Microsoft's campaign to help Linux on the desktop
Summary
Topics
People in open source land don't begrudge Microsoft's right to earnincomeso much as its tactics in doing so. And, at least in the case ofapplications, there's one tactic at the top of just about every opensource advocate's hit list: the use of proprietary, undocumented fileformats--the code that stores where text is bolded and marginschanged.
Had Microsoft not adopted this tactic, most users might still be usingOffice 95, but by making file formats of newer versions of Officeunreadable by older versions, Microsoft created a pressing need toupgrade, even among users who didn't need any of the newer features.
"It's like a virus," I remember one MS-Office user telling me. "You'refine so long as everyone's using the older version. The moment one usergets the new version, everyone needs to upgrade in order to be able tocommunicate with that person, even if they were happy using the oldversion."
An important side result of keeping the file format proprietary was thatother word processing programs couldn't properly import Office files. All have significant flaws in their Word(tm) import functions.Thus Microsoft could -- and did -- gain end-to-end control over the waypeople shared documents, as well as how they create them.
This problem has been a consistent sore point in the open source world.Open source programmers didn't mind competing with Microsoft onfeatures,but at least wanted to be able to move files back and forth betweenOfficeand its alternatives.
In response to With the next release of Office, known as In the past, Microsoft protocols, when they've been open enough, havebeenwell implemented by open source developers. The two best examples ofthishave been the DHCP protocol forobtaining boot settings and the Both DHCP and SMB were invented by Microsoft, essentially re-inventingexisting protocols well-known in the Unix world (bootp andnfs, respectively). The open source world implemented Will opening the Office file formats instantly make free softwareprojectssuch as Office's use of XML could help the Linux desktop as much as Microsoft'sopening of SMB allowed Samba to help Linux become such a competitiveserver. To be sure, there are still usability issues with current LinuxGUIs, and Windows still runs many more applications than the Linuxdesktop. However, both GNOME and KDE are making serious progress atimproving ease of use, and if Microsoft's XML file format, for all it will do for Windows and Officeusers, may offer a greater advantage to fans of the company'scompetitionthan it does to Microsoft. Do you think Office's use of XML provides an opportunity to alternativeoffice suites? Tell Evan in the Talkback below or the ZDNet Linux Forum. Or, write to Evan directly at Evan@starnix.com.
Talkback - Tell Us What You Think
The best of ZDNet, delivered
ZDNet Newsletters
Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox
Facebook Activity
