Assimilation by acquisition

Summary: The latest example of Microsoft applying OOXML-esque tactics to block national migrations to Open Source, just as it stifled a shift towards open standards

WHEN governments required open standards, Microsoft corrupted national bodies all around the world to help pretend that Microsoft Office was an "open standard". Microsoft is now trying something similar with "open source". We previously wrote about this in:

• Unsolicited Mail from Microsoft Canada Wants Developers to Create/Increase Government's Windows Lock-in
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Here is a new article which shows that Microsoft's dirty plot carries on:

DC Codeathon Event Gathers Developers of Open Source Projects for Government

[...]

Sponsored by Microsoft and the League of Technical Voters (LTV) -- a nonprofit group that aims to motivate and assist technical experts to improve lawmaking and governmental processes -- the event will display examples of improved citability on government Web sites.

Microsoft is to "open source" what fox is to the hen house. The latest storm over OOXML ought to serve as a reminder of that [1, 2, 3, 4]. The next version of Office won't be OOXML-compliant either. Scott Mace says that "MS Office remains the fault line between open and closed" and Charles from OpenOffice.org says that "Perhaps someone’s monthly fee was not sent in time, go figure." He probably refers to Alex Brown, who was a major part of (accomplice in) Microsoft's OOXML fiasco [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21]. He is just trying to cleanse his image and appear balanced, some have argued. Microsoft's booster Gavin Clarke lends his pen to it. ⬆