Summary: The latest propaganda from the 'Microsoft press', Microsoft's distortion of formats using VML, and the continued threat of proprietary Samba substitutes masquerading as 'open'

Microsoft's Paoli, who played a role in distorting the nature of Microsoft Office formats (portraying them as "open"), has been busy recently 'openwashing' Microsoft's Fog Computing effort. Paoli's latest spin on 'open' is a subject we tackled here before [1, 2, 3], so we won't be going into the rebuttals again.

Roughly two weeks later it's time for the 'Microsoft press' to recite those very same talking points.

Microsoft believes that customers own their data in the cloud, Paoli said. To support data portability in Windows Azure, Microsoft advocates the Open Data Protocol (OData).

This whole spin around OData is also loved by Microsoft's MVP Mr. de Icaza, who uses Mono to 'openwash' .NET. One of his colleagues is already creating patent traps using Mono (a project called Banshee) and there are equally scary derivatives. Novell is by all means part of this problem. Novell Inc. -- and its VP de Icaza in particular -- also promoted OOXML.

One reader has told us that Microsoft's "VML is back" and it is using OOXML as a carrier, further demonstrating Microsoft's SVG snub [1, 2] (expected all along).

The Strict compliance level disallows some of the really MS Word early versions-flavoured features. For example, the Strict compliance level specifies that all drawings in an OOXML document are specified as DrawingML shapes, not as VML (Vector Markup Language).

Microsoft never changed. Having corrupted standards bodies all across the world it continues to ensure that only Microsoft Office will be able to handle people's personal files. Frank Ohlhorst has this new article advising people to buy proprietary software (disguised as "open" using the 'open' core trick) from former Microsoft employees [1, 2] (people should use Samba instead) to integrate networks the Microsoft way rather than the standard way. How long will it take for everyone to understand that "open" at Microsoft is a sham (usually Windows-only) and that falling into Microsoft protocols and formats is a technical nightmare? ⬆

"Microsoft's case wasn't helped when two books, Undocumented Windows and Undocumented DOS, written by Andrew Schulman, appeared on the shelves. The books charged Microsoft with building secret interfaces into its operating systems, giving its own applications developers an advantage over its competitors by making Microsoft's own applications run better than anyone else's."

--Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, a book composed
by the daughter of Microsoft's PR mogul