“Initiate Plan A”
* Destroy FOSS with FUD => “Get the Facts”, “Cancer”, etc.

“Outcome of Plan A”
* Spectacular Failure.

“Initiate Plan B”
* Create the impression of “interoperability” by olive branching with FOSS.

Why do I say “impression”? Because its very obvious that all this is a facade!

(1) “MS’s Open Specification Promise” is deliberately incompatible with the GPL. (They won’t officially acknowledge it, but instead, provide some half hearted response about “legal interpretation”. It was a simple “Yes/No” question, and they couldn’t even answer it!)

(2) Their intention is to encourage open source developers to work only on their platform. (ie: Windows)…The goal is to kill Linux. An OS is nothing without good applications.

(3) They have tried to emulate FOSS. And this has also failed. (Their version of SourceForge and their “Linux/Open source Lab”…Port25).

(4) They’ve only become generous when they know it gives them leverage over others OR they have been legally pressured into it. (See the European anti-trust case).

(5) They have manipulated the ISO process to their advantage. Every geek on this planet who cares for standards knows it. (ie: Stacking the votes with local Microsoft Certified Partners in certain countries).

(6) Instead of working on an OOXML to ODF (vice versa) plug-in themselves, (as they have the full OOXML implementation), they hire third-parties to do the work, and put the project on Sourceforge to TRY to make a good impression.

The fact is, despite all their recent “olive branching”, it doesn’t hide the values and principles of Microsoft for the last 20yrs+.

That is:
(1) Destroy ALL competition by any means. This is WAR!
(2) Take control or develop OUR OWN standards.
(3) Subvert anything that will hurt our future.

They have NO intention of actively taking part in Open Source in the traditional sense. Instead, they will redefine what “open” means under their terms and use their PR to push their definition.

They ARE the bad guy. No matter how hard you try, you cannot do deals with bad guys. Because you will always be left out in the gutter, bleeding from the huge knife in your back.

The best way to handle Microsoft is to ignore them, and minimise your reliance on them. (Being completely independent of them is often the best outcome).

I hope the Blender guys aren’t politically-naive like many in the “open source” crowd.

I’m so tired of the “open source” people criticizing RMS and free software ideology when they’re so damned naive!

Don’t play nice with Microsoft, your community will be violated in the end!

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/02/08/Microsoft-buys-3D-company-for-Virtual-Earth_1.html

M$ has started to fall behind in OpenGL support and with the rise of the game consoles (of which even the PS2 outsells the M$ turd) there is no need for Windows PC-based gaming.

However, since many of the consoles dual boot Linux, I’d like to see the option to plug the console into the main desktop machine and act as a single-node render farm.

It is a bit of a double-edged sword: for example (if memory serves), Mozilla/Firefox had NTLM authentication on Windows only for a long time, which meant it could do real single sign-on just on that platform. Very important for people using corporate intranets, but obviously putting non-Windows platforms at a disadvantage.