Microsoft trying to quash OpenDocument

Tue Oct 4 02:45:34 UTC 2005

> 
> http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170724,00.html
> 
> http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170916,00.html
> 

The points you bring up regarding the above links was covered earlier 
in this thread.

There was also a fascinating article from Groklaw earlier in this 
thread if you are following this stuff, complete with a purportedly 
unedited OGG file depicting the 2-hour meeting between 
representatives from Microsoft and the Government of Massachusetts 
regarding civil rights, OpenDocument and Microsoft's XML format. 
While it is 2 hours long, after hearing the first hour, it seemed to 
be a pretty lively discussion (how can you lose, with topics like 
that?).

Points are brought up revealing (to me at least) MS's plans to 
abandon the ".doc" format. At this point, I would like to say as an 
asside: an extension like ".doc", like ".txt", appears to be vendor-
neutral, yet it is hard to *not* identify the ".doc" extension with 
MS Word. I imagine, unless someone can say that I am mistaken, that 
they would keep the ".doc" extension as "hot property", and change 
the file format. In contrast, StarOffice had to settle for a crummy 
".sxw" extension (I know it was their choice, but we can see that 
vendors are now running out of recognisable 3-letter extensions). I 
can't see Microsoft going that way.

> Of course the problem that M$ has with this is:
> 1)  In order to keep their monopoly on the desktop, they need to keep
> everyone on a proprietary format, which means keeping their office
> suite from reading and saving files in the OpenDocument format; 2)  In
> order to sell to Massachusetts, they need to allow their office suite
> to read and save files in the OpenDocument format.
> 
> Of course these are irreconcilables, which is why M$ is currently in a
> high state of panic.
> 
> On October 3, 2005 09:23, B B wrote:
> > On Mon, 03 Oct 2005 06:55:23 -0400, pking123 wrote:
> > >it is because their lawyers told them not to support
> >
> > it, because it would weaken their attack of the
> > technology.
> >
> > Exactally, I was looking at it from the view of an
> > empowered user, which due to free software now exsist.
> > One of the articles in the thread focuses on how M$ is
> > at the same position that IBM was when M$ started.
> >
> > I've been waiting to see the first chinks in the armor
> > of Bill the Great and Linux on its own would not be
> > it. The US Antitrust should have been it but a big
> > customer standing up and saying "your software is not
> > good enough for us, we are choosing the alternative"
> > IS!
> >
> > Expect to see a M$ head office response to this, the
> > lawyers and "best minds in the business world" need a
> > few days to brew the FUD...  Should be here soon.
> > http://news.google.com/news?q=microsoft
> >
> > Freedom and openness is a big, heavy sword and we
> > heard the sound of it swinging last week. Get used to it!
> >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________
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