Cracking Open the SharePoint Fortress

dreemteem writes with this excerpt from ComputerWorld UK:"SharePoint is a brilliant success, for a couple of reasons. In a way, it's Microsoft's answer to GNU/Linux: cheap and simple enough for departments to install without needing to ask permission, it has proliferated almost unnoticed through enterprises to such an extent that last year SharePoint Sales were $1.3 billion. But as well as being one of Microsoft's few new billion-dollar hits, it has one other key characteristic, hinted at in the Wikipedia entry above: it offers an effortless way for people to put content into the system, but makes it very hard to get it out because of its proprietary lock-in. This makes it a very real threat to open source. For example, all of the gains made in the field of open document standards — notably with ODF — are nullified if a company's content is trapped inside SharePoint." The article offers a slice of hope for getting around that, though, in the form of a new API for Google Sites which can slurp the data back out.

Comments

Re:bah, sharepoint.

[Blakey Rat]

I love Slashdot.

If it's so godawful (and it's not, but that's beside the point of this post), then why don't you write a better version of same and kick Microsoft's ass in this market space?

Obviously, you have a hundred ideas of how to make a better CMS than Sharepoint, so let's see you plop that money down where your mouth is and do it. And if your CMS is so much better, it should be no problem to sell to companies that are currently using Sharepoint, right? Go for it, you could be the next Internet Millionaire, and knock Microsoft in the teeth at the same time.

Or you could just sit here on Slashdot and bitch and moan, bitch and moan.