Beware of Geeks Bearing Gifts
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| Let's take a closer look at the what is being offered as part of
| this "royalty free" deal from Microsoft....Not very open source
| friendly, is this? You can marry into the family and get
| protection from the Godfather, but you can't transfer this to
| anyone. They need to make their own accommodation with
| Microsoft. This makes me wonder about the Microsoft-funded
| ODF Add-in for Word that Clever Age and others are working
| on. This add-in does UI-level manipulations of the Office 2007
| ribbon. Are they covered under Microsoft's license program? Are
| their user's covered? What about anyone who takes the source code
| and modifies it and redistributes it?...This is very reminiscent
| of the original license on the Microsoft binary file formats,
| back in the days when the specifications were published on MSDN
| CD's...Interestingly in that case, once they achieved their goal
| of total market domination, Microsoft removed the file format
| documentation from MSDN and it was only available under a special
| license. They started open, in order to gain market domination,
| but once their goals were achieved, the openness ended. What
| prevents this from happening again?
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http://www.robweir.com/blog/2006/11/beware-of-geeks-bearing-gifts.h
Also related to:
Ballmer: Vista to Spur 'Wave of Innovation'
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| This includes new products like SharePoint Server 2007 and Exchange
| Server 2007, he said, adding that the new enterprise versions of
| both Vista and Office 2007 bring new capabilities such as
| enterprise services for Exchange and SharePoint.
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http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0%2C1895%2C2066535%2C00.asp
The exit routes are available now, but the intent is to eliminate them.
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