Microsoft calls IBM hypocritical on document standards

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A Language Problem

You have a language problem. Standard US English has been broken, and you now only speak Microsoft English, which means your defination of the word "standard" when applied to documents means "choice of application" to you, instead of "means of communication" in standard US English.

Standards are for interoperability between disparate systems, which is why we all try to use standard International English when talking to each other in this forum. US english is only understood by 300 million of the western world's population, whereas International English is understood by nearly 2 billion.

International English is open for anyone to use for their own communication application, and is a standard because its underlying rules and formats are published. But within the standard are groups of people who use their own unpublished privare rules and formats embodying their own mores and aspirations, excluding others from understanding and sharing in their communications.

There are many of us here outside the private space that is Microsoft's USA, who understand the words but don't understand the meaning of what MS is saying primarily because they are not communicating in International English.

I think you may be able to see the parallel here between ODF XML in which the rules and formats are completely published and MS XML which contains unpublished private rules and formats.

Changing the meaning of words is an old marketing trick, used to good effect by the old Big Bad Blue, who taught MS all their marketing expertise. "Open Systems" was countered by IBM's "Open Architecture", "Open Source" was countered by MS' "Shared Source", and now "Open Document Format" is countered by some new MS marketing dream word. The former two didn't work, so if MS' track record on hijacking open standards is anything to go by, we can expect this lastest effort to maintain that particular standard and eventually fail as well.

Microsoft could do well to employ someone like you, who obviously understands their MS English, to pre-empt these sort of situations by creating Open International Interoperability Standards in other areas of application communication before things like ODF appear and get in the way of their marketing plans. Multimedia would be a good place to start.

Posted by: stomfi@...   Posted on: 02/14/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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