On Tue, 8 Feb 2005, Smoot Carl-Mitchell wrote: [...]
The intriguing part of all this to me is watching Microsoft try to flee upmarket (tighter integration e.g Longhorn) and at the same time respond to the disruptive market erosion created by Open Source software. So far we have gone from Open Source solutions are more expensive (the TCO campaign), to Open Source is less secure, to Open Source is less interoperable. None of these FUD strategies appear to be working.
No, but the tragic part is that the media plays along. He seems especially to have the computer magazines on a short leash these days and they do seem to bark when he tugs on it.
In fact the interoperability argument is so laughable, I suspect it will be put on the shelf very quickly. The market appears to be responding to the "good enough" nature of Open Source software and ignoring the FUD.
The interesting thing is that in practice open source has always been very good in interoperability of both data and protocols. Recently it's been getting harder to have MS products in a heterogenous environment.
Much of the shortcomings in interoperability come from Microsoft's end, both for open source and closed source. (e.g. the ODBC problem between MS-Word and FileMaker)
If MS were obeying the court decisions and publishing it's APIs as ordered, there would be less difficulty in integrating MS with other systems and applications.
The patent threat also appears to be losing steam with IBM and Sun opening up at least portions of their patent portfolio at least in a limited ways.
At least in the U.S. and maybe only psychologically, depending on the relevancy of the patents. Copyright alone has done just fine and we'd all be better off without sw patents like in Europe. sw patents hurt computer users along with developers.
There is still a lot to do, but so far nothing Microsoft is doing is sticking. They must be very frustrated in Redmond these days.
Enough so that R&D has been halved: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/27/microsoft_fy2005q2_earnings/
-Lars
Lars Nooden ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
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