08.01.08
Posted in Microsoft, Office Suites, Security, OpenDocument, Open XML, OpenOffice at 4:08 pm by Roy Schestowitz
“I feel we are much too smug in dealing with Novell. Perhaps they didn’t hurt us in DOS yet — but it’s not because of product or their trying. It’s because we already had the OEMs wrapped up.”
–Jim Allchin, Microsoft
“I don’t understand how IE is going to win. The current path is simply to copy everything that Netscape does packaging and product wise.”
–Jim Allchin, Microsoft
Watch the following new article. Consider its meaning and implications in the context of what’s quoted above.
Microsoft strikes deals to preinstall OneCare
[…]
The deal covers 12 countries and includes hardware providers MDG Computers Canada, LEO Gesellschaft fur Computer & Kommunikation, Wortmann, Olidata, Hyrican Informationsysteme, Sotec Company, TICNova Quality Team, Sony Corporation of America and Toshiba Asia Pacific.
This may be scandalous not only because they try to shelve their competitors, which for many years defended the Windows platform (or at least tried to). Microsoft already uses this strategy along with H-P. But there is deeper issue here. They sell an operating system which lacks something called security. People need to purchase it separately (trial versions leading to subscription fees) or become one of about 320,000,000 zombie PCs.
Similar tricks are already used with Microsoft Office, bar the security issue. And speaking of which, watch this from the news:
The software giant will be selling it for just RM99 at the Kuala Lumpur PC Fair, which starts on Friday. Normally, the product would set you back RM499.
As a gentle reminder, this comes from Malaysia, which is moving to OpenOffice.org and ODF. There might be obvious motives here and the same type of thing was seen in a neighbouring country just a few days ago. A few weeks go this was done in South Africa, too.
For those who recall the Wipro-Microsoft dance/tango with OOXML [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], watch this new collaboration. They are rubbing each others’ back and some would say they are inseparable. █
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07.31.08
Posted in Microsoft, Windows, GNU/Linux, Office Suites, Security, Open XML, Vista at 5:58 am by Roy Schestowitz
Bruce Schneier: With iPhone, ‘Security’ Is Code for ‘Control’
A couple of readers have asked us to cover what initially seemed like old news. Slashdot picked it up some hours ago, the the story appears to have been reborn. It’s about Microsoft treating GNU/Linux on a dual-boot system like it’s garbage, throwing it away under the guise and excuse which is “security”.
One reader writes: “I just spotted this piece of news. The war Redmond is waging against GNU/Linux intensifies. […] I’m sure they will ridiculously attempt to justify this step for security reasons (but what best security measure than running a virus-resilient OS instead of windows in order to perform a sensitive task with safety than having a dual boot system - for example for online banking or to recover data from a windows partition after suffering a winOS crash-).”
Two similar examples where Microsoft used “security” to battle competition include:
- Blocking of access to old file types due to so-called “security issues”. Why fix some undisclosed flaws when you can force an upgrade (more revenue)? Is OOXML really more secure or is it somewhat of a back door?
- Then there’s the story about Microsoft trying to block virtualisation (of GNU/Linux of course) using a EULA, thus putting limitations also on the BIOS. Microsoft’s excuse was “security”, but antitrust interference had them give up the charade. It remains to be seen how it ends up.
At the moment, almost 1 in 2 Windows PCs is a zombie PC. When Microsoft speaks of dual-boot, i.e. GNU/Linux, as a security hazard (as opposed to ActiveX, back doors, and other cracker- or government-friendly ‘facilities’), one can hardly keep a straight face.
Politicians typically use words like “paedophiles” and “terrorists” to justify radical action or modification of the law. Microsoft too uses the same tactics, but it uses the word “security”. While there may be an element of truth sometimes, don’t believe it for a second. It’s a case of cutting off an entire limb because of a bad fingertip or toe tip. It’s opportunistic. █
“Really, I’m not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect.”
–Linus Torvalds
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Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Ron Hovsepian, Steve Ballmer, Office Suites, Mono, OpenDocument, SUN, Open XML, OpenOffice, FOSS, xandros at 4:59 am by Roy Schestowitz
Novell still leans towards Microsoft, too
Gavin Clarke is at it again. He does yet another Ramji/Microsoft glorification piece. This time, for a change, he adds this:
“We need to engage with Windows administrators - this stuff runs on Windows,” Ramji said.
For more from Ramji on how Microsoft surrendered sovereignty to the Open Source Initiative, on chief executive Steve Ballmer’s apparent rapprochement with open source - just don’t mention the “L” word - and how Microsoft won’t be open sourcing Windows, you can download George’s 11 minute podcast here.
Remember what Microsoft has in mind. As Steve Ballmer once shouted (and even damaged his vocal chords in the process), it’s “Windows Windows Windows”.
The Ramji/Clarke-like series isn’t an isolated incident and it never stops. Remember how Microsoft raves about its control of the press and its ability to push so-called (pseudo) ‘open source’ figures into the headlines. It even says so in a job description.
John Fontana does Ramji another glorifying piece, calling him a “guru”. And then there’s this:
Then it turned ugly.
The first questioner from the audience wanted to know what it would take for Microsoft not to claim patent infringement violations in open source code.
His inquiry was followed by whoops, whistles and thunderous applause.
The next question was about trust, as in why should we trust you this time? And the next referenced what the questioner called the “Office Open XML debacle” and accused Microsoft of using its power to buy international standards.
To explain what has happened here, consider this: Microsoft attacks Free software at the back and uses people like Ramji as a punch bag to absorb criticism and make critics of Microsoft look ugly (because, hey, Ramji didn’t say anything to aggravate, did he?). For similar reasons, female representatives are sometimes used to mitigate a verbal assault. It was a similar situation in OSBC 2008 [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].
Here is what Pamela Jones wrote recently about Microsoft’s attempts to bury memories of the OOXML fiasco:
Now, when it looks like the world really does want ODF instead of OOXML, surrogates are sending a dual message — first, that ODF has won, so OOXML isn’t worth fighting any more (and anyone who does is an “extremist” anti-Microsoft whiner), and two, that OASIS isn’t able to do a good job with ODF, so the same folks who brought you OOXML should take it over.
In the same vein, the message Microsoft delivers to us now is that Microsoft just loves open source and if someone complains about it (or — God forbid — insults ‘poor Ramji’), then that someone is “an “extremist” anti-Microsoft whiner,” to repeat the wording used above. It’s a moral shield which used to ensure that the Trojan horse can penetrate the very centre of Open Source City and then change its governance.
There is actually a lot more of the same in ODF/OOXML. Alex Brown [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21], for instance, played innocent a while ago by issuing an apologetic press release. Microsoft pulled the same type of stunt. The purpose was to shut up critics and make them look bad by pretending that Microsoft had already lost.
“The purpose was to shut up critics and make them look bad by pretending that Microsoft had already lost.”As Groklaw showed some hours ago, Microsoft lied. It was self-serving double-speak. Pamela Jones wrote: “If you believed the story put out that “ODF has won”, you may be in for a surprise. ZDNet Asia has some quotes from Oliver Bell, Microsoft Asia-Pacific’s regional technology officer, a CompTIA person, and a sales guy there, all touting OOXML as the dominant choice, due to it allegedly being the default format in Word. I’ll show you one example, but you’ll find it all of interest. Of course, what is available in Word is not the ISO format OOXML, despite what this article says.”
“CompTIA,” eh? Does it not matter who pays the wages there?
Also on the same subject, Novell continues bragging about its own version of OpenOffice.org. It won’t say out loud (with rare exceptions that it’s only for Novell’s paying customers. for whom it claims to have paid Microsoft for ‘protection\. Remember that this thing is filled with Mono hooks, VBA, and OOXML. Novell even makes the Windows version better than the GNU/Linux version. It was a promise made in the agreement between Ron Hovsepian and Steve Ballmer. Sun has many reasons to be displeased. Novell is with Microsoft. Novell supports Microsoft technologies like .NET and OOXML and nothing will change. █
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07.28.08
Posted in Formats, Microsoft, Finance, GNU/Linux, Office Suites, Europe, America, SUN, Oracle, Open XML, Google, FOSS, Database, Mail at 8:07 am by Roy Schestowitz
In recent posts about the secret pains of Microsoft we had identified growing weaknesses in the ‘Cash Cow’ departments [1, 2]. Well, in the past couple of days alone, the same problems persisted. Here is just a quick roundup that serves as another sample.
Office Business
As new signs of future trouble, consider the strong new push in China for a Microsoft Office replacement. Citing Red Flag Linux, crtiics would argue it’s a bargaining card, but once you look closely, it doesn’t quite seem so. They bypass Microsoft at formats level and the software looks impressive.
Ren predicts that the UOF standard will be promoted in at least six ministries in China by the end of 2008 and then might become compulsory among other Chinese entities. This should ruffle some feathers at Sun, IBM, and Microsoft.
In response, Microsoft changes its proprietary formats again and makes them competition-hostile. It claims to have changed the legal terms though. This happened at the end of last week.
Expect more margin erosion as Microsoft fights back. In response to competition on-line and on the desktop (chiefly OpenOffice.org), prices continue to drop. Here is a new report:
“This is also part of our Unlimited Potential program,” added Rivera-Moreno. Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential is a global program aimed at helping the middle and bottom of the world’s economic pyramid of about 5 billion people, the software company’s website stated.
Microsoft will of course blame what it calls “piracy”, but it should be very clear what is happening here. Even in wealthier countries, Office and Exchange (along with adjacent layers in the network and stack) are gradually being replaced. Here is the latest such story. Now it’s the Telegraph’s turn.
Might the news that the Telegraph Media Group (TMG) is moving to Google Apps and phasing out Microsoft Office and Exchange be in future remembered as the end of the Microsoft desktop arm-lock? Probably not, but the stakes are so high that it’s worth a little speculation.
Databases
Microsoft recently called MySQL a “biggest competitor”. Watch this new article from The Register. [language warning]
Sun Microsystems is about to *** the database world, and nobody sees it coming. Imagine a SQL database that can support the absurd level of concurrency promised by HyTM. Conveniently, Sun owns one of the most popular relational databases in the world: MySQL. If MySQL on a single Rock based system can outperform Oracle or Microsoft spread across many systems, then DBAs worldwide would gladly tell Larry Ellison or Steve Ballmer where to shove it.
Direction
The departure of Johnson appears to be worse than it initially seemed. It was possibly fast and impulsive, suggesting that there may have have been something to escape, something to run away from.
Johnson’s departure from Microsoft probably abrupt
[…]
Remarks from Chief Executive Steve Ballmer at that meeting certainly indicate the move was a surprise.
There’s more to indicate confusion and lack of focus. From Friday:
1. Ballmer: Big Plans, Few Options
Ballmer was emphatic, if not frustrated. If he said it once, he said it a thousand times: A bid to buy Yahoo!, or just its search business, was off the table.
2. Microsoft may need an IBM moment of clarity
Microsoft could use some of that focus. It’s not that Microsoft is forgetting the enterprise business. In fact, Microsoft is hellbent on being the No. 1 enterprise software company. The problem: That enterprise windfall is funding things like Live Search and Xbox. I credit Microsoft for its willingness to invest and be tenacious, but you have to wonder about the returns here.
3. As other companies cut back, Microsoft keeps spending
His goal isn’t to cut spending but “to convince you that we are investing money wisely.”
They try to acquire rather than earn more and more sources of revenue. Savings may be down, but they need to impress investors to keep momentum going. The analysts don’t exactly buy that because it is not sustainable. Microsoft may be approaching debt if it starts another round of buybacks.
The inability to evolve and desire to evolve is showing. For quite some time now (no more than several years) Microsoft has seen some of its margins declining and it thought about transitioning to other sectors, including chip production. It seems like Microsoft has just been dealt a blow by the FCC, which turns to some other suppliers after Microsoft’s repeated technical failures.
An early prototype built by Microsoft failed to operate in the FCC’s lab. Microsoft later determined the device was broken.
The FCC is now testing other prototypes built by Philips and Motorola as well as Silicon Valley startup Adaptrum and Singapore-based Institute for Infocomm Research.
The Motorola device connects to a database of TV stations operating within 125 miles and scans the airwaves nearly every second for other signals that may pop up unexpectedly, such as a wireless microphone.
Music players is another niche that made Microsoft envious, particularly because these player soon evolved to become phones and portable computers.
Even Microsoft’s biggest of fans are outraged by their lies and inability to penetrate the portable music players business (dominated primarily by Apple at the moment).
We didn’t want to post MSZuneFan’s “last video” because of the hard language but we’re more than happy to report it now has been removed from YouTube.
There are some more details here.
You’ve probably heard by now that the infamous Zune Guy (”Microsoft Zune”) was so disappointed with Microsoft that he’s elected to have his ink removed in place of something more in line with his shifted priorities. In addition to the reconstructive work he’s going to have, ZG claims that Microsoft actually lied to him about his free trip to the Redmond campus, which (as you might imagine) further tarnishes his image of the company. Unfortunately, according to reps from Microsoft we spoke with, the trip was never confirmed — only discussed — and ultimately canceled due to the very reasonable fear that it might lead a lot of “hyper-engaged users” to expect a trip of their own (though they did hook our man up with a free Zune and some related swag).
For those who have not kept track of the lifetime (or deathwatch) of the Zune, here are some articles of interest:
Losing Cuba
Losing business at an enterprise level is far from the same thing as losing an entire nation. Cuba’s plan seems to be on track.
At a technology conference in February last year, the Cuban government declared its intention to rid itself of Microsoft software in favor of open-source alternatives. According to an Associated Press report, Communications Minister Ramiro Valdes, who opened the conference, suggested that Microsoft was cooperating with U.S. military and intelligence authorities, and he proclaimed that IT is a battlefield on which Cuba is fighting imperialism.
More on Free software and Cuba:
In summary, things are changing fast. One just needs to look closely. █
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07.25.08
Posted in Microsoft, Windows, Office Suites, OpenDocument, OpenOffice, FOSS at 2:38 pm by Roy Schestowitz
Microsoft Office is poised for suffering and Microsoft too recently acknowledged its problem, labeling OpenOffice.org a “biggest competitor”. Watch it grabbing all the big awards in this year’s Sourceforge poll.
This must have left a mark on Microsoft.
Microsoft was the diamond sponsor for this year’s Sourceforge Community Choice Awards, culminating last night in a party at the Jupiter Hotel in Portland.
The big winner? Open Office. It swept the awards for top project, top enterprise project, and top project in education.
Indeed — no matter how ironic — this was sponsored by Microsoft. For those wondering about the incitation of panic among the awards, start here.
“Microsoft does not care about open source software.”In other interesting news, there’s a hot new discussion at the moment which began with this ComputerWorld article from Mr. Weiss. It’s about the harms which so-called “piracy” (typically meaning an attack on ships, as opposed to unauthorised copying) causes projects like OpenOffice.org.
Microsoft does not care about open source software. Watch how Microsoft mistreats its own ’shared/open source’ poster children, which make use of .NET. It’s actually is ‘neighbour press’ that reports on this problem.
…that, Walker thinks, is a shame. DotNetNuke has benefited hugely from the attention lavished on it by the DevDiv, but Walker believes there are scores of worthy, .NET-based projects that are just not getting the support they need.
“We’re hoping that over time that attitude will change and they will provide more support for native open source application vendors,” Walker told me.
Walker isn’t alone in this sentiment. Back in April, Coding Horror blogger Jeff Atwood spoke at length about his frustrations with how Microsoft treats open source developers. He went so far as to say that “open source projects are treated as second-class citizens in the Microsoft ecosystem.”
The company only rewards programs that exploit their users. What does that say about the company? █
“He [Bill Gates] is divisive. He is manipulative. He is a user. He has taken much from me and the industry.”
–Gary Kildall
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07.24.08
Posted in Formats, Microsoft, Office Suites, OpenDocument, Courtroom, Open XML, OpenOffice, FOSS, Fraud, ISO at 5:59 am by Roy Schestowitz
Broken ISO
It’s too hard to forget what ISO and Microsoft have done and continue doing. From their high horse they continue to snub developing countries. Here is how Bob Sutor puts it.
I think that ISO and IEC are on the edge of a precipice which, if they fall off, will cause them to rapidly lose relevance to IT (ICT) developments in many parts of the world, especially emerging markets.
What they appear to be saying to India, Brazil, South Africa, and Venezuela is “Go away, our process works. We love our process. You are wrong. Live by our rules and be quiet.”
If the appeals process is cut off without detailed community examination of the charges against what happened in the OOXML experience, I think that the reputations of the ISO and IEC will continue to diminish. It does not seem to me that anyone at the senior levels of these organizations get this. Rather than giving these four nations the cold shoulder, and doing it with what appears to this reader as having arrogant undertones, it makes far more sense for ISO and IEC to allow the process to carry on.
Complaints will surely continue to come. In fact, the process was so obviously broken and abused that Rob Weir has just published this detailed item. It shows what a disaster it has been from beginning to end.
When a new 6,000 page DIS is submitted to JTC1 only one month after the publication of another standard (ODF) in the exact same space (XML document formats for office applications) and 19 NB’s submit contradiction statements, and the JTC1 Secretariat’s “best effort” is to hold no consolations with the NB’s claiming contradictions, to hold no meeting, to make no attempt to resolve the question, then I believe that any NB would has a legitimate grounds for appeal on the inaction of JTC1 with regards to contradictions. There is no evidence that a “best effort” was made here to resolve the contradictions. Doing nothing is clearly incompatible with the required “best effort”.
It starts gently and gets down to more gory details. Just imagine that the BSI was taken to court over the abuses [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10].
A Call for Change
The FSF has just issued a post urging people to join the fight against Microsoft’s OOXML.
The fight against the adoption of OOXML as an ISO standard is continuing in many countries. In the UK the UK Unix & Open Systems User Group (UKUUG) unsuccessfully, sought a judicial review of the British Standards Institute’s decision to vote yes. UKUUG are now seeking to appeal against that rejection of a review and you can help them.
“Microsoft corrupted many members of ISO in order to win approval for its phony ‘open’ document format, OOXML. This was so governments that keep their documents in a Microsoft-only format can pretend that they are using ‘open standards.’ The government of South Africa has filed an appeal against the decision, citing the irregularities in the process.”
–Richard Stallman, June 2008
Security
As shown a couple of weeks ago, OOXML may be a security menace. Watch another potentially serious issue that Microsoft has introduced with its ‘moving goalposts’ approach.
I was coming in from Sunday School this past week into the main church service when I was summoned to the audio/visual booth. There was to be a presentation that morning and the PowerPoint file was not compatible with the A/V computer. Why? Because the file was created in Office 2007 & the computer ran Office 2003.
[…]
Now all the A/V people have to do is get the Microsoft update and there will be no other issues. But why should they have to go find it? Why wasn’t it automatically pushed to them. People with Office 2003 will (at some point or another) open Office 2007 files. They don’t want to find out that it doesn’t work. Most times, they won’t even know why it is not working or how to get it to work. All they want it to do is have it work.
So thanks, OpenOffice, for just working.
As this post hopefully demonstrates, not only has Microsoft broken compatibility with rival office suites; it also jeopardised users by breaking compatibility with security software whose filters are not ‘OOXML-fluent’ (and never will be).
A World of Freedom, Choice
Aside from Web-based substitutes to Microsoft Office, the following new article presents one among many options.
Another change has been the spread of the open-source software movement. Desktop competitors to Microsoft Office, such as OpenOffice.org, have begun to get some traction. These suites may not come with all the features of the Office apps, but they don’t come with its price tag, either. They also offer good functionality, good support for Office document formats (as well as truly open formats of their own), and you pay whatever you want to pay — or nothing at all.
As a result, users have become more open to considering alternatives to Microsoft’s ubiquitous suite.
Here is another short article about a lightweight alternative.
Abiword: One Lean, Mean, Word Processing Machine
OpenOffice.org gets a lot of attention these days as a practical, no-cost alternative to Microsoft Office. While OpenOffice.org does a fine job, however, there are times when a smaller, faster, feature-packed word processing program would be useful. There is another open-source application that fits the bill perfectly here — and it deserves far more attention than it gets.
The monolithic nature of Microsoft Office (one size fits all) and the monopolistic data formats typically mean that people’s computers must obey Microsoft’s hardware requirements, which they negotiate with companies like Intel to boost their profit. It’s never about the consumer or developer; the customers are OEMs, hardware manufacturers, the government, and the media industry.
Europe’s Commission intends to bring an end to this abuse. It seems genuinely willing to do the right thing and there’s room for citizens’ feedback until the end of September.
The draft document based on which the final EIF v2.0 will be elaborated is now available online on the IDABC website of the European Commission. External comments from all of those interested are welcome by 22 September 2008.
Even the Commission seems more open than ISO. Long live ISO. █
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07.17.08
Posted in Microsoft, Novell, Deception, Office Suites, OpenDocument, SUN, Open XML, OpenOffice at 1:56 pm by Roy Schestowitz
Novell’s promotion of Microsoft OOXML and bringing of Microsoft .NET (Mono) closer to OpenOffice.org hasn’t escaped developers’ attention. Moreover, their confrontation with Sun Microsystems over control of the project was quite nasty [1, 2, 3, 4]. Novell was seen as self-serving at the time.
Novell has a double commitment. On the one hand, it is a partner of Microsoft, so sales of Microsoft Office are important, even if they are defended through elevation of Microsoft formats. On the other hand, Novell works with Sun, which competes against Novell and Microsoft on several fronts while also collaborating. The question is: in which way would Novell lean?
According to recent communication among OpenOffice.org developers, Novell may slowly be alienating itself. Consider, for instance, what Michael Meeks writes.
Hmm, “they are in alpha, beta, whatever stage” 
I beg to differ. Yes - some of the patches in ooo-build are experimental, but we [Novell] disable these by default on stable branches so they are not applied. Everything else that is applied to our product Novell offers L3 support for - if you find something broken, we will fix it (well, if you’re a paying customer - but we’re interested in bugs of course anyway).
Interestingly, when you look at our L3 work-load, only a tiny fraction of our bugs are specific to our changes - almost all are present in the “conservative” up-stream OO.o. Conversely, in many other cases the fix for a bug is not in the “conservative” up-stream OO.o - so up-stream users suffer it, but not ours
That is of course just selfish, but it’s part of a broader picture. The thread as a whole is worth seeing.
The basic premises of Michael Meeks are a lie. OpenOffice.org versions that are produced by the Novell build system are typically much buggier than the ‘vanillas’.
More importantly, the thread above teaches us about that old admission that Novell is refusing to contribute to the codebase of OpenOffice.org. It then accuses Sun Microsystems of standing in its way (see the links at the very top again). Not nice.
Novell is not a team player. It did, after all, sell out the GNU/Linux ecosystem as well, did it not?
With ‘friends’ like these, who needs Microsoft? █
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07.06.08
Posted in Microsoft, Office Suites, KDE, Standard, OpenDocument, Asia, Open XML, FOSS at 5:41 am by Roy Schestowitz
I
t was months ago that we discovered how Microsoft had bullied even professors [1, 2] in pursuit of a win for its proprietary OOXML. Such strategies of sheer and shameless aggression rarely prove effective. If anything, once they blow out, they turn people sour. At the moment, according to a regular reader of Free Software Daily, Professor Rajanish Dass is pushing for adoption of ODF and OpenOffice.org.
a case study done by Prof. Rajanish Dass of IIM A on the Espousal of ODF by the Dept. of IT, Delhi.
This links to a PDF, which has appended inside it some valuable supportive exhibits.
KOffice Again
When it comes to ODF, OpenOffice.org is far from the only game in town. Arguing otherwise is just disinformation that typically serves the opponent of this OASIS-formed specification, which is elegant, portable and has a provable, portable implementation. KOffice, for instance, is prepared to collaborate with the OpenOffice.org in order to share information and probably code too. The impressions of KOffice 2.0 (still in alpha) seem very positive based on the following new review.
The good news for people new to KOffice is the integrated installer makes downloading and installing the required software a breeze, even on Windows.
Linux users are well acquainted with downloading many packages at a time from the Internet in order to install software, but this experience is less frequent on Windows, where users tend to download a monolithic package or install software from a DVD.
In the mean time, you’ll find OpenOffice.org recommended and promoted in a variety of places. It has just been highlighted by the Microsoft-centric (Paul Allen) CNET and this new blog post about Free software boasts OpenOffice.org as a poster child.
To help promote the spread of Software Freedom and the advancement of technology, try using some pieces of Free Software instead of Proprietary Software. Two very well know[n] pieces of Free Software you may want to try are the Firefox Web Browser (http://mozilla.com/firefox) and the OpenOffice Productivity Suite (http://openoffice.org).
With Firefox’ worldwide usage hovering around 19% (it’s hard to tell for sure for a variety of reasons), for OpenOffice.org to be listed there along Firefox’ side is quite an honour. OpenOffice.org is being downloaded over 1.2 million times a week and this excludes the many cases where it’s prebundled or where a single download makes multiple deployments. In any event, it’s very clear that ODF spreads quickly. Microsoft understands this. Here you see another new recommendation of OpenOffice.org:
The software I’m suggesting this week is called Open Office. If you can justify the expense of purchasing a word processor or spreadsheet like Microsoft Office, you will likely find that Open Office does everything you need and more. Even if you need to share documents with others using Microsoft Office, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Microsoft Responds
Earlier today we mentioned Microsoft’s latest move against low-cost laptops. It fights not fire with fire (or free with free). It fights libre with gratis. The latest such push is called Equipt.
Microsoft Fights Open Source Office With Equipt
Microsoft in unhappy with the slow sales of its Office suite and comes p with a new marketing plan: a subscription pricing model.
It’s important to warn peers and family about this trap. It’s a time-enable lock-in. Personal data is to be held hostage.
The ‘Innovation’ Excuse
Unsurprisingly, Adobe is in many ways like Microsoft. They are both deep in proprietary software. They can hardly imagine another way.
Consider this: Microsoft won’t ever stick to ECMA OOXML. It never did and it continues to deviate further away. Adobe is pretty much the same when it comes to Flash, so it would be risky to hold our breath based on this new gem from O’Grady.
Perhaps the biggest question facing the potential standards players will be the balance between standardization and the speed of innovation. When we spoke with Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch about the opening of its SWF format, one of the questions we put to him was the potential for SWF to make the transition from open specification to formal standard. While not dismissing the possibility out of hand, his concern was that it might negatively impact Adobe’s ability to innovate within the specification. Standards need not be inimical to innovation, but neither are they designed to foster it.
They confuse innovation and control, just like freedom and power. Fast innovation is never the work of one single party or entity; it’s the joining of minds. Some hardcore proprietary software companies see this idea as antithetical for no justified reason other than greed (or shareholders). █
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« Previous entries ·
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.