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Microsoft has dropped the $99 licensing fee previously required for its Services For Unix software and last week made a new version of the interoperability product available at no cost on its Web site.

Services For Unix is a subsystem of Unix APIs and development and administration tools intended to help businesses migrate Unix or Linux applications to Windows computers or create heterogeneous environments where the operating systems coexist. Version 3.5 comes with performance improvements and features that make it better at both functions.

Some customers have complained that Microsoft doesn't do enough to help them deal with mixed computing environments. In a survey last fall by information Research, more than half of the 400 business-technology professionals responding said Windows-Linux interoperability was a problem.

"The real driver behind this [pricing] change is this interoperability issue," says Dennis Oldroyd, a director with Microsoft's Windows server group. "We want Windows to be the best platform for interoperability."