Microsoft releases another XML spec

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Actually, it's easier than that

Responding to your The larger projects and their leaders need to persuade IBM, HP, Dell, and other large OSS backers to help them financially and strategically to protect them against MS's onslaught of patents and creative licences.

It's really not necessary for the projects and their leaders to persuade the industry leaders. IBM and HP, most visibly, have adopted Linux as their corporate strategy. As IBM puts it, the change is from "Making a better Unix" to "Making Linux better." Both of these companies are migrating their developers to Linux, and will make changes in response to their customers' needs, not for some vague purpose such as to counter Microsoft. Of course they will continue to add to the patent portfolio to protect their systems and will have them available to counter any person or company with malicious intent.

The big boys don't care about Microsoft, they care about each other. They will make use of MS products (as they do now in the home market) when it meets their needs and will rely on other sources when appropriate. You don't really make progress when your moves are only to "counter" some third party.

It may sound like I'm splitting hairs, because the result is the same. Yes, open source does have the innovation, development and patent protection of the giants in the industry, but it is because they see benefit in it and will likely harm third parties only when necessary.

Incidentally, it is some kind of misguided myth in this forum (and nowhere else I know of) that open source merely clones proprietary products. In some areas, such as NASA's software and that of the National labs, open source is all that exists - there are no proprietary products - and it is darned innovative. If we choose to restrict our view to "everyman" products, we can take Netscape/Mozilla, where we have tabbed browsing, popup blockers, Baysean filters on spam filters. Mozilla is advancing so fast that you just about get one feature assimilated before the next version is out, and I certainly don't know of a proprietary product that is leading the way. Is Linux copying proprietary? I don't know personally, but I think the sequence of kernel releases is based on experience and feedback and there isn't a commercial product to copy. True, the look and feel is so Windows-like that you need a label to prove realize isn't another Windows version, but this makes it easier for that 95% we keep hearing about to adapt to the product; the front end is not what Linux is. Okay, OpenOffice is pretty much a replacement for MS Office, except that its "real" native format is XML, and I don't think there was a proprietary antecedant for that. I think of this more like ISA - first the industry migrates to a standard, then it advances (like PCI is a bit advanced, don't you think?).

Long winded I know, Michael, but the message is "yeah, it's happening - find something else to worry about."

Posted by: IT_User   Posted on: 04/15/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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