On the Microsoft fine
From Groklaw, an extract from the Free Software Foundation Europe's statement on Microsoft's recent fine:
"If we are to believe Microsoft's numbers, it appears that 120.000 person days are not enough to document its own software. ... For users, this should be a shock: Microsoft apparently does not know the software that controls 95% of all desktop computers on this planet. Imagine General Motors releasing a press statement to the extent that even though they had 300 of their best engineers work on this for two years, they cannot provide specifications for the cars they built."
It's long been my opinion that closed "standards" (including protocols and file formats) are an unmitigated loss for many reasons, though most especially because they lock the user into the first vendor's solution. It's gratifying that the European Commission has the intelligence to realise this, though given the trend in European (and other) governments towards open standards, perhaps not too surprising.
[ Entry posted at: Thu 13 Jul 2006 21:10:35 BST | 0 comment(s)... | Cat: Politics ]