On Friday 14 September 2007 09:51, Janani Gopalakrishnan wrote:

Hi,

I would like to seek your views on something...

Microsoft is criticised much by the FOSS community -- one or the other aspect of it. Their software, their ways of doing business, their attitude, whatever. My belief is that whenever somebody criticises they will also have a potential solution in mind -- and I felt, why is it that the solution aspect is barely discussed wrt the Microsoft issue :-)

Wrong. It has been discussed ad nauseum. Grep the list archives. One of the issues that came up out of discussions in the FOSS community is open standards. The result is the ODF specs for documents.

So, I am throwing this question open to you...

"Is there some aspect of Microsoft that you do not like? If so, what? And more importantly, how do you think they can correct this flaw of theirs (if you think they can)?"

M$ reactions to the ODF standard is a very very nice pointer to the real problem - M$ continued quest to perpetuate an illegal monopoly by foul means, without the slightest technical merit.

Solution - break the monopoly by forcing open all existing and future M$ protocols. Fine them in hard cash (not stupid vouchers) for every violation of incomplete protocol definitions. Force governments to use only open standards No software patents.

These are very simple. But M$ and their microserfs specialise in dishing out crap like multiple standards are good for competition, end users will suffer, our ip will be compromised and other rubbish, to the mainstream media. The reporters who print this crap have absolutely no understanding of these issues and make no attempt to undersatnd them either. And in my opinion much of the media are biased because lack of tech knowledge AND M$ ad money. I am yet not even talking of M$ sponsored "case studies" and reports.