Office licence policy disclosed: XML only for enterprise customers

The report titled Manifold MS Office 2003 presents an overview of product variants and license models of the forthcoming Office release. The XML capabilities of Office 2003 are, according to this report, only available for customers with the "Professional Enterprise Edition", only available for multi-volume licenses. The XML extension is, apart from the not negligible license costs, only available for enterprise customers.

For the icoya Word XML , the XML plug-in for Word, there are no such restrictions. WordXML extends Word 2000/XP by powerful XML processing capabilities with user-defined XML schemas and electronic forms based on XML. icoya Word XML is available at 69.00 EUR + VAT per user.

Citation from the article Manifold MS Office 2003, in c't 9/2003, page 45:

"The for the summer 2003 announced Microsoft Office 2003 is supposed to be available in six different versions for home users, enterprise users, and students.

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The Professional Edition and the Professional Enterprise Edition, only available in multiple volume licences, include the Access database, in the standard edition as well as in a professional edition. Only these two versions, together with the Windows 2003 Server are supposed to be able to use the information rights management and can handle user-defined XML schemas. According to the software manufacturer, only the Professional Enterprise Edition will include the tool InfoPath for using electronic forms on basis of XML.

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According to the announced product editions, only enterprise customers are likely to profit from the substantial improvements in Office 2003."