You know what? Reading all this stuff (not your post, but the post you linked to and the stuff that alex linked to from there) makes me so extremely angry.

You're right. What does all this have to do with embracing standards? The only things he does is mention software implementations to which, at the time of implementation, there realy was no standard for anything of the like, or a) the standard was crap, or b) the defacto standard could be improved upon.

Mostly.

All he's doing is having a whinge, and an unjustified one at that.

And what really gets my goat is the whinging about things like the office format being GPL incompatible, or the need to license the IP of indigo and avalon to write a mono clone.

I'm unimpressed.

The last independent security survey I read had Win2k3 server with less unpatched security holes than Linux and it was even done by a generally Linux-happy group. It may require more resources but I have yet to see one crash (and I've seen Linux crash plenty) and it's far easier to install and configure than Linux is. It's a lot cheaper than an enterprise Linux implementation too. Redhat for example is on a subscription-based perpetual license. You pay $799 for ES Standard (which I would assume compares to 2k3 Standard) and you only get updates for a year unless you pay $799 again the next year. We pay ~$500 for 2k3 standard and updates are provided for the life of the product. Granted..you don't get as good of support service with Windows (with the product purchase) but then again you're not as likely to need it.

Well, Alex wants standards so that open source software can proliferate so he can sell support on it. There's no need to sell support for an integrated stack that is fairly easy to maintain.

I don't have any problem with Microsoft doing whatever they want to do to gain their market share. They are in software business and business is business. I do have problem with Microsoft using their dominant power to partake in unfair competition. They can change/extend standards to ensure their product is better. But in doing so, they put other players in difficult situations because all they want is to have a fair ground to compete with. You may argue that in doing so, Microsoft can provide a better software for consumres. But, I do believe that competition is necessary for any breakthroughs that can really make innovations.

I don't have any problem with Microsoft doing whatever they want to do to gain their market share. They are in software business and business is business. I do have problem with Microsoft using their dominant power to partake in unfair competition. They can change/extend standards to ensure their product is better. But in doing so, they put other players in difficult situations because all they want is to have a fair ground to compete with. You may argue that in doing so, Microsoft can provide a better software for consumres. But, I do believe that competition is necessary for any breakthroughs that can really make innovations.

Yeah I was harsh on them, but what I'm really trying to say is that open standards are what create beautiful ecosystems of development.

Microsoft keeps putting all this development time into features that would be cool, but because they are part of a platform play to lock you into Windows, people just don't use them.

Microsoft also talks a good game when it comes to standards, like the Common Language Runtime, but they cripple those efforts when they threaten the Mono team with lawsuits.

I can only speak for myself, but I don't want to develop on .NET because I know that if Windows Server isn't doing a good job for me, I cannot rely on switching to a Linux Server running the same application under Mono. So Microsoft just lost a developer with their .NET lockin strategy.

As for the GPL open doc thing, I really haven't looked into it enough to speak expertly on it, but I think what they are saying is that although Microsoft opens the schemas up, if you interact with Office XML in GPL code (like Linux), Microsoft will sue you. That's just no good.

I came upon this response by happenstance, feel free to give me an email ping if you disagree with one of my posts @ alex at sourcelabs, I'm happy to talk about them.

Your blog is realy very interesting.