
The launch of Microsoft's new
interoperability principles have been both
cautiously welcomed and
sceptically scrutinised as the company goes about convincing the IT industry that it is genuine in its pursuit to provide interoperability with rival products, more consumer choice, less vendor lock-in and greater collaboration with the open source community.
Here, Microsoft Australia CTO Greg Stones gives
some obviously polished PR-approved responses to questions from Computerworld regarding the motivations behind support for ODF and PDF, what the software giant is really gaining by providing support to rival formats, and the ambiguities in its Open Specification Promise. He also gives a painfully polished response to
CNN's senior editor's claims that the company is trying to eliminate free software.Typical Microsoft PR response to tough questions, but interesting nonetheless....
Member since:
2005-07-06
Until I see people with microsoft.com addresses on the Samba, Open Office and other project mailing lists, with code submitted from microsoft.com addresses, and I see a commitment from Microsoft to using LDAP schemas that are standard outside of the Active Directory world, and password hash formats that are standard outside of the AD and Windows worlds, and actually communicating with people - all this is just fire and motion, as Joel Spolsky says.
It's sad that they're going around trying to get people to buy this, and it's really sad that they still think they can answer these questions with ridiculous soundbites that don't mean anything at all.