Microsoft and "Interoperability"...LOL! That's a good one!
,----[ Quote ]
| Let's call MS's "interoperability" campaign what it really is. Its a farce of
| half-hearted attempts to LOOK like they're doing something (for their Press
| Releases, EU, and public), but not really achieving anything substantial if
| they don't see or get any direct benefit from it. When it comes to standards,
| it must be standards made by them, that they control and lead. (Which means
| they control the tempo of when new features and changes are
| released...They'll be your friend now, simply out of convenience to them).
`----
http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/21799
Related:
Is Microsoft Hijacking Open Source?
,----[ Quote ]
| What really worries me is what looks like an emerging pattern in Microsoft's
| behaviour. The EU agreement is perhaps the first fruit of this, but I predict
| it will not be the last. What is happening is that Microsoft is effectively
| being allowed to define the meaning of “open source” as it wishes, not as
| everyone else understands the term. For example, in the pledge quoted above,
| an open source project is “not commercially distributed by its
| participants” - and this is a distinction also made by Kroes and her FAQ.
|
| In this context, the recent approval of two Microsoft licences as
| officially “open source” is only going to make things worse. Although I felt
| this was the right decision – to have ad hoc rules just because it's
| Microsoft would damage the open source process - I also believe it's going to
| prove a problem. After all, it means that Microsoft can rightfully point to
| its OSI-approved licences as proof that open source and Microsoft no longer
| stand in opposition to each other. This alone is likely to perplex people who
| thought they understood what open source meant.
|
| [...]
|
| What we are seeing here are a series of major assaults on different but
| related fields – open source, open file formats and open standards. All are
| directed to one goal: the hijacking of the very concept of openness. If we
| are to stop this inner corrosion, we must point out whenever we see wilful
| misuse and lazy misunderstandings of the term, and we must strive to make the
| real state of affairs quite clear. If we don't, then core concepts like “open
| source” will be massaged, kneaded and pummelled into uselessness.
`----
http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1003745
Halloween Memo I Confirmed and Microsoft's History on Standards
,----[ Quote ]
| By the way, if you are by any chance trying to figure out Microsoft's policy
| toward standards, particularly in the context of ODF-EOXML, that same
| Microsoft page is revelatory, Microsoft's answer to what the memo meant when
| it said that Microsoft could extend standard protocols so as to deny
| Linux "entry into the market":
|
| Q: The first document talked about extending standard protocols as a way
| to "deny OSS projects entry into the market." What does this mean?
|
| A: To better serve customers, Microsoft needs to innovate above standard
| protocols. By innovating above the base protocol, we are able to deliver
| advanced functionality to users. An example of this is adding
| transactional support for DTC over HTTP. This would be a value-add and
| would in no way break the standard or undermine the concept of standards,
| of which Microsoft is a significant supporter. Yet it would allow us to
| solve a class of problems in value chain integration for our Web-based
| customers that are not solved by any public standard today. Microsoft
| recognizes that customers are not served by implementations that are
| different without adding value; we therefore support standards as the
| foundation on which further innovation can be based.
`----
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070127202224445
A File Format Timeline
,----[ Quote ]
| Like any durable goods monopoly (and few things are as durable as
| software) Microsoft's largest competitor is their own install base.
| Microsoft has made many attempts at moving beyond the binary formats
| in the past, with Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003. But in each
| case it failed. These were all false starts and abandoned attempts. So
| we should look for signs that OOXML is actually Microsoft's real
| direction and not another false start or dead end.
`----
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/06/file-format-timeline.html
Microsoft used undocumented Windows APIs - Iowa testimony
,----[ Quote ]
| 'All I can say is holy API batman...I'm not kidding...we are talking
| about literally 500-800 APIs here, no joke,' he wrote.
|
| Alepin had earlier claimed that Microsoft ran special demonstration
| programs whose sole purpose was to crash rival products and alleged
| that the company had subverted developers who used Microsoft's
| version of Java 'thinking they were developing multi-platform
| applications, but were actually developing Windows-specific
| applications'.
`----
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/101947/microsoft-used-undocumented-windows-apis-iowa-testimony.html
CIS Accuses Microsoft of Plotting HTML Hijack
,----[ Quote ]
| An industry coalition that has represented competitors of Microsoft
| in European markets before the European Commission stepped up its
| public relations offensive this morning, this time accusing
| Microsoft of scheming to upset HTML's place in the fabric of
| the Internet with XAML, an XML-based layout lexicon forn
| etwork applications.
`----
http://www.betanews.com/article/ECIS_Accuses_Microsoft_of_Plotting_HTML_Hijack/1169824569
|
|
