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A tour of the Microsoft open source lab
Microsoft's Port 25 weblog is carrying a tour of the company's open source software lab. "To some folks outside of Microsoft, the Open-Source Software Lab has been a sort of mysterious place. A place where we study Linux and open-source software, cursing our enemies while brewing our malevolent plans to combat those nasty FOSS developers. Oh, and we also have a death ray on the roof of building 17. It's Linux-powered, of course, just to add a little irony."
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A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 20, 2008 23:04 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] HMmmmmmm. Port25. I love the smell of well-paid astroturf in the afternoon.
Holy microcrap Batman! Posted Mar 21, 2008 1:15 UTC (Fri) by mgb (guest, #3226) [Link] Since when does a 366x288 JPEG image need a megabyte? Oh, wait, my bad - these guys are micro$ofties. They send a 2272x1704 JPEG to the browser and then resize it in HTML. Just to add to the confusion, the HTML specifies two sets of sizes - 366x288 and 1825x1602 - neither of which matches the actual 2272x1704 image size. One set is specified via HEIGHT/WIDTH tags and one set via a STYLE, and then of course there's the actual image size. This is presumably so that different browsers exhibit one of three confusingly different behaviors, all with maximum inefficiency - a key feature of micro$oft products. The META claims that this crap was generated by "CommunityServer 2007.1 (Build: 20917.1142)". Definitely something to avoid.
Holy microcrap Batman! Posted Mar 21, 2008 1:24 UTC (Fri) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link] Come on. Such comments are uncalled for.
Holy microcrap Batman! Posted Mar 22, 2008 21:44 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Why are they uncalled for? Here are some microsofties trying to look cool. They serve us a bunch of crappy pages that just prove how cool they are. When you are presented with a Trojan horse, at least you can require a minimum of craftsmanship.
Holy microcrap Batman! Posted Mar 23, 2008 19:56 UTC (Sun) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link] Right on. Microsofties are lame. Ideally they should be prevented from blogging, using the web, and most importantly using Linux. Why not just kill them all while we are at it :-)
Holy microcrap Batman! Posted Mar 23, 2008 21:23 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Of course they are lame; if they were smart, they'd be working over at Google XD
Flying chair alert Posted Mar 26, 2008 7:39 UTC (Wed) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] Be careful with comments about Microsoft employees jumping ship to Google. A certain someone at MS has been rumored to fly off the handle at this very idea...
Holy microcrap Batman! Posted Mar 21, 2008 1:46 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] Brand loyalty is the phrase you're looking for. Microsoft needed blogging, because everyone was blogging. People who ran companies that make beans were blogging. Grandparents were blogging. So Microsoft needed to be blogging too. Some individual Microsoft employees had been blogging, as ordinary users of (often Linux or *BSD based) blog sites. But at a corporate level Microsoft couldn't just use an existing blogging site, and they definitely couldn't install some sort of LAMP solution. It needed to use as many Microsoft technologies as possible - So they went with Community Server. But Community server isn't very good. It's riddled with bugs, and it seems that adding features you might want is either very difficult, or at least hard to do without effectively forking the project. Microsoft's own Community Server installs have had weird problems, outages, big feature gaps compared to competing blogs people are familiar with and so on. So it all looks rather poor, particularly for the Microsoft bloggers working on .NET (the platform used) and to a lesser extent SQL Server (the RDBMS used). It's also causes embarassment for the IE group (it doesn't obey anything resembling web standards, so they get beaten up about that, and it sometimes used to trigger rendering bugs in IE, so they'd get beaten up even more about that).
Chill-out Batman! Posted Mar 21, 2008 6:48 UTC (Fri) by Obsid (guest, #42617) [Link] Hey "mgb", We noticed this already, this should be fixed now. Keep your pants on next time man! ...no, really, keep them on. Steve
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même microcrap Posted Mar 21, 2008 7:57 UTC (Fri) by mgb (guest, #3226) [Link] You fixed one kind of problem Steve, but you created new problems. And there are many unrelated problems that have not been addressed. You now have no IMG WIDTH/HEIGHT attributes, which slows page rendering. You also have no IMG ALT attributes, so the page is compromised for those with text mode browsers or text-to-speech browsers. And you forgot to remove the old anchors although there's nothing left between the A and /A so they're unclickable and therefore just a waste of resources. They're not even commented out. But performance and accessibility problems are only the tip of the iceberg. Even after your "fix" there are a mind-blowing 249 XHTML validation errors just from that one page. Even humans generate better HTML than Community Server! By way of comparison, the page for this article downloads quickly, renders quickly, and has zero validation errors. (Nice job Mr Corbet!) Why not install some commercial-grade FLOSS blogging software on one of those Linux boxes in your lab, at least until Community Server is ready for alpha testing?
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 21, 2008 6:59 UTC (Fri) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link] I work with routers and both Cisco and Juniper both have the other company's gear in their test labs. As you'd expect since ISPs demand that routers interoperate. Why should it shock me that Microsoft has Linux servers in its lab? I suppose because Microsoft doesn't have the same reputation for interoperability. The elephant in the room unanswered by this blog entry is what use Microsoft makes of its Linux test lab. Is the result better interoperation better or worse? The results to date suggest deliberately worse interoperation is the result of Microsoft's better understanding of Linux systems.
Interop success Posted Mar 21, 2008 14:45 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] One example we know of, which presumably used this lab (although it's possible they originally acted on reports from a customer running pre-release software) is a bug in Samba. A typographical mistake meant that Samba incorrectly handled a type of message which wasn't yet being used by shipping Microsoft CIFS clients (it was to be introduced in Vista). When tested with clients which did use the feature IIRC it caused directory listings to be truncated. Microsoft eventually made the decision not to use the feature supported by this new message type, in part because it was unreliable with Samba, and there are large enterprise customers running Samba. So that's an interop success story, although not one that reflects very well on Free Software in this case. Obviously the Samba team fixed this, but that only helps people with new installs, or who know to update their system (which may be a black-box storage device they bought from some Taiwanese outfit). So Microsoft decided it wasn't practical to go ahead. You should be able to find the long debates about this on Raymond Chen's "The Old New Thing" blog if you're interested.
Interop success Posted Mar 21, 2008 17:54 UTC (Fri) by 3vi1 (guest, #39830) [Link] So what you're saying is: Microsoft didn't use a (apparently so important that it was never used before) feature because *Vista* clients would not have suffered in the interoperability area. If I were MS, I would have just implemented the feature, and add a registry flag to allow Vista clients to fall back to "the old way" if a company needed those clients to talk to Samba. This would have allowed the companies to fix the problem either (preferably) at the server or client side. I highly doubt that customers with very large MS contracts do not have either the in-house expertise to upgrade Samba themselves, or the support contracts to upgrade their "black-box" devices.
Interop success Posted Mar 21, 2008 19:34 UTC (Fri) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] Actually, what Microsoft did makes business sense: if they'd used the option, some of their customers would have found that switching from XP to Vista breaks the client on their network. This would contribute to slow adoption of Vista, which has been a real problem for them. It's much better politically for them to do it in SP 2 or something, by which point their users will probably have upgrades Samba for other reasons anyway and when it doesn't reflect badly on Vista in general if there are awkwardnesses.
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 21, 2008 8:41 UTC (Fri) by afalko (subscriber, #37028) [Link] Is it me or did I learn just about nothing from reading the blog article? I am curious what exactly Microsoft researchs? Performance? Features? How to make winapps compatible? Why do they need all the powerful hardware? I "researched" OSS on a Pentium III 600MHz box, I'm sure they could have too. If they "love" OSS so much, do they contribute patches or release OSS? ...My 2 cents...I don't like secrecy. The article does not convince me at all that Microsoft is pro-OSS/nice to OSS.
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 21, 2008 11:50 UTC (Fri) by Felix.Braun (subscriber, #3032) [Link] It's true that the blog entry is a bit light on information. But then, that's true for about 99% of all other blog entries out there. As I see it, this is a completely ordinary blog entry about some folks on the Microsoft Campus who have some really sweet hardware to play with open source code. Their team seems to total all of four employees. Can you think, what kind of influence a team of four may have within a company like Microsoft? That seems to reflect the importance level that is attributed to interoperability there. Be that as it may, you sure can't blame these four guys for company policy. For all we know they might be perfectly respectable hackers just doing their job in a world filled with suits, just like the rest of us. Can you imagine, what it must feel like to work on OSS at Microsoft? No wonder these guys may feel a bit isolated. So they just wanted to announce their existence to the world in a blog post. I don't see why they have to be held to higher standards than the rest of the blogosphere just because they happen to be on Microsoft's payroll.
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 21, 2008 12:15 UTC (Fri) by cpm (guest, #3554) [Link] Yet they still work there. That's on them.
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 21, 2008 16:39 UTC (Fri) by szh (guest, #23558) [Link] > you sure can't blame these four guys for company policy. Yes, only blame for choosing the company with such policy. > might be perfectly respectable hackers Your definition of respect must be different from mine. > just doing their job in a world filled with suits, just like the rest of us. That's no excuse for helping THE MOST ANTI-FOSS suits in the world. > So they just wanted to announce their existence to the world I believe they were told to do so, to make a better image of the company, which tries hard to destroy FOSS, yet they lie "We all love Linux and open-source".
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 21, 2008 16:58 UTC (Fri) by Obsid (guest, #42617) [Link] > I am curious what exactly Microsoft researchs? Performance? Features? How > to make winapps compatible? Yes :) Add interoperability and education too. Steve
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 21, 2008 9:24 UTC (Fri) by pheldens (guest, #19366) [Link] It reeks of somekind of counter propaganda, "look we run some floss, it's ok for some geeks in a basement to hobby around with." The guys themselves may not be aware of this. Who gave you permission to publish this? And the amount of tuxes, are those supposed to convince us?
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 21, 2008 18:23 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Of course it's propaganda. All companies have some form of propaganda to promote it's products or try to drum up attention. Fundamentally it's not much different then any open source program with a FAQ page that answers the question "why use our software?". The major difference is that it's trying to be 'un-corporate". Hence my astroturf comment above. Same thing with their other similar website called 'Channel9'. That website is a bit worse, though. Also has more useful and interesting information, too. If the port25 people want respect they are going to have to do more then just a blog though... For example a how-to on making Samba be a PDC for Vista, with work-arounds, configuration gotcha's and maybe some patches. _Then_ they might be taken seriously. Actually providing useful details on integrating Windows servers and desktops with Linux servers and desktops would be a huge step forward. Another example would be maybe something like using MySQL or Postgresql as a backend for Access 2007 in order to make forms built in MS Office be multi-user. This sort of information is stuff that people actually need, a Windows knowledge base for Linux users, since the majority of Linux admins are going to be dealing with Windows whether they like it or not. Of course if most people here are right there is now way in hell Microsoft would allow them to publish information, and even details on Microsoft's products, that will make it possibly easier to replace MS products with FOSS.
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 21, 2008 14:33 UTC (Fri) by rwoodrum (guest, #38318) [Link] Microsoft has no volition to work with the Open Source community. Currently working with several ex-Microsoft employees has only etched this into my head more deeply. It's rather disappointing as we have built a start-up on open-source applications and yet there are precious few (probably 2/20) of us that give back to the community and see this opportunity as something other than "free" software. And yet again, many exhibit this moral turpitude that the products are "superior" and inherently more "serious." This is not the way technology is evolving and I don't think Microsoft will be able to sustain its bloat in perpetuity... I will be glad when it finally comes to terms with reality.
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 21, 2008 17:45 UTC (Fri) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link] Microsoft loves the open source community. They absolutely adore the work of the various flavors of BSD and happily use their work at every opportunity. In a perfect world we wouldn't need a GPL, the BSD license would be all that's needed. The reality is that companies like MS are happy to take the work of others and provide nothing back, really that's why the GPL exists. Microsoft would never admit publicly that they couldn't get a working TCP/IP stack until they took the BSD code and you don't see any gratitude or giving back. But don't doubt for a minute that MS loves open source, just not the GPL kind.
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 21, 2008 23:12 UTC (Fri) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] This proportion of people actually contributing vs just enjoying the fact that you don't have to pay is roughly the same I see around me here. Ditto for people expounding on "software freedom" and its advantages, without doing more than talk.
Good work alienating Linux fans Posted Mar 21, 2008 19:20 UTC (Fri) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link] Good work guys, with all you negative comments. Make sure to alienate the few Microsoft employees that use/like Linux. Doesn't it seems a bit immature to condemn all of them just because they work for Microsoft ? The suggestions to find another job because Microsoft is "evil" make me laugh. Yeah, sure everybody should quit their Microsoft jobs - the hell with feeding their family, the mortgage, etc. This is why from outside the OSS community can seem like a hostile bunch of nerds who never leave their parent's basement. (BTW, I have no association with Microsoft whatsoever, and I use Linux both professionally and at home.)
Good work alienating Linux fans Posted Mar 21, 2008 20:10 UTC (Fri) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link] >Doesn't it seems a bit immature to condemn all of them just because they work for Microsoft ? I have to agree here. "Some of these companies primarily developed non-free software, but the two activities were separate; thus, we could ignore their non-free products, and work with them on free software projects. Then we could honestly thank them afterward for their free software contributions, without talking about the rest of what they did." is a quote of rms I agree with. So if the people at the ms linux-lab are actually making contributions to Free Software, it is unfair they should be shunned or ridiculed. Or alternatively, all contributions from people receiving their paycheck from proprietary software vendors (such as HP or IBM) should be shunned, which obviously would be very detrimental to Free Software. I understand how great it feels to unite under a single banner against *the enemy*, but in truth microsoft is just *a* proprietary software vendor out of many. >Yeah, sure everybody should quit their Microsoft jobs - the hell with feeding their family, the mortgage, etc. Depending on what their job is that might be a good idea. "Feeding their family" is almost always an appeal to emotion. In reality it is often closer to "have a second car" or "own a detached house" or similar luxuries.
Good work alienating Linux fans Posted Mar 21, 2008 20:29 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Doesn't it seems a bit immature to condemn all of them just because they work for Microsoft? If you choose to work for a convicted criminal monopolist, what do you expect? The market for software developers is such that a software developer choosing not to work for Microsoft could still make a pretty good living. The whole "port 25" website is just propaganda; it's completely insincere. Oh sure, a few of the geeks working in Microsoft's OSS lab may be stupid or deluded enough to think they'll actually make a difference, but no-one with an ounce of sense is fooled by Microsoft's clumsy and transparent PR attempts. Luckily for us, Microsoft's subtlety is about on par with their software quality.
Good work alienating Linux fans Posted Mar 21, 2008 20:51 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] I wouldn't be worried about alienating them. If they didn't think that they were not going to get flack for working for Microsoft then they are morons. Any reasonably intelligent person should realize this and, accordingly, not give a crap one way or another. Let it roll off like water on a duck's back.
Individually Smart, Collective Stupid Posted Mar 25, 2008 3:56 UTC (Tue) by ldo (subscriber, #40946) [Link]
No it doesn't. While there are many individually smart people working at Microsoft, collectively a lot of their intelligence just seems to cancel out. A case in point is this long discussion by Mark Russinovich about the performance of file copying in Vista. Mark is a smart guy--he used to be with the old sysinternals.com company that Microsoft bought. Now here he is, working gamely away at trying to fix one small part of the problem, without having any influence on the whole picture. As a result, people are still complaining about file-copying performance in Vista. Getting back to Microsoft's stance on Free Software, ultimately it's mainly what Steve Ballmer thinks that counts. Doesn't matter what lower-level Microsofties may think, if Ballmer is hostile, then their company as a whole remains hostile. End of story.
Individually Smart, Collective Stupid Posted Mar 26, 2008 0:20 UTC (Wed) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link] No it doesn't. While there are many individually smart people working at Microsoft, collectively a lot of their intelligence just seems to cancel out. I am sure the same thing can be said for any sufficiently large company. Regardless of your opinion about their intellect, the presumption that individual employees are evil or hostile, is not only illogical but harmful, especially if they happen to be using Linux and proclaiming their love for it . I personally think that it is naive to consider whole companies "evil". It simply does not make sense. A company is a business entity which has to make money (especially if it is a public company). Microsoft does it by developing proprietary software. RedHat happens to be "friendly" because they use Open Source and Free Software. Of course they must be friendly - they rely on it for their business! However it is just that - a business decision. If it was more profitable to develop proprietary software they would do it in a blink.
Individually Smart, Collective Stupid Posted Mar 26, 2008 7:39 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] I personally think that it is naive to consider whole companies "evil".I am not sure of that: a company is an organization, and organizations can be less evil or more evil, just like people. Imagine if we said: "Hey, the Mafia is neither good nor evil: they are just an organization, just like the Catholic church or Doctors Without Borders". Sorry, but some organizations are more inclined to commit crime than others. There is something called corporate culture, and it includes a tendency or willingness to do evil or be fair. Standard Oil was bent on keeping a monopoly, just like Bell or now Microsoft. That doesn't mean that good things can't happen despite that environment (think Unix), but it can be harder. A company is a business entity which has to make money (especially if it is a public company).That is true, but a bit lopsided. Making a profit is only one of the objectives of a company, and not always the most important; there is also maintaining its stock price, keeping a good public image, respecting the law, making its employees happy, keeping ahead of the competition... And that is besides its particular objectives such as delivering product or developing free software. Focusing only on one objective for a company is not likely to capture the whole picture. Case in point: what is more important for Microsoft, keeping its monopoly or making a profit? And now its logical consequence: is Microsoft likely to lose money in a deal, just to keep its monopoly in a market?
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 21, 2008 23:03 UTC (Fri) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] In another post on Port25 they show pretty clearly that they Still Don't Get It. http://port25.technet.com/archive/2008/02/13/why-use-down...
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 22, 2008 0:11 UTC (Sat) by chromatic (guest, #26207) [Link] What did you find objectionable or incorrect in that post?
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 22, 2008 7:56 UTC (Sat) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] Objectionable? Nothing. But the whole "success is sales" metric is clearly not understanding a (at least to me) huge part of OSS.
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 22, 2008 20:07 UTC (Sat) by chromatic (guest, #26207) [Link] I thought it was clear in the first paragraph that Brett meant to discuss "success" in terms of business success. In that context, "sales" or "conversions" or "support contracts" seems a much better metric than "downloads". That doesn't apply in the case of community-driven projects, but then again neither does "downloads".
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 22, 2008 7:02 UTC (Sat) by sramji (guest, #51212) [Link] You guys are biting the wrong hand here. Stephen has been a champion of Linux interoperability, and was a tireless advocate for Samba testing. His work directly led to the open discussions we had with the Samba team to get them the documentation they needed - including IDL files and network packet analyzers - to make Samba better. Stephen wrote the documentation for smbtorture, the test suite used by the Samba team. I encourage you to fact check all of this with Jeremy Allison and Andrew Tridgell. Beyond this, Stephen is dedicated to evangelizing Linux and teaches Linux+ certification at a local community college. I realize you have many frustrations with the company's history, and you're welcome to attack me or Port 25, but give Stephen a break. He deserves better than the treatment you're giving him here. Sam Ramji Sr. Director, Open Source and Linux Strategy Microsoft Corporation sramji@microsoft.com
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 22, 2008 9:49 UTC (Sat) by darwish07 (subscriber, #49520) [Link] Don't really worry about that. There are two kinds of OSS people. The first are those who are most of the time busy doing real work and you won't find them in those kind of flames. The second is just people with _lots_ of free time who like to play the "us and them" game. a.k.a, slashdot, digg, (some little portion of LWN comments when the article is _non_ technical, LWN can't be blamed for this portion though). I'm sure Corbet had a good point in his mind to post this article.
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 22, 2008 22:27 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] What!?! There are few free software developers who can resist the urge of getting into a good flamewar. Renowned Linux hackers such as Ingo Molnar or Al Viro have spent disproportionate amounts of time here on LWN debating on philosophical issues. Even Linus himself is renowned for his flaming abilities, although sadly not on this site.As to the lot of dilettantes, where I humbly belong, we try to learn and do what we can to spread free software, including small contributions. The frontier between the doer and the thinker is not so clear in our community. But I can guess that most of us sadly don't have lots of free time; I know I don't. If a blog post on a corporate site sucks then it is fair to criticize it, wherever it comes from. And you know that a site sucks big time when the intro has typos: This represents an open conversation dedicated Linux, Windows and open source interoperability.A boss moaning about "what a good boy Steve is" is not likely to get much respect here.
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 22, 2008 18:45 UTC (Sat) by simosx (subscriber, #24338) [Link] You are a Senior Director of Open Source and Linux Strategy at Microsoft, and you are posting a comment as a "guest" on LWN.net. A bit stingy to get an LWN.net Corporate account?
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 22, 2008 23:13 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] A bit stingy to get an LWN.net Corporate account? MSFT corporate policy probably prohibits doing anything that would help the Linux community.
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 23, 2008 1:03 UTC (Sun) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] That being said, why does MS even bother to run the "interoperability lab" featured on the Port 25 Web site? Are they trying to help the Linux/FLOSS community, or are they only helping themselves?
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 23, 2008 14:42 UTC (Sun) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] What do you think?
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 23, 2008 21:07 UTC (Sun) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] """ I realize you have many frustrations with the company's history, """ Oh? All in the past now, is it? And Stephen's work led to the discussions with Samba? Are you sure that pending multi-hundred-billion euro fines from the EU didn't influence the decision just a bit? At least we know now that $1.4 billion is the threshold where MS actually notices. I don't believe that the treachery is intended, by your company, to be "all in the past". But I am hopeful that with the help of ongoing investigations and watchdog efforts by the EU, that the treachery *will* end here and now, for good. Finally, someone had the guts and the clout to take on MS and make some headway. Save your PR for the EC, because I strongly suspect you're going to need all you can get. And it's pretty ineffective on people who have been watching you so closely all these years and know better. As an advocate and implementor of Unix in small business, you guys have been stepping on my toes, unfairly, for coming up on 20 years. And I'm keeping plenty of popcorn handy for the duration of this part of the show.
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 23, 2008 22:10 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Er, I don't think even the EU would impose multi-hundred-*billion* euro fines. ;} (claiming one pedant point; your point was clear regardless)
A tour of the Microsoft open source lab Posted Mar 26, 2008 1:13 UTC (Wed) by higuita (guest, #32245) [Link] i dont know, but things like exchange 2007 OWA being a sh*it in firefox, not having support for public folders, not having rich text support, when supporting the public folder is just a matter of putting there the damn link, rich text support is just a matter of dropping TinyMCE (its LGPL, so not any problem using it) or using correct html and javascript instead of activex... OR adding support for odt in office (and sharepoint) and drop ooxml (or at least use BOTH)... or let activeX die and promote the use of correct html and javascript... or adding working support in outlook and exchange for other protocols other than MAPI (like webdav, caldav)... or add native support for other filesystems (HFS+, ext3) and protocols (ssh, nfs)... or (etc, etc, etc) only when MS stops putting stupid limitations in it own software and start to use standard protocols (without extending it), we people will give you some slack dont get me wrong, your work is important, but for each thing you manage to improve, other parts of MS manage to break or limit 3 or 4 other things. Apple have done a system that mostly plays well with others, MS keep trying to play alone and only listen to other kids with big guys (gov's, big companies) force then to. Competition is good, if your software is good, there is no need to make business by enforcing a monopoly and using grey methods!! so again, you guys are doing a good thing, please dont stop, saddly there is still ALOT to be done
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