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"For years now, Microsoft has either failed to implement or has actively corrupted a range of truly open standards adopted and implemented by the rest of the industry. Unless and until that behaviour stops, today's words mean nothing."
Recently I accidentally went to a short promotional Microsoft presentation (non-US) about OOXML for work...I came away from that presentation with the impression that Microsoft as a company, and especially at the executive level, doesn't actually have a clear understanding of what an Open Standard is.
Yes, Microsoft will (I'm sure of it) loose its hold on a desktop and in business. But that doesn't mean it will die. It will shift its act into other areas, and as any other meta-organism it will keep fighting for its life.
You know what Microsoft doesn't get? -- For one thing, the Internet. Microsoft doesn't control it. What it used to be able to do in the dark now falls out of its noxious bag of tricks into the Internet's bright light, stage front and center. And there stands Microsoft in the spotlight, with its pants down, and let me tell you, it's not a pretty sight.
This week the Dutch government will discuss a proposal to switch as much as possible to open standards and open source software. The Microsoft director for the Netherlands, Theo Rinsema, responded that Microsoft is not objecting to open standards, but the proposal excludes too many not open standards, like PDF, MP3 and GSM, which are widely accepted standards.
"...Microsoft is too big to fail, but in the end it will likely become another AOL - a company that tried to create a walled "web-like" partition and failed, and that is now becoming increasingly irrelevant as a consequence...
In the past, I’ve noticed that reviews of the various GNU/Linux OS distributions have frequently made point of their downfalls when compared to one Microsoft OS or another. This doesn’t make much sense in the grand scale of things, because most-if not all-of Microsoft’s advantages come from being the long-time
"Despite having an open source strategy the South African government doesn't really understand how to benefit from OSS. This is according to Microsoft director of corporate standards, Jason Matusow." Stay tune for more FUD from Microsoft...