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DoJ Extends Microsoft Oversight for Two Years
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The US Department of Justice has extended its anti-trust oversight of Microsoft by two years. This only applies to the requirement that Microsoft make protocol documentation available to competitors, though. All of the other requirements have expired, and Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly did not give the states complaining the full five years of oversight they requested. Still, this should prove useful given that one of Microsoft's new tricks is to use OOXML extensions to tie businesses to Sharepoint."
Yes.
The Software Freedom Law Center got the protocol documents for Microsoft workgroup networking, which they were supposed to make available in 2004.
The EU agreement also weakens Microsoft's FUD about Linux and other FOSS violating its patents. They now have to disclose patents covering its workgroup protocols so developers will be able to show their code doesn't infringe.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
More details can be found here from the previous round of talks: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070308-us-doj-microsoft-dragging-feet-on-documentation.html Or the official DOJ page http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f221700/221759.htm
"It's one thing to talk about the poetry of machines. Quite another to listen to it for yourself."
As a SharePoint geek (2003 and 2007) I'm curious about what's in the new OOXML formats that's SharePoint specific. I know I haven't
/. so much fun.
seen anything in the documents -- hell, out of the box SharePoint doesn't even correctly index all the new OOXML formats like it does
for the old binary ones.
Yes, SharePoint 2007 works best with Office 2007 (DIP, better dialogs, read-only means read-only, calendar sync, etc. etc.) but I have
yet to see _anything_ in the standard collaboration functionality* that screams "OMGWTFBBQ! Why aren't you using OOXML formats?".
All that said, please don't let facts get in the way of anti-Microsoft rants. It's part of what makes
*I don't consider writing features that generate OOXML to be standard collaboration. Yes, it's much easier to do OOXML than, say, WordML and/or SpreadsheetML.
P.S. As to the poster asking about Alfresco, I think the biggest hurdle there is lack of decent documentation.
On the contrary.
There are misguided FOSS attempts on going after what Microsoft is doing, but overall all they achieve is a loss of time for everyone. Why lose time replicating crappy technology? In this bag, I include, for instance, Mono and Moonlight. And, of course, the efforts on implementing MSOOXML, by Gnome, for instance. MSOOXML should be seen as a deprecated legacy format, for which only a half-assed converter should be created.
Take Samba, for instance. It's a great piece of software! But for what? For implementing a proprietary file sharing protocol, that is so flawed that it has to be changed with every major version of Microsoft's OS, many times with incompatibilities with previous versions. I mean, of course Samba made viable the implementation of Linux on the enterprise, on Windows networks, and should be praised for that. But, overall, isn't it a waste for these very talented guys to lose all this time coding this crappy protocol, when they could in fact be putting their effort on something other than following what Microsoft is doing?
Microsoft make lots of very good products, it's not fair to bag them on -everything-I don't agree. I don't know any Microsoft product that I could call "very good".
The reason to "bag them" is not because of their products, but because of their business practics, which are not based on competing on merits, but on spreading FUD and locking in customers as much as they can. Just see ODF/MSOOXML and the OLPC/Classmate for two great examples of why Microsoft is not to be trusted.
Unlimited users, but its a bit limited on how much hardware and RAM you can throw at it. Also limited to 4 gigs in size. Reporting Services is in, DTS (Which, as of SQL Server 2005, has been remade from scratch into the vastly superior SSIS) is NOT in (and that makes me very, very sad, since SSIS is my favorite ETL tool).
:) Postgres has OK dev tools, and onces its hidden behind an ORM like Hibernate or LLBLGEN, it all looks the same, aside for the business intelligence bits.
I'm not sure about the scheduling and stuff, but quite a bit of these features are there. The development tools for it are also free (they're part of a free version of Visual Studio). No Analysis Service and OLAP cubes either.
It is definately not for all scenarios, but considering the ease of development, it serves a lot of purposes. I still push the open source offering when we need an enterprise-class solution and the customer's being cheap though
Microsoft has posted first and second quarterly results for fiscal year 2008 that that have been nothing less than spectacular. It is debt free, paying dividends, and holds $20 billion or so in cash.
Interestingly, since Windows Vista became generally available one year ago, Microsoft's client business has grown more than 20% and sales of Windows Vista have now surpassed 100 million licenses. Microsoft reports record second quarter results
If this is castration, then let's give the eunuchs their due:
Vista is the only client OS to show significant growth in years. OS Platform Stats
You can argue all you like about the specifics of the w3Schools stats but you are going to have a much harder time explaining away the long term trends exposed there.