Bonum Certa Men Certa

When You Know That Microsoft Has Formally Hijacked Open Source

Holy Macaroni! At first, when viewed in the feeds reader, the following article seemed like humour, but it's not (it's from April 3rd, not April 1st). The Times of India, a respectable publication, has just published an article with the headline: "MS says it won open source war." This refers only to the OOXML fiasco. So, what on earth is "open source" here (mind another hijack of this term) and what makes this a win, let alone a "war"? It's only an isolated step, which was taken using sheer corruption that remains under investigation with an appeal. OOXML won't ever be implemented and whatever strives to implement something close to it is not open source, it's proprietary. OOXML itself is proprietary.

Can you see how Microsoft hijacks the team "open source" and puts it up for display in mainstream papers, claiming that it "won the open source war"? As in defeated others at an open source game, using proprietary formats? What would an innocent non-techie reader think? The term "open source" is being artificially diluted here and this dilution serves no-one but Microsoft. Remember Aras?

On a brighter note, if you want some OOXML humour, Groklaw has some.

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