07.23.07
You Can Still End the Desktop Monopoly. Fight the ‘Monopoly Enabler’ (OOXML).
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.
Content is available under CC-BY-SA
Boy Shitzforwitz said,
July 23, 2007 at 12:59 am
This FUD post is brought to you by the combined efforts and funding of RedHat, Canonical and the Free Software Foundation, which also hosts the excellent ‘badvista.org’ FUD campaign. FLOSS rocks!
GNU/Linux user said,
July 23, 2007 at 2:04 am
Just take a look at news like this http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2007072014373817 You should know that there are a strong facts that say against MS business policy.
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 said,
July 23, 2007 at 2:16 am
Just a few hours ago, in a discussion that I had elsewhere:
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 said,
July 23, 2007 at 5:33 am
Ahhh, so now we see what this is about. You’re not just anti-Microsoft, you’re really just another hater of Americans. Wow, FLOSS evangelization never looked better than in your expert hands! Boy Shitznowitz rocks!
Roy Schestowitz said,
July 23, 2007 at 5:39 am
Will you stop nymshifting? How many different identities have you trolled with, ‘beryl_user’? Your style is consistent, so the morphing fools nobody.
John Drinkwater said,
July 23, 2007 at 6:15 am
What’s with all the trolls recently?
I can’t wait for his next claim, where he labels you Communist, or a member of the Nazi party
Boy & beryl_user, it’s quite easy to be anti-OOXML (Microsoft) yet pro-America. Please, get a clue.
Sam Hiser said,
July 23, 2007 at 7:21 am
Attracting trolls is the second highest form of flattery, Roy. The time to spend responding to them is time away from what you were doing.
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 said,
July 23, 2007 at 8:53 am
Last year there were some discussions which compared the deal with Sun to other deals. The transcript had to be pulled from the Web Archive because Microsoft no longer had it online.
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/