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Microsoft Bids To Take Over Open Document Format
what about sends in a Groklaw alert warning that, by PJ's reading, Microsoft may be trying to take over ODF via a stacked SC 34 committee. The article lists the attendees at an SC 34 meeting in July and gives their affiliations, which the official meeting materials do not. (The attendees of the October 1 meeting, which generated a takeover proposal to OASIS, are not known in full.) "Why do I say Microsoft, when this is SC 34? Look at this ... list of participants in the July meeting in Japan of the SC 34 committee. The committee membership is so tilted by Microsoft employees and such, if it were a boat, it would capsize ... Of the 19 attendees, 8 are outright Microsoft employees or consultants, and 2 of them are Ecma TC45 members. So 10 out of 19 are directly controlled by Microsoft/Ecma ... [I]f the takeover were to succeed, SC 34 would get to maintain ODF as well as Microsoft's competing parody 'standard,' OOXML. How totally smooth and shark-like. Under the guise of 'synchronized maintenance,' without which they claim SC 34 can't fulfill its responsibilities, they get control of everything." A related submission from David Gerard points out that BoycottNovell has leaked the ISO OOXML documents, which ISO has kept behind passwords.
It won't work. The DoJ has people who actually investigate things, and so would filter out all the inaccuracies and FUD, and find there is pretty much nothing left of the "scandal".
At least 90% of what Groklaw has written about on this topic came straight from IBM blogs, and, if you actually fact check it, you find that IBM out and out lied about most of what they said.
Profit
MS make plenty of really good products - SQL server, WIN2k3 (check netcraft and see it's uptime is in the top 5), .net and visual studio. They also provide patches and updates to products for free for almost a decade after their original sale - win98 for example went for about 9 years. MS treat their employees VERY well, they also donate a lot of money to charity and run their offices in as environmentally friendly manner as they can.
as far as business practices go they hardly even rate a mention compared to monsters like IBM or AT&T, who both got busted up decades ago for the kind of market manipulation that makes MS look like a corner hotdog stand. i'd rate MS about average on the sneaky stakes, their huge and so everything they do attracts a lot of attention, but they really are very subtle about throwing their weight around when you consider their annual profits are large than the GDP of small countries.
when you look at it rationally they aren't the devil - just a huge company and the throws of change they aren't well prepared for.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I think so. I'm an optimist.
Don't you mean you're a MS MVP? Did they change the name? Did I miss the memo? How do I join the exclusive club so I can get kickbacks too?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
It is frightening how obnoxiously cynical Microsoft is. The sad thing is, if they had any confidence in their own products, they could do themselves and the world so much good.
Balmer needs to go. Microsoft need a leader with vision who can instill confidence in their product and their abilities... that way, they might still exist in ten years time.