Microsoft Can't DRM Docs Fast Enough

grcumb writes "As part of the DoJ Anti-trust settlement, Microsoft was ordered to provide freely available documentation for its communications protocols. InfoWorld is reporting that not only are they late in delivering the required APIs, but it's because they want to convert everything to the read-only Web Archive (MHT) format, which can only be viewed in MSIE. InfoWorld reports that, "In July, Microsoft said it would complete revisions of the documentation required by the court in the autumn, a season generally reckoned to include the months of September, October and November in North America, but may now have to extend work on a beta or test version of the new documentation into December...." So we have to wait longer for a format that makes the content harder for developers (developers! developers!) to use. Maybe they didn't read the documentation ..."

Comments

Re:What's wrong with PDFs?

[DerFeuervogel]

My advice to the Dept. is they need to come down hard and fast on this as contept of court, or M$ is gonna walk all over them.
The Bush DOJ? Ha ha ha ...
Right.

Re:Why accept document in MHT?

[spectecjr]

If the judge demands that the documentation for Microsoft APIs is open an available for everyone, how is delivering said documentation in a form that only IE can read, meeting the judge demands?

If they REALLY have a monopoly, then why are you complaining? You, by definiton, have IE don't you? Use it.

Re:What's wrong with PDFs?

[fitten]

PDFs are ideal

Ideal maybe in that they are the only broadly used format. I don't like PDFs and I don't like 32+MB acrobat applications hanging around doing nothing when you load a PDF into the browser. PDFs are big and slow. If there were another semi-standard cross-platform document format, I'd use it over PDF. I go to fair lengths to avoid PDFs.

Re:Why Microsoft is above the law

[FreeUser]

Kind of makes a mockery of the word "justice" doesn't it? When Justice depends on who is in office then the dept of justice is nothing but orwellian doublespeak.

Please people make it a point to re-read 1984 before the election.

Why? Diebold tabulators are being used in more than a dozen states this election. The outcome has already been predecided, the question is merely the means. Either g.W. bush will win the election "fairly" (assuming smearing the war record of veterans and lying perpetually to the American people can be construed as "fair") or his party and its right-wing supporters will flat out steal the election again ... this time probably by entering a two digit code in the Deibold tabulators and changing the unauditable totals to something more in line with their desires.

Either way, America has four more years of incomeptence to look forward to. The real test, and why everyone should vote against Bush anyway, is whether the American people will hand a victory to him, or whether he will be forced to defraud our democracy again to get it. We owe it to ourselves to force them to show their true colors, and to not make hanging on to power easy, but don't kid yourself ... with the currect Conservative/Reactionary group running things, we're already doomed.

Microsoft, as appalling and disgusting as they are, and as destructive as they have been and will continue to be to our industry, our digital freedoms, and ultimately our rights to free expression in this technological age, are nothing compared to the corrupt regime that has not only let them off the hook, but is actively wrecking this country and its founding institutions on far too many levels to even begin elucidating in this post.

Vote by all means: let the world know we didn't choose this incompetent thug this time any more than we did the last time, but don't kid yourself on who is going to be in the White House after it's all over.