11.26.07
Quick Mention: The Role of Document Standards and the Wrath of Sharepoint Revisited
Sharepoint is not about sharing space with competitors
It has been a while since we last mentioned Sharepoint, which is a huge lockin squid that wraps its tentacles around documents. Please pay careful attention to what Matt Asay has to say. He understands this because his company is deep inside these territories.
While most of the open-source world sleeps, Microsoft is gearing up for a truly innovative take on its next-generation operating system. Sharepoint, not Windows, is the future of Microsoft’s intended dominance.
He talks about the role of ODF and the reason we ought to look at a broader picture that involves business processes in the enterprise. There is a project that involves Mainsoft and IBM’s WebSphere which strives to address this threat. Dana Blankenhorn wrote about it last week.
Andy Updegrove has meanwhile turned his attention to the need to document the whole ODF/OOXML story. Fortunately, the story will not be told by a side to whom this whole thing is a matter of its own commercial interests, by its own admission.
Here is what Andy says about the literature we will have.
There is little question, I think, that regardless of where and how this saga ends, it will be studied in business schools and by economists for decades to come. What they will conclude will depend in part upon the materials we leave behind for them to work with. That’s one of the reasons I’m launching this effort now, as a publicly posted eBook in progress, rather than waiting until some indefinite point in the future to reconnect with the players in this drama to mine their recollections of what they were thinking and doing at the time, by then colored by the passage of time and the influence of later events.
Andy says that the book (eBook) might be used by economists, but hopefully he’ll cover the Massachusetts story extensively enough to make it a good read for those who study bullying, manipulation, and even subtle bribery. The Massachusetts story is just one example that left many of us utterly disgusted. █
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.