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Ballmer Pleads For Openness To Compete With Apple
mjasay writes "At the Mobile World Congress, Steve Ballmer took aim at Apple's closed iPhone ecosystem with an ironic plea for openness: 'Openness is central because it's the foundation of choice.' Ballmer has apparently forgotten his company's own efforts to vertically integrate hardware and software (Zune, XBox), its history of vertically integrating software (tying SharePoint into Office, IE, SQL Server, Active Directory, etc.), as well as years of illegally tying Windows to Internet Explorer that only the US Justice Department could undo. Indeed, Microsoft's effect on the browser market has pushed Mozilla to get involved in a recent European Commission action against the software giant, with Mozilla's Mitchell Baker recently declaring that 'A number of illegal activities were also involved in creating IE's market dominance,' now requiring government intervention to open up the browser market to fair competition. Putting aside Microsoft's own tainted reputation in the field of openness, is Ballmer right? Should Apple open up its iPhone platform to outside competition, both in terms of hardware and software?"
Well, Microsoft have done all the things listed in the summary, but I fail to see how does that make Ballmer's statement incorrect? Getting something right is still getting something right, whether you do it seldomly or your motives lie inside your pocket. And iPhone is more locked up than anything Microsoft has ever done, so his statement is not even hypocritical.
From the *summary* (for [insert deity]'s sake man, at least read the *summary*) of the 'most ungreen companies ever' link you gave above:
... they wouldn't be able to claim it, unless they had some justification for it. From what I read, Greenpeace don't really care about what you *do* these days, they care about what you *promise* to do in the future, and how much you pay them to be quiet. They're a form of eco-terrorists, and eventually they'll get theirs...
As for Darwin, it seems pretty open to me.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Sorry, that is an ignorant statement. For starters, go to Dell, or Compaq and try to order a NO-OS computer. Then try to order a Linux computer. Then try to order a Solaris computer. Just try it. The reason for the lack of competing operating systems lies in the monopolistic, competition stifling conduct that Microsoft has employed over the past decades. Go on, order a Dell with Digital Research operating system installed. Then, come back and check my sig. To deny that Microsoft enjoys a monopoly is simple ignorance. Debating the reasons Microsoft enjoys that monopoly will surely help to cure that ignorance.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Microsoft's crime is not being successful, but in unfair business practices which led to the failure of competing companies. Ask Sun Java about Microsoft's JVM. Microsoft broke the law, violated contract agreements, and did everything within their power to outright steal Sun's intellectual property. When all that failed, Microsoft attempted to subvert Sun's market by creating their own Java Virtual Machine - again, with stolen ideas and code that belonged to Sun. Go ahead, cheer for a bunch of criminals. It tells us about you.....
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
If you're living in a cave with no internet, sure. But it's taken two decades of reverse engineering to get us things like .doc support in OpenOffice, web pages that work in both IE6 and Firefox, read/write NTFS, DirectX games, and so on. All thanks to Microsoft's systematic and deliberate anti-openness measures.