[Macworld]

Post your comments for Microsoft makes boldest move yet embracing open source here

[warlock7]

This is another ploy to push OOXML! BS MS!!! You're not embracing open source when your proprietary formatting of an open standard is your real motivation. Nobody wants OOXML!!!

They put out an open source based web site, great. What about Silverlight?!?! Nothing open about that new attempt to take complete control of the intraweb. MS is just doing the same old song and dance in order to quiet down the EU and once they get them off their back it'll be back to business as usual.

[tomtom]

"They put out an open source based web site, great. What about Silverlight?!?! Nothing open about that new attempt to take complete control of the intraweb. MS is just doing the same old song and dance in order to quiet down the EU and once they get them off their back it'll be back to business as usual."
Indeed yes but with one proviso. MS has not pulled the wool over the focused eyes at the EU.
See this quick off the mark reaction from EU officials here:-
http://www.reuters.c...U00633320080221

[doglesby]

"some companiesa??including Novella??signed specific deals with the vendor to protect customers from indemnification"
Actually, I'm pretty sure the deals provide indemnification, rather than protection from it. Someone needs to look up that word.

[Gatesbasher]

MS wouldn't have offered to reveal their proprietary APIs if they intended to keep using them. Now that Vista is a mega-disaster, they must have some plan to abandon Windows, figuring they can "absorb and subvert" (their usual strategy) the Open Source movement. They figure they can make their versions "just a little" incompatible (it's open source, they can change it any way they want), so that even if they reveal their modifications, they'll have the installed base to become the center of gravity of the new Open Source/Microsoft universe. Believe me, they have a plan, or they wouldn't be doing this.

[Grapho]

Yes. I am also skeptic about the real underlaying motivation. In any case I believe that Microsoft has become less relevant then ever and this trend will continue.

[Frost7]

I wonder if Microsoft is "embracing" open source the same way they "embraced OS/2."
"Embracing" for Microsoft means either stealing something or killing something.

[greg30307]

As warlock7 says above, this is about OOXML. They want to use this press conference to distract attention from something much more important to them: the adoption of Open Office XML (OOXML) at a meeting of International Organization for Standardization (ISO) next week in Geneva. There Microsoft hopes to have its so-called open file format approved as an international standard.
MS is making this move because many governments have started requiring documents for their use be in an open, internationally recognized standard format. There already exists such a format, Open Document Format (ODF), which some countries were beginning to require. ODF, though, is truly open and is not owned by any one company. Microsoft, of course, wants the standard to be owned and controlled by them. Microsoft has subverted the international standards process in its quest. The EU has just opened an investigation into the methods Microsoft has used to achieve this extremely important goal. See Wall Street Journal article from February 8:
Microsoft's Office Push Scrutinized by EU
Regulators Are Looking At How Firm Corralled Support for the Software
By CHARLES FORELLE
BRUSSELS -- European regulators are examining whether Microsoft Corp. violated antitrust laws during a struggle last year to ratify its Office software file format as an international standard.
...In the months and weeks leading up to the vote, Microsoft resellers and other allies joined standards bodies en masse -- helping swell the Italian group, for instance, from a half-dozen members to 85. Opponents said Microsoft stacked committees. People familiar with the matter say EU regulators are now questioning whether Microsoft's actions were illegal.
entire article at (but you have to pay for it):
http://online.wsj.co...7034452081.html
For those who want to know more:
http://www.noooxml.org/start