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The Company Everyone Loves To Hate
In honor of Microsoft's 30th year, Epeeist writes "The BBC is running a Have Your Say article on Microsoft at 30." From that article: "Microsoft will always adapt and buy into other areas to keep themselves at the top. They're the company everyone loves to hate." While they're reflecting, most people are focusing on the now. teslatug writes "Brian Jones, a Microsoft PM on the Office team, has just confirmed that the new default XML format of Office 12 is not compatible with the GPL. Brian believes that LGPL may be compatible, but others have raised issues about the ability to redistribute." Relatedly, shades66 writes "Microsoft's Alan Yates tripped over his own words in responding to the Massachusetts Information Technology Division's late-August declaration for OpenDocument and other open software standards." For some more colourful commentary, smooth wombat writes "John Dvorak has written an article for MarketWatch in which he postulates that the reorganization by Microsoft is actually a prelude to its breakup into three separate entities."
Indeed, I would hate to see what a truly efficient Microsoft could do to Apple, Sun and the open source community. Considering their resources, and if they can whittle themselves down to a highly efficient company, they could put up an effort against their competitors second to none. Now, perhaps that wouldn't be a bad thing. An innovative Microsoft will force the open source community and other companies to become just as competitive, if not more so.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
No, I hate hating them. I'd rather not have such annoyances in my life. I'd just like safe, secure software that does what I want, and nothing that I don't want.
And I'd like them to secure the current operating system before moving to the next one.
For a programmer an improved operating system is one with less program faults, less resource requirements, and better performance on the same hardware. Microsoft seems bound and determined to go in exactly the opposite direction.
Cheaper would be nice too. Darn, they missed that one too.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"Standards" designed to make a competitors entry into any given market controlled by microsoft impossible."
An endless FUD compaign against competitors
and choosing to stifle innovation in self interest of controlling the direction of the market to areas they already control.
In the South Park movie, Bill Gates got shot in the head and everyone in the theater laughed. Once South Park wants to kill you, the teeming masses will follow.
I saw that movie in an on campus theater, at a university, with an audience of hundreds and hundreds of engineers and scientists. That scene received a standing ovation, hoots, screams, cries of joy, thrown popcorn, and other jubilation that drowned out the movie for the next 5 minutes.
How can an XML file format be incompatible with the GPL?
Does that mean we can't link them directly, or include them embedded within a binary?
It's a file format. They going to patent XML?
I'm confused.. I think he only said that for FUD factors, becouse it makes NO sense at all.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..