-based content filtering rules, Policy Patrol Web helps companies manage their Internet resources according to each of their user’s needs. In this way, companies can optimize Internet resources, avoid lost productivity and protect against legal liability and damage to reputation.

Microsoft acknowledged Thursday that hackers booby-trapped its popular MSN Web site in South Korea to try to steal passwords from visitors. The company said it was unclear how many Internet users might have been victimized. Microsoft said it cleaned the Web site and removed the dangerous software code that unknown hackers had added earlier this week. A spokesman, Adam Sohn, said Microsoft was confident its English-language Web sites were not vulnerable to the same type of attack.

The U.K. government is proposing changes to a fraud law that would mean scammers behind phishing attacks could face up to 10 years in jail. The Home Office has published the government’s Fraud Bill, in which it suggests a new offense of fraud to close loopholes in the current law. Under the proposal, the offense could be committed in three ways: By false representation, such as phishing scams; by failing to disclose information for financial gain; or by abuse of position. The Home Office is also planning to criminalize obtaining services dishonestly, possessing articles for use in fraud and participating in fraudulent business.