Interview: Marten Mickos, CEO, MySQL
,----[ Quote ]
| "With Microsoft, we meet them in smaller companies and where the competition
| is happening at the operating system level. If they customer says they want
| one person on Linux, then you can't use SQL Server, of course.”
`----
http://www.mycustomer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=133420&d=101&h=817&f=816
This is either an disadvantage to Microsoft or an illegal advantage. They lock
out competitors.
Related:
,----[ Quote ]
| [Microsoft:] ...we should take the lead in establishing a common
| approach to UI and to interoperability (of which OLE is only a part). Our
| efforts to date are focussed too much on our own apps, and only incidentally
| on the rest of the industry. We want to own these standards, so we should
| not participate in standards groups. Rather, we should call 'to me' to the
| industry and set a standard that works now and is for everyone's
| benefit. We are large enough that this can work.
`----
http://www.os2site.com/sw/info/comes/px09509.zip
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
Microsoft Looks for the Big Guns in OOXML In-Fighting
,----[ Quote ]
| Bill Gates has reportedly been making phone calls to the Secretary of Defense
| and the Secretary of Commerce to push the American National Standards
| Institute to ignore the votes of its advisory committees and vote "yes" on
| ISO standardizing Microsoft's Open Office XML (OOXML) format, the one in
| competition with the OpenDocument Format (ODF) pushed by IBM and Sun.
|
| Gates reportedly picked up the phone when the last INCITS ballot failed by
| one vote to support Microsoft.
`----
http://xml.sys-con.com/read/419573_p.htm
IBM is still locked out of the Portuguese OOXML meeting
,----[ Quote ]
| In spite of various communications, we [IBM] are still locked out and will
| not be allowed to participate. Microsoft will be there, as well as a special
| Microsoft guest, as will various Microsoft business partners, and others.
`----
http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=1755
Microsoft criticized for Open XML petition
,----[ Quote ]
| The petition is an attempt to make it appear that Open XML
| has "pseudo-grassroots" support, argues Mark Taylor, the
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| founder of the Open Source Consortium.
`----
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6173625.html
|
|