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The Open Web and the Walled Garden
Nicely stated:

Going forward Sharepoint is everywhere, and as
future iterations of a cloud oriented Microsoft
Office hook into the next iterations of
Sharepoint, it seems likely an extensive new
walled garden will emerge. How and if this
Microsoft ecosphere will allow interoperability
with the open source world is a loaded
question.

Somehow Microsoft was able to protect their
desktop monopoly, preventing others from
integrating into the MSOffice productivity
environment. There was an interesting eMail that
came to light during the Iowa-Comes v. Microsoft
anti-trust case. It seems Chairman Bill had been
approached by the MSOffice team in 1998. They
wanted to make MSOffice Web ready. His response
was a rather direct; future formats, protocols and
interfaces must be proprietary. And that included
the WebDAV protocol.

Today we a situation where Microsoft applications
provide end users with a choice. They can choose
1998 Web standards that have more often than not
been extended to accommodate Microsoft proprietary
innovations. Or, they an choose rich Client -
rich Server" formats, protocols and interfaces
that are proprietary, but full featured,
integrated and highly interoperable within the MS
galaxy of desktop, device, server and Web server
systems. These proprietary RiA formats, protocols
and interfaces are part of the Windows
Presentation Foundation layer, with acronyms like
OpenXML, XAML, Silverlight, XPS, VML, Linq, and
Smart Tags. All of which are designed as high end
alternatives to Open Web HTML5, CSS4, SVG/Canvas,
emerging JS Libraries, JavaScript4, XHTML, RDF,
RDFa, and Sparql.

There is also the problem that Microsoft has
learned how to work within the foot dragging
vendor consortia charged with continuing Open Web
innovation and interop. It doesn't take a whole
lot of mush about backwards compatibility
to slow down the already slogging vendor
consortia.

The bright light in all this is the revolution
occurring at the edge of the Web with iPhone and
the WebKit community monster set loose as Apple
boots the world into the age of visual computing.

Microsoft of course has their hands full with the
wave of WebKit RiA rushing the edge with iPhone,
Android, Nokia, RiMM and Palm. Microsoft was
seemingly caught flat footed. But with RiA
challengers like Adobe AiR, Eclipse and JavaFX
having embraced the WebKit layout and visual
document model, joining the fray with massive
developer communities in tow, the future of the
Open Web looks better than ever.

~ge~

Posted by: gary_edwards   Posted on: 03/25/09 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use
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The Open Web and the Walled Garden  gary_edwards | 03/25/09
SharePoint, Open Source and Small Businesses  pankajunk | 03/26/09
WSS vs MOSS / WSS great for SME  Robin Majumdar | 03/26/09
RE: Where Worlds Collide - and then there's Sharepoint  Prateek Parkhi (RIA Evangelist)-SpadeWorx Software Services | 04/16/09

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