An interesting read thanks for that thecheekmaster. That will "hopefully" challenge the open source world... can't wait to see.

Sounds just a little too good to be true to me

Yup. I agree. They were just fined by the EU for non-compliance with a previous order along these same lines. The EU said MS's documentation, that was written to help integrate competing OS's into the same network with MS to put them into compliance with the results of their antitrust loss, was written to maximize volume and obfuscate information. In other words MS's documentation was written to obfuscate, not clarify, issues of integration.

Actions speak much louder than words, so I'll believe MS when I see them actually making good on their words, as their history is all talk and no action along these lines.

To tell the truth it is tacit admission from MS, without actually saying it, that everything their critics have been saying about them is true.

I thought this thread would be an appropriate place to put this so we can see the differences between what MS says, and how MS implements their own stated 12 principles.

The following quote comes from a Groklaw post titled "Taking Microsoft's ODF Plugin for a Spin... Splat".

For those of you who may read this post in the days, weeks, and months to come when the entries are no longer on the front page of te blog look for the entries on July 13, 14, and 18 of 2006 from the An Antic Disposition site to see the screenshots and read the original postings on this.

Now, before the MS guys here say, "Well, why should MS make it easy to work with other document formats?" I say read the promises just made by MS. Actions speak far louder than words, and MS has already given the lie to their own promises in their handling of the ODF document formatting issue.

Man!! you're SO annoying .....how long this "I hate Microsoft Campaign" is going to go for? It get's boring after a while....
Everytime I try to read a thread that I find interesting, you manage to spoil it with your attitude!! please stop!!!!!!!

& give it a rest!!!

Well I for one applaud ff for posting that. It is a reminder of the reality behind corporate guff.

What I find annoying is corporate-speak where the words seem to be divorced of all reality!

Harry.

As far as I am aware none of us work for the above mentioned companies, so all we can do is speculate Harry.
Finding an anti Microsoft piece of literature is not the hardest search string I can think of as I am sure you’re well aware.

I agree. That's one reason I just keep on posting this stuff. This idea that these corporations should not be held accountable and that all their deception should not even be talked about is bunk as far as I'm concerned.

Ummm.... Just what about my post was speculation? This thread started with MS's promises, published by their own legal department, of making their products interoperable with other OS's and software. Then I posted links to screen shots showing that MS is not doing what MS itself said it would. That isn't speculation.

Easy there mate, I'm not an MS fanboy, nor am I a MS hater but I do find myself agreeing with Freddy here. He's not exactly ranting, just showing some facts (in this case, the fact is that MS's ODF plugin is crap) and formed an opinion about what it says. He's as entitled to his opinions as much as anyone else. He's not exactly a foaming-at-the-mouth lunatic proclaiming Bill Gates is Satan. [EDIT] Actually, he is, but he still has a point.

Thank you Freddy, I found your contribution here to be interesting, informative and a general eye opener. As per usual, you have made a good point

@Casablanca - there are many people here that find Freddy's posts very interesting and would not want him to stop having a pop at M$. I would suggest that you skip his posts rather than resorting to personal attacks, as this kind of tactic is heavily discouraged on this forum.

From Anne Broache's blog on ZDNet about MS's announcement of its 12 principles I found the following:

This is what I figured MS would use to get out of actually applying their "12 principles". They will use DRM and all it's associated tie-ins to the OS and hardware to lock competitors out and then claim it's all security and privacy related so they are cooperating with, and following, the anti-trust orders and still locking out everyone else to even a greater degree than they ever have before.

If I was rich I'd bet money on this one as DRM is designed to keep MS firmly in the driver's seat and lock competitors out. They will implement DRM in their Office suite and without the MS keys nobody will be able to read an Office document. The beauty of it is that they have now claimed it as a "security" issue, not a competitive issue. Thus they will be getting more restrictive and less interoperable with other software and OS's and still claim that they are cooperating.... That's probably why they wrote an entirely new network stack. With DRM it's probably possible to be able to lock out a non-DRM OS from communicating with a MS OS as DRM will run at both hardware and software levels, and call it "security".

I knew there had to be a gaping hole in their "promise" somewhere, and this pro-MS blog just published it.

Well, I AM an MS fanboy - but there's always room Freddy!

Really? I have always thought your sig was just sarcasm.....

No. Someone's got to stand up for them! :hhhmmm

What! After the shower today!

I didn't know they wrote a new protococol suite, but if whay you specualate on here comes to pass Freddy, no one is ever going to implement it. More and more businesses are running *nix servers and there are still plenty of other OS's that have a significant grounding in enterprise. Just about every financial company in the UK uses VMS for example. Our VMS and Windows networks are very heavily integrated to the point that if MS did stop Windows networking with other OS's, it would be Windows to go first, probably in favour of Linux or some such. They'd lose more of their enterprise stake than they're going to with Vista.

I found some more on this subject today.

The above quote comes from the Agnitum web site, makers of the Outpost Firewall. The rest of the article can be read here.