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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."
What's the point? The DoJ has achieved less real change in the past decade than the EU has achieved in past two years.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
In a rare "double-whammy" decision, the DOJ has ordered Steve Ballmer and Darl MacBride to co-produce (and star in) a feature length film entitled "2 CEOs, 1 Cup"... MacBride couldn't be reached for comment, but Ballmer was heard saying: "No problem. Bill has been preparing me for this for years".
Seriously, though. Why does the DOJ seem so toothless when it comes to corporations or the ultra-wealthy, yet act like right-stomping psychopaths for small players (to the point of waffling on definitions of torture, or weaseling around the constitution)? How could it be anything but corruption?
It is clear to me that the sanctions are still relevant. What is not clear to me is how the consent decree is going to change anything, since TFA also states that "protocol specifications" were supposed to be released in 2003, and still haven't been fully released.
Other than this text, there is no discernible information contained in this sig.
sql server is a great product, and is certainly better then everything else in the opensource world aside from postgresql (i've used both extensively) and even then sql server trumps pg in many areas. like wise with access, say what you will about it but i don't see any OSS project that's even close to it.
many of the developer tools MS puts out are top notch as well, something OSS is still 10 years behind on - easy to use gui development, and i say that as someone who programmed in wxpython for 2 years solid on both windows and freebsd, and has since moved to a windows shop. no doubt there will be some out their who will equate this with VB programmers and the usual snobbery, but the truth is i can put together a windows apps many times faster and just as robust as anything currently out there int he linux world.
for OSS to move forward, they need to drop the stupid ego trip and look at what MS do RIGHT, or OSS will always be the poor mans 2nd choice.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Is it incompetence that caused Microsoft not to get the protocol specifications documented? If that is the case Microsoft is in big trouble. Or they are illegally going slow. Either way Microsoft should be in big trouble. I think the judge needs to wake up.
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.
Most of the stuff on