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We're Open enough, Says Microsoft
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft Australia has come under fire from rival vendors and open-source advocates for keeping its Office document standards proprietary.
Greg Stone, Microsoft's national technology officer for Australia and New Zealand, faced criticism during his presentation at the Australian Unix User Group conference in Canberra yesterday. However, he stood firm on the company's policy of making the XML schemas for its Office 2003 document standard publicly available provided interested parties sign an agreement with the software heavyweight. "Why should I have to sign an agreement?" one audience member demanded to know."
Just look at IE.
Can one piece of software possibly be more open to exploits and viruses?
"Why should I have to sign an agreement?"
So Microsoft can own your soul, your offsprings' souls, their retroactive grandparents' souls, and the souls of everyone they come in contact with.
In the form of a nice law suit.
No use being Anonymous Coward. You used IE, and they know it now.
hilarious
You'll still be completely and totally unable to use Word files in non-Microsoft applications, except in a buggy and incomplete reverse engineered form.
But that's open enough to suit Microsoft perfectly fine.
Ask Linus. Proprietary is the way to go.
And you all knew this was coming.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Earlier I posted on how today Microsoft had declared beta software as ready for production, and how root is apparently completely safe. Microsoft calling themselves open source enough just takes the cake though.
our customers are also opened enough....we only have to give them a litle more vaseline to maximize the opening
you'll need to sing an agreetment with Microsoft
Swaaaaannieeee - ohhhhhh how I love ya, how I love ya, Swaaaannnniiiiiieeeeeeeee!
Oh you meant "sign" an agreement... my bad. please spellcheck in the future,
plskthx
AC
I thought man was talking on malware authoring conference.
839*929
Well, using GPL fonts in a document means the document has to be open, does it not?
Zero Sum (don't amount to much). [root@localhost]
While we're at it, let's solve world peace! All we need to do is get all the world leaders to sit down and back an idea on how things could be made better...
Ok. I'll make a few phone calls and see what I can do.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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Root is safe, beta is gold, MS is open enough and MN2004 is coming back on a corrected trajectory. All makes sense.
and I also believe all politicians are honest and truthful
Free as in costs money
Advantage as in same thing later
We are proud to present
Open as in closed
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I thought all MS software where open..!?! Guess i'll have to go close windows to prevent bugs flying inn...
Bits of News Giving you the latest bits.
I'd say they are _gaping_ open!
And because you read it on /., it MUST be true >:)
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Running as root is safe, beta is good for production use and MS is open enough. Next thing you know, they'll be saying that Adobe bought Macromedia, one of its enemies.
Indeed. Can I read your email because it's in Thunderbird?
Damn, I already moderated this topic. Now I'll have to log in with my sock puppet to comment.
I can see it now, instead of Windows NE (NExt) or something marketdroidy, they will produce Windows Free {tm}. "Microsoft will set you Free!" {tm} Of course, a legal copy of Windows Free {tm} will cost $395.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What we really need is an OASIS plug-in for MS Office so that MS Office users can use the OASIS format without any hassles. That would be cool.
That sound you just heard was 10,000 Microsoft lawyers, all getting a boner.
-Styopa
Sad, but still one step up from their usual "unnamed" sources IMO. Now at least they're quoting that Anonymous Coward guy on /. He must be an expert given how often he posts.
Bullshit. A pub is private property that allows the public to enter.
Microsoft = pub
If a pub owner would like to allow smoking, the customers have the choice to enter or not.
Smoking = access to document standards.
If a pub owner would like to allow smoking, the customers have the choice to enter or not.
I get it now... so all this fight for open standards is actually a cleverly disguised campaign to remove smoking bans! It all makes sense now!!!
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