Microsoft offer to leave!
Microsoft have threatened to take Windows out of South Korea if the powers that be decide they have breached anti-trust laws by bundling MSN Messenger and Windows Media Player with Windows. It appears that Microsoft see this as a viable threat, and quite possibly blackmail, but they haven’t taken into account the growing number of people and governments using open source software.
Large chunks of Africa are running on Ubuntu Linux and doing just fine, governments in many places around the world are turning their back on Microsoft and proprieatary standards and software because they see major problems (not just financial) with investing their documents and operations in the whims of private enterprise. The fact of the matter is that not even Microsoft can import an early powerpoint presentation into modern versions of powerpoint with accuracy. The somewhat undocumented proprietary file standards are causing data loss amongst all kinds of computer users.
Open source invariably uses open standards, which, even when outdated, are still documented and can be imported into various programs. Open source software not only provides financial benefits, but can be altered to perform certain functions better.
I’m not saying that proprietary software is bad, I’m just saying that Microsoft seem to b showing an odd level of arrogance in their dealings with South Korea, and if they continue they will cause many other governments to reconsider their dealings with Microsoft and similar companies….except for the backward thinking ACT government that is…they have developed a strange “Open source is never documented and is always the worst solution and is only there to annoy people” stance on the matter. Strange when you consider the fact that ANYBODY can write a program which reads and writes Open Office files perfectly (because it is properly documented) and you have to reverse engineer and make guesses to implement a buggy filter for MS Office files (you try calling Microsoft and asking to see the documentation).
South Korea could make a decision as early as Wednesday….it’s not my place to speculate, but have fun flying those executives back to the US, Microsoft!
Samuel
October 29th, 2005 at 11:36pm