Comments on: Is Microsoft ‘Pulling a Netscape’ on Flash, Firefox, VMWare?

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 02:07:45 +0000

I was thinking more along the lines of FSF or some standards committee. It seems to be beyond the scope of EFF. I’ll drop Brad Templeton an E-mail later.

By: Straddle my Paddle

Straddle my Paddle — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 01:49:11 +0000

Someone needs to ask EFF to take action on this.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:00:43 +0000

Victor, that's just what appears to be happening. At the moment we ought to just rely the most on Vinje et al in the Commission. A large group which includes IBM reported this abuse approximately a year ago. I don't know what took the EC so long to respond and take action.

By: Victor Soliz

Victor Soliz — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:13:58 +0000

Is there anything we can do ? I mean, seriously, Microsoft is attempting to hijack the web with silverlight and make .net a requirement to .. browse the world wide web, can’t we do something to prevent this? I don’t know, perhaps someone should begin information campaigns? I guess we might need people to boycott any attempt of websites to move to it as well.

It would be a shame if Microsoft is able to pull out a netscape once again, as if the world did learned nothing from the past.

By: Stephane Rodriguez

Stephane Rodriguez — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 04:13:09 +0000

No matter how ludicrous Microsoft are, I think they’ll eventually fall under their own weight. People out there don’t want to install software anymore. The more Microsoft enables virtualization, the more they are cannibalizing themselves, since they open up scenarios that would have been forbidden just a few years ago. Virtualization allows anyone to run an old operating system version on their computer and as such completely disregard Microsoft’s forced upgrades. It’s a big deal in the long run and will kill Windows cash cow. For the Office cash cow, it’s about the same : the more Internet services they open up (like viewing Office documents in full fidelity with just HTML in a web browser), the more they give reasons not to purchase Office software anymore.

And, since Microsoft can’t seem to be able to fix dll hell and component versioning (the Windows installer MSI is flawed since day one, Microsoft hired consultants to help them fix dll hell and versioning hell, but said consultants have since then moved on to other subjects), I also have good hope that Silverlight updates will crash themselves and create PR disasters.