Microsoft Sings a New Tune—Wants to Play Nice With Open-Source

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1. OpenSocially
   

   February 21st, 2008 at 9:06 am

   Open–socially.

   Great idea.

2. Ravi Shanker
   

   February 21st, 2008 at 9:11 am

   huh!
   Dunno what to say…

3. Matt Asay
   

   February 21st, 2008 at 9:13 am

   Erick: Not really. This policy on open source is the same one that Microsoft has had for several years. Absolutely no change. The real change is on the open APIs and protocols. But for open-source developers, it’s same ol’ same ol’.

4. bmiles
   

   February 21st, 2008 at 9:13 am

   It such a coincidence that they make this announcement around the same time they are trying to acquire yahoo. I think this is a microsoft peace offering or icebreaker to a community of startups who feel this merger will destroy the startup scene.

5. google
   

   February 21st, 2008 at 9:17 am

   http://www.googleyahoobaidu.com/index1.htm

   MS now know what should do. and she will be big ,but not great intenet company.

6. allen stern
   

   February 21st, 2008 at 9:18 am

   live call coverage if anyone is interested:
   http://www.centernetworks.com/.....call-notes

7. jro
   

   February 21st, 2008 at 9:19 am

   For all the hate on MS on open-source, I would posit that they are taking more meaningful steps in enabling open-source development against their product line than most any other company. With their huge deployment base, even nominal support like this can create some real opportunities.

   In case anyone has missed the trend, MS is becoming more open than closed. In a few years, I wonder if the MS-bashing from open-source proponents won’t switch to some other company.

8. YDRIVE
   

   February 21st, 2008 at 9:20 am

   Absolutely splendid. Microsoft is always a great company. Yahoo! also.

9. Chris
   

   February 21st, 2008 at 9:26 am

   http://www.advogato.org/article/101.html

   “Today I received a polite phone call from a fellow at Microsoft who works in the Windows Media group. He informed me that Microsoft has intellectual property rights on the ASF format and told me that, although I had reverse engineered it, the implementation was still illegal since it infringed on Microsoft patents. ”

   Too little too late. I would tell developers not to waste time on Microsoft technology. This is a classic bait and switch.

10. Intercon.NET
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 9:27 am

    It is arguably more fruitful and meaningful (and helpful and healthy) to have open (and worldclass) documentations, than all those many (still respectable) open source packages with shitty or simply no documentation to [add whatever word you like here]. I just love Microsoft!

11. Chris
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 9:28 am

    http://digg.com/microsoft/MSFT.....n_Document

    This announcement is a continuation of this initiative, which was launched to stop governments from switching to open formats.

12. Karim Yaghmour
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 9:36 am

    On the face of it, this might look like what Trolltech did with Qt and what MySQL did with its DB: if what you’re doing is free, then feel free to play around with our stuff, but if you’re making money then we want to be making money too. But this is far more insidious though because of this part: “Companies that engage in commercial distribution of these protocol implementations will be able to obtain a patent license from Microsoft, …” IOW, if you’re redistributing those “free” implementations for commercial use, then you have to pay. That, specifically, is very different from things like Qt or MySQL.

    Having contributed quite some open source code myself, I’d have to say that this isn’t the type of thing I’d consider. It’s a poison pill really.

13. Joel Haasnoot
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 9:40 am

    Let’s not forget that Microsoft has (had?) anti-trust issues in the EU… I really wouldn’t be surprised if this was more of a move to try and stop any further lawsuits.

14. Chris
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 9:40 am

    @12

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl.....p;from=rss

    QT is actually released under GPL. Meaning you can make commercial software out of it and make as much money as you want without paying them a dime. Just as with GTK/Gnome.

    You can’t compare a widget toolkit with a protocol. One can be linked as a library, and the other can’t.

    Microsoft is trying to reverse the trend of losing to open formats with governments and other large institutions. It’s all about control. Once they get them back, they can and will change the parameters of the game. It’s a game to them.

15. Michael
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 9:41 am

    Microsoft is playing nice and opening up APIs and documents…

    until it decides to stop. And you have no power there.

    Granted, some of this information will be like toothpaste - once out of the tube, it will be hard to put back in. But do not make the mistake that, because MS is opening up their vaults now, that this means that the next version of any of their products will be subject to the same openness.

    I agree with the previous poster who warned of “bait and switch”. This is the klaxon sounding in the back of my mind too. I think that MS is being sincere here and now, but because there is no way for us to hold them to this behavior going forward, I would not bet my own money on this behavior continuing.

    Still - thanks, Ozzie. Consistency leads to trust. Keep it up.

16. JC John SESE Cuneta
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 9:41 am

    No. Actually, this is a very timely announcement to get the votes of the NO countries against making OOXML an ISO Standard.

    The world and the internet is abound with “NO TO OOXML, YES TO ODF”. We’ve seen news left and right how governments and corporations are switching to ODF and FLOSS applications. With the fast-tracking of M$ losing domination (but still dominating), it is nigh that they start launching programs that will create confusion.

    Confusion? Yes. For those who are not really solid to FLOSS and for those who are only opting for the ‘best’, they now have an ‘option’ not to re-consider M$ or not to switch to FLOSS.

    It will start an attitude of “Hey, M$ is opening itself up! M$ loves the FLOSS Community AFTERALL! Oh My the world turned upside down!” Then voila, M$ won again.

    This announcement is more likely connected to the OOXML voting even if they deny that, it is too timely to be not related to that.

    OOXML voting is here. This is their last chance to get it ISO’d and compete with ODF. They are claiming that ODF can’t handle the numerous data of M$ Office especially 2007, then why not just join ODF and help it improve.

    They are not really appeasing the FLOSS Community, but they are sowing confusion to the hearts and minds of those who really haven’t fully moved to FLOSS.

    “Let’s make a show to pull them back to our favor again.”

17. Erick Schonfeld
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 9:45 am

    @Matt Asay, good point, I added a link to your post.

    @Michael (15), for the products this covers, they ar esaying it will also cover future versions (Vista, Windows Server, Sharepoint, etc.).

18. antje wilsch
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 9:46 am

    Projects like MONO and DotNetNuke have helped spur this along. MSFT has been slowly moving to be more open for quite a time now. I am not sure this is new news from a developers’ point of view, but good to get the public word out.

    Licensing sounds like a bear though….

19. km4
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 9:48 am

    I love the smell of desperation at Microsoft !

    Too little…too late….few really trust them…after 20 yrs plenty of Microsoft partners screwed and today cannot make any significant $$$ working with the beast….they will become increasingly irrelevant.

20. Simon Rivada
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 9:50 am

    It’s a good move, a really good one which will take some of the critics away. But let’s be honest, when Microsoft does something like this most the tech-savvy guys will not trust it. Think it is all about getting friendly with the enemy only for their own richness.

    I do not share the opinion but I know a lot of them do. I, personally, am starting to like Microsoft more and more

21. matt
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 9:50 am

    erik, these are not “dramatic steps”

22. Technicle
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 9:58 am

    @JC John SESE Cuneta
    FLOSS, while will always be there, won’t kill Microsoft. No serious companies and governments would feel comfortable to use free software in general to do their work. They might not trust Microsoft, but all the more so, they won’t trust FLOSS either. Mightbe MySQL and Apache (and a handful more) are the only few exceptions. Even Google Apps for Enterprise are, essentially, not free.

23. Sean
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 9:59 am

    An interesting approach,,,i knew Ray Ozzie would bring more open-ness to the game….lets see what happens

24. Todd
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 10:00 am

    Laocoön, priest of Troy, who, in Virgil’s Aeneid, tells his countrymen to “Beware Greeks bearing gifts”. Both German and English have expressions related to “Greeks bearing gifts”, but they don’t use the same idioms. While English concentrates on warning against Greeks with gifts, German emphasizes the gift itself. Ein Danaergeschenk is a “fatal gift” that brings misfortune or causes problems.

25. Jeff the Great
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 10:00 am

    is this what Scoble was crying about? God I hope not….

26. Chris
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 10:08 am

    “No serious companies and governments would feel comfortable to use free software in general to do their work.”

    um….

27. Holger
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 10:09 am

    Nice about the APIs… but that’s pretty much it. The “promise” to Open Source developers is worthless because it’s a promise to the *developers* only. They still want to charge when you distribute it commercially (and be sure they will count charging for support as “commercial distribution”) and, even worse, if you simply use it in a commercial setting. So rather than this being a great gift to the Open Source community, it’s a nice little poison pill - get developers to use their patentented methods (after all, they have been promised not to be sued) and then collect royalties from the companies that use Open Source software - a nice way of making money from OSS developers’ work, exactly what MS always wanted.

28. Technicle
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 10:10 am

    @22, and in terms of open source, most Google stuff are not open source — even though they sponsor a open source repository… then, what makes Google a lovable company, and Microsoft a hatable one, with respect to the open source perpesctive?

29. JC John SESE Cuneta
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 10:12 am

    @Technicle

    Yah it won’t of course, but they’re getting hurt. So they need to show something so their current customers won’t see it. Additionally, we have the people who will wait-and-see and use the best option. With this move of M$ they can gain these people.

    This is really more about OOXML and the undecided and wait-and-see than being about open-source developers.

    Nonetheless, this is good. Any developer, FLOSS or not, should read and use whatever s/he can from the documentations M$ will release.

30. cease
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 10:13 am

    @JC John SESE Cuneta

    I agree, this is half assed attempt. Releasing documents and announcing intentions , is not enough.. adopt open standards , drop your piece of sh*t standards that is not good for the industry, stop complaining open source steals from you, and compete on technical merit. Then you might gain peoples trust again.

31. Technicle
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 10:17 am

    @Chris

    “um…”

    My stance is, open formats, yes; free software, not necessarily — for want of (perceived) “quality and reliability”.. in quotes because, meaning of them are always subjective and questionable (in that everything has bugs anyways).

32. Technicle
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 10:29 am

    @JC John SESE Cuneta
    >This is really more about OOXML and the undecided and wait-and-see
    Agree.

33. JC John SESE Cuneta
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 10:33 am

    Personally, they should just embrace FLOSS. If they want to protect their ‘current’ APIs, software, etc. and by all means protect it. That is where their business depends on.

    There are many other areas where they can enter into and start developing FLOSS applications from there. This action simply confirms that they’ve something and they do not like it.

    For starters, if OOXML fails to be an ISO Standard, then start using ODF and help with its further development, now I strongly believe the “Free and Open” Community will accept that very positively. Now if OOXML becomes an ISO Standard, then they can start implementing and officially supporting ODF.

    There are many ways where they can truly support and “be friendly” with the Free and Open Communities, not just this, with clause of “covenant not to sure…”

    But heck, personally, I am not saying it is bad or it is not worth it. By all means, “thank you”. Though, if they truly want to be friends and support interoperability, then they should do more than that, and I’ve mentioned two ways that they can do.

    Still, my stance will not change in regards to OOXML. But seriously, thank you for those documentations and for that covenant.

34. aaa
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 10:34 am

    microsoft is turning over a new leaf. I applaud their recent move to provide software developers from schools / universities with developer software licenses. Always made me mad when I was being taught to program in language and id had to buy the full version of developer packages.

    And now I applaud them on welcoming the open source market. Good to see them working with their audience rather than against.

    Well done bill and stevie.

35. Chris
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 10:37 am

    Historically Microsoft has been slow to come around on things. They are taking baby steps into the waters of openness, and while the waves may cause them to run back to the beach, the steps are steps in the right direction.

    Personally, I’ll watch how this announcement unfolds, and decide from there. Sometimes sincerity is proven with time. Monoliths aren’t known for their agility, but with the proper motivation anyone can change. Redmond certainly has the desktops to make a meaningful, positive impact. If they follow through it’s a win for everyone. If they don’t it’s business as usual.

    Doesn’t hurt to be hopeful, does it?

36. Matt
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 10:43 am

    good post, erick… would be nice to see MS providing hosting and distribution platforms for the open source community to deploy apps… this is flirting with open source… with the resources at MS’s disposal it is rather unconscionable that their idea of embracing open source is to highlight that they “will not sue developers” for their efforts to bolster the MS products…. pfffft. Long way to go MS.

37. Karim Yaghmour
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 10:48 am

    @14

    This is slightly inaccurate. Here’s an interesting post within that slashdot thread:
    http://slashdot.org/comments.p.....d=22106080
    Specifically, you can’t link proprietary code to Qt. If it were LGPL it would be different.

    Now, with regards to comparing a library to a protocol you are partly right. And FWIW, my word (”this might look like”) are meant to be mitigating. But, regardless of what it is that is being licensed (protocol, API, library, kernel, etc.) the point is: what am I permitted to do with my code once I’ve written it to use said licensed platform/api/foo. In that specific regard, I think we are in agreement, this about Microsoft continuing to maintain control. Whether this has particular applicability to ongoing negociations with govts may indeed be true, however I feel this similar to what Trolltech some 10 years ago: they had a desire to tap into open source, and they successively introduced licenses which tried (and sometimes failed — Harmony toolkit anyone?) to please developers. Maybe MS will go through a similar process … ? I won’t hold my breath

38. joe
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 10:54 am

    i think much of the value of the offer depends on how much royalties would they charge , and if the rates could be easily known before developing products.

    hopefully they would do what they write in their site , and offer Reasonable and Non Discriminatory Licensing at reasonable royalty rates , and do it on some long term basis. this would be interesting

39. Krish
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 11:00 am

    Seriously Eric, put in some time to understand the meaning of the term open-source. I understand that Mike gets pissed off when Fred Wilson quotes your article for the lack of journalism standards. But if you are going to make such obvious mistakes, we don’t need Fred Wilson to say that about blogger standards. Don’t abuse the term open-source just because you don’t know what it is. Call me a fundamentalist or any other term. I don’t care but the usage of the term in this context is plain wrong and it lowers the standards of blogging.

40. Krish
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 11:02 am

    Just to clarify, I was talking about the title of the post not your contents.

41. Federico
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 11:06 am

    Sounds like a “mee too” from MS, but it can work if they keep up the open APIs and documentation, and most of all.. support!.
    Right now I think they’re more interested in start catching up with open standards and people developing gadgets, widgets or whatever for their own products… instead of losing them while they’re more interested in Thunderbird add-ons, Firefox add-ons, opensocial, and all that “hype” stuff that is driving developers attention away.
    Just a quick thought.

42. Alex Hammer
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 11:08 am

    As they say, “there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come”.

    Those companies that do not bend — even if they’re on their knees and as powerful as Microsoft — will break.

    I feel that way very strongly.

43. Chris
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 11:13 am

    @36
    “This is slightly inaccurate.”
    “Specifically, you can’t link proprietary code to Qt. ”

    “Meaning you can make commercial software out of it and make as much money as you want without paying them a dime”

    You can sell GPL software. People do it every day. My statement was accurate to 100%. Commercial, means you sell it for money, not that you keep your software closed while using an open library, such as nero for Linux .

    As a member of the Free Software Foundation, “badchris” @ fsf, for over 2 years I will chime in on @38.

    Open source, simply means that the source code is open in terms of programming. Free Software is not simply open source, it is free in terms of redistribution and the way you use the software.

    If you’re talking about the people who use Linux, or LAMP, or even word press that is used by techcrunch which you are using right now. You are in fact talking about Free Software, not open source.

    The .NET runtime and other MS software was previously released under the MS public license, but was not redistributable with modifications. Now they are simply releasing the formats under the same type of license, which grants no identifiable time frame to the usage, and they are doing it with an extra provision that lets you redistribute it, but not charge for the incarnation or implementation.

    This is not free software.

    This is aimed at people that want to extend native support for MS formats in free software. The same way as OO2 exports PDF. This is to keep their formats from dying which is the trend right now amongst modern day developers.

44. other
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 11:14 am

    “Erick: Not really. This policy on open source is the same one that Microsoft has had for several years. Absolutely no change. The real change is on the open APIs and protocols. But for open-source developers, it’s same ol’ same ol’.”

    Agreed - Erick should be fired for biased stories. “sings a new tune” my ass, did you just miss everything during your time at those other publications? I mean I know TC is only a blog and not a magazine, but try to be a little professional. I wish we could go back to the days of just mike writing.

45. Federico
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 11:18 am

    Oops.. started with the wrong foot.. the links to the file formats specification (doc, xls, ppt) are broken..
    http://www.microsoft.com/inter.....rmats.mspx

46. Matt
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 11:24 am

    @43 … well that would leave us without duncan… unacceptable. i would be sad without the midnight dosage of duncan across my wire…

47. Intercon.NET
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 11:31 am

    There’s also a big camp of developers who just need better API and formats documentation and interoperability — instead of open source codes/libraries, because they don’t want to open source their products, which even GPL won’t help. Another way put, GPL has its (intended and intentional) limitations, and so do Microsoft’s offerings. In any case, it’s a giant step forward in terms of openness. Whether helpful or not, depends what you do and what you want.

48. Brian
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 11:33 am

    Remember “Show us the code” ???

    see youtube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9SlW1dxM70

    Funny considering the news…

49. Richie Cunningham
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 11:43 am

    Interesting. I think Microsoft is finally seeing the light, (OOXML may have had something to do with it, as well as the European & Yahoo issues) although I wait to see whether their words are matched by deeds. I note however that it is easier to give concessions when you are the undisputed market leader.

    I wonder when Apple will open some their locked down gardens (iphone sdk excluded)

50. Fabian Schonholz
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 12:29 pm

    If all these really meant any change …. Now they need to make their products work

51. other
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 12:41 pm

    “@43 … well that would leave us without duncan… unacceptable. i would be sad without the midnight dosage of duncan across my wire…”

    what?! duncan is a chimp. half the crap he writes is completely wrong, and the other half is wrong enough to make my eyes bleed.

52. Rick
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 1:38 pm

    To paraphrase Dr. House: “Microsoft lies. It’s in their nature.”

    Let’s face it, they lied about the nature of open source, they lied about their business practices and they are now indirectly admitting they have lied about what openness and interoperability would mean to their business and innovation in general.

    Everything they have actually done towards openness and interoperability and generally playing nice with others has been canceled out by the small print, dirty tricks an other forms of backhandedness.

    Why on earth would anyone believe they are telling the truth right now?

53. rubu
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 2:22 pm

    I note however that it is easier to give concessions when you are the undisputed market leader.

54. Kevin H
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 3:05 pm

    Notice how these interoperability principles and APIs apply only to their latest products, which they are having trouble convincing many corporate users to upgrade to. But hey if people start developing whizz bang add-on apps that are really appealing, people will need to upgrade their MS products to use the ‘must-have’ add-ons.

55. Alex P
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 3:41 pm

    An open-source initiative from Microsoft is like a nicotine patch from Philip-Morris. Hypocritical. Nothing’s really changing.

    Open specs and open docs are also pretty much worthless since there’s absolutely no guarantee that once this wave of open-source fad recedes in MS, they won’t make changes obsoleting published specs.

    They have a seriously fscked up reputation among the developers by being a supplier of incomplete documentation and unreliable APIs. Making declarations that it will all now going to be dandy is NOT a way of improving it. Fix the damn bugs. Not the ones in Windows Media Player DRM, which get blazingly fast response, but those that your own dev community has been pleading to fix for freaking years.

56. Jason Harrop
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 5:04 pm

    What I’d really like to see is publicly accessible bug tracking for those high-volume Microsoft products. Read access to such a thing ought not require a login.

    This would give much greater visibility of reported issues, and progress in addressing them (inc when/how the fix will become available to MS customers).

    It is crucial to understanding the difference between the documentation and the actual implementation.

    There used to be such a thing for IE7 - see http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archi.....60095.aspx
    but it seems to have quietly disappeared. http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/.....erFeedback says “The Internet Explorer Feedback page is temporary closed. Report all security bugs directly to secure@microsoft.com.”

    cheers

    Jason

57. toto
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 5:20 pm

    youtold it yourself : “the reason for this action is primarily to get the European Court off its back”

    they are playing with communication.

    they are changing the result of a judgement to make communication with it.

    they are just doing a litlle that the european court is asking them, nothing more.

    only the future will tell us if they stop fighting against open source.

    your title shouldnt be “ms wants to play nice with open source” but should be ” ms, is finally doing what the european court is aking them from years”

58. toto
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 7:40 pm

    anyway, its a very good decision and i hope that they will really go on this way to open themselves to the world

59. grishick
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 9:12 pm

    Eric, have you never seen MSDN library? It has thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of pages of documentation, articles, code, etc. And anyway, that $#!t often does not work the way MSDN describes it.

60. Charles Kelly
    

    February 21st, 2008 at 10:33 pm

    #1. It makes business sense. As does free developer software for students. Capturing the Mindshare of the developer community has always been the focal point of Microsoft’s strategy. I was one of the original 8 Regional Directors entrusted with access and the independence to be straight in getting the word out to our peers.

    #2. It has already been “added to” developer group evangelists plans/schedules. A Microsoft Developer Evangelist shared with me what he would be doing after more of the CLR is finished. He was very interested when I told him I like/use jQuery, John Resig’s New Wave JavaScript, and the huge open-source “plug-in” community, and I want to seamlessly “plug-in” to Visual Studio 2008. A talented developer in Europe has already done preliminary jQuery.NET development work. Microsoft MUST fully support standards to ensure their software works with everyone else’s.

    #3. It “is” the Ray Ozzie era dawning. Thanks to the financial engine and sales mega-team that Steve Ballmer created and dominates, Ray Ozzie will be free to do what he has always done best–one of the world’s pre-emminent scientists. Driven by vision and an all consuming love of technology, Ozzie will represent the “old school geek” in terms of being true to the science and technology. I used to be a Lotus 123 and Lotus Notes fanboy. Ray speaks for me!

    #4. That’s my opinion. As Charles Barkley so eloquently stated “I could be wrong, but I doubt it!”

61. Burt
    

    February 22nd, 2008 at 12:54 am

    Here’s my question: If Microsoft one days releases the source code for say “Windows9X” would anyone care?

62. Masseratti
    

    February 22nd, 2008 at 5:24 am

    The damage is done, nobody trust them anymore.
    Unethical bastards, I say fuck’em!

63. Ian Kemmish
    

    February 22nd, 2008 at 6:26 am

    The most interesting thing about this for me is that the overpaid consultants will now have to come up with more original excuses for why their software doesn’t interact properly with Windows.

    In the late 90’s one of my smarter cohorts spent a month getting a virtual printer to work with Windows NT. It was documented, but very badly (though not as bad as that paradigm of lousy technical documentation, Apple’s TrueType spec.). The virtual printer worked flawlessly. Needless to say, I was pretty amused when the EU’s “expert witnesses” years later averred that there was no documentation for this and it was probably impossible to get such a print server to work, but that they’d need a lot more money before they could be absolutely sure. Of course, they may actually have been right when they said this about file serves, but I know they were wrong they said it about print servers.

64. Your Uncle Bob
    

    February 22nd, 2008 at 9:22 am

    Who gives a shit what the Open Source Community thinks? I don’t. Are they going to buy my software?

    People like to say that MS doesn’t innovate, which is a fair statement. But what has the Open Source community really innovated? Oh sure, they have taken ideas and expounded upon them and made better versions, but they haven’t really innovated either.

65. Olivier
    

    February 26th, 2008 at 12:25 am

    It sounds good on paper. I am suspicious though to hear MS talking about “promoting data portability” when there is not even compatibility between Office 2007 and 2003 documents. So let’s wait and see…

66. Stefan Engeseth
    

    March 9th, 2008 at 11:35 am

    If Microsoft doesn’t change, they wont survive competition from Open Source. I think this is the first step but they need also to change they their DNA and brand. If Microsoft don’t change, they wont survive competetion from Open Source. I think this is the first step but they need also to change they their DNA and brand.