You Can Still End the Desktop Monopoly. Fight the 'Monopoly Enabler' (OOXML).
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2007-07-23 05:16:14 UTC
- Modified: 2007-07-23 05:18:37 UTC
Here is a fragment from a
powerful short essay. It comes from Pieter Hintjens, President of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII).
This fight is over the future of Microsoft’s desktop monopoly. If OOXML gets passed as an ISO standard, Microsoft will be rolling out more ‘standards’ and end up with a stack of ISO standards that only it can implement. It is already spinning “open standard” to mean “closed format heavily protected by secrets and patents”. Free software won’t be able to implement OOXML, and users will be locked-in to Microsoft’s proprietary world for decades. It’s a clever abuse of the standards process.
It is worth mentioning that there are open invitations to OOXML elimination discussions. The NoOOXML CLub
mailing list is getting the word around the Web at this very moment. Please help us combat Microsoft's hijack attempts, which are well coordinated. The deals with Novell, Linspire, TurboLinux, and Xandros are part of the Big Plan.
Europe may have
begun investigating the
rotten stories, but without your help, their intervention could be insufficient.
Comments
Boy Shitzforwitz
2007-07-23 05:59:53
GNU/Linux user
2007-07-23 07:04:31
Actually Microsoft is not a Devil. Governments are our Devils. Governments make stupid laws and allow Microsoft to play not fair. In democratic countries governments should be the law, unfortunately they are not. Today companies are in charge, and law is not for puny common people.
Roy Schestowitz
2007-07-23 07:16:41
msg-id:< ol48a3de7skvljr0g4915gduja29jcqe8g@4ax.com >
"This company [Microsoft] for all intents and purposes is now a sovereign nation. They play by their own rules. And they are immune to the U.S. legal system.
Their weak spot is that they are so large and spread out that they've lost control of themselves.
So the answers to your questions are No... and Yes, but it will take some time and energy."
About the Groklaw article, it was mentioned some hours ago as well:
http://boycottnovell.com/2007/07/22/gpl-linspire-finance/
In short, we apparently have enough evidence to show that Microsoft pays its competitors to concede competition. The government fails to see this and intervene. Maybe it just turns a blind eye because Windows gives America tremendous control over the rest of the world.
beryl_user
2007-07-23 10:33:07
Roy Schestowitz
2007-07-23 10:39:09
John Drinkwater
2007-07-23 11:15:23
Boy & beryl_user, it’s quite easy to be anti-OOXML (Microsoft) yet pro-America. Please, get a clue.
Sam Hiser
2007-07-23 12:21:38
Let's keep the focus in on this theme here of OOXML as a first part of the plan to extend the ISO complex of proprietary standards. The other good theme is that Microsoft pays competitors to step down. We have evidence that Sun took money to agree not to interoperate with MS document formats (and this is affecting ODF), not to mention the deals you're keeping tabs on.
Stay the course!
Roy Schestowitz
2007-07-23 13:53:47
http://boycottnovell.com/2006/11/25/sun-novell-ms/
http://boycottnovell.com/2006/11/27/sun-patent-microsoft/
It's interesting to read this several months later. In hindsight, Mark was correct as well.
http://boycottnovell.com/2006/11/23/novell-mark-kent/