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Linux Foundation Comments On Microsoft's Increasing Love of Linux
LibbyMC writes Executive Director Jim Zemlin writes, "We do not agree with everything Microsoft does and certainly many open source projects compete directly with Microsoft products. However, the new Microsoft we are seeing today is certainly a different organization when it comes to open source. The company's participation in these efforts underscores the fact that nothing has changed more in the last couple of decades than how software is fundamentally built."
Step 1: Embrace.
Step 2: Extend.
Step 3: Extinguish.
They see this as step 1.
Reeses
...when someone smells money in the idealistic work of others, it's time to beware!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
I am not going forget all of history in one instant,
I'm not worried about history. It's their present actions I want to see corrected.
1. Stop blocking open file/document formats and start actively working towards interoperability. I want to be able to use any tool of my choice on my data.
2. Stop astroturfing EVERY tech forum in existence. I want to be able to discuss Linux and other OSs/software etc without harassment from MS damage control drones.
3. Lose the control-freak attitude towards competitors. Don't try to patent-bomb/bleed/cross-license them out of existence.
4. Don't buy/bribe government customers to keep them locked in. We have a right to use free and open tools on documents written on taxpayer dollars.
5. Stop manipulating hardware manufacturers. Locked/broken bootloaders, closed drivers etc are dirty ways to compete.
There's a lot more, but the point is made. Until I see some fundamental changes to the way MS does business, I'll have to keep assuming this current cosying up to the community is cynically motivated and dangerous.
No, the standard body should do its job and produce good standards. Whether Microsoft implements it or not is not their problem. A good standard which Microsoft does not use is much better than a mess which nobody can implement correctly.
Yet prior to 2007, Microsoft was a dominant player in the mobile market - Windows Mobile was everyone - on phones, PDAs, and even PDA-phones. So was Palm. And Nokia. HTC was making Windows Mobile devices (as an ODM).
Microsoft was never a dominant player in the mobile market. They were so pathetic that a little company which got its start repackaging GEOS for a market failure of a PC-based handheld designed by Casio, built by GRiD and marketed by Tandy was able to completely embarrass them and dominate the space with a handheld powered by a motorola CPU whose core was nearly twenty years old. I refer, of course, to Palm Computing. HTC's Windows Mobile phones were horrible pieces of shit. I had one of the later ones, a Raphael. The software was shit, the hardware was shit (HTC was too lame to add a piece of tape to retain the keyboard connector even after the community figured out the fix) and the overall experience was shit. The phones were expensive even on contract so nobody but nerds bought them.
The only mobile market that Microsoft ever dominated was the corporate handheld market, for applications like point of sale and inventory. And that was only for a minuscule slice of time, because let's face it, WINCE is SHIT. It has had no reason to exist approximately since the release of the AMD GEODE made it feasible to run full-blown Windows on a handheld device. (Sure, there were mobile x86 processors before that, but none of them offered adequate performance and acceptable battery life. Some of the 486SLCs came close, but still couldn't really deliver the low power consumption necessary.)
Microsoft has only ever dominated the PC and the low-end server markets, which it still controls. They do have dramatic market share in console gaming now, however, due to Sony's repeated massive failures. But few people want their phones today, they want Android or Apple because that's where the apps are. Microsoft got their shit together far too slowly in mobile, in spite of being one of the longest-term players in the game, and now the only chance they have to even be important again is for Apple or Google to fail hard. I don't think it's possible for either of them to fail that badly.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"