[Am-info] Is the sky falling and the end near for open source?

[Fred A. Miller]

Is the sky falling and the end near for open source?

"Edwards is undoubtedly right to be worried. Microsoft's use of XML is 
sufficiently Microsoft-centric that the price of use will almost 
certainly include platform-consistency — meaning that all users must be 
at the same release level for both the Microsoft operating system and 
Microsoft Office. Because Microsoft Office documents operate a bit like 
Internet worms, spreading Microsoft Office wherever they land simply 
because there's no other reasonable way for the recipient to access 
them, the concern is that early adopters will force their business 
partners to follow suit and eventually lock out open-source products 
like OpenOffice.org.

Of course, the open-source community could follow Microsoft's lead to 
add XML functionality to its products, thus maintaining 
interoperability, but there are some difficult issues that may make this 
technically impractical and legally impossible."

<http://www.linuxworld.com/go.cgi?id=742373>

-- 
Fred A. Miller
Systems Administrator
Cornell Univ. Press Services
fm@cupserv.org, www.cupserv.org