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IBM Slams Microsoft, Calls OOXML "Inferior"

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the yer-mama's-ugly-too dept.

cristarol sends word that Microsoft's accusation, that IBM has sabotaged Redmond's attempts to have the Office OpenXML format approved by the ISO, has drawn a heated response from IBM. Ars Technica has the story. "'IBM believes that there is a revolution occurring in the IT industry, and that smart people around the world are demanding truly open standards developed in a collaborative, democratic way for the betterment of all,' IBM VP of standards and OSS Bob Sutor told Ars. 'If "business as usual" means trying to foist a rushed, technically inferior and product-specific piece of work like OOXML on the IT industry, we're proud to stand with the tens of countries and thousands of individuals who are willing to fight against such bad behavior.'"

3 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. They're both full of... by Assmasher · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Micro$oft pretends to want an open format but really wants an 'open but biased' format they can contrive to make Word the best implementation of. The don't care about being 'open' except when it may benefit their bottom line.

    IBM pretends to like Open Source, but really makes an enormous percentage of their income from services directly related to such endeavors. They only like Open Source because they benefit financially from it, no other reason. The don't care about being 'open' except when it may benefit their bottom line.

    Now, IBM's greed benefits more people than Micro$oft's currently.

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  2. Re:Battle of giants by Crazy+Taco · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Oh, I think it's much, much too late for that. IBM and Microsoft have been at odds since the whole OS/2 joint development agreement fallout. The only thing nobody seems to notice much around here is that IBM has been winning.
    Winning???!?! Since when? Microsoft has destroyed IBM in every area they have ever competed in.
    1. Operating Systems? Microsoft. Windows clearly destroyed OS/2.
    2. Office Software? Microsoft. Office has destroyed IBM owned Lotus. And Outlook has clearly crushed the clunky, butt ugly Lotus Notes.
    3. IDEs? Microsoft. Visual Studio owns every IDE in existence, including the IBM spawned Eclipse (which actually isn't half bad, but that has more to do with the product being open source than being involved in IBM), IBM owned Rational products such as rational APEX, etc.
    4. Language design? Microsoft. The .Net architecture has set a standard that IBM has certainly never matched, even in their Java collaboration.
    5. Treatment of their employees? Microsoft. IBM just slashed the salaries of 8,000 engineers by 15% because those engineers wanted to be paid for all the overtime IBM was making them work. So IBM said, "Forget these lawsuits, you are all overtime eligible, and your base salaries are all going down 15%". Any worker there making 80,000 would be looking at a 12,000 dollar paycut. So, Microsoft clearly wins this one, and alienating all it's employees will cement IBMs downward spiral.

    So in conclusion, the reason people don't notice IBM winning is because they aren't. Nor are they close, or even trending towards winning. They put out one overpriced, under featured, ugly software product after another, and they are now alienating all their engineers. If it weren't for consulting and patent revenues IBM would have already collapsed.

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    Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
  3. They're still selling CMVC! by FatSean · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Your management just bought the wrong IBM product for the job you are doing.

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