re: Office from the past, ODF and OOXML (Office of today and tomorrow) and why is organic growth nearly always bad for software and why re-writing is not good either

David Overton — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:06:14 GMT

Vijay,

Of course I make it sound so reasonable . This is a dance and unfortunately this is the way it goes. I don't think Microsoft is scared any more than any business is of losing business. However I think we need to stop banding around terms like "guilt of anti-competitive behaviour" when in each case it is a very specific section of the business, rather than the whole company. I could go into Windows N, but I don't think now is the time.

As for XML, look at your history - Microsoft moved to a common document format in 1997, still support many document formats in our products. Microsoft moved to XML as a strategy in 2000 and pioneered the industry move to Web Services and XML. Remember "dot NOT". That was the reaction of the people you are upholding as leaders to XML based solutions.

Don't get suckered (by any side) into thinking this game is ALWAYS about winning business and nothing else. IBM still creates more patents per year than any other company. Only allows people it does not consider a threat tp use its IP and so on. Do you think IBM didn't know they were going to re-release Symphony based on ODF when they were campaigning for ODF? They were really just shouting "use my file format, not theirs".

I did re-read your blog post and I don't see you defending MS on this, but that is the joy of the written and unambiguous language that English is

ttfn

re: Office from the past, ODF and OOXML (Office of today and tomorrow) and why is organic growth nearly always bad for software and why re-writing is not good either

Vijay Singh Riyait — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 22:19:08 GMT

Dave, when you explain it, it all sounds so reasonable! I can accept that the MS standard is superior and that we should all adopt it but this constant sniping at each other's standards doesn't serve the interest of customers. I also pointed out (which you didn't hightlight) the stupidity of trying to stop MS getting it accepted as an ISO standard. Microsoft has been found gulity of anti-competitive behaviour by both the US Government and the EC by a due process. I believe Microsoft is learning from these experiences and changing but it's a big beast to change and maybe what it needs is people like yourself to educate your colleagues about interoperability and openness.