Development

Vulnerability in Microsoft Corp.'s ASP.Net could allow an attacker to bypass security features on a Web server and view sensitive content, according to the company.

Microsoft Corp. is developing versions of its Windows operating system with only a subset of the Windows code base, designed for specific server tasks, in a move that could reduce maintenance costs for customers and create products that are less vulnerable to attack.

Continuing its flirtation with open source, Microsoft Corp. on Monday posted the code of a little-known collaboration application to open-source development site SourceForge.net.

America Online Inc. (AOL) is launching a program Monday to promote and facilitate the creation of what it calls AIM Robots for its AIM instant messaging system.

IBM Corp.'s SpeedStart Linux Software Evaluation Kit (SEK) is not only the company's, but also perhaps the industry's, most generous SEK offering ever. Designed to bring Linux adoption into enterprise systems, IBM decided to target developers with such a rich variety of tools and applications in order to encourage continued use of Linux. In this manner, the company hopes to see its products being used in concert with Linux.

JBoss Inc. on Monday is shipping JBoss Application Server 4.0, which the company is billing as the first open source application server certified as compatible with the J2EE 1.4 platform.

Microsoft Corp. has yet to release a feature-complete beta version of its upcoming Visual Studio 2005 development tools. But at this week's VSLive conference in Orlando, it announced a refresh of the existing beta release and disclosed more details about the product.

Oracle Corp. is expanding the management functionality offered to users of its business applications and is working with members of the independent Oracle Applications Users Group to improve its technical support and software development processes.