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Microsoft Eases Licensing On Office 2003 Formats
kfiller writes "Microsoft has negotiated a deal with the state of Massachusetts to lower licensing restrictions on the Excel and Word XML formats in Office 2003, in exchange for the state to reconsider their focus on adopting 'open standards' to adopting 'open formats'. Is this just another move to encroach on the open source community?"
They are trying to get Microsoft jealous by flirting with opensource to get Microsoft to lower their prices. Nothing to see here. Move along.
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Don't be stupid. If Microsoft has complete control of the format, they will alter it when the occasion arises to break everyone else's apps. Then they say , "Look these other programs are inferior because they don't support the full spec like we do." As has been done for many years.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
> I would INSTANTLY switch to "open source" operating systems and applications if I could find some that met my needs.
I did so years ago, and seldom if ever have a need to boot Windows due to applications that I need myself.. I do have a need for Windows due to customers using it tho.
> Who wouldn't?
Obviously many people.
There are applications to suit the needs of the average user in many cases, but the average user is not willing to invest the time in making those work and learning to use them. I did because I already had another need for open source software (well, actually for a Unix like system, and buying a sun/sgi/hp/ibm unix box was out of the question for me at that time)
What people often forget is that OSS software might be free as in beer, but you have to work a bit harder to use it for now.
Linux and FreeBSD and similar systems have come to a point where for a knowledgable user, they may be as easy or easier to install and use then Windows and even OS X, but that doesn't really help the average user. Fetting a machine with a reinstalled and preconfigured Linux desktop and modern installers for comemrcial software for Linux go a long way to making this a possibility, but as long as the default offer from your average computer shop is some x86 box with XP home, it will take a long time to get there.
Oh, and even for those who do know a bit about computers in general, a different system still takes a bit of time to get used to, and not all of them are prepared to put in that time.