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Cyberspace feels the force of Microsoft rumour-mill
,----[ Quote ]
| 'Today,' he writes, 'something really interesting happened. Both Google and
| Microsoft are poised to make dramatic strategic moves. But the moves are
| polar opposites. According to a rumour, Microsoft is to acquire Yahoo!'s
| search business as well as Facebook, and lock both down, to better take on
| Google. And Google is letting third parties access one of its most valuable
| assets: its ad network.
|
| 'So what's really going on here? Microsoft is poised to shift from open to
| closed. Google is making exactly the opposite move: shifting from closed to
| open.'
|
| Profound, eh? Give me the hysterical ladies of Cranford any day.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/may/25/digitalmedia.microsoft
"We should dedicate a cross-group team to come up with ways to leverage Windows
technically more."
--Jim Allchin, Microsoft
Recent:
Is Microsoft Office in trouble?
,----[ Quote ]
| And, now Microsoft isn't hurrying to support its own format, but it is moving
| to support PDF and ODF... Could it be that all those copies of Office 2007
| Microsoft boasts of selling are collecting dust at reseller and retailer
| warehouses instead of being used on office systems? Could users be sticking
| with their older copies of Office and when they do want to move to something
| newer, they're moving to OpenOffice and Google instead?
|
| Interesting isn't it?
`----
http://blogs.computerworld.com/is_microsoft_office_in_trouble
Microsoft can’t support Open XML
,----[ Quote ]
| If Microsoft can’t give users a compelling reason to switch from their old
| version of Office to Office 14 their cash-flow is going to slow down
| considerably.
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http://practical-tech.com/business/microsoft-cant-support-open-xml/
The Embrace, Extend, Extinguish of ODF Begins? - Updated
,----[ Quote ]
| I believe Sun pays Durusau to work on ODF as the OpenDocument Editor, OASIS
| TC. Sun? What's up with that? Seriously. What's going on here? If this is who
| is steering ODF in OASIS, I'm extremely worried. And if there is a secret
| working group rewriting the directives, while Microsoft and Alex Brown both
| say they want ODF transferred to ISO for ongoing maintenance, I'd say the
| Embrace, Extend, Extinguish of ODF has officially begun.
`----
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080524063506630
Microsoft Supporting ODF? -- Close, But No Cigar
,----[ Quote ]
| Once again, the problem is software patents. Internet News indicates that
| commercial Linux/FOSS vendors, and the GPL license that Linux comes with,
| will be excluded...
|
| [...]
|
| GPL developers can't obtain patent licenses. That would violate the terms of
| the GPL. Period.
|
| Like Microsoft doesn't know that.
|
| But, you say, Linux is GPL'd and that's Microsoft's primary competition. Can
| it be that commercial vendors and the GPL will be exiled again from
| the "even" playing field everyone else gets to be on? Why yes. It appears so.
| Commercial Linux vendors need not apply. Or they can sell out.
|
| In short, I think Microsoft has no intention of interoperability with its
| actual competition, namely commercial Linux, like Red Hat and Ubuntu, et al,
| all the vendors who refuse to sell out to their patent demands. I'd say it
| has to be deliberate on Microsoft's part, because when Microsoft offered its
| Open Specification Promise (OSP), the promise not to sue over OOXML, sorta,
| kinda, it was clearly informed by the Software Freedom Law Center that the
| OSP's terms are inconsistent with the GPL and that the promise provides no
| assurance for FOSS developers. And Microsoft is certainly knowledgeable about
| the problems with RAND terms for FOSS. But they persist in offering what they
| know commercial GPL developers can't accept.
|
| [...]
|
| Please note that they too expressed dreams of maintaining ODF, not just
| OOXML, and making the two "interoperable". So, now Microsoft says it will
| join OASIS and "help" ODF and it hopes ODF will go to the same folks who
| mangled OOXML.
|
| Does that sound helpful?
|
| I wish they were sincere. I'd love to be proven wrong. But I'm afraid, having
| watched Microsoft shove OOXML through the Fast Track process, despite it not
| even being usable, that ODF will be harmonized out of meaningful existence. I
| suspect that is the plan. And so to me, the announcement of "support" for ODF
| sounds like it could just be the next chess move in Microsoft's strategy to
| maintain its heavy footprint.
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http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080522012330406
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