Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Fri 20th Dec 2002 12:41 UTC
"The Open Source community's answer is to ignore Microsoft's incredible technological lead - because it is proprietary and not a standard - and instead focusses on their own cool thing and self-gratifying cool features, because they think they can do better (which is where the ignorance combined with ego comes in)." Join the discussion at Advogato.
Permalink for comment
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Recent Original Stories
Recent Comments
Headlines
Random Comments
Random Stories
Random OS Link
Who cares about who is arrogant, or bad or good. The issue is not this namecalling and ethical crap
Bottom line, standards are important in computing: APIs, file formats, communication protocols. The MS business plan was, is, continues to be - we own the frickin' standard. Buy our stuff or don't have a personal computer that works with anything. That is good for MS shareholders. MS is just doing exactly what any business would do in their shoes.
Of course having a standard - even a one company one - is tremendously valuable and MS gets credit for having done this in the early days of the PC. Lots of companies made money and saved money because of what MS did.
But the problem is there is a better, long-term solution to "One Company to Rule Them All." It's called open standards, standards controlled by technical bodies, standards controlled by anyone and anything other than ONE FRICKEN COMPANY. So that multiple products and platforms - even proprietary ones like OS X and Windows -- can function together and communicate. Unix and its various flavors and the Internet and OSS are the model for this - nobody owns it.
MS is like the Aunt that comes and stays with the family while Mom and Dad are sick or something and then she won't go home. She makes the mistake of thinking her good deeds entitle her to free rent forever.