Revert to their previous behaviors? Do you mean CONTINUE their previous [mis]behaviors? [LWN.net]

Revert to their previous behaviors? Do you mean CONTINUE their previous [mis]behaviors?

Posted Apr 3, 2008 5:45 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
Parent article: OOXML gets ISO approval

This is not first time Microsoft played this game (this is the first time ISO was involved, but the game is not new). Once upon time Windows had competition, believe it or not. GEM, DESQview/X and others. And some even used standards (DESQview/X). Microsoft needed standard too. And got one: ECMA 234. Of course standard was quickly obsolete: even before it was approved Windows 95 (with greatly expanded set of interfaces) was out. But it allowed Microsoft to use the same rhetoric back then: we are open, we support international standards, bla-bla-bla.

If you'll take a look on today's story you'll see little differences, but nothing major: competitors had ISO-approved standards this time, so Microsoft needed one too, MS Office 14 is not yet released, but beta will be out soon. OOXML will not cover it like ECMA's Windows API only covered Windows 3.x. In short: I see no need for them to revert to their previous behaviors. Because they never really stopped. Will they get similar reward this time too? We'll see.

The only serious change I see is software patents: back then Microsoft viewed them as abominations, but today it uses them as weapons. I can not say this is change for the better though...

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